Fresh Air - Best Of: Malala Yousafzai / Oscar Isaac

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

Malala Yousafzai was 15 when a Taliban gunman shot her for advocating for girls' education in her native Pakistan. She understood that she was a target. “I had pictured it many times that this could happen. I had pictured it at school. I had pictured it in my school bus. I knew that the Taliban could do anything,” she told Terry Gross. Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was just 17 years old. In an interview from a live event onstage, she talks about her childhood before the incident and finding herself after being in the public eye for so long.Also, we hear from actor Oscar Isaac. He’s currently starring in the Netflix series ‘Beef' and recently played Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of ‘Frankenstein.’ Book critic Maureen Corrigan recommends three books for the spring: ‘Yesteryear,’ by Caro Claire Burke; ‘American Fantasy,’ by Emma Straub; and ‘Enormous Wings,’ by Laurie Frankel.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y. Y.Y. in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Malala Yusuf's eye. She was only 11 when she started to demand the right of girls to go to school after the Taliban invaded her town and banned girls' education. She was 15 when she was shot by a Taliban gunman. Looking back now, does she think she understood the risk that she would become a Taliban target? I had pictured it many times that this could happen. I had pictured it at school. I had pictured it in my school bus. I had pictured it on the street. I knew that the Taliban could do anything.

Also, we hear from actor Oscar Isaac. He's currently starring in the Netflix series Beef and recently played Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toros Frankenstein. And Marie Nicaraghan recommends three books for spring reading. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. As remarkable as it is that my guest, Malala Yousaf's,

won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17. There are remarkable ways she's been living her life since then. Let's start with a famous part of her story. She was born in 1997 and grew up in a remote region of Pakistan-Swat Valley near the Afghanistan border. In 2008, after the Taliban invaded her town, terrorizing the people, they banned girls' education. She publicly spoke out for her right and the right of all girls to go to school. as payback in 2012 when she was 15, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman. She was flown to a hospital in England where she continues to live.

Her recovery was miraculous. It's when I read her recent memoir, finding my way, that I learned how the bullet changed the course of her life, thrusting her into a new culture, and changing her in ways that didn't quite fit her public image as an inspirational hero and top student, and sometimes even challenged her own self-image. When she was admitted to Oxford University, a dream come true, she wanted to live the

life of a teenager and find time to make friends, have fun, have adventures, including jumping from her dorm roof to the campus bell tower. She defied some of her culture's traditions and her parents' expectations from how she dressed to who she married. At the same time, she was experiencing PTSD and panic attacks for the first time, recovering from her multiple surgeries and continuing to raise money for the foundation she co-founded with her father to advocate and raise money for girls' education in places where that is banned. All this took time from her college studies, and she felt like a fraud, a symbol of female education who was barely passing some of her classes. Another thing I learned from her book and from hearing her speak is that she's very self-aware, introspective,

funny. I spoke with her in front of an audience at W. HYY, where she was given this year's Lifelong Learning Award. Malala, it is such an honor to have you here tonight. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to talk with you. It's so nice to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you for the honor and good evening, everyone. It's always so nice to be in this beautiful, warm, welcoming city. So, you know, your father, as I mentioned, founded a school. It was the school you went to. So, you know, So he was passionate about education and passionate about it for girls. And when the Taliban came and took over your area, they had a deadline for when they were going to close down the schools. It was the 15th of January 2009.

And you attended school until the last day, even though I think you're only allowed to go up to fourth grade and you were in fifth grade. Yes. And we would wear just our home clothes. We could no longer wear our school uniform. It would give you a way. Yeah, we said like the Taliban should never know that girls are daring to go to a school. We would wear these long, hefty, like, scarves and just, you know, wrap them around our body. So we could hide our school bag.

Like any bag, we'll sort of hide. So there's no proof of us daring to walk to a school. And we said that if they ever ask us what grade we were in, let's say they found out, we'll just tell them we're in fourth grade. They could never prove it. So we said, you know, we're still like, you know, little girls. But girls were risking their lives. to be in a classroom. Right.

