Fresh Air - Kerri Russell On 'The Diplomat'/ Remembering Dorothy Allison

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Kerri Russell stars in the Netflix political drama The Diplomat as a foreign service officer tapped to become the American ambassador to the UK. Russell also starred in the series Felicity and The Americans. She spoke with us last year about these characters and getting her start on The All New Mickey Mouse Club as a kid. Also, we remember author Dorothy Allison, who died this week at age 75. Her critically acclaimed 1992 novel Bastard out of Carolina was based on her own childhood experience of being physically and sexually abused. We listen back to Terry's interview with Allison about the book and her life.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Ira Glass with This American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast, chances are you know our show. So instead, I'm going to tell you, we've just been on a run of really good shows lately.

Some big epic emotional stories, some weird funny stuff too. Download us, This American Life. This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger. If you like to distract yourself from real world crises with the fictional kind, then you can now watch season two of the Netflix series, The Diplomat.

Carrie Russell stars as Kate Weiler, a career foreign service officer with an excellent reputation for handling international crises, often behind the scenes. Her husband Hal, played by Rufus Sewell, is also a diplomat and former ambassador. Let's hear a clip from the current season, but first a little exposition. Last season, Kate Wyler and her British counterparts had been investigating the terrorist attack of a British aircraft carrier. She had been told that a Russian

mercenary named Lenkov was behind the attack, but that it was secretly planned by someone within the British government, and she suspects the Prime Minister. Last season ended with a cliffhanger. A car bomb went off, severely injuring Kate's husband, her deputy steward, and another staff member named Ronnie. In this scene, Kate meets the embassy's lead CIA agent, Idra Park, at the hospital and fills her in on the investigation. Park is played by Ali Ahn. Lankov put together the attack on the carrier, but the Kremlin did not hire him. I think the prime minister did.

What? Of this country. Slam. They are British police. This is a British hospital. Our people are not safe here. Kate, you think the British Prime Minister ordered a strike on his own warship,

which may or may not be connected to the bomb that just went off in his own city? You think he ordered that too? I think the call is coming from inside the house. And three Americans, including my husband, just got coming from inside the house. And three Americans, including my husband, just got blown up inside the house. Carrie Russell has played two iconic roles on television, the lead on the show Felicity,

as a young college woman in New York, and Elizabeth Jennings, a Soviet spy in the 80s living undercover in the United States in the critically acclaimed show, The Americans. She received three Emmy nominations for that role. She got her start on television as a teenager on the all-new Mickey Mouse Club, with a cast that included Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake. I spoke with Keri Russell in 2023 when The Diplomat premiered.

Keri Russell, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Well, it's great to have you here. I just wanted to ask you first, how you were pitched the show The Diplomat and the character Kate Weiler. Deborah Kahn, who wrote it, sent me the script. It came through the normal channels. It was actually, it was the holidays, it was Christmas time and it

just so happened that I had three sets of grandparents downstairs in my house. I was cooking for them all. It was chaotic and fun and amazing. And, you know, I was clearly not shopping around for a new television show to join. I read this and I just, it has this combination of, or Deborah's writing does I suppose, of this political fun intrigue and almost in the world of kind of war journalism and those kind of stories that interest me.

And this world of civil servants and the State Department and the people who do those jobs that, you know, we just don't know that much about. And Deborah, she writes about the minutia of life, you know, so it's someone going to meet the president but then realizing there's yogurt on my pants. And you're like, I gotta get this yogurt. Like, how am I gonna get this off?

And it's just great writing, and I couldn't say no. So the show's creators called your character itchy. What does that mean to you? That's very funny. She's a very good organizer and she's very good at getting all the facts right and getting people where they need to be behind the scenes. And then I think if you ask her to wear something other than her one black suit that she really feels good in and smart in and tough in and you ask her to wear a dress, it's going to show her sweat and she's itchy and she doesn't like when

people look at her. So that's really fun. Yeah, she's much more comfortable behind the scenes, right? That's what this show is sort of about, you know, plucking her from the background as like number two and bringing her to the front in a very visible post, which London would be for an ambassador. So as you said earlier, the job of the American ambassador to the UK has a lot of ceremonial aspects to it.

