Gwyneth Paltrow x Robin Wright: Honing Your Creative Vision

0:02When 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 a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. 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.

0:58Here we go. This week, we're sharing a gem from the Goop Podcast archives,

1:07my guest today is the award-winning actress producer and director robin wright i've admired robin's work for as long as i can remember and i was really thrilled to finally get the chance to speak with her robin has just released her feature directorial debut land the film is about a woman who's experienced tremendous loss and retreats to the beautiful but unforgiving wilderness to try to find a new way to live. Watching the film felt like being inside a poem. It's so moving, visually stunning, and completely took my breath away. Today we talk about making career pivots, honing your artistic vision, how we heal from trauma, and why she felt called to make a movie about human kindness.

1:53So let's get to my chat with Robin Wright.

1:59Okay. I am so excited to talk to you on so many levels. First of all, I don't know if you know this, but basically the reason that I wanted to be an actress was when I saw you in Santa Barbara, the TV show when I was 12 years old. I watched it every day. You were my complete obsession. You were so breathtaking and so natural. And I was like, who is this? This is like what I want to do when I grow up. I'm serious. With your fucking long hair and your amazing face and body and all of your natural behavior. I was like, I, I need to try to be this person. Okay. That is one of the funniest stories of all time, because what a cheesy show.

2:55Is it cheesy? I don't know. Well, and it was so popular at the time. Of course it was just the eighties, but I just loved mostly the costumes come on with the big 1980s shoulder pads right everything was about shoulder pads but you were such a revelation was about oh my god that's so funny I swear I swear I mean I have been your ardent fan since then like since I was 12 I'm serious. I, I, I have like loved you from afar forever. So I was just curious, like, how did you, what was your path to, to being on that show, which obviously then started the rest of your amazing career, but how did you get on a, how does one get on a soap opera?

3:47That was one of the last auditions that I did before I said, I'm throwing in the towel. I'm, I suck. I'm never going to get anything. And I bought a ticket to Hawaii, one-way ticket to Hawaii to get on a boat and be like, cut the crudité for the crew. That was my job position. I'm just going to go do that and make some money. And as I got to Hawaii, I got the call saying, you got the part on Santa Barbara that you auditioned for right before you left. And then it was, you know, you sign a two-year contract and that's your life at NBC studios, 16, 18 hours a day, five days a week. And we would sometimes sleep in our dressing rooms and NBC studios.

4:32There's no windows except for in the front where the production people had their offices. So we were kind of in a dungeon with no real air circulation. And then we'd go down into the stage dungeon and shoot the show with three cameras. And I lived in Santa Monica and that was in Burbank. I can't, why go home for five hours? Wow. So we'd sleep on our couch in our dressing rooms a lot of the time. It was insane training, I have to say. Just in terms of getting accustomed to the rigor and the discipline of the job and like nothing was hard after that. pretty much it was almost like boot camp for acting and also learning to work with three cameras at once.

5:18You had to know when to turn, when to favor camera one, et cetera. And some actors had 15 pages of dialogue a day with monologues and crazy kind of memorization you had to have. I never realized the live three camera. So you're sort of editing as you, or they're editing as they go so the and and do you know when they're on camera one versus two versus three well what you could see in your periphery was the red light so you'd know if camera three's red light would go off you knew to go more to the left to get a profile shot for camera one and they were in the booth editing the movie the movie the show as we shot it it was like, it's like a sports event.

6:03A little bit. Incredible. That's amazing. Was it fun? It was actually, but it's, it's fun in the sense of the same way it's fun being on a series like House of Cards. You join this incredible team of people and you're around each other more than you're around your family. That becomes your family. And that was the, the, the hoot of it is that we would have barbecues on the weekend at the makeup person's house, etc. And just bonded with our crew and the other actors. Right. It's also a, I don't know, for me anyway, it was a fun time before I had kids. I felt like I could really engage in that familial side of like shooting something.

6:48As soon as I had kids, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to go home. I just want to go home. Have you done a series? No, I've only done, I did a guest starring role on a show called Glee like 10 years ago, which I really loved. I had never, I had done a mini series when I was 19 and then I had done one TV movie and then I did film, film, film. And then I went and did this guest starring role. And I loved doing TV because you work all day when, you know, it's like you do, a film and you're sitting in your trailer all day waiting to do anything. And in TV, it's like, you're, it's so exciting.

