Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Mara Wilson: My Diagnosis Saved Me

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Mara Wilson (writer, actor - Mrs. Doubtfire, Matilda ) opens up about body dysmorphia, living with severe OCD, and the grief of losing her mother at an early age. She details what it was like working with the late, great Robin Williams on Mrs. Doubtfire, her struggle to overcome her "cute" image she became well-known for during those years, and how that fed into her body dysmorphia. Mara discusses growing up a sensitive child, her family’s own intergenerational trauma and how it tied into her own mental health struggles, imposter syndrome, and living up to labels. She considers her experiences with therapy and medication, her spiritual journey, and the differences between dating boys and girls. Mayim and Mara debunk the myths of severe OCD and explain what living with it is really like. Mara Wilson's Book, Where Am I Now?: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318758/where-am-i-now-by-mara-wilson/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It probably took me 20 years to get to that point where I could finally read motherless daughters and I could finally think about what the loss was to me. And for a while, it was almost like I was pretending my mother had never existed because it was too much to think about my life with her and my life without her. It's Myambialic's Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. Hi, I'm Myambiolic.

and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so that you don't have to. We're doing the heavy lifting here. Speaking of doing the heavy lifting, I'm on my own today. Jonathan Cohen is in a meeting. He is not here, but that is his chair. And he would say that he's doing okay. That's usually what he says. And I guess I'm doing okay too. I'm very excited to speak to someone who people have kind of told me for much of my adult life that I should connect with. It's someone who's 12 years younger than me, but had a really, really interesting career as a child actor and wrote a book really talking about the transition from childhood to teenhood and kind of being out of the industry. Her name's Mara Wilson, and her book is Where Am I Now, True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame. And this very, very iconic face is the child who I first learned about. She was in Mrs. Doubtfire.

She was the adorable little daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire. She also is Matilda and has done many, many other things, but really was known for this iconic cuteness and has a lot to say about that now that she is a grown woman. And we talk about OCD, we talk about anxiety, we talk about the early presentation of that. She also talks about loss. She suffered a huge loss when she was eight. Her mother passed. And she talks a lot. about how kind of grief evolves over time. I really hope that you will take a good listen and there's so much to reflect on here. It's really, really a pleasure to welcome Mara Wilson to the breakdown. Break it down. Where am I finding you? I'm in L.A. I'm back where I grew up. Well, not technically back where I grew up because I'm not in Burbank, but I did get back to L.A. a couple years ago, which surprised a lot of people. But compared to New York, I feel happier here but I also feel way more bored. Well, let's go back.

You were one of the people that I've always known about and didn't know a lot about. And you have this beautiful book, Where Am I Now, True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame? And, you know, the picture on the front is, you know, very iconic for many of us of a certain age. And what's really cool is when you talk

turn it over, it's you. It's you now. And now-ish, your hair is longer here than it is as I'm looking at you. Yeah, a couple years ago. There's so many aspects of your childhood that I really relate to. And also, I started acting, I was a late bloomer. I started acting when I was in junior high. I was 11, so going into seventh grade. And, you know, people always kind of like, you know, snort at me when I say, I don't relate to a lot of things of child actors who, let's say, had been in the industry since they were toddlers or since they were, you know, the ones that didn't have a choice. Well, and so I guess that's sort of, you know, there's certain aspects, of course, of my existence that definitely felt like there were not as many choices. However, you know, I like to say I had, I had 11 and a half crazy years of just being in my family. Yeah.

That was enough to set me up for who knows what. Yeah. You know, the industry was sort of another layer. And I'm not saying that you didn't also have that. You had your own family life and then the industry on top of it. But you did. You started acting at an age when a lot of children don't have a lot of agency about most things in their life. You had a very joyful presence, you know, in so many films. I mean, it's true. You know, when I think of, you know, you and Mrs. Doubtfire or Matilda, you know, you embodied an aspect. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm. I'm being completely honest, you embodied an aspect of childhood that didn't feel overly kind of saccharine and precocious, but still was just out of reach from what I think what a lot of young girls and a lot of young kids felt that they could be. And I think that's what I always thought of you when I would see you in things. I was like, that girl's the girl that I wish I was, you know? And I don't mean you. I mean, the characters that you played because you were like

Like a little spunky but sweet. And, you know, can you talk a little bit about sort of that image? Yeah. I mean, I think it was definitely the girl that I wanted to be too. And I think that a lot of times people would meet me at, you know, at camp or things like that. And they would kind of expect me to be that girl. And then they found out that I was, you know, I was awkward and I had my neuroses and I was kind of nerdy. And they were like, oh, she's not as cool as she's not the badass that we were expecting her to be.

So I think that that did happen a lot. I also feel like I did feel at least at the beginning, like pre-Matilda, I would say, that they did try to push me into more of a, you know, saccharine kind of thing. I think particularly in Miracle on 34th Street, there was a lot of like, oh, this is cute. Let's just have her do this because it's cute. And that drove me up the wall because that was not, you know, being cute was not a value in my family. It was my mom's values were you need to be strong and you need to be smart. And so those were really what she emphasized.

And that was why she loved Matilda, because Matilda was both of those things. And I do think that, yeah, that was an image for a while. But I also think it was a bit frustrating because I could never live up to it. And in a way, it sort of echoed me having three older siblings, me having three older brothers who were very smart, very cool. and everybody knew them. And, you know, it was, it was, you know, it's Joel Wilson's sister.

It's John Wilson's sister. It's Danny Wilson's sister. It's not, it's not Mara. And so that's how I felt for a long time that Matilda was kind of this older sibling that I had to live up to in a way, sort of this thing that always had a shadow over me. Tell us a little bit about when you did start acting

and how that came about. I recently spoke to Seth Green. And, you know, he talks about that, Like, he basically came out of the womb, like, let me entertain you. Yeah, I was like that, too. Okay, so tell me, because I was, I was not like that, but tell me what that was like for you. What did it look like? I mean, I was, I was a born extrovert.

I really was. Like, I've seen pictures and videos of myself where I'm just, like, mugging for the camera at, like, three years old. And there's, like, all the home movies, and all the home movies, I'm jumping in front of the camera and smiling and insisting. that they take videos of me. And I think it was like three years ago, one of my brothers found an old video of like one of his little league games. And after when they're when they're talking to all the kids about, you know, how the game went and everything, I'm just running around and I'm going up to every other kid and I'm

going, hi, hi, hi, hi. And then I'm, you know, running up and talking to, you know, running over to like my dad and he'll play with me a little bit. And then I'll leave him and go over to the other kids. and go, hi, hi. Do you think it was also being kind of like the first girl in the family? I do think it was. You know, that's glorious, right?

Yeah, I do think it was. Like, I was sort of celebrated for being the first daughter. They were very excited to finally have a daughter. And so I think because of that, that made me, that gave me confidence. And I was also a very, from what I've heard, I was a pretty well-behaved little kid. Like, I liked to be good. I liked to listen. I liked to do what I was told, and I was good at that.