And you know, you said that the job is often a reward to a big political donor or bundler. And Kate's supposed to attend all these parties and teas. She's supposed to wear dresses and do photo shoots. And she really bristles against that. She just wants to do the diplomacy. And I was just wondering if that's something that you relate to as an actor. Do you enjoy movie openings and galas,

or would you just prefer to do the work? Going to an award show is such a fun idea. Going is zero fun. It's so fun to think about wearing a fancy dress. It is so fun. think about wearing a fancy dress. It is so fun. Everything is so pretty. Oh my gosh, and the colors, and getting your hair and makeup done,

and imagining that you'll look so much better than you really do when you do school drop-off. But the truth and the reality of getting your hair and makeup done, you still look sort of weird. You're instantly starting to sweat, putting on a dress going, oh, this doesn't look the way I thought it would. Oh, wow, standing in front of hundreds of photographers

while they take your picture and you're like, oh my God, I'm doing the wrong face. I'm not standing right. Oh, they're going to see my sweat, can they see through this dress, can they see my nipples? Like what, you know, it's all, that is never fun. Like, all you want to do is do like five minutes of one of those things and then go leave and get a burger and have a beer. But that's not what you get to do. It's like an eight-hour ordeal. So, yes, I fully,

when I read that, I was like, oh, yeah, I know what that is. I mean, just, you're just in a tailspin of uncomfort. Right. Well, let's just take a short break here. Let's talk about your last TV show, The Americans. The show ran for six seasons on FX. It ended in 2018. It was critically acclaimed. The show won two Peabodies, and you were highly praised for your performance, and you were nominated for three Emmys. So, for people who don't know the show, I guess there are some people out there, the

show takes place in the 80s during the Reagan administration, and you play Elizabeth Jennings, a Soviet spy posing as an American. You're in a KGB arranged marriage to another spy played by Matthew Reese. And when the show starts, you've been living in the United States for 15 years. You have two American-born kids, which was initially just like part of your disguise. And you've thought of your relationship to your husband as more of a work relationship rather than a romantic one. Although, at this point, you're starting to have real feelings for him.

So could you just tell us how this role came to you? You know, it's funny, John Landgraf, who runs FX, really advocated for me to do this part. I kept... I read it and I was like, why in the world would they want me to play this cold, calculating spy, Russian spy? Because literally, when I was reading it, I was thinking of like... You know, in Rocky, like when he has to fight the Russian fighter and he has that amazing Russian wife, I think it's Bridget Nielsen or something, right? Am I making that up?

That's who I was picturing. I am frazzled and nervous and like girl next door, I was like, what? Why does he want me? But that was sort of the genius of him, is realizing that you need somebody who does look sort of ordinary and that people have this sort of whatever feeling for so that I could be this crazy killer and, you know, sneaky spy. Well, I'd like to play a scene from the show. This is from season three.

So your daughter, Paige, is a teenager at this point. And well, I guess she was a teenager all along, but she's getting a little older. And your handlers, the KGB, want to recruit her for the cause. And Philip is strongly against this. He wants Paige to have a normal American life. Your character Elizabeth is more resigned to the idea, and this is a real rift in the marriage at this point.

But Paige has been suspicious of your behavior for a while, and in this scene she confronts you both, and you decide to tell her the truth, and Paige here is played by Holly Taylor. Paige... to tell her the truth, and Paige here is played by Holly Taylor. Paige, your father and I... We... We were born in a different country. What? Where? The Soviet Union. We came here before you were born. I don't

understand. We're here to help our people. We're here to help our people. Most of what you hear about the Soviet Union isn't true. Everything that we've told you about being activists, about wanting to make the world a better place. So, you're... We work for our country. Getting information. Information that they couldn't get in other ways.

You're spies? We serve our country, but we also serve the cause of peace around the world. We fight for people who can't fight for themselves. Stop. Paige, we've wanted to tell you this for such a long time. But you didn't. No. No, you're right.