So during that period, I think this was during this period, a journalist from the BBC, after a volunteer from your school to keep a journal that the BBC could draw on or publish, I'm not sure which. And one girl volunteered, and then her father came the next day and said, I'm not allowing her to do this. It's too risky, she could get killed. And then your father says to you,

Malala, would you like to volunteer? How did you feel about that? I'm asking you to volunteer when you knew it was a great risk. I mean, it was an anonymous, pseudonymous journal. You wrote it under a pseudonym. But how did you feel knowing you were taking on this risk? And this was before you got shot by a Taliban. Yeah, so I was 11 years old.

And when I heard that... That's so young. Yes, yes. How could you even comprehend the risk that you had taken? You know, my honest reaction to a question like this is that, like, I wish I was a child. I wish I knew nothing about these things. I wish, like, I didn't have to write a blog. I wish I didn't have to become an activist.

But that was the lived reality of girls. At 11 years old, they're telling you that just because you are a girl, you cannot step into a classroom. You cannot have an education. And I know that, you know, like, when I look back, I'm like, yes, that was a crazy thing that I did. I put my life at risk, but at the time, what scared me more was a life without an education as a girl. It terrified me.

And I, you know, like, think about women's struggle for equality, for justice, everywhere around the world. You know, we're fighting to protect ourselves against violence, against oppressions. Women are literally being murdered and killed. You know, that's how extreme it is. And I said, you know, education is that pathway, that hope that I can have, that I can have a better future. So the best thing I can do is actually speak out and see if there's some hope that things would change for us. I think it's when you were living in the area where your parents grew up,

which is very remote and very mountainous. I think it was then that you were on a school bus when you were shot. It was in 2012 that they attempted to kill me. And you weren't expected. that, right? You didn't think that you would be a target. It wasn't that I never pictured it. I had pictured it many times that this could happen. I had pictured it at school. I had pictured it in my school bus. I had pictured it on the street where I used to walk to school. I knew that

the Taliban could do anything? And I used to wonder, like, could I save myself? Like, you know, how could I make them understand that I'm actually not a threat? I actually want education. for myself, for girls, even for their children. But when the day arrived, it was the 9th of October, 2012, it was a normal school day for me. And, you know, when we were driving back to our home in our school bus, that's when, like, you know, everything pauses in my memory. I don't remember anything.

I have different visuals, different flashbacks, but I'm never sure what I really saw and what I'm sort of picturing because of what I heard. But my best friends tell me that story because they were on the school bus with me and my very best friend, Muniba, she was sitting on my right

and she tells me this story that two gunmen stopped the school bus and this one guy he walks to the back of the bus and asks who is Malala and I was not covering my face and he looked at me and then he pointed a gun at my head. and pulled the trigger.

And I asked my friend, I said, like, did I scream? Did I say anything? How was I reacting in that moment? And she said, you just held my hand really tight. You were silent. You were looking at that person, but you were not saying anything, and you just held my hand really tight, that I could feel the pain for days, and then you fell into my lap.

So that's, you know, they also went through a lot of trauma because, you know, I was recovering from the Taliban bullet injury. It had caused facial paralysis, hearing loss, and swelling in my head as well. So I had to, you know, replace the skull piece with the titanium plate. I had to go through a lot of recovery things. And surgeries, many surgeries. Many surgeries. But my friends actually saw what happened.

Your friend Moniba, who was swimming next to you on the bus, she later told you she was covered in blood. after you got shot. And she really thought that she must have gotten shot too because there was so much blood on her. And she was traumatized. She had nightmares all the time. And I could never compare the two.

Like I was carrying the pain and they were carrying the memories. So I always talk to my friends. You know, I ask her for the same story again and again. And I'm like, tell me what happened that day. And every time I hear it, I'm like, I just, I can't believe we all saw it that day. So I also really admired their resilience. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Malala Yousafzai at an event where she received W. H.Y.Y's Lifelong Learning Award. Her recent memoir is called Finding My Way. We'll hear more of the interview. After a break, I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air weekend.