I also think that I was, you know, pretty sensitive. I would cry about things that made me feel very sad. Like my mother had a pamphlet about a girl who had been killed by a drunk driver, and I sobbed and sobbed when she told me what it was about. I sobbed all day. So I was very, and I think I also had a good ear for dialogue, because I could hear something and I could, and this is something that I feel like we should talk about more at some point

because I know you are into the neuroscience of everything, and I think that, and I remember you did a project on perfect pitch, right? Yeah, when I was in grad school, that was actually what I wanted to do my thesis on. Do I did some study on the genetic basis of perfect pitch? Yeah, because I remember reading it in the newspaper and being like, oh, that's cool. And that was also like, oh, this means that there are, there are child actors who grow up and get to do cool things like this. Well, and also, but yeah, but what you're talking about also is you had an ear for something,

not just emotionally, but kind of auditorially. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that I was, you know, I'm not, I obviously wasn't Merrill Streep or like even Dakota Fanning, but I was, I think that I was, I had a good ear for dialogue. And a lot of times if somebody said something to me in a certain way, I could say it back to them the exact way, or if I said something in one way, I could remember how it was said and say it the exact same way, sort of pitch memory. I actually, it's funny because I have very little emotional, not emotional, I have very little visual imagination. Like, I don't hold onto images in my head very well at all. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's almost like a very, somebody's

's moving through a PowerPoint very quickly in my head. And, and I can't really imagine something that isn't based on my own experience. Like every time I read a book, the people in the book live in the same house, which is like either my house growing up or a house that somebody I knew when I was young. Right. Or, yeah, I say it's like a PowerPoint or like a slide projection thing. Or I tell people that my mind is like a community theater with limited backdrops. They just keep cycling through that.

But I think in some ways that meant that I had to be more, upon auditory signals upon auditory cues. And so I developed a good ear for dialogue. And I also spent a lot of time. I was in a family that talked a lot. You know, we were, we were a big Jewish family. We talked a lot. So there was going to be, you know, I was going to be listening to my mom and my mom on the phone and my mom with my brothers. And my mom was very, you know, erudite, erudite. She was a very smart woman. I would listen to the way that she talked. And I would listen to the way that my brothers talked, and I just spent so much time listening in on conversations. I think I kind of had an idea of how people talked and how adults talked, and I had a big

vocabulary, and I was a big talker. So I think that all of these things kind of converge to make something that is good. You know, there are qualities that you want to have in a child. Miami-Belix breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan. This has happened to me many, many times, especially on the perimenopause journey.

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Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership and after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my and Biala's Breakdown to help support the show. I'm curious sort of at what age this sort of crystallized. Five, I would say, four or five. And I saw, I mean, we grew up in Burbank where it was as normal to be a child actor as it was to be in Little League. Like there were so many, or maybe not in Little League,

maybe something a little less common, but it was pretty common there. Were your parents from Southern California? Like, I don't know anyone who grew up in Burbank. I'll just be honest. And I live in L.A. and have always lived there. Were your parents from Southern California? No, they weren't. I mean, that's kind of the thing about Burbank, too,

is that Burbank is very much a place where people from other part of the countries come to live. So, and from other countries, too. But it's kind of like a, at the time, it was a place where you could go that was sort of lower middle class, but it was pretty safe. And so a lot of people, there were a lot of people, there were a lot of people there who'd been there since like World War II. But it was basically a company town. It was, it was once, you know, Lockheed and like the military, industrial complex moved out of there, it was all industry.

So my dad worked for NBC and then he worked for KTLA, so the local news station affiliates. And, you know, my mom had had different jobs around there as well. And my, like my mom's, I was just thinking the other day that my mom had two best friends and they worked for, they worked for, their partners worked for NBC or Disney, I think. And so it was just very common where, where, and it's also why to this day it annoys me when people say, oh, we're going to Disney and they mean Disneyland or Disney World because to me Disney just means office buildings. Right. So, so it was very common. And I think I found out later that my family was in a toothpaste commercial. I think like Crest was looking for, was looking for like real families. And so

my family was in one and and that was actually my first commercial. I didn't realize that I was a baby on my mom's hip. Wow. But one of my brothers, I guess, kind of got bitten by the bug and he wanted to do it. So he started doing commercials. He was in like a sizzler commercial. He was in a couple different things. And then he, he was in some movies. He was in the movie Turner and Hooch. I'm trying to think of some other ones. This movie called Wait Until Spring Bendini. He was at a couple different movies. My mom used to say he had small parts in big movies and big parts in small movies. And then I saw what he did and I went to my mom and I said that I wanted to do what he did because I kind of put it together that it was, I mean, I always loved telling stories and

performing stories to my family and to the point where my stories would last forever. So I would be like, I have a story. Once upon a time and my brothers would clap and go, a good story, good story to cut me off. Because otherwise it would have turned into the Odyssey. So yeah, it was, that's what I did. I told my mom that I wanted to act, and she immediately said, no, you don't. And set me up on a mock audition to try to dissuade me. And it didn't work.

I was like, that's okay. I can just go on another one. And it felt kind of easy, come, easy go. It felt like fun. And so I did a bunch of commercials, and they were fun. And then I got called for a movie, which is Mrs. Doubtfire. So that was, okay, so that was. soon after. Yeah, it was probably within six months. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I say wow, because,

you know, that was a major motion picture with Robin Williams, who was a major, major movie star. Which I thought was cool, but I wasn't really phased. And I think that might also be, because, like I said, I grew up going to visit my dad at work and at work, you would see the people who the people who worked at at KTLA. I think actually Blossom was on that lot. Yeah, then we moved to, we started at Renmar Studios, which was the old Desilu Studios. Then we were

at KTLA for a transition year and then we went over to Sunset Gower where most of our years were. Yeah, because I do remember, I do remember being like, like, walking by and being like, oh, is that Blossom? Because, you know, Blossom was... That's funny. Blossom was the cool, older show. And what year were you born, just so I can

see our difference? 87. Oh, okay, got it. So, yeah, I was, I'm 12 years older than you. Yeah. You would have been like older sister or babysitter age, like just the age that you think, like, somebody is cooler than you. Right. Little did you know. So the Mrs. Doubtfire experience, a year after I started acting, I was cast in beaches, which was a very, you know, a very large, you know, movie. We were actually produced by Disney. and, you know, I was working with Bet Midler, and, like, I knew who she was, and, you know, like, Barbara Hershey and, like, Gary Marshall directs it.

And I remember, you know, it came out the week of my bat mitzvah, actually. And I remember, even at that age, right, at 13, I didn't really understand. Yeah, I didn't understand either. What was your understanding? Like, I didn't even realize, like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be in movie theaters, like, all over. Like, my family in Israel got to see me on television before they even met me. You know, like I had never even met family that around the world could see me. What did that feel like, you know, to be that young?