7:35I mean, you're just kind of like on the go. And I couldn't believe like, oh, you're going to shoot two pages in, in, in half a day. Like this is unbelievable. They're like, no, we're shooting two pages in two hours. And then another, you know, I just like the pace of it and the pace of it is incredible, right? It is. It's almost like being on an assembly line of acting. Get in this costume. We're going to shoot it. And how many scenes you have to shoot per day. It's crazy. Like being on this movie, the difference between just pre-production. Let's just talk about that. Like prep, to have four weeks on this movie to prep and talk to your DP and your producers and look at locations and collaborate with the departments that are making your movie.

8:21TV, you get maybe five, six days to prep one episode? You started directing on House of Cards. Right. And we're going to talk about Lan in a minute because it is so exquisite. It is so beautiful. I cried 40 times. Thank you. I love that you were moved. Loved it so much. It's like a poem and I want to talk to you about it, But I kind of want to understand before we talk about it, your path to directing because you are so gifted at it. And so when did this start to brew in you? And when did you have the guts to kind of, I mean, I don't know, because you might be completely different than I am. But when I was thinking about changing, pivoting a bit and doing something different in my career, it took me like five years to get up the guts to even sort of say it out loud to myself.

9:18Did you always know you wanted to direct? Did you feel any trepidation about it? Like, how did you take that step from it being this internal feeling or desire to being something you said out loud to somebody? it took a long time to make that transition of vocalizing it right and it was always in the recesses of my mind like god one day one day I would love to direct and having worked with a handful of great directors Anthony Mengele being one of them right and watching that style and the grace that he had and so intelligent and he was a poet the way he directed actors right and then venture right same thing just like there's this other guy talk about the other end of the spectrum but learning from each of them as the years went by and taking notes like copious notes like I love that part from that guy I love that from that woman and then just sort of building this little diary of I'm going to be able to have the confidence one day to do it.

10:29And when I got on House of Cards, it was two years in, I felt comfortable. I had support and security and teachers. I had cinema teachers. Our camera operator had been shooting for over 47 years. so I learned the camera and lenses from him we learned about lighting from our dps and if I hadn't had that education from that crew I don't think I would have had the confidence to say I'm ready to direct the show and they actually encouraged me to do it I said I think I'm ready whispering and they said we got your back we're going to be with you every step of the way we've been doing this a lot longer than you and they they were there they were my babysitters and my teachers.

11:18And what, what is it about directing that you longed to execute? If that makes sense, like what, what is the artistic expression and driving and, and, and like creating a story and a picture that, that moved you? What, what was it about it? I think it's twofold. It's as an actor, I couldn't wait to be behind the camera to watch the evolution that actors produce in a scene where you can tell them a story without just giving them an adjective, like just be happier or be more depressed. And learning to not want to do that, that we've had done to us as directors. Be more depressed when you walk in the room.

12:05Well, what does that mean? It doesn't help me do anything. give me substance and sustenance and then let me imbue that in a take and I couldn't wait to do that because it's what I missed a lot of the time being an actor and then you would see if I could just give that actor this note I know they could achieve what the director wants right now but they're getting blocked by their own cerebral mind you know what I mean that was one reason to want to do it. And then I loved the idea of jumping into another ship, having been in this ship of acting for almost 40 years and going, I want to work with all the people because all the people are building this.

12:58We're all architects of this project. Not one person directs it. You work with everybody. And I love the collaboration and the creativity that comes with that. When you've got your production designer coming in and going, I've got this great idea. I was up at midnight. And you're like, that's genius. That just changed the movie and made it a hundred percent better. Something I never would have thought of. So you're just welcoming all these ideas and the creative juices are flowing all day, every day and prep. And then everybody wants to make the best movie. How many episodes of House of Cards did you direct?

13:33I think 10. Wow. Okay. So by the time you got to the movie, you had given yourself a full mini MBA, mini masters in directing. Kind of. I'd like to think that way. Thank you for saying that. That feels very astute. had you suggested that maybe in you know the first couple of episodes your house of cards you were in less so that you could sort of get your feet wet or no were you just still starring in every episode right out of the gate it was still starring in every episode but they I think they did try to trim a little bit just so I could get my footing so you were you you at the inception of this, you were immediately doing two giant roles at the same time.