So let's get to the flashback. So one of the things you did in college is you took some hits from a bong at the encouragement of your friends. And then you had this really bad flashback to something you didn't even remember in the first place, which was getting shot by the Taliban gunman. Would it be triggering if I asked you to describe it? No, not at all. And I want to share this story because I wish somebody had told me that this is something that could have happened. That post-traumatic stress? Yes, that this was a thing. And it happened to me seven years after the attack. That's something that I could not. not fathom. I said, I was okay this whole time. Why is it happening to me now? So when I, you know, tried that bong, like time slowed down and I felt like I was stuck. I couldn't move. And I was

reliving the Taliban attack once again. I thought it was all happening. And I couldn't understand if I was alive or not. And it was a really terrible experience. And I started getting panic attacks after that. And that's when I realized that I actually need help. So I started sharing with my friends as well that I was not feeling okay. I was not enjoying the social events or anything. And then it still took me a few months. And then a friend of mine suggested that I start seeing a therapist. And that's when I started getting therapy.

I had never received therapy before. Well, you said that even in the Pashti language, there's no word for anxiety. I can't imagine that. So it must have been really terrifying. And also, did it challenge your own identity? You'd always thought of yourself as like, I'm really brave. Everybody tells me I'm brave. I don't think, I don't remember the experience of being shot.

I'm still not afraid. And suddenly, you were afraid to go to sleep. You were afraid to dream. You were afraid of a lot of things. How did it challenge your sense of yourself? I did feel very disappointed with myself that I was no longer living up to the expectation of being brave and courageous. But I had to unlearn a lot this whole time that actually true bravery is when you keep fighting for what you believe in, even when you are scared. So it helped me think very differently.

Do you still have flashbacks and panic attacks? Yes. And I think, like I try to look after myself. And it has just helped me understand that if I want to do my work in the best way possible, I have to make sure that I look after my mental health and my physical health. I'm raising awareness about therapy as well, that, you know, we should get therapy. And especially for, you know, women from communities, you know, where I come from, like the South Asian community, Muslim community, Pashtun community, encouraging it in those places as well.

and in therapy sessions, of course, those things really help you, but then I also thought it's also about the physical health. I thought, like, if you are an activist, you're not allowed to get, you know, sleep or you're not allowed to eat well or not allowed to look after yourself because it's just all about work, work and work. And then I realized I was actually not doing that job well because I was not in the best shape. So when I started looking after my physical health as well,

I've started going to the gym now. I do weightlifting. And that's great. Running, yeah. And when it's leg day, my husband and I go together, so leg day is my favorite day. And he's literally crying because, you know, I'm like, we have to lift heavier weights.

So he doesn't like it, but I love it. So you go to Oxford University. You're still recovering from surgeries. This is still more surgeries to come. You were schooled at first in your father's school, in a fairly remote region of Pakistan, you didn't get the kind of education that most Oxford students get,

and yet you were held to the same standard. And I understand why the leaders of the university would not want to make, like, you a special student with a different standard, and you probably wouldn't have wanted that for yourself either. However, it seems to me so unfair that you who were nearly killed, killed, who was still recovering from that, psychologically, emotionally, physically, and who didn't

have the same education as the other students, were held to the same standard and the same timetable. And you were falling behind. You were used to being, like, really smart. And that was part of your identity. And you were, like, the girl activist standing up for education, and suddenly you were barely passing your classes. Yeah, nearly failing. What do you think they maybe could have done to help you during that time or to better understand what you were going through?

It just strikes me as being very unfair. I wish I had spoken to you back then. So we could have written it to the university. At the time, I had a lot of work that I needed to do for Malala Fund's Gals Education Advocacy. So I remember in just like a week or so. You had donated your with your Nobel Prize money. Yes. You and your father created a fund to support girls' schools.