We didn't. So that's a scene from the Americans. That's a real turning point in the show. And it's ironic, you finally telling your daughter the truth about their lives, just lays bare all the dishonesty that they've been living with and that their family is based on a foundation of lies. It's, um, you know, Joe and Joel, the writers of the show, um, uh, they, at one point had,

had spoken to like a psychologist about children, um, and how this might affect them. And one of the things I thought was so interesting was they were saying one of the things that traumatizes a child more than anything is a huge lie. Because they can't even trust their own memories. Because they go back and they're like, but none of that was real because you weren't doing that. So I have all these memories that you were working in a travel agency or whatever we

were doing. And you know, that's not even real anymore and how damaging that is. Well, it's interesting because parents, whether they're Soviet spies or not, they conceal things from your kids all the time for all sorts of reasons, like to maintain their innocence, to simplify things, and just to keep the parents' lives private, and that even continues as the kids age.

One of the things I found really fascinating with your relationship with Paige is that like even when Elizabeth reveals that she's a spy, like she still can't tell Paige about all the stuff she does, like all the honey traps and the murders. Because she doesn't want Paige to think she's a monster. No, I know. It's such a great idea for a show because you have these people, these children looking up to you and they're judging you and it's such an interesting, it's not just one spy telling the story in a movie. You're living with them and you're living with their choices and feeling all these other

little satellite parts of their lives. And that's what's so fun about this era of TV that who knows, maybe we're moving out of now. Watching the show last week, I was just thinking about how much fun it must have been for an actor because there's so much acting in it. First you're acting as a Russian spy who's pretending to be an all-American mom, and then you have all these side missions where you're disguised as other characters, you're seducing people, you're killing people.

It just must have been really fun to go in and and have all the stuff to work with It was so fun. I mean it's it's an actor's dream first of all, there's this incredible cheat Of and I feel like since the americans now there's a lot of Things I feel like these days where people get all wigged up and do things Yeah, yeah, you wear a lot of wigs. You probably wear like a hundred wigs during the show. So many wigs and stupid mustaches and things. But you know, it's this incredible shorthand cheat to feeling like someone else, getting to wear that wig or crazy makeup. You know, I did this job with Gary Oldman and Gary said, I've been watching it and I

call David Bowie and we FaceTime afterwards and we talk about the show. I was like, oh my gosh. That'd be a good podcast. It's so cool. Totally. So anyway, he said, that one episode where you're wearing this one wig, I think it was this, it was early on, I'm wearing some super short, crazy wig and they kind of gave me weird skin and he said, you know, people don't understand that when you do that, it helps you so much. Like, you look like a completely different person. I said, I know, it's true. And it was really, it's such a

fun cheat to seeing yourself as this other person. I just was reminded of, have you ever seen that Bugs Bunny cartoon where it's, I think it's Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and this wig van has a crash and all the wigs float in the air and then the wigs keep landing on their heads and they change characters. No, that's exactly how it was. the wigs float in the air and then the wigs keep landing on their heads and they change characters. It was so stupid and so fun. You know, we'd be like, midnight and Matthew would come in to the trailer with some crazy mustache and we would just laugh our heads off. It was so fun.

So, Carrie, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your childhood and how you got your start in acting when you were cast on the all-new Mickey Mouse Club. This was in the early 90s. I think you were on the show for three years, is that right? Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, I think so. It was a long time ago, but yes. Yeah, starting when you were like 15. And the show's famous as the launching pad for a lot of talented young actors and musicians,

including yourself, Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears. So there was a big casting call in Colorado, and so you decided to try out. And at this point, it doesn't sound like you've done a lot of acting. Did you know what you were getting into? And, like, was one of your ambitions to be on television at that point in your life? I had no idea what I was getting into. I did not grow up wanting to be an actor at all. And I did show up with hundreds of kids and all my little dance pals. And, yeah, you wait in line for, I'm not kidding, hours at some stupid Denver Convention Center.

And you get in finally and he says, hey, what do you have prepared? Can you read this little script about a mermaid trying to recycle? Something like that. And sure, yeah, I'll read the words. can you read this little script about a mermaid trying to recycle? And sure, yeah, I'll read the words and then do a little dance because that's what I had prepared like one of my solos and then he was like, okay, well, what song do you want to sing? And I was like, oh, no, I don't sing. And he said, little girl, do you see the line of kids waiting out there? Do you want to sing a song? And I said, I don't. I don't sing.

