Search Engine - How do you survive fame?

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Actor Molly Ringwald joins us to talk about a time in her life when her job was to pretend to be a normal American teenager, a job which made it impossible to actually be a normal American teenager. How did she learn to survive? In an era when the internet has turned many more people into public figures, what can everybody else learn from her? Plus, Sruthi Pinnamaneni tries to learn more about a rare and enchanting song. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm PJ Vote. Welcome to Search Engine. Each week, we try to answer a question we have about the world. No question too big, no question too small. This week, how do you survive fame? We ask a person who was the most famous teenager in America, Molly Ringwald. After some ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Serval AI. If you ever worked with an IT team, you know how quickly their day gets eaten up by repetitive tickets, password resets, access requests, onboarding? It all adds up. And as your company grows, those requests just keep piling higher, pulling your team away from the work that actually moves the business forward. That's where Serval comes in. Serval can cut up to 80% of your help desk tickets,

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Because I don't really hear myself. Let me see which one you are. I think you're this. Say something? Yeah, I think that's better. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good right there. Okay, cool.

Okay, I'm going to redo an introduction. Okay, wait. Can you turn it down a little bit? For breakfast, I had, I went to Whole Foods and I got a whole box of cheese sticks. Oh. The, like, crackery ones? I love those. I love those.

The ones that are, like, kind of twisted? Yes. Yeah, those are so good. I ate an entire box. Okay. Does that sound okay? Yeah. Okay.

This is my least favorite part. It's just weird to talk about someone while they're in a room, but that's okay. Molly Ringwald is an American actor, a writer as well. But she rose of fame in the 1980s playing a teenager in a series of very popular movies. 16 candles, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink. She's a grown-up now and still a beloved actor. She's in the big Dahmer series on Netflix last year, which gave me nightmares. One feature of fame is that it turns real, living, human beings into metaphors for something else in everyone's imagination.

Maybe in real life you really are that thing, maybe you're not, but you become, for strangers who haven't met you, a kind of living metaphor. Molly Ringwald in 1980s was maybe a metaphor for the American teenager, like the person that a lot of people pictured when they thought about what a teenager was in the 1980s or a teenage crush. What would that do to a person? We've been friends for a long time. We've never talked about this. I have always been in awe of just how well-adjusted Molly is, not well-adjusted for a famous person, well-adjusted. for a human being. I've had friends who've had varying degrees of success on the internet,

which has meant that I've watched people lose themselves to even just micro amounts of fame. I've watched people's egos expand and collapse over doses of fame much less strong than what was being manufactured in Hollywood in the 1980s. And the more I've seen this, the more I've wondered about Molly, who remains a paragon of normalness. So much so that I feel a little bit weird talking to my friend about her other life, about being famous. But I've been thinking about this stuff lately,

and I wanted to know how she got to a place where her brain seems to work very well. That's my introduction. That's a good introduction. I'm curious, like, how would you introduce yourself? Hi, PJ. Hi. How would I introduce myself? I think it depends on who I'm talking to.

I usually just say I'm Molly, or I'll say I'm Matilda's mom or Adelan Roman's mom. Usually I'm just Molly, or I'll say I'm Molly Ringwald. I'll use my whole name and then people will be like, yeah, I know. I know who you are. Or they don't because not everyone knows who I am. And before I even start to ask you questions, just to check my premise, the question I want to ask you by the end of this interview is, how do you survive fame? Do you feel like you have survived fame?

Yeah, I think I'm out of the woods now. I mean, now I've been famous much longer than I haven't been famous. So I don't really even remember a time when I wasn't in the public eye. What was your first entry point into even acting? What was the first time in your life you were in front of a camera? The first time I was in front of a camera, I mean, I think I was like in front of a camera doing a commercial when I was little. But I started out doing theater, so I was on the stage first. Even my first professional job was a long musical.

I did the first West Coast production of Annie for 15 months. I do love the hour of... How old are you? I just aged myself there. I was 10. And do you remember what it felt like? I loved it. I mean, I really felt like I was kind of born to perform

and born to entertain people. I mean, that's what I said I wanted to do when I was little. That's what I told everyone that I was going to be a famous entertainer. From when you were 10? Oh, from like way before that. I was on stage with my dad when I was three and a half. Like, that's when I started. Your dad wasn't an actor, was he?

No, he was a jazz musician. So the world's youngest jazz singer is how I was touted. So you were three and a half years old singing like jazz standards? Yeah. Yeah. So did you never have an awareness of stage fright? Evidently not. Oh, so crazy to imagine.

No, but, you know, I was always kind of a shy kid, considered myself an intro. Yeah. The only time I didn't feel shy was when I was performing. Why? I don't know exactly, but it had to be like a lot of people. It had to, the only way I didn't feel shy is if I was performing and like you couldn't really see the people, it was like there was a light on you and like you knew the people were there, but it was like that, that to me is different. Like if I was asked to sing for a couple people in the living room, that felt really hard to me. So like wedding toast, difficult. Exactly.

Enormous theater, not difficult. Exactly. Yeah, because it's almost like you're alone, but you're not alone, when there's just like a light on you. It's just like a weird thing, but a wedding toast would keep me up at night trying to prepare for that. Or speeches. If I have speeches that I have to do by myself, that gives me anxiety.

I relate to that. I, like, two of my sisters have gotten married, and both times they asked me to give a speech, and it was like, I crammed for it. It was like I was talking in front of the present. Like, it really, really stressed me. And also just wanting to get it right, but also talking in front of faces you can see

is a very scary feeling. Yeah, yeah. Always that's scary for me. But performing is not. Singing a song that somebody else wrote is not, or performing as a character. And I don't think this is unique to me. I think this is something that actors experience.