Yes. So you had to keep vigilant about that in addition to all the other stuff that I mentioned. Yeah. So I remember that a week and a half in college when one day I was in Lebanon with Tim Koch where they announced grants to support Malala Fund's work, which was very important because with those grants, we could then help girls in Lebanon and Pakistan and Afghanistan and Nigeria. And then in a few days I was at Dundalda.

and I had, you know, shared the stage with Justin Trudeau, and from those conversations, we helped secure, like, you know, more than $2 billion for girls' education. You know, like, it was a big commitment for financing for girls' education. And then a week later, it was like another event where I was, you know, sharing my story and all of that. So to me, it felt like all of these things were important, and I thought I could manage it. But when my teacher saw my performance, she was very, very. concerned. She said you are behind on your essays, you're not attending the lectures,

and you will literally fail if you keep doing it like this. So she wrote a letter to, you know, to everybody in my circle and said, Malala will not be allowed to travel during college time. It's like you have to be in college, like just because we don't take your attendance doesn't mean you can travel to Lebanon or all of these places. And I also realized that there was a whole academic support system at college. I was hesitant to consider it because I thought I might be the imposter here. I might be the only one who's getting it. But when I reached out, they told me that students have challenges because of different reasons and it's completely okay to ask for help because this college is built to

help you learn. So what do they do to help? Like just help me understand how to better prepare for my essays, how to divide my time, how to do the reading in a way that's more efficient, plan the essay before jumping into the reading, all of these small tips that really helped me. And then I improved. I improved in my studies. I did not become like an excellent top students right away. I didn't really become that student. But I was doing okay.

And I was just happy with doing okay where I was having good time with my friends. I was socializing and I was also managing my studies as well. I was in the end very happy with that. Did you accept the fact that you weren't like? in the upper tier of the ultra-smart academic students? Honestly, I wasn't being hard on myself, even though, like, I wish to, in an ideal world, you want all of it.

You want to be that unicorn who's just good at everything, is getting their top grades and having a social life and getting good sleep in all of that. But in Oxford, they tell you, you can't have it all. You have to really choose. And I thought, you know, if there's one thing I were to pick in these college years,

that would be to have a social life. I did not have a friend's in high school. I had only made one friend and that's because she fell out with her best friend. So I just filled in the gap. Because I was so new to the culture even though I could communicate in English but it wasn't my first language.

I was still speaking the textbook English. I was still familiarizing myself with the phrases and any of these trending words that they use and I sort of felt like I was I was not cool enough to make friends. I thought my story was very boring. Boring. And I thought a Nobel Prize can't get you friends.

So yeah, and I also even at school, I ran for the head girl position because I was working really hard. I wanted to be part of every club, every society. So when I heard about the school head girl position, I ran for that and I lost. And that made me so upset because, you know, you like,

you want to be embraced and accept. by your college students and, you know, like by your school friends. It means so much because I was still young. I was still very young, even though I received the Nobel Prize before I had even completed my high school. But in the end, I'm still 17. And, you know, you just want to be in the cool friends group at the same time.

You were 15 when you won the Nobel. No, 17. 17, okay. Yeah, a bit too late. Were you expected... A bit older, you know. A bit older than 15. Were you expecting that as a possibility?

No. Did you know that you were like among the people being considered? Of course it was in the news. But I remember that day when the announcement was supposed to be made. And my father said that I should skip my school day because what if they announce? And I said, Dad, like everybody who thinks that I'm going to win this is crazy. and I said, I am going to go to my school and I was in my chemistry class

and my school's deputy head teacher walked in and she called me outside and she usually calls you when you are in trouble. So I was praying for myself and then she told me that I had won the Nobel Peace Prize and it was like the most insane thing I could ever hear from a school teacher And then I was told that you should go and do a press conference and go home.

And I said, like, no. I went back to a physics class and I finished my school day. And I said, if you get a Nobel Peace Prize for education, you have to finish your school day. Did that make you cool in school? Because you said you weren't cool. Just for a day. Seriously, didn't know what? So died down the next day.

I was like, give me another award. or the Grammy next or something, the Oscars, who knows? Malala, I just want to say, I think you're really an inspiration for the work that you do, for the risks that you take, but also believing in living a full life that welcomes joy and love and fun, you know, being a full human being while participating in your activism. Thank you all for your support, and it's truly an honor to be here and to share. share the stage with you as well. And I just want to say one thing to Philly, go birds. Thank you. Thank you.