And so they called me back amazingly anyway. And they had me sing some little song. I think they had me sing Happy Birthday. They want to make sure you can carry a tune, which I probably barely could, I'm sure. Well, if people haven't seen the show, it was a variety show. And you did some singing, you did some dancing, I'm sure. Well, if people haven't seen the show, it was a variety show. And you did some singing, you did some dancing, and then there's like a lot of set pieces.

So I wonder if you compare your upbringing to your kid's life. And if there was a casting for another Mickey Mouse Club, like, would you let your kids audition? Like, you had a good time, but it was certainly a unique way to be a teenager. Listen, I had the best of all worlds. Normally, when a kid is acting, there's one child surrounded by adults. And not to mention the crew, which is huge. A crew to make an hour show. I mean, it's hundreds of people.

So, it's this kid, you know, working really long hours and needing to be professional and are surrounded by these adults. The Mickey Mouse Club, you know, I was one of 19 kids. The adults were invisible to me. I didn't even notice them. You know, it was just being in a small high school, I was just worried about like, you know, who I was going to make out with probably, who I had a crush on. So it was a sweet kind of innocent version of acting.

That being said, I just think putting any child in a professional setting like that is really tricky. And that's why so many people don't make it and have complicated lives after. And don't make it and have, you know, have complicated lives after. And as much as we did have fun and we totally did, little kids, like you're supposed to be able to mess up. You're supposed to like have a sick day or three or, you know, I don't regret anything and I'm so grateful for my life, but I would never let my kids do it because kids are supposed to be kids, if they can, you know?

And if you want to do it, you can do it later. Carrie Russell, recorded in 2023. Season two of her series, The Diplomat, is currently streaming on Netflix. We'll hear more of my interview after a break. And later, we remember writer Dorothy Allison, author of the critically acclaimed novel, Bastard Out of Carolina. I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nesbitt, digital producer at Fresh Air.

And this is Terri Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every

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The code switch team spent election day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them It's a time capsule of people's hopes and fears before they knew the results. One way or another, there's a change coming. I wanted to vote for Trump, but I voted for her. Gaze for Trump. I cried this morning. I've been crying on enough. I'm terrified. Listen to Code Switch, the podcast about race and identity from NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger. We're listening to my 2023 interview with actor Kerry Russell. She stars in the political drama, The Diplomat,

which is currently streaming season two on Netflix. Russell plays Kate Wyler, a career diplomat tapped by the White House to serve as the US ambassador to the UK. Russell got her start on television as a teen on the all new Mickey Mouse Club. She became famous as the lead on the TV show Felicity and received three Emmy nominations for her role

in the series The Americans as a Soviet spy in the 80s, living in the US, pretending to be an American. So, Kerry, after your time at the new Mickey Mouse Club, you decided to move to Hollywood and try to make it as an actor. You were on a few shows that didn't quite succeed, like there was an Aaron Spelling show. You were in a Bon Jovi video.

Amazing. I didn't quite follow the narrative of that video, but it seems like you had pretty bad news in it. I don't get it. Why? And then you tried out for the show Felicity, which was your really big break. And Felicity is about a girl who graduates

from high school in California. She's planning to go to Stanford and to pursue a medical degree. But she changes her plans because this boy, Ben Covington, who she's had a crush on, but never really talked to, writes like a compelling note in her yearbook. And so she decides to bail on all her plans and follow him to New York and he's going

to the University of New York, which I have to say, I always thought it was weird, like they can name Stanford Stanford, but it's, you can't have NYU. Like that's kind of weird, but that's besides the point. Well let's hear a scene from Felicity. This is from the first episode where the very earnest and honest Felicity confronts her crush Ben Covington, played by Scott Spieman in a college stairway and reveals to him why she's in New York. I just want to preface this by saying that I don't want you to feel weird about anything I'm about to say at all.