Did you even, was it even on your radar? Like, this is a movie going out into the world with a very famous person starring in it. I did not understand the magnitude. I really didn't. And I think that my parents sort of felt like this was going to be my one and only. This was going to be something that they could put in scrapbooks that they could do. I mean, I think about how my college boyfriend had a friend who, who was in episode one of Star Wars.

He was in The Phantom Menace. And it was kind of something that he had done for fun. And also, like, kids made fun of him for it because kids are terrible. But it was just sort of a like, oh, hey, he did this thing when he was young. And then he completely moved on, didn't do anything else. And I think that's kind of what they thought it would be like for me. Like, like, we even took, we even, like, had a little scrapbook going. It was a really fun experience for me.

And so I think that we were just kind of like, oh, yeah, this is a fun thing. And I really didn't understand the magnitude of it all. I had to be told several times, you know, you need to behave, you need to be better behaved on set, you need to do these things. Like I remember asking why people didn't clap at the end of the day because, you know, when you're in the poor and play in preschool, you know, and you're playing Queen Esther, like everybody claps for you at the end. And my mom was like, that is not acceptable. That is so rude. These people work so hard. And she was pretty tough on me, but I think I kind of needed that.

When I went in, I remember I went in to audition for, we did screen tests and we went up to San Francisco. And my mom was, you know, eight and a half months pregnant at the time. And we were doing the screen tests. And I remember going there and met a lot of really great kids. But I think we all kind of zeroed in on each other. It was me, Matt, and Lisa. and we felt like we were a family. Immediately.

We felt like family. And I don't know what it was, but we just immediately connected with each other. And I remember thinking, I really want this, but I really want Matt and Lisa to be there too. And they got it too. And it was Matt Lawrence,

who you know, obviously, his brother. Yes, I've known him since. Well, I've known him since he was very young. Yeah, you've known, you've known Matt since he was super young. Yeah. And, you know, and he's a total sweetheart. And Lisa is, Lisa is still my big sister to this day.

We still text each other all the time. I love her. And Robin, Robin was great with kids. He really was. He was, he was a wonderful, he was sort of a father figure, sort of a fun uncle, father figure he was. And, you know, as, as like Ruden, as his material might be, he was never inappropriate with kids.

And Sally was, of course, very lovely. And she would help me run my lines. And she would, she was so kind and sweet. And she had a son who was a little bit younger than me, who I recently met again. And it was so funny because it was like meeting somebody you went to preschool with. So I really couldn't have asked. And Chris Columbus was great with kids too. I mean, he was just coming off of, you know, home alone and adventures and babysitting.

And so he knew and he was a father himself. So he knew exactly how to talk to children. It looked like a lot of fun. It was. I can tell when, you know, when actors are. acting like they're laughing. And there were many times when it really felt like you were genuinely tickled. Like it really seemed like a lot of fun. I mean, I remember, because I remember being on a show after that and being on a sitcom after that and being told that I couldn't laugh. So I think some of

the humor went over my head. But it was really fun. It was just, it was always fun. I remember probably the first scene that we did, we were outside and we were doing a montage scene where Mrs. Doubtfire is riding a bike, and Robin asked me what kind of music I liked. And nerd that I was, I said that I was a big fan of musical theater, which I still am. And he asked me what musicals I liked, and I named some Rogers and Hammerstein ones. And he started singing, There is Nothing Like a Dame, which my mom thought was amazing, because it was a man dressed as a woman singing, there is nothing like a dame. But, but yeah, he was, and just, Everybody there, it was such a warm, kind set. It was just a really, it felt like it was just a good time and it was just a good experience. And it felt like it did feel very familial. I mean, you can see me with like my childhood teddy bear

in one of the scenes. And in other scenes, you can see, I think when they're playing soccer in the park, you can see my brothers flying kites in the background. Wow. Yeah, it really did feel like, Like, it just felt like we were, we were all in on something wonderful together. It was a very fun time.

And I think a lot of times when people ask about kids turning out bad, which is a terrible phrase. Yeah, nobody turns out anything. Nobody gets to a point in their life where they're just like, well, I'm this for the rest of my life. Well, but I think what you're talking about is a lot of what I had experience with, which was if you're on a set that is also healthy and where the people in charge have consciousness, not just about children, but about how women are treated, how much drugs and alcohol you see,

for example, those things make a big difference, you know? Well, that's something I feel very strongly about. Like, I think children should be children. I don't think children should be around, you know, smoking and alcohol and drugs. I mean, like, okay, yeah, they're probably going to see their parents, you know, have a drink once in a while. But like, that's, they, they need to, they need to, they need time to be children. Sure. Well, and I think on a set in particular, it makes a big difference. And, you know, when you hear a lot of stories of, you know, kids who grew up in the industry and ended up having problems, a lot of it was that there were problems on the set, meaning in terms of how people treated kids and what they expected them. So you also, you know, you were raised even in a different time from, you know,

that kind of generation. I was. I think it was a little bit safer when I was there. It still wasn't totally safe. I, and I, I mean, I saw that happen with, you know, some kids who were a little bit older who'd, who'd had, you know, much other older girlfriends or boyfriends who'd, you know, had parents who didn't really care if they had fake ideas and things. And parents, I think, were also, are also incredibly important. And the kid has to want to do it. And you can tell when the kid doesn't want to do it. I've said this before, and I don't really know how we could prevent this, but I think that you can be, you know, one of my controversial opinions is that you can be a child actor who is well adjusted. You can't really be a child star who is totally well adjusted. It's going to be, at the very least, it's going to be like, you know, like what everybody was talking about a couple years ago with the gifted child. when a child is told they're gifted

that sometimes creates this undue pressure on them and makes them feel like their self-concept is threatened every time they make a mistake. Right. And I think that child stardom is a bit like that too because you have to contend with it and it's like having another set of parents or teachers or something to, you know,

having fans can feel like having another set of parents that you need to please or another, you know, teacher that you need to please. But unlike parents and teachers, they don't have any vested interest in you. They could dump you at any time. And especially if you're somebody like I was, who was in a lot of kids' movies,

they're going to see you as an object of ridicule because it's the same way that as little girls grow up, they might mutilate their Barbie dolls. They cut off their hair. They cast them aside when they're a little too old for them and they don't care about them anymore. And honestly, that's how I felt. Once I got to middle school,

I had people making fun of the children's movies that I was in and Burbank is such a strange place to live in because there were all kinds of child actors and child models at my school and it was so much so that there was a hierarchy. Like the coolest kids were in Gap ads. Right. Because it was the 90s and Gap ads were the coolest.

And I was sort of on the bottom of the totem pole with like, it was like me and Michelle Tractenberg because we were in kids movies. So it was, you know, making fun of Matilda and making fun of Harriet the Spy. But like Julius was in a Gap ad. Look at this. cool is that. Sure. I want to get into more about your personality, sort of separate from your work,

but I do want to mention, you know, you had a very significant loss kind of in the midst of all of this. And your mother of blessed memory, she passed in the middle of a very active life that you were having that had been very connected to her. Yeah. I guess I am curious if, you know, But when you think of life with your mom, you know, and then you think of life without your mom, I'm curious if that felt like a particular defining moment because you were also living so publicly. Yeah. Or if it just, you know, felt like a tremendous loss for a child. It was, I mean, it was, it was, and it remains the, probably the single most defining moment of my life.