My interview with Malala Yusuf Sae was recorded on stage at W. H.Y. where she received W.H.Y. Y's Lifelong Learning Award. Malala's recent memoir is titled Finding My Way. Our book critic, Marine Corrigan, recommends three quintessential spring reads, novels that are light, breezy, and funny, with an undercurrent of chilly reality. Sometimes girls just want to have fun, right? I've been in a springtime mood of wanting to dive into a cartoon-colored ball pit of comic novels with spunky heroines, and I found some good ones. But what I also found is that much like the classic screwball comedies of your, escapism in these playful novels links arms with edgy social commentary. Yesterday, an intricately plotted debut novel by Carol Claire Burke has been getting lots of attention, and deservedly so.

The main character here is an online trad wife named Natalie Heller Mills. On camera, Natalie revels in activities like spending four hours making a loaf of sourdough bread, and then adorning it with a nativity scene made out of herbal stick figures from her own garden naturally. A little of this goes a long way for those of us who share the attitude of the late Joan Rivers. Rivers famously quipped, I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later, you have to start all over again. Amen. So imagine my glee when Natalie, who only plays at being a pioneer woman, wakes up one morning to the realization that she's been transported back to the year 1855.

Welcome to the real pioneer life, where if you want milk for your morning gruel, you'd better hustle out to the barn and find a cow. If Burke had only stuck to this plot line, yesteryear would be a fun, one-note snark at retro lifestyle influencers. But instead, it tells a more ambitious, suspenseful, and, yes, ultimately melancholy story of its heroine's aspirations and capitulations to ideas of how women should live their lives. I thought Gary Steingart's brilliant 2024 essay in the

Atlantic about his agonizing seven nights aboard the icon of the seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, had ruined me for all other tales of enforced frivolity on the ocean. But I was wrong. Emma Straub's latest novel, American Fantasy, starts off sharing Steingardt's cynicism and ends up affirming the right of women, especially middle-aged women, to party without self-consciousness or apology. Our main character here is a 50-year-old divorced woman named Annie, who's been persuaded by her younger sister to join her on a four-day themed cruise. The theme is on board, namely, a gone soft-round-the-middle boy band of the 90s named Boy Talk, that both Annie and her sister loved. Almost every other passenger aboard is a woman of a certain age, otherwise diverse in race,

politics, ability, income bracket, and even sexual orientation. All were rabid boy talk fans. The cruise production manager, a gay woman. woman named Sarah reflects that these were the guys who had launched a million sexual awakenings, and even if they had awakened something other than heterosexuality, they had still been present, like distant guardian angels of puberty. Straub tells the story of the cruise through the eyes of Sarah, Annie, and one of the band members, a thoughtful guy named Keith, who, like Annie, is at a cross-refer.

Rhodes. This is a novel that makes the radical move of honoring rather than ridiculing female fandom. Here's Straub's description of Annie's epiphany about her own fandom as she's standing in a packed crowd during a boy talk performance. The music was a direct vein to her own childhood, the least complicated part of her life. All around Annie, women were dancing and singing, and for a second she closed her eyes and thought, No one else will ever understand this, except, of course, everyone standing beside her, who all understood it perfectly.

I've shared the premise of Lori Frankel's forthcoming novel, Enormous Wings with a few friends. Based on how instantly they entered the book's title into their cell phones, the premise is all you need to know about this wild, but all too timely story about female autonomy or lack thereof. So here goes. Frankl's heroine, Pepper Mills, is 77 and a reluctant new resident of the Vista View retirement community in Austin, Texas. Surprisingly, she meets a nice man there and has sex. And then, through a medical fluke that Frankel almost makes plausible, Pepper finds,

finds herself pregnant. Her doctors expect the pregnancy to end in miscarriage. When it doesn't, Pepper seeks an abortion. But she lives in Texas, and she's now such a media sensation that it's almost impossible for her to leave the state. Complicated, gutsy, and entertaining, enormous wings pokes fun at life's unpredictability, and stokes anger at situations that aren't at all funny. Marin Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed yesteryear, American fantasy, and enormous wings. Coming up, we hear from actor Oscar Isaac.