Okay. Uh, the thing is, I came to New of intense feelings for you back in high school, and even though I know that we never really talked before graduation except that one time when I was passing out flyers for the blood drive. Anyway, maybe the fact that we never did talk was why I had those feelings. Because now, of course, I realize now that it was a crazy thing to do to follow someone, I don't know, 3,000 miles. And I sort of panicked about it, but I just wanted you to know that I'm past that and I'm totally okay with it now. I mean it, you know, because it's not really about you so much anymore. I'm here now, you know, because it's not really about you so much anymore. I'm here now, you know.

Uh, because... I'm here. Heh. Heh heh. So, um... What are you thinking? I'm honestly, honestly, I'm just... I'm just, I'm just I'm just I'm flattered by the whole thing I'm flattered I am good that's that's really a perfect perfect answer okay so can we

just be friends yeah sure great of course yeah okay that's that's really Sure. Great. Of course, yeah. OK. That's a really hard scene to listen to. Oh my god. I haven't heard that in a million years. That is hilarious. Oh my gosh. But you know, you're really good in that, though. You're taking all these awkward pauses,

and it sounds really natural. But I have to say that she finds out, I think in that episode or the next episode, that he, on his college essay, he totally made up that his older brother died and that it was his dream all along to go to this school. And I have to say, Felicity should have totally left him at that point. Completely. That's a bad sign. Bad side, but then I remember at the end of the pilot, they're standing on a rooftop and

they're kind of like, oh, well, you know, this was our first few months and we're going to agree to put the past behind us and she's maybe going to go back because it was crazy for her to come to New York. And he says, yeah, I just, I just, I can't wait to see what the city looks like when it snows. And it's just like, he just, it's such like a romantic way of looking at the world and that time in your life when everything is new and in front of you. Oh my god, it's so, it's so sweet. It's such a sweet little something.

So when Felicity ended, you decided to take a break from acting. Can you talk about that decision? So Felicity was four years and it was this big chunk of my 20s, you know, so grateful for it, for it, saved a lot of money. Because, you know, we were working really long hours on network shows. You know, you have about two months a year that you're not on that show. It takes, because you're doing about 22 to 24 episodes. And so, you know, what, like 16-hour days, 17, 18-hour days sometimes. And I just felt like I had missed part of being a kid a little bit. So I took that money I'd saved and I rented an apartment in New York to be close to my

girlfriends, Alana and Lindsay. And I acted like a kid. Like I didn't want to act. I wanted to show up to birthday parties that I wasn't able ever to, because you know, when you're shooting a show, you're working till 1030 at night, and then you wake up at five and you're on set the next day. So I missed out on like, you know, stupid things, birthday parties and going out dancing and getting drunk and walking home drunk in the

snow and I got to do all of those things those few years in New York and you know just wander around listening to overly emotional teenage music or you know reading books all day and it really that step back is the only way I'm still in this business. Because I think I had to like know I wanted to do it again before it consumed me. Well, Keri Russell, it's been such a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for coming to Fresh Air. Thank you so much. I spoke with Keri Russell last year.

Season two of her show, The Diplomat is currently streaming on Netflix. Coming up, we remember writer Dorothy Allison, who wrote with painful honesty about the experience of being physically and sexually abused as a child. This is Fresh Air. On NPR's Wild Card podcast, comedian Seth Meyers talks frankly about his early career. I was far more temperamental when I was younger and things ran very hot at S&L. And there were definitely times where my instincts were to say something that would have been relationship ending to people. I'm Rachel Martin.

Seth Meyers is on Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation. On the TED Radio Hour, clinical psychologists John and Julie Gottman are marriage experts. And after studying thousands of couples, they have found... Couples who were successful had a really different way of talking to one another when there was a disagreement or a conflict. How to be brave in our relationships. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. I'm Jesse Thorne. On Bullseye, Connie Chung, the legend of TV news, tells us

about her incredible career and marvels at the convenience of standing desks. They have these desks here in New York that move up and down. That's on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm Sam Brigger. We're going to remember writer Dorothy Allison, who wrote the critically acclaimed bestselling novel Bastard Out of Carolina about violence and sexual abuse in a poor Southern family. Allison died last week at the age of 75. The cause was cancer. Allison based the book on her own experience, being physically and sexually abused by her stepfather. When the book was published, George Garrett wrote in the New York Times Book Review, The literary territory that Allison has set out to explore is dangerous turf, a minefield. It is a great pleasure to see her succeed, blythe and graceful, as Baryshnikov in performance."