Because my mother was larger than life, you know, she was, she was. She was the biggest authority that I could picture, like, other than God. She was the, she was like, you know, there was her and there was Hashem. And I, you know, which my people at the last one was to say, but she was just, she was larger than life. She was such a presence in our life. And I knew that I was a lot like her, too. I knew that I was a lot like her. And it's still funny to know, like, me and my sister, even though we never really got

to know her as an adult, we still hold a lot of her same values and a lot of her same beliefs. And it's, but she was, she was a very strong woman. And so not only was it this huge loss in my life, but it was also sort of, you know, world turning because it taught me that somebody that I thought was immortal could die. So it really shook my foundations. It was, you know, it was, it was like this Grand Canyon opened up in my life. How old were you when your mother passed? I was eight years old. And my mother was very young. She was 42, 43, 42, I think. How old was your sister at that time? She had just turned three. So it was rough. It was very rough. And we had three older brothers. And I mean, we all kind of took care of each other. And my dad was very sweet but very passive, you know, he'd always

let my mom do the disciplining and he could kind of be the fun one. And so suddenly he had to do the disciplining and he was just kind of like, oh, this is, this is hard. And I mean, I can't fathom being a single father with a full-time job managing a daughter's career and raising five children. And also having a toddler. Yes, and a toddler and while going through the worst loss of your life. I can't even fathom that, so I have a lot of empathy for that. But I think that also acting in movies in some ways was good for me because it helped me be distracted, I think.

It was kind of a distraction. Although I do think that a lot of the movies that I made after that kind of went down in quality because my mother was a cinephile. She knew exactly what she liked in movies and what she didn't. My dad was the type of person who fell asleep during movies. And my dad is also, my dad's an engineer. He's very pragmatic. And I always say that engineers are born, not made. They're a type. And if you've spent any time in the scientific world, you know what I'm talking about. And he's pragmatic. And I'm actually very pragmatic, too, as an adult as well, which is my dad's influence my dad's genetics. So for him, it was just like, yeah, just be in whatever movie,

whatever movie that wants you, who cares? And so he still wanted to keep me, they wanted protect me by putting me in children's movies. They didn't want anything that had any kind of sexualization, any kind of violence. They didn't want anything like that because they wanted to make movies that people my age could see. So I started doing more of those, but yeah, some of them weren't the best. And I think that that's also when I started to struggle with having fans and struggled with having these because I felt so exposed

and I felt like I just wanted to be a normal kid. And also, you know, when you start as young as you did, that is what you know. Exactly. And, you know, and I think you absolutely are, you know, I think you don't give yourself and your family, you know, enough credit. And this is the distinction that I try and explain to people lovingly when they say like, you spent your whole life in front of the camera.

And I was like, no, entering junior house, high, like I had had a very, you know, different experience than if the only kind of socialization that you have with adults is literally people who either are asking something of you or really, you're in a relationship of exchange in an adult world from a very young age. And that's, that is familiar. But I also would like to sort of, you know, flag just like for everybody listening because it's not something that we are comfortable talking about, especially loss of a parent for a young child. Yeah.

Because when you think of an eight-year-old, and, you know, my kids are 14 and 17, when you think of an eight-year-old, their entire world is still really around having their needs be met, you know? You don't know when to get a snack. You don't know. Like, you'll sometimes still be like, oh, I forgot I had to pee, right? Like, that's what being eight is. Like, being eight is you're still just transitioning to, like, a cognitive world from a fantasy

world. So I also just want to kind of like acknowledge for, again, for anyone listening, you know, when you lose a parent, really any time before, I mean, I would say anytime before 20, there's still a child in you that does not comprehend that the person who really is your higher power next to God, right, for most kids, that's not even really something I believe that an eight-year-old can even fully process. Like that's something you then take into your life and then becomes part of you, right? It probably took me 20 years to get to that point where I could finally read motherless daughters and I could finally think about what the loss was to me. And for a while, it was almost like I was pretending my mother had never existed because it was too much to think about my life

with her and my life without her. And I missed her and I ached and I ached for her. But, you know, I couldn't visit her grave. I couldn't do any of these things until probably my 20s. So it was, And I think, yeah, as a teenager, I finally started to process the loss a little bit more. And I remember in college, I would be wrecked around the anniversary of her death, which I still do get every time her, you know, the arts that rolls around. I'm a mess. The concrete operational stage is a really hard time to lose a parent because you're also just figuring out then. And that's, you know, like ages like seven to 10. You're just figuring out what's real and what's not. And that's when a lot of children start to have a lot of anxiety about the world. Because they're just realizing like, oh, I am not immortal. My parents can't protect me from everything. There's wars out there. There's disease. There's death and there's loss and there's pain in a very big way.

So they start to internalize that. And so it kind of warps them when they lose a parent at that age. Just so people can have a framework. So when would you say you stopped acting and entered sort of, you know, more of a, that was something I did and now I'm trying to be this person. I would say probably about 12 or 13. Okay. Yeah, it was around middle school, I would say.

And I mean, middle school is a tough time for everybody, but at that point, I was lucky because I had friends. I had a good, a good friend group. And I also had a lot of performing activities that kind of reminded me why I got involved in film in the first place. and unlike film where there is such a or TV even where there's still well I mean with TV it's not that bad because it's a week or a couple of weeks before his show goes out but in although actually my parents kept me out of TV because they were worried that

I think like you know we knew Jonathan Taylor Thomas and we saw what was happening to him and when you're coming into somebody's you know living room family room every week they're going to feel like they know you and they're going to feel like they own you. Sure. So they saw what happened to other kids. You know, they would be grabbed in the mall. People would feel like they owned them. They were being, you know, put up on pedestals in a really, like, uncomfortable way.

And some of them, I feel like could manage it pretty well. Like, Joey didn't seem to mind. When I knew him, he was just like, yeah, whatever, I'm a teen idol. That was my impression anyway. But some people were like, I mean, I remember talking, I talked to Devin Sawa about it. And he was like, oh, it was so weird being a teen idol. Yeah. Well, this is also before social media for us.

You know? It was. It was. But, and so it was sort of like, it was parasocial relationships before parissocial relationships. And my mom said, is that what you want? Do you want to be on TV? Do you want to have everybody knowing your name? And I was like, no, I don't think so. Although I will say that every time I did a sitcom episode, it was so much fun. It's really fun. It's like a little play. I mean, it's a little play. It is. And actually one of my favorite acting experiences, if I may go off on a tangent here. And as you've learned, I often go off on a tangent. Anybody who's talked to me for more than five minutes knows this. But probably one of my most favorite acting experiences was in a show called Pearl, which was a show that Ria Perlman had.