He stars in season two of the Netflix series Beef and recently played Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. This is Fresh Air Weekend. Our co-host, Tanya Mosley, has our next interview. Here's Tanya. My guest today, award-winning actor Oscar Isaac, was still deep inside one of the most consuming roles of his career, playing Victor Frankenstein, when director Lee Sung-Jin came calling for him to star in the second season of his Netflix series Beef. In Beef, Oscar plays Josh, the manager of an upscale Los Angeles Country Club. He's polished and charming, but underneath that smooth exterior, his life is falling apart because he's stealing from the country club. He's polished and charming. He's polished and charming. But underneath that smooth exterior, his life is falling apart because he's stealing from the club, and underneath the facade, his marriage is also falling apart. Oscar said at first, he had a hard

time connecting to this character. But it helped when an acting coach told him to try to bring the character of Victor Frankenstein into the role. How would Victor feel being trapped inside of Josh's small life? This is exactly what Oscar needed to step into the character. In this scene from the series, Josh and his wife, Lindsay, played by Carrie Mulligan, are home. after spending the day at the country club. They get into an argument, which turns into a full-blown fight, with both of them saying the worst things

a married couple could say to each other. It's intense. You like doing that stuff. I hate doing it. I've just gotten really good at pretending. You get privileged access to Titans in every industry, and you love it. Who are these Titans?

We get to be friends with politicians and CEOs. We had dinner with Bono. You think that they're your friends. But they're not. Your staff. You're an employee. They pay you to be around. Well, one of us has to get paid.

Maybe if we had a little more income, I wouldn't have to do this job that you find so repulsive. Well, I gave you my entire inheritance, and we're still completely underwater. If you bring up my mother right now, I will lose my... I do not regret a dime we spent on her. Oscar Isaac is a Golden Globe winner who has moved between indie films and global franchises

from Shakespeare to Star Wars. His films and TV work include Inside Lewin Davis, Dune, Card Counter, scenes from a marriage, and most recently Frankenstein. Oscar Isaac is of Guatemalan and Cuban descent. He spent the first years of his life in Washington, D.C., before moving to Miami. Oscar Isaac, welcome back to fresh air. Thanks, Tanya. Very happy to be here. We're going to get to that intense fight in just a second. I said when we were shooting that, I said, I hope. I hope that on my in-memorium clip, it'll just be me screaming, we had dinner with Bono.

I know, right. But, you know, first I want to talk to you about this thing, this acting coach told you, to bring Victor into the room. Why was that the key to unlock this character, Josh? Well, it was, it's interesting because it was, that's almost accurate. There's elements that are, but the time frame was actually, I was in the midst of shooting already. And I was having, I was kind of. of losing my voice a bit. I just felt like my throat was always so tight and I was having a hard time. And there's this wonderful acting teacher, guru, Kim Gillingham. And I met with her and I said,

I'm having a really hard time and I don't know. And on the way over, I was actually, you know, thinking about Victor and how much fun that was. And then she had the great idea of like, well, let's, let's, you know, bring Victor back and let him talk to Josh. And so we did this exercise where, you know, form of hypnosis. And then she's like, now let Victor come and speak. And he came back and he was just so anger to be, to be stuck in this little tiny man. And so that feeling of being strangled was coming a bit from that.

And it wasn't about letting go of that, because that's an important part of the character. But, yeah, it was a really interesting exercise to kind of bridge that gap. Because sometimes, yeah, you know, you're playing with energy and the nervous system is, you know, It was eight months or something of working on Frankenstein and then a tiny break and then I was right into doing beef. So to kind of have a physiological mindfulness about how to move into the new character was great.

You described Josh as living in a small life, but he manages this world with a lot of old money and privilege. Can you explain that a bit more? Yeah, so Josh Martin, he works. He is the general manager of Monavista Point Country Club, very elite, lots of athletes, as he says in that clip, Titans of every industry. And he is the GM. And he worked his way up from the barn cart. He's been there since he was 16 years old. And it's taken a lot of work to get where he is, but he's great with people.