The book was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Allison also wrote a collection of short stories called Trash, a second novel called Cave Dweller, and a memoir titled Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. Terry Gross spoke with Dorothy Allison in 1992 when Bastard Out of Carolina was published. Allison said she tried to avoid the pitfalls of the literature of victimology by being as honest as possible. That honesty meant describing the disturbing, confusing thoughts of the victim. Here's a reading from a third of the way into the book. And please note,

this interview includes a difficult discussion about child sexual abuse, and you may consider not listening further. I didn't daydream about fire anymore. Now I imagine people watching while Daddy Glenn beat me, though only when it was not happening. When he beat me, I screamed and kicked and cried like the baby I was. But sometimes, when I was safe and alone, I would imagine the ones who watched. Someone had to watch. Some girl I admired who barely knew I existed. Some girl from church or down the street, or one of my cousins, or even somebody I'd seen on TV.

Sometimes a whole gang of them would have to be trapped into watching. They couldn't help me, they couldn't get away, they had to watch. In my imagination, I was proud and defiant. I'd stare back at him with my teeth set, making no sound at all, no shameful scream, no begging. And those people who watched admired me and hated him. I pictured it that way, and I put my hands between my legs. It was scary, but it was thrilling too. Those who watched me loved me. It was as if I was being beaten for them, and I was wonderful in their eyes. You understand this fantasy of having people watch you and admire you as you're beaten

but remain defiant. Yes. It's, um, it's curious because it's what I did as a child and I've talked to other survivors, and it's one of the ways in which you can, in which you can fight the feeling of being this contemptible being. Because basically when you're being, when you're subjected to that kind of abuse, as a child, you almost always begin to feel that it's justified, that there is really something wrong with you, that you're this terrible person that this is happening to. And the only way I ever

found really to deal with the emotional onslaught of those feelings was to begin to feel like a martyr, this almost Joan of Arc figure in my own mind. Something that really upsets the girl in this story. She hates the beatings, she hates the incest, she hates her stepfather, but she's turned on by the stories she tells herself about the beatings, and she feels terribly guilty about this. Absolutely. And she thinks that maybe she's as guilty as her stepfather is. That's something you understand too?

Oh, yes. And it's hard to explain to people on the outside of the experience, mostly because it's really hard to admit that you could take that experience and convert it into your own erotic charge. I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to analyze it. I simply know that it happens and it becomes a way to make it your own experience. I think one of the reasons why someone might be reluctant to admit to a feeling like that is not only their own kind of fear of what they were feeling, but also the fear that somebody would say, well, see, that must have been she enjoyed it. Absolutely.

It's like the myth of rape, you know. Obviously, if you orgasm during rape, then it must not have been rape. So if a child begins to feel erotic excitement while being manipulated by an adult, does that give the adult permission to do it? It's a horrible thing to even imagine. And you don't, part of the reason to keep it a secret and to be quiet about that feeling is that you might give someone any small measure of encouragement to feel they have a right to do this. They have no right ever to sexually touch a child is just not possible to do. There's no justification for it. And the fact that the child might in fact manufacture some erotic excitement is not

a justification for it. But if we pretend that it doesn't happen, then that guilt, that self-horror stays, never goes away. When you hear about somebody having experienced sexual pleasure, while they were being victimized. What upsets me is that they're then ashamed of themselves for it. That I find upsetting. We don't have, especially if you're a child, I mean, my inset started when I was five years old.

I wasn't capable of making any decision about what I wanted to do. I didn't have the capacity to do that. When I began to feel all these funny feelings that I could not explain to myself, all I experienced was horror. I began to think that I was the terrible person I was being told I was, and it's taken me most of my life to make the decision that that's not the case. Would you tell us a story your relatives told you about how you were born? I was born in a car accident.