Oh. Yeah. I think, didn't Don Rio do Pearl? I think so. It was on the same lot as Blossom for a while. Yeah, yeah, he created Blossom. Yeah, and I got to work with Ria briefly. She's wonderful. Really, really, really fun. Yeah, it's a very fun, fun woman. And it was a great set. It was her and Malcolm McDowell and Carol Cain and just like an incredible group of people. And John Ratsenberger was directing our episode. I remember that. And we had such a fun time. And I had one of my first very big crushes, which was on Lucy Lou, which, I mean,

how could you not have a crush on Lucy Lou? And she was so kind and so smart. Like I, I, and she, her character didn't like mine. And so she came up to me. and she was like, I know my character doesn't like you, but I really like you. And I was like, I really like you, too. Yeah, Pearl was created by Don Rio, and it was produced by Paul Wood and Tony Thomas, who produced Blossom. Yeah. So, yeah, we were, that is so funny. I haven't thought about that in years. It was a funny show, and I was in that a few months after my mom died, and it was a very bright

spot for me. I mean, I also filmed a movie called The Simple Wish that summer, and I was working with Michael Richie who he was a very tall man with a white beard and and he was very gentle and soft spoken but clearly very intelligent and every time I would like read a book and there was a wizard in it I imagined it was Michael Richie. But between that and he had two wonderful daughters, Lillian and Miriam who I played with and that I think filming that with them and then filming Pearl were these bright spots in an otherwise incredibly dark year. And I remember after Pearl wrapped, I cried for days straight. because it really just did feel like being with these people that I really loved and being on this set that I really loved. That is what happens, you know, a sitcom. It really is. It's like, it is. You have to create a family. That's how you get that work done.

I want to sort of now, you know, kind of go back and sort of through all these, you know, years that we've talked about, let's say, just like from birth until let's just call it high school. One of the things that is highly prized in a young actor and even in an adult actor is precision. and perfectionism. And there is a very naturally compulsive nature to performance and to acting, especially when you're a child. And routine is obviously very helpful when you're learning any skill. To think about it more clinically, the topic of my thesis was obsessive compulsive disorder. So just so you know, this literally is a thing that I like to talk about.

What a lot of people don't know about obsessive compulsive disorder is it's not just about liking your shoes need. No, I mean, and if you could see, if you could see where I live right now, it is a mess. And I mean, I need to clean it. I am a messy person. Right. But the, I think what a lot of people sort of mistake colloquially is like, I like to have things this way, I'm OCD. And obsessive compulsive disorder is a diagnosis that requires both obsessions and compulsions. And the obsessions are the things that we think about or ruminate on, the compulsions are typically actions that are done to dispel the anxiety from the obsessions. And I think in the popular culture at the time, I would see people who wash their hands a lot, but you never see the anxiety. Correct. You never see the

obsession because it's really hard to show that. Right. So the obsession is the internalizing aspect, and the compulsion is the externalizing aspect. I'm sort of curious when you maybe started getting an indication that some of the things you were doing or thinking or ways that you were behaving weren't necessarily your actor parts, but your Mara parts. Yeah, I mean, I think that I was a worrier from a very young age. And I took everything very personally, and I worried about everything. And I kind of personalized a lot of big experiences. Like an astronomer came to our school, and he did that, he made that mistake that I think a lot of people make where they want to make something interesting for children, and instead they just make it terrifying.

So he talked about solar flares, and I thought that meant fire raining down from the sky. Right. And he talked about- Which is also one of the plagues that we talk about at Passover, so it's a logical. Yeah, I mean, that was another thing. That was another thing is, you know, I worried about the things that I was told, you know, could happen during Passover. And all the power, Hashem had I had. Yes.

That really, you know, that really scared me too. Yeah, the Old Testament God can be very scary. It can be very scary. And when you're a kid and you don't know the context. of it and you don't know that it's you know you don't know that it's it's because it's a bunch of stories about a community and about different experiences then then you just think oh this is this is threatening and this is scary and this is real and I was I was always very worried from a very young age I I worried about death I worried about sickness I was that kind of worrier and it was

strange because I was either, like I said, a very sort of upbeat, extraverted kid, or I was, you know, having an anxiety attack. I think as I got older, like when I was in third grade, that was really when all the shit hit the fan. Third grade was when my mother was sick. I had just finished filming Matilda. I started having panic attacks about things like my pet hamster escaping. I started washing my hands all the time, so much so that my hands were always red and chapped and raw and my mother would have to put, you know, salves and ointments and all these kinds of, you know, and all of her home remedies on them to make sure that they wouldn't hurt so much anymore. It was a really hard time for me, and I knew that it was weird. That was the

thing. I knew that I was strange. I knew that this was something that other people didn't have, and I started having panic attacks at school. I had a feeling that this was not something that other kids had. And also it wasn't really spoken about. Like this wasn't something that was like in the vernacular of like, oh, should we get her therapy? She needs occupational therapy. Like this could be, you know, people didn't talk like that then. It was, I remember hearing the word anxiety, but also I think that my mother, I think that my mother was probably afraid because she knew that mental illness ran in her family and she knew that, I mean, obviously there was a lot of trauma on that family, they were all people who'd escaped Fagroms in Ukraine and Lithuania and Belarus. And so

there was a lot of trauma in the family and there was a lot of mental illness in the family. And I think that she was afraid of that happening to me. So she would just be kind of like, and she was also sort of just to like suck it up type mom anyway. So she was just kind of like, okay, get over it. You'll be fine. Deal with it. And she had cancer. She was dealing with her own stuff at the time. And I would, you know, I would go to the guidance counselor, like, every day, but they didn't really seem to know what to do with a child with anxiety, a child with obsessions and compulsions. And it's strange to me because I kept, I think about it, and the way that I talked about my symptoms and the way I described them, if I heard a child describe them today, I would immediately be like, even if I didn't have the extensive experience, I think if anybody heard the way that I was talking, they would immediately say, oh, that sounds like OCD. I think we know a little bit more about OCD now because it's 25 years later. But at the time, I guess people didn't really have the knowledge that it could even happen to children.

I mean, a lot of my stuff, even to this day, people love to be like, well, it's because you're an actor. Like, oh, it's because of this. Or like if I have a complicated relationship or if my brother has a complicated relationship with me, well, it's because you're an actor. And it's like, well, it's never, first of all, it's never that simple. and the things about us, like what we're talking about, like our chemical makeup, intergenerational trauma, like those things, they can be exacerbated

or even numbed by our presence as public people. But when you get down to it, if we strip away all of our professions and don't think about bank accounts and fame, we're all a bunch of chemicals just trying to navigate this universe. Yeah, I mean, I was like, I was going to be a little messed up no matter what.

I mean, my mother's family, my mother had had, you know, a horrible abusive family and, and, you know, there's still a lot of horrible, abusive, sick people in her family and the kind of sick that won't get help and refuses to get help. On my other family's side, we were Irish and, you know, escaped a lot of trauma there too. Like, I've seen the pictures of my great-grandfather and he looks haunted in every single picture. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of intergenerational trauma on both sides. and there was always going to be some kind of, there was always going to be something there.