14:28You haven't directed anything that you haven't been in. That's right. How difficult is it to do those two very different things with two very different objectives at the same time? You know, on the show, it was a very different animal because I had played that role already for two and a half years. You just kind of snap to the character. You've been doing it for so long, it's second nature. And that created an ease to be able to go from behind the camera where you're answering all the questions that need to be answered as a director and directing the actors. And then you go, okay, just shift for three minutes.

15:12We're just going to go do this angle on me. And you bang out a couple of takes just the way you do your job. It's more focus. I found it was, I needed more focus to be behind the camera, of course, because there's so much more to think about. So many more people that are involved in the decision-making process of what's your episode going to look like? What tone do you want? How many angles do you want in this scene? Do you want the camera moving? How close do you want to be on you? What does that mean to the environment and the behavior in the room with the other? You got to be thinking about those things 24 hours a day.

15:47so intimidating. I mean, I can't, I've, I can't imagine, I can't imagine directing and I certainly can't imagine directing myself in anything. Like I, I can't imagine having all of those plates spinning at the same time. It's, it's extraordinary. Did you feel, but you said on, on House of Cards, you felt really supported by the crew, which you also presumably had known for a long, long time. And, and you were able to, did you feel like you were able to be brave and develop your visual style? Yes, exactly. And what a gift because you felt like you were home and yes, you had your family around you supporting you and just saying, try this idea.

16:34See if that is what your visual palette is like, Robin. And that's how you start to find your original style. And it doesn't mean that I want to just stick with one style. I know directors have a very, a lot of directors have a very particular style that stand out. And I just feel like I want to dabble in other styles. And most of that is, yes, content. Like I'd love to direct a comedy right now just to go completely to the other end of the spectrum. But also, I really want to start playing around with the camera and achieving what I envisioned in my head when I read that script and said, I want to do that project.

17:20Because it takes a lot of homework to know those lenses and know why and when to move the camera. Like I watched Eternal Sunshine of, what's it called? Spotless Mind. Spotless Mind, yeah. What a great film. and watching, yes, incredible writer, Charlie Kaufman, love his mind, Michelle Gondry, just one of the greatest directors of all time. And Ellen Kuras, the DP shot it. And I was just watching the way she was executing the vision of that director and that writer. And I really want to hone that skill and find something that is more true to me. What is your vision? What is your style? What's your technique or your trademark?

18:08I don't know yet. It's my baby.

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19:19but it's interesting too if you think about it from coming from the perspective of an actor because in that incarnation you're a chameleon right so you are adapting to whatever the material is and you're bringing it to life so interesting to be an actor and to approach material from the provenance of coming from adaptability and then thinking about, okay, no, what, what is my imprint on this first and foremost, as opposed to the material. It's a very interesting switch to make. It really is. And we, we had to adhere to a specific style on house of cards that David Fincher set, right? He made the template.

20:01We could only use certain lenses. We could never use handheld we could never use steadicam um of course a lot of demand for big wide shots like seeing the whole white house residence and then seeing francis and claire walk you know into the shot and it's trying to find what it what is your style like you say adaptability so i had to find my style, even though the style was already set of the show and not break that wall, which I'm sure some directors come onto a show and they do and everybody gets reined back in going, no, no, this is the look of our show. But I had free reign on land. And what did you want that to look like?

20:48And of course, like every movie, you always are going to, even as an actor, you go, God, I wish I could have done this on this take. And I didn't get it. I didn't get that take, or I didn't get that shot, or I didn't shoot the scene the way I saw it in my head. And I knew it and I didn't correct it. So you're kicking yourself still. And that's just, I think, just the beginnings of learning. I have so much to learn. So thrilling and so wonderful to be able to watch somebody do this. And the movie is so beautiful and there's such a facility. I mean, with the camera and like, I felt like it was so clear what the story that you were trying to tell and it was so moving and it is so visually stunning.

21:41The scene where you're sort of making the garden and figuring out how to live off the land and that the power of the regenerative spirit it was so emblematic of what your character was going through this incredible grief overwhelmed by grief and inconsolable understandably and I loved how quiet it was that it was we didn't need so much explanation like that your direction and your performance was so strong and so clear that we could just watch this incredible story of healing through nature occur. So how did you find this movie? How were you like, yeah, that one, or did, did you, were you involved in the writing of it or did you read it or how did it land on you?