And, you know, he's an incredibly hard worker. And his love language is service as well. And but behind that, it's not a selfless service. I think he's, he wants access. And there's something in him that feels he'll never be somebody that can become a member. And this is the closest he can get to have access to this kind of life. Yeah. At the end of the day, he is the help for lack of a better term.

That's right. That's what his wife says to him. She's like, they're not your friends. They're the help. Thinking about this character, Josh NB. He doesn't belong there, really, but his way of giving back is through service. And then there is this fight where we just see another side of him. So he's charming to all of the people who are part of the club.

But at home, this fight he has with his wife, I mean, we heard a little bit of it in the intro. It gets worse. Lindsay, his wife, picks up a golf club. You tell her, thank God we don't have. kids, stuff like that. And so I'm thinking about you pulling from your role as Victor Frankenstein. In his case, specifically, his cruelty kind of comes from a wound he can't look at directly. Where does Josh's cruelty live? I mean, is it someplace different? Is that out of frustration? I think with Josh, it's the, yeah, it's the rejection that she's saying. It's like the kind of I see through this identity that you,

created. With Victor Frankenstein, he had no doubts. The whole movie, he has very little doubt, which was a very freeing thing to play up until the moment of creation. And then after that, it's kind of all doubt. And that's when he kind of goes in within himself and ossifies. But this, Josh is very different. Josh is, is mostly doubt and mostly reactionary. You know, he's constantly trying to control the situation, which is what a lot of these GMs do as well. And he says, like, I let people win all the time. That's what I do.

And I remember talking to somebody that has the job, and he said, you know, I'd go and he wants me to play tennis with them, and I'm a really good tennis player. And we get a pro to come on as well, and we play. And I'm like, do you let him win? And he's like, of course I have to let him win. Like, not by a bunch, but I can.

can't destroy his time there. You know, that's not the point. So I just found that very interesting and, you know, and how little of a personal life one has in that situation. You know, it all gets mushed and melded together. You did research. You spoke with someone who really has that job. I did, yeah. Yeah, I did with a couple people. It's a very strange foreign world to me. although I did work at a golf club for a few months when I was 16. But it was more like weddings that would happen in this small golf club, and I was a bit more of like a waiter. But it was, yeah, I heard a lot of the same wedding songs over and over again

and had to get out of there. But, you know, I was like, you could imagine some, you know, that's about the age that Joshua was when he started. And he decided, no, this is. my way in. And, you know, I did it in Lake Worth, Florida. This is in Montecito, very different vibe. But I think he really sees, like, I've got something and I've got something special and people like me. And I understand people and I understand how to make them feel good. And I think, yeah, he sees a way into this life. Okay, Oscar, I want to get into Frankenstein for a moment. And

you have called, I've heard you a few times call, del Toro's Frankenstein, a Mexican melodrama. And I have never heard it describe that way. What made it then? Or Guillermo, because he is, you know, he wanted to approach it that way and invited certainly me and all of us to approach it that way, which was, you know, for him it was a very autobiographical

telling, at least in the expression. of the film. And, yeah, it was just the way that we would approach every day. There was kind of this maximalist thing that was happening, but that was deeply, deeply felt. I mean, it's like listening to a corrido, you know. It's like a mariachi music where it's so passionate. And because it's just like such a deep, deep expression

of both and expression and celebration and celebration of both joy and pain at the same time. So I think it was that kind of point of view that was very exciting. We have said that we spoke exclusively in Spanish to one another, which was so nice for me. I hadn't had that experience, certainly not with the director. I mean, it was really just with my mom and my aunts. So it felt like a real familial thing to do. And it's my mother tongue.

So there was just something that just went deeper. It just went to some other part of my brain that usually isn't accessed in that way. Can you describe it? Because I've heard that from people before, especially around language like Spanish and your first time actually being directed in Spanish. Did it unlock or add a dimension? I think it was just like a direct. directness and a simplicity.