But I do think that, I always say that there is no better or worse job for a perfectionist than film actor because you're rewarded for getting it right the first time. Correct. And I think that that does lead to sort of a thing. It is a bit like being a gifted child where it is like, oh, or, I think it's children who are labeled gifted

because I don't think that it's actually children who are gifted that have the problems. I think it's children who are laid. labeled gifted. I think that label gives you a lot of pressure because it makes you feel like you have to live up to something. Well, and with all due respect, and that's a completely legitimate being an actor person, though, it's a completely, like, you're basically learning, you're learning interpersonal relationships with people who essentially need something from you. It's a transactional relationship where even, you know, manipulation in the nicest sense has to occur. Yeah. I mean,

I think that, well, people, it's funny because I had people ask me, like David Letterman asked me, do you know that you're acting? And I was like, yeah, of course. And I think that children actually are better at acting in some ways than adults are, because children can step into a world of playtime and then step away all the time. Well, they haven't been hardened by the realities of the world. Like the veil has been lifted, you know, in that sense. Of course we're going to be vulnerable with people because we're fine with that.

And we don't see any problem with crying in front of something. strangers and we don't see any problem with doing these things. So, and, and, you know, what is, what does a child do? A child picks up a toy, starts to play with it. Does imaginary airplane noises or imaginary Barbie talking or whatever? You say, it's time for dinner. They put it down. They drop the play. They go. And acting is a very sort of meditative make-believe. And so you can drop in and out of that as a child. I want to ask you also, you know, I remember the first time that I realized that like I had hips, you know, because I was this very like skinny, like long-limbed string bean of a like track runner in, you know, in middle school kind of kid. And when I finally sort of became a

woman, it was astounding and disturbing. And I remember it, it was like, oh, now I'm in a different realm of my existence. And that's when you learn the difference between I don't like my body and body dysmorphia because body dysmorphia is a clinical, a clinical and diet diagnostic indicator of an inability to access, you know, the true representation, you know, that you have. But I'm curious, as you sort of left, you know, the industry, as it were, what did sort of your internal and kind of psychological world do? Oh, okay. Well, yeah, body dysmorphia is a big thing, and it's something that I'm still dealing with to this day. And honestly, I think that this also has something maybe it's controversial, but I think there's some anti-Semitism in there as well,

because I think that you don't see a lot of, there are a lot of Jewish actors out there, but I think particularly with women, you don't see as many Jewish women who look like Jewish women. I mean, this is something I've said before also when guys are like, I love Jewish girls. I love Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. And I'm like, well, that's not very helpful when you're like this girl in middle school and high school and you're like, I'm my, I don't have a waste, but my breasts will reach my knees by the time I'm 50. Like, nobody's like, I want that. That always really surprised me. And yeah, it would be, it was like Natalie Portman and, and Scarlett Johansson, who, you know,

are stunning and talented. And I love them and they're fantastic. Exactly. But like a couple of years ago, I read a list. There was some listical thing going around on the internet and it was like top like beautiful actresses who were actually really ugly. And I looked at it and it was all like Leah Michelle and Sarah Michelle Geller and I kept her, or not Sarah Michelle Geller, it was Sarah Jessica Parker and although

Sarah Michelle Geller might have been on there as well. And I looked at it and I was like, huh, half these women on this list have something in common, guys. And if you did that about any other ethnicity and the rest were all like Middle Eastern. And I was at like Middle Eastern and Greek. And so I was just like, guys, this is just, you're, you know, and if they did that about other ethnicities, people would rightfully be like, that's insanely racist, you know, that's insanely messed up.

But, but they, you know, they just didn't, they didn't do that. So I think there was, that was partly that. But it's also very hard because when I was a teenager, when I was, you know, 12, 13, I was starting to think, oh, I'm ugly, I'm hideous. Nobody look at me. Nobody look at me. And I had people in newspapers, adults in newspapers, saying that I was ugly, saying that I was, quote, odd looking, saying that I was not cute anymore. And I knew that when you weren't cute anymore, you were essentially useless. And I would try to go in for parts because for a long time, I'd always been very short from my age and I'd look younger than I was.

But I couldn't do that anymore because I was, you know, a C cup at age 13. And so it was just like, this is not, this is not something that I can keep doing. This is not something that I'm going to be able to do. I can't play the younger roles. And in a way, I would almost rebel against it where they would say, we want a flat-chested girl for this. We want, there would be a line in the script saying like, saying like, there was a line where somebody said, I don't have any boobs. And so I went in wearing a push-up bra because I was like, screw you, this is what you're going to get with me.

And what did that sort of, and in terms of like other aspects of, you know, like OCD stuff, like, did that stuff escalate for you in your teens? Were you kind of finding more of an equilibrium? I guess I'm curious also like when when did you sort of quote get help? Meaning did you at some point say, I need to go into therapy or I need help. I did. And I went into therapy when I was, I think, like 12 or 13. And I started going into therapy and I got diagnosed officially with OCD around then. And the thing was, I knew that I had OCD because I'd done enough research on myself and I read a book written about a girl with OCD that I found out later was written by one of my friends on Matilda's mom, which is an insane coincidence. But I looked up OCD and, you know, with the rudimentary internet that we had at the time and what I knew in the library and encyclopedia and such. And I was like, oh, I have this. And I went to my guidance counselors. I said, I think I know what's wrong with me. I had a wonderful studio teacher at the time, Lori, who had been working on a film with me, and she had told me that she had anxiety too.

Like, I confessed to her that I was weird, and I didn't tell a lot of people about it. But I told her, I was like, I'm really weird. She was like, I'm a little weird too. And I was like, no, I get really anxious. I get really scared. She was like, I have anxiety too. It's okay. And it made me think, oh, okay, there are adults who have this, not everybody is in control all the time,

and they deal with it, find ways to deal with it. So with her help, I think it took my dad. a long time to realize that they're to accept that there was something wrong with me because I think parents want to blame themselves for it. But, uh, and they don't want to damn their kids with the diagnosis, but that diagnosis saved me. Did they put you on medication? They did. And it helped immensely. Were you put on an SSRI? Yeah, SSRIs. I think I was on Zoloft at the time. I'm on Lexopro now. And it, it helps because I could not function without it. And I was diagnosed with severe OCD and I couldn't, I couldn't have functioned without it.

SSRIs are prescribed for OCD, not because OCD is caused by being depressed and needing more serotonin, but that is a system that can impact that loop and that interrupting loop of the obsessions, again, before we even get to the compulsions. Did you stay in therapy through your teen years? I did, yeah. And the thing was, though, that there were a lot of things that I couldn't really face in therapy at the time. There was a lot of stuff that I couldn't really talk about.