22:39It came to me about three years ago. I was directing the last season of House of Cards. And this was a script that won in a contest, writers, where they take 5 ,000 submissions and they pick five scripts out of the 5 ,000. This was one of them. And Alan Stewart, our producer, got in touch with my agent, said, can I come to Baltimore, Maryland, and have a meeting with Robin? Because I think she should direct this movie. I read it and I just loved the simplicity, the quiet, the healing aspect, and that it was all about the beauty of transformation and that human kindness and human connectedness can pull you through, can help us heal.

23:27And at that time, three years ago, why it resonated so strongly was we were all experiencing and witnessing these random shootings that were going on almost biweekly. And I just was weeping every day as I just couldn't imagine what these people were going through. How do they find their way? Everybody does it differently. And I just wanted to tell this story for that reason. And this is one person's experience with grief, not claiming to understand everyone's grief and how they should heal one person. And it is generally with the help of another. When you are faced with adversity, it is humans, other humans that help pull us through and give us faith to live.

24:16Did you feel incredibly vulnerable and exposed? And I only ask this because, you know, in my experience on set, when you have to kind of rip your skin off and bear that deepest, most raw part of yourself, you're doing it in the kind of matrix of the director holding you and what they want. So how do you do that when it's for yourself and then you're the one adjudicating if you're doing it enough, if that makes sense? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Should we go again? We should go again. You have to have an incredible team of people around you. And that team is your producers that are on set. I had three female producers there every day in the DIT tent watching each take.

25:08And we had had so much conversation for a year prior, what each scene should be, how I wanted to execute A, B, and C. They took notes. They knew exactly the movie we were all setting out to make. So when I was in front of the camera, I literally would just say, can everybody just clear out, get out of the cabin? And I would just be alone. And then whatever you do, I would play the song. I have music. I go to music. And then I'd get in that emotional space. and I had a walkie and I said to the AD, okay, I'm ready, bring them in. And they would come in the cabin and be very quiet. Camera was already set.

25:51Lights were set. And I only wanted a couple of people in there, the necessities, you know, if the camera was moving the DP, if it was locked off, nobody had to be in there except the boom guy and me. Wow. As much as possible that we could do that in the emotional scenes, I would do. I don't like, I don't know if you're the same. I'm really uncomfortable performing emotional scenes like that or getting naked or I don't like doing it in front of the crew. I'm embarrassed. I feel awkward. I feel self-conscious. Yes. If I have only two people in the room, I feel like I can be more vulnerable, like you were saying, be more available to what the scene needs.

26:35and also so beautiful to get to see the full arc of those emotions you know I feel like if you're editing your own work you know what you were trying to do and you you you left it for us to see it was so beautiful I was like ah everyone everyone should be able to say like no leave that in I I was trying to do something like I I got it right there and you know what I mean it was like and it was a very powerful performance and it was very you it felt it felt like you felt so freed up to me to do what you were doing it was really empowering to see like as as a woman to understand you were able to achieve like that depth of transmitting that kind of feeling and while being at the helm of the whole thing.

27:34You know, I realized I haven't seen a movie in so long. I've been watching House of Cards and, you know, it's like you, you kind of, I don't know. I don't, I think, and also obviously in this whole COVID year, it's not like we're going to movie theaters and it also feels like the movie business has changed so much. And I don't know, I realized, my God, I miss this. I miss this two hours of letting a story unfold like this and in this beautiful way where it's taking its time, but yet you're hanging on every scene. You don't get that. And it's different to television. Yeah. Cause you know, and also you're going to have a continuation of.

28:20Yeah. Your questions will be answered quicker, things like that. So yeah, in this hour and a half window, it's a meditation, the meditation and trusting that the audience will be patient, that they don't need fast food service all the time because this movie, the event, the unfathomable event, the movie, and then you go forward. And then it had a bunch of flashback scenes of what her life was. So I took all of that out. Let's just try. And we had many iterations in the edit because it was a Rubik's cube. It was like, you could have that movie. And then you could also have faith in the audience that they're going to wait and we can keep them engaged.

29:11I hope, I hope that was my greatest fear. I don't want to watch me alone for the first 10, 15 minutes of a movie. Oh, everybody else does. Don't worry. But you know, where you're just like, that's going to be really boring. No, but our editors were fantastic. How they just trimmed all the gristle off of the steak And they just made it move like a juggernaut until act two, when there is the rescue and entering a rebirth period of this character's life. It was tricky and they did a great job in the editing room. Truly, because you don't, not knowing fully until the end what happened, it's like you don't need to.