My mother was on the way to the airport with a bunch of my uncles and aunts, and they hit another car, and she was in the back seat asleep. So she was thrown over the front seat, through the windshield, over the other car. She wasn't hurt too bad, except that she had a concussion and was unconscious for three days. And of course, I was born while she was unconscious, which meant that my grandmother and my aunts were at the hospital, and they got into an argument while talking to the clerk and didn't manage to

manufacture the tail, the manufactured marriage my mother had been going to get through. So I became a certified bastard. How old was she when she gave birth to you? 15. One month past her 15th birthday. She was a child. She did eventually marry, right? My mother married three times. She did eventually marry, right?

My mother married three times. Well, the first marriage was annulled. But she married my stepfather when I was five and lived with him until she died. And he was the man who abused you when you were growing up? Yes. Did she know about it? Yes and no. One of the things that's hard to explain to people is that my mother knew because there were... I told her. Actually, I didn't tell her. I told one of my cousins who told her. What's hard to explain is that she did not let herself know all of everything that was happening. She couldn't have.

And when I grew up and we, I would go home and talk to her, we would have these very long, slow, painful conversations. And she was enormously guilty that she had not been able to stop it. And she tried. That's one of the hard things that I try to show in the book is, like my mother, Annie in the book, tries desperately to prevent what she sees is, like my mother, Annie in the book, tries desperately to prevent what she sees happening, even though she doesn't see a lot of what's going on. And she tries to protect her children. She believes absolutely that the man she loves is going to change, that what's happening is just because he can't find a job, because

his father is mean to him, because he's hurt and wounded, that he's just, she thinks of him as this little boy that she's going to mother into being a good man. And she cannot believe that that's not happening. So you must have been very angry with your mother for staying with your stepfather after she knew for certain what was happening to you. Not until I was in my thirties did I really start to get angry at her in that way. My mother... My mother loved me.

My mother spent her whole life desperately trying to make my life and the lives of my sisters better. She literally worked herself to death taking care of us, trying to make some small difference. And if you had ever had a way to meet her, you would have met someone that was just extraordinarily loving and a very large soul human being. And that's, I was madly in love with my mother. And I knew how impossible her life was. She worked as a waitress her whole life. The best job she ever had was as a cook.

She was constantly sick. There was enormous bills. She never, never got her life under control. And she always thought if she just worked a little harder, did this little thing more, it would be possible That having her there having her like this barrier between me and what was essentially a really cruel world I loved her enormously. I could not possibly have been angry at her while I was at home and for a long time after She was my heroine

And only yeah, It was only when I began to really deal with the problems in my own life that had resulted as being, that getting out of being the victim and into being a survivor was when I started to get angry. And it was nightmarish to be angry at her that way. We're listening to Terry's 1992 interview with Dorothy Allison, the author of the bestselling novel Bastard Out of Carolina. More after a break, this is Fresh Air. Read about the impact of women in music with NPR's new book, How Women Made Music, a revolutionary history from NPR Music. This stunning anthology offers original writing and illustrations, interviews and photos.

And the audiobook includes 52 years worth of interview excerpts with more than 60 legendary artists. Visit npr.org slash how women made music to order now. This is fresh air. Let's get back to Terry's 1992 interview with Dorothy Allison, who wrote the bestselling novel Bastard Out of Carolina. She died last week at the age of 75. Please note this interview is about the impact on her of being physically and sexually abused as a child, which includes a period of self-harm and suicidal ideation. Remember, if you or someone you know may be considering suicide

or is in crisis, you can reach out to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Dorothy, I'm going to ask you to read something from the preface to a collection of short stories that came out a few years ago. And the collection of short stories is called Trash. Would you read the opening of the preface for us? It's titled Deciding to Live. I became the one who got away, who got glasses from the Lions Club, a job from Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, and finally went to college on a scholarship. There I met the people I had always read about, girls whose fathers loved them innocently,

boys who drove cars they had not stolen, whole armies of the middle and upper classes I had not truly believed to be real, the children to whom I could not help but compare myself. I matched their innocence, their confidence, their capacity to trust, to love, to be generous against the bitterness, the rage, the pure and terrible hatred that had consumed me. And like so many others who had gone before me, I began to dream longingly of my own death. I began to court it, cowardly, traditionally, that is, in the tradition of all those who had gone before me, through drugs and drinking and stubbornly putting myself in the way of other people's violence. Even now, I cannot believe how it was that everything I