Things were kind of tumultuous at home. I was not at a good age to lose a parent, and I also wasn't at a good age to gain a parent. My dad got married when I was 13, which I think is a good thing because he needed somebody to help raise the children, and we wanted somebody who was going to love us and take care of us. But there was also a big culture clash because my stepmother was Catholic, and Judaism was very important to me. And I'd also had a lot of bad experiences, I will say, with, like, I knew a lot of like bigoted Orthodox Jews and Catholicism and I did not take. And I think that

when I was in college, particularly I was like, screw this, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any religion. I don't want to be part of any religion ever. I didn't know that there were like liberal and leftist conservative Jews. I didn't know that there was like this whole group of like agnostic Jews out there. Like I think my college boyfriend went home and told his family. He was like, yeah, she's, they're like, is she Jewish? It's like, yeah, she's an agnostic Jew. And his mom said, honey, what do you think we are? And just also for people who are like, what is happening? So Judaism, besides being an ethnic line, and by that, that means that we, when you have a

group of people that, for example, have diseases, genetic diseases that only fall in that community, that is evidence that this is a distinct, I don't mean special, I don't mean better, it is a distinct genetic population that has a very strange status because for us, we also do have a religion that goes with it. However, you do not need to believe in God to be Jewish. Yeah. There are many cultural aspects and ethnic aspects to being Jewish that is part of a lot of people's identity. I know it's confusing. It sounds nuts. And for example, when you think of Israel, Israel is full of Jews who are religious, not religious. There are also Arabs who are Israeli citizens. So when people sort of group like all of Israel and all of Jews, it's very

complicated and we know that it sounds crazy, but you can be an identifying member of the Jewish community. No one kicks you out. No one changes your DNA and says you don't have to have all those diseases that Jews have, which I also like to point out to people when people are like, I was born Jewish, but I'm not really Jewish. And I was like, you need to get tested for Tasex and Gauche's disease, just like the rest of us, whether you think you're Jewish or die. Well, before my mother died, she started getting into other spiritual practices as well. She was doing a lot of yoga. So there was a lot of books on Hinduism and Buddhism and Sufism and and all kinds of spiritual new age stuff.

And I remember saying to her, and she would do some of these things with me, and I remember telling her that it worried me because I was worried that I was like, do you think Hashem will be mad? And she said to me, you will always be Jewish. She said to me, you will always be Jewish, no matter what, you are Jewish, you will always be.

And it's interesting, too, because my brother's wives aren't necessarily Jewish, all of them, but all their kids are decidedly Jewish. it's something that we we uh it is important to us and it's important to me and it's definitely gotten more important to me in the past more important to me in the past few years and it's something I was always like oh I want to raise my kids this way I want to do this and the traditions are important to me and being part of a community and being part of a history is very important to me so even if I don't believe in like every literal thing in the Torah and even though I've like

never been to Israel and all of these things like this is all that's all like one aspect of being Jewish. There's different aspects of being Jewish that are important. I do want to talk about another aspect of you that maybe didn't feel safe to talk about. And I think, you know, it's talking about sexuality and gender is of course complicated and can be very loaded. But I also know that, you know, especially for people who are listening or watching us, you know, the conversation around gender and sexuality now in our culture is so much more rich, so much more complicated. Hi, Katie. Yeah. And I Hello, everybody. I don't know what I was thinking naming her after a goddess.

It went straight to her head. Wow, look at that hair. That's beautiful. She's beautiful. Yeah, she and I both shed a lot. I wonder sort of if you can talk about, you know, in any way that's comfortable for you, your first sort of acknowledgement of like, oh, maybe I'm not, you know, a cisgender, you know, heterosexual person.

Was it when you were young? Was it when you were older? I mean, there were signs for a very long time. I mean, I pretty much only had crushes on boys who were very, like, baby-faced and sweet or kind of eccentric. Got it. You know, like, it was, I look at it now. And there was a lot of, I think, plausible deniability about that in the 90s and late 2000s because there were a lot of very beautiful baby-faced boys. I mean, Kurt Cobain was like, had the perfect baby face.

And, like, like, you know, if you think of, like, boys to men, think of, like, how nerdy. and sweet they all looked. And think about, I mean, like the guys from silver chair and like Rhett Miller from the old 97s and Glenn Phillips from, you know, Toad the Wet Sprocket and like all of these guys were just like all of the musicians and stuff in Chris Cornell. Like they all, they all were very pretty. So I could kind of have, you know, I remember like Paul, thinking Paul McCartney was cute when my mom showed me like help in a hard day's night. And I, so I liked boys when I was young, I, but with girls, I kind of felt something different and deeper. I mean, I would compare it with, like, flirting with boys kind of felt like, like, playing ping pong. Like, there was a lot of

back and forth. There was a lot of teasing. It was, it felt like, like, you know, it was a joke, but when I was with a girl that I really, as I put it, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, who's gay put it, when I was with somebody I really admired, it was like jumping into a pool where I was just like, this is, I need to be around you all the time. I love the way your hair smells. I, you know, I noticed that I noticed things about girls that other people didn't. Like I noticed how when somebody was wearing like, like a girl was wearing a tight shirt, how there would be those like three little lines on the bust where it was a little too tight.

Or like I would talk about, but people picked up on this and people knew. that I was kind of a tomboy and I was, you know, definitely called some names and such. And it was something that I think I always knew, but I didn't want to acknowledge because I felt like I already had too much going on. I was like, I was like, I'm already a former child actor. I'm already, you know, I already have OCD. I'm already neurotic. I already have some messed up family stuff. I can't have this too, which I remember when I came out to my friend Abe, I told him, I was like, I just always figured I couldn't have this too. And he said, well, that's, doesn't make any sense. And I was like, you're right. It doesn't. And I also felt like I had a lot of,

I mean, I've always said that if you look up imposter syndrome in the dictionary, there's a picture of me, but also don't look at it because I look like such a phony there. Right. No, that's my, you know, that's been my joke for a long time. And so I had a lot of friends who were gay and a lot of friends who were bisexual. And I would be like, okay, but I'm not really, I'm not really like that. I'm not really there. And, and, but everybody who was close to me knew that I'd had crushes on girls, just knew that it was exceptions, you know, and I wasn't a serious relationship with a man all through college, but I realized that I liked boys when I was young to a degree, but I also was somebody who liked doing what I was told and thought that, and liked to go a certain way. And I thought, okay,

well, most girls like boys. I'm not brave enough to be gay or bisexual. And there was also a stigma. I also heard, oh, bisexual girls just want attention. And people always told me I just wanted attention. And I did. I mean, I was a little drama. nerd extrovert theater kid actor from a young age. I did want attention, but that wasn't the kind of attention that I wanted. And so finally, you know, I had crushes in high school that, some of which ended very badly. And I told a girl that I loved her in high school. And she went, oh, I love you too. And then I was like, I wanted to say, no, that's not what I mean, but then I would have to have faced up to what I meant. And after that, she stopped talking to me really.

or at least not in a nice way anymore. She stopped being in my life, and it was very hard for me. So there was a lot of sort of trauma, and there was a lot of sort of that, and there were people who were like, I had a lot of gay friends who were like, no, you're not, you're straight,

and are not necessarily gay friends, but a lot of people would be like, no, you're straight, and I would joke about being the token straight girl. And so it wasn't into my 20s that I finally felt, you know, I was, like, upset about being ignored by a girl, and I talked to my therapist,

and she's like, okay, what do you think this means? What do you think this means? Like, it was something that she'd known for years. And finally, I said, I guess I like girls. I guess maybe I'm bisexual. And I sobbed and sobbed. And then I came out of that therapy session feeling lighter than I had in years. And I texted my brother saying, I think I have something to tell you. And he was like, yeah, that doesn't surprise me, especially since. He works in a field with a lot of, a lot of lesbians and a lot of queer women. So he was like, you know, you talk a lot like them. Did you know at the time that you were bisexual?