Even with me, you know, my vocabulary is not great, you know, maybe eighth, ninth grade, maybe, and Spanish. And so, but I would, you know, I would just, no matter what the question was, I would force myself to just express it

in Spanish to him. And there was something about having to find the simplest way of saying what I wanted to say that, I don't know, it was a very interesting experiment. And And since then we speak nearly every day. And, yeah, I've gained this incredible family member.

I mean, he's so passionate. I also describe him as the Mexican Buddha. You know, he has such wisdom and such generosity and zero pretension, but also cares deeply about the work that he does as well. So it's just an, you know, he's just an incredible human being and a real advocate for other people and advocate for other people's work. He doesn't ever trash anyone's work or speak negatively. I just found him to be an incredible example of how to be a person in this world.

That'll be a man, how to be an artist. That sounds special to now have this daily friendship with a director. Is that common for you? I mean, not like this. This is a real family member of mine now. There's a real closest. And I have definitely become friends with a lot of the people I've worked with. It is such an intimate setting and you go to deep places.

And that's one of the things that is really special about this work. You know, we are carnifoke. We are. We're circus people, but like we need to hold on to each other because it is such a strange bubble to be in. And it's such an elusive thing that we're searching for, that we're trying to find together. and it's often a very humiliating experience.

It's a humbling experience. To be an actor. Yeah, to be an actor, I think to be an artist, but particularly to be a performance artist, your own self, your body and your voice, that's the materials that you're working with, right? That's the Highwire Act, I think, is watching somebody battle their own ego

and embarrassment and, you know, and some people do it effortlessly and other people do lots of other wild things to battle that and to do that with a character with incredible writing or really. All of that adds to this kind of astounding feat, at least for me when I watch it, thinking about it, of like those great performances, you know, like,

how is that happening? And knowing how hard it can be to allow oneself to kind of get out of the way to let something happen. I know. Okay, before we wrap, I have to ask you about your music. People who follow your career

know that you were a musician in your young life, and you're known for this character that you played, a folk musician from inside Lewin Davis. But you revealed recently on late night with Jimmy Fallon

that you and your sons have a band. What's it called again? Fleece. That, okay, that's really a punk rock name. Fleece featuring cool dude. Wait, who's the cool dude? That's my oldest son, Eugene.

He's kind of like, he's like, he's got his own thing, so he just, you know, we're one of the projects that he works with. But they have it as much lately. It's like, actually they've got the other, they're doing their drumming lesson right now. They're really into playing drums. I mean, they're so musical. But you know what? The bands, I got to be honest, it's a little on hiatus. for the last couple of months.

It's like suddenly they're just not as into jamming with dad. Maybe I got too much. I think I got too into it. You think you, yeah, because you know that happens. When parents get too serious about it. Yeah, I just killed the vibe. I actually want to play a clip, two clips actually from that late night performance,

you're talking about it. The first clip is your son singing, followed by a clip of you singing the song that you guys put together. Let's listen. I love that. That's good. And then here's you picking up the guitar. Okay, now I know, this is where you lost it.

I think this is why Flees broke up because you were on the Tonight Show. Yeah, yeah. They're like, no, man, you killed it. You totally, and not in a good way. We're an underground punk band. You can't go on the Tonight Show and play a song. Right, I know. Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, I loved seeing that, though. That had to be really great to, like, have this connection with your sons from the place that you started to find your artistic voice. Yeah, no, it is. It is. Those are all his own lyrics and to find a reason to do that and to play it. And playing it for them, I mean, they were laughing. They thought it was

so fun. It's a really fun thing to share with them. It's something my dad shared with me. He played music all the time and would record music and had guitars and things around the house. And that was a real connection for he and I as well.

We really bonded over that. And so I was like, I want to have instruments readily available at all times just in case inspiration strikes and they want to go down and play. And that's been a really lovely thing. Are you playing for yourself as well? Sometimes, at times. Yeah, I still do a bit for myself. It's interesting because when I get a little extra low, I'm like, you know what? I haven't played in a while.

and I play and that feels really good. Oscar Isaac, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you, and thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Oscar Isaac stars in Season 2 of the Netflix series Beef. He spoke with Tanya Mosley. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. gross.