survived became one more reason to want to die. Why do you think you went through a self-destructive period after having decided to live and getting away from home? Oh dear, it's like math, it's like one in one. You take a child and rob that child of all self-esteem, you will get an adult that has no sense of their own worth. I spent a good portion of my late teens and early twenties trying to find a way to die without having to actually take the responsibility to kill myself. It's a direct result. I've seen it in so many other people. I've seen it in some of my younger relatives. It's just, it's a devastating impact. The hard thing

is to change it, to crawl out of that black depression and begin to think of yourself as a human being like other human beings instead of a monster. What helped you do that? I'll tell you the truth. I think it was feminism. I began to believe that there was an explanation for what had happened to me. And I came to it largely through a political understanding. I went away to college and somebody talked to me about Marx and showed me, you should be a communist. They said you're working class.

Well, I'm not much good at that because communists need to do what they're told. But I started reading and trying to study why is it that these things happen and why is it that everybody especially believe that incest and violence happens to poor and working class kids. And I looked into a study group, a feminist study group, and all of a sudden it was bigger. It wasn't just that we were poor. It was because I was a girl child and because girl children in my family are taught to endure and survive and not to fight back. And that began to let me be angry.

It began to let me believe that I wasn't this monster that deserved what had happened to her, but somebody who had fallen under somebody else's madness. You did something that it sounds like nobody else in your family had done before. You left home. You went someplace else. You tried to have a life different from the lives you had seen around you. How did you make that move? Oh, I did something.

I did a number of things nobody else in my family had done before. I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school, the first person to go to college. There have been two since. And I have come of an enormous family. It's just that both of my sisters dropped out of high school in the ninth and tenth grade. It's just not something that we were given the idea that we could do. But a lot of it had to do with my mother. My mother believed that I was this incredibly special person, that I was brilliant. She thought that I was just amazing. So when I was five

or six years old, she started getting me books and she started saving money to send me to school. She would put quarters in a tip jar. She did it my entire childhood. The point I went to college, she had almost $200, and she'd been saving for more than 10 years. Wow. It wasn't exactly a life in which she could keep money. Yeah. But that, when you're, if you make that decision

with my mother's encouragement, believing that I was different, a lot of other things come along. The fact that I was so bright and won so many prizes and awards and things drove me away from my family. I didn't have any choice about leaving. I didn't know how to talk to them after a while. The hard part was going back. Right. Something else that set you apart from your family and probably from a lot of people who you knew growing up is that you're a lesbian. Ah, yes.

How old were you when you figured that out? I think I was about 11. And I wasn't entirely sure all of what it meant. I just knew that I didn't have any of the same desires that everybody else around me. I wasn't much interested in boys or the whole cycle that you get into of getting boyfriends and doing that whole thing. But I was madly, passionately in love with a little girl down the street. And I was always in love with a little girl down the street, no matter what little girl

it was or where we were. I don't think there was a day in my adolescence that I was not madly in love with somebody and she was always female. Now when you were young, things were much less in the open about homosexuality than now. And I think people who were gay and lesbian were really encouraged to think of themselves as sick and perverted. Coming from a kind of background where you were already really worried and really guilty about who you were and why your stepfather was abusing you, thinking that you liked girls probably or might have brought on...

It made it more complicated. Yeah, right. I began to think or worry that people would think that I loved girls because my stepfather had raped me. It was one of the... Well, I'm sure a lot of our listeners are thinking that right now, frankly. Yeah. Almost everyone that I've ever talked to says, well, that's it.

That's why. But I don't believe it. I believe that my lesbianism has been a source of energy and power in my life. It's almost as if, oh, you must hate men because he did these terrible things to you. That's why you love women. I don't, but I don't think of it that way. I don't love women because I hate men. I don't even particularly hate men. I happen to love women.

And lust is a little bit more basic than running away, you know? Well, Dorothy Allison, I want to thank you very much for talking with us. Thank you. Dorothy Allison recorded in 1992. She died last week at the age of 75. On Monday's show, actor and stand-up comic Jimmy O-Yang. He co-starred in the HBO show Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians. Now he's the star of the new television show Interior Chinatown, based on the National Book Award-winning novel of the same name.

I hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Brigger.