Did it occur to you? Maybe I'm just a lesbian? I mean, I still sometimes go back and forth on that. I do think that I'm bisexual because I do still like men. You like them to have sex with them or you just like them? No, I'm still attracted to them sometimes. Basically what I say is that I'm attracted to, and I don't consider it like men and women. Like I've definitely been attracted to people who, you know, don't consider themselves.

men or women. Like I've been attracted to non-binary people. Right. But I do tend to be more attracted to femininity. Mm-hmm. So I think it's femininity. But I've even noticed like there's times of the month where I'm more attracted to masculinity and times where I'm more attracted to femininity. Like it depends on a lot of things.

And hashtag science. I think that there's something, I mean, I think there's something there. Like hormones are weird and crazy. And also, less people say that what I'm implying is that men and women are the only people who should be attracted to each other. not what I meant. I meant that the science of hormones does change our creativity. It changes our cognition. It changes all sorts of things. Yeah, I wasn't implying that like at certain times of the

month, you should be straight. No, but I know for me, I'm like, I'm like, oh, this time I want somebody more like this. This time I want somebody more like that. I can actually pinpoint it. And I found that strange pattern in my life. But yeah, I mean, I do think I like women more, but I wouldn't call myself a lesbian because to me, being a lesbian sort of feels like you, you, that is like a commitment, that is a life, that is a thing. And I don't want to be like a lesbian who like still dates men. And that kind of thing is sometimes, because sometimes, yeah,

sometimes it happens and sometimes you don't. They're just words and labels. It's just a spectrum. Exactly, exactly. And it is a spectrum. But I mean, when I first came out, I was like, oh, I only have crushes on girls sometimes. And then I kind of did the math and I looked back on it.

And I mean, I remember there was a girl, there was a child actress that I felt a really strong affinity with. And I always thought was really beautiful and really cool. Is it me? She's married to a woman now. I was like, is this the moment where Mara tells me she loves me? It's going to happen. Not going to say who it was. Not going to say who this other actress was.

But I mean, people can probably put it together. But there was, you know, who I really like. I have a strong guess, but I'll save it for my brain. I really liked her. I mean, I really liked her when we hung out as kids. and, you know, I, but I mean, I told my family and I told my, my siblings and my, you know, my sister was just like, yeah, I know. And my brothers, I remember one of my brothers, I told.

And he, he, we were at a Mexican restaurant and he was sitting there eating his food. And he's like, so are you dating any guys? I was like, no. Also, I don't know if I really want to date guys for a while. I think I might want to date women. and he didn't look up from his enchilada. Like it was such a non-surprise for him. And he just took another bite.

He was like, oh, so you think you might want to be dating women? And I was like, yeah. He was like, okay. And just it was a non-surprise. Have you had relationships with women that felt like, oh, this is the kind of relationship I can imagine? I mean, I've dated women. Relationships are a bit hard for me. But, yeah, but I date women.

I like women more. I haven't found one that I'm like, oh, I want you to be like my partner. but yeah. I laughed when I read, so your name, I actually never, I never knew that you were Jewish. I'm just going to be honest. And, you know, Mara, I think of it always sounded like kind of an Irish name to me. It's Irish and it's Hebrew.

Correct. Which was good for my family because, you know, my father was a Gentile. He agreed to raise us Jewish. And Mara is bitter. It is. So Mara is bitter. And I'm actually named for Mara. Mariam, which is Bitter C.

Miriam actually means bitter C. So my joke is always I was born bitter. And when I saw that you said that, I was like, oh, look, that's adorable. So anyway, I just... Everybody always laughs when I tell them that. But I never thought of the name Mara as Mara. So yeah, it's really incredible to get to talk to you. And I highly recommend, where am I now?

True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame. I like to use the word brave and most people hate when I do, but that's a word that I think of. Like this is a really, it's a very brave thing to be so incredibly open. And, you know, you're also very funny, you know, and it makes sense that, no, but it makes sense that, you know, the stand-up kind of community, you know, has taken you in and that you have taken them in.

You are, you're a great storyteller and, you know, just a tremendous. amount of a really, really great perspective I get from just talking to you and from your book. So thank you so, so much. And I hope our paths will cross again. Yeah, I hope so too. Thank you so much for having me and for letting me ramble. It's kind of funny not having Jonathan here to reflect with, but I guess I can reflect on my own a little bit. I definitely identified with so much of what she said. I also don't know that I've ever heard someone raised in the industry speak so well about both sides of it because, you know, a lot of times you hear child actors talk

and they're like, it was amazing, everybody was great and I love myself and everybody loved me and it was hard, but I did okay. Or you hear people like, I had a terrible experience and it led me down a path of depression and drugs. But she really held both. And I think that's, you know, really a testament to the work that she's done on herself to be able to hold both those things and say, these were the great things. It was really fun. I love. loved it. It felt like a family. And also, I was completely being controlled by an adult industry that didn't necessarily allow for a lot of, you know, personal growth and development separate from that identity. I actually, I went to junior high school here in the Valley and Allison Hanigan

went to my school. And, you know, she definitely seemed and was much cooler than me. And I remember she tried to kind of be friendly with me, but I did not know how to do that. I was like in chess club and jazz band. So I really envied, you know, that kind of support group she had. And I never could make that transition to drama school or to even drama classes. I was terrified because I was teased so much. But it makes me really happy that she had that and had that kind of insulation as she was a teenager. It's so hard, you know, to write about the things that she writes about, especially being this cute kid who really was. She was held up as like the cutest kid ever and so talented and she really was an authentic, authentic child performer. And then to sort of, you know,

have to come to the reckoning of like, am I still cute? Am I still marketable? You know, am I still worth something? She really writes about it very beautifully. And I would love to see her do stand up. I want to be her friend. So I will try and do that. And make sure to follow us on at Biali Breakdown. Check out our Instagram. And, you know, check out Mara's book. Even if you don't know anything about her as an actor or about the industry, the transition from childhood to adulthood, I think there's so much that so many people can relate to.

Anyway, that's it. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, see you next time. It's my ambiolyx breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One, fix you one. And now she's going to break...