I think there's a lot of shy actors out there that don't feel shy. And they're able to express something that they can't feel like they can express in their ordinary life. And that's kind of part of the appeal. And so when you were a kid acting, can you just paint me a picture of what that was like? Like your 10 in a production of Annie on the West Coast, how did that fit into the rest of your life? Well, that became my life for 15 months. And when you're 10 years old, 15 months is a really long time. So that was just like, that's what you did. I didn't go to regular school. I went to school with all of the anti-orphins during the day with a really nice teacher named Miriam, who wore bell bottoms. And then at night, I performed. I was friends with all the girls. And that was just kind of like everything. It was my social life. It was my school. It was it was, it was, It was a job because I was paid for it. And then I slept late, unlike other kids.

I didn't go to school until later because I had to perform late. It was fun. It was something that I really wanted to do. You get to express big emotions that, like, everyone is telling you as a kid, like, behave yourself, don't yell, don't scream, settle down, don't behave like that. You're just told all of this stuff. But when you're on stage acting, you just get to, like, express all of the stuff that's in there in a really, I guess, pretty healthy way.

Yeah. And were you, like you were describing how for you at that point school was like, you're being educated with like the other orphans from Annie. Were you like immediately kind of just removed from normal school life, like from like normal school kids basically? Yeah. For the 15 months that I did that show, I was only going to school in the Annie school room. which was in the theater. Totally strange, but it felt completely normal because you adapt when you're a kid. Kids adapt to just about anything,

whether it's good or bad. It just was. That's what life was. But it was really, really hard when it ended. Basically, you aged out of Annie. You aged out of the play. You got to be a certain height, and they measured you,

and you could only get your wardrobe refitted so many times until you were just, just too tall. You could literally like physically feel yourself growing out of the thing you wanted. Yes. That's so bizarre. Yes. But by that point, I think I'd gotten an agent and was like auditioning for things. And fortunately, for me, I left Annie and like a week later was in my first television series. It was different strokes, which was a Norman Lear series in the 80s. And then that became facts of life. That was really, really lucky. And what your family, were they like, how invested was your family in you doing this? Like, was their feeling? I mean, they must have

been pretty invested because I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise. My mom was a stay-at-home mom when we were growing up, me and my brother and my sister. I was the last. So then after that, she went to chef's training and got a job. But like, while I was growing up, somebody needs to take you to auditions and take you to classes and do all that. It's kind of like a full-time job. Yeah. I mean, mothering is a full-time job anyway, but she mothered. She took care of my dad, who was blind, and then also, like, took me to auditions.

Morning, girls. Here I am the only headmaster that makes house calls. How are you, girls? We are women. Okay, Mr. Badley? Sorry, Molly. Keep forgetting, you're a woman. And then not too long after that, I got my first movie.

And what was that? It was called Tempest. And what was Tempest? Like Shakespeare? It was a modern adaptation that was directed by Paul Mosersky, and it was with John Cassabethtes and Jenna Rollins. Oh, F. And Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia.

Yeah, it was a really big, important movie with a lot of, like, really big, important actors. How old were you? 13. What did that feel like? It felt amazing. I was really excited. I mean, I didn't know who John Cassavetes was because I was 13 years old.

So I wasn't necessarily excited about that, per se. But I was really excited. I just got along with the director really well. He was a really great director, and he really got me. And it was smart, and it was interesting. And then I got along so well with John Cassavetes and Susan Sarandon. All of them. I mean, the whole experience was incredible, and that's when I decided that I really wanted to focus on film. Does it feel strange looking back at how comfortable you were?

I don't think I necessarily would have been that comfortable except for the fact that Paul Mazursky was such a great director and was such a strong actor's director. He was also an actor before and really just wanted. the best out of me and like knew how to tap in to that. And I was basically playing his daughter who was kind of a little bit of a wise ass. And so he wanted to make sure that I could bring it. And so during the audition process, he said, tell me your life story. And I'm going to like throw you a penny every time you say something dumb. Okay. And so I was like, okay, I'm Molly Ringwald. I was born in Roseville, California, and he would just like fling a coin at me. Is that dumb? Because it's just like a straight fact? No, it's not. He was just fucking with me. Like, he was just, he wanted to see how I would respond. But I knew that he was fucking, like, like, it felt like a game. It didn't feel like a test. It felt like a game. And so he just, like, and then he ran out of pennies and then he started to throw quarters. And then I gathered them. I just kept, like, gathering them off. And he was like, okay, give me back my money. And I was like, no, I'm going to keep it. And it was just, he was just smart. He was just a good direction. Yeah. And he got me. And other directors that I've worked with haven't.

Frozen dikers are too sweet, and they make you dizzy. It's a principle of the thing. I don't really want a frozen daffrey. I taste it when once in I'm a month's barred, but I'm not free to do what I want. Mom is, you are my mom. We're not free. I'm just older. You can do what you want. I dream what I don't do. Like what, besides quitting your job. But my job is part of what I am. It's not that simple, Dodo. School sucks, but I can't quit. It's not that simple for me either.

But this was your first experience of working on a film, and it felt like home, and it felt fun, and it felt like the right type of challenge. And that was the director. Yeah. Yeah, and it was the actors. I mean, it was Cassavetes. It was Jenna Rollins.

I was working all of a sudden in this whole other caliber of quality. I mean, to go from, like, a sitcom, which was just like set up, set up joke, set up, joke, set up, joke, set of joke. And then suddenly I was doing this movie that had three weeks rehearsal ahead of times, which you don't even get now on practically anything. It was really like another time of movie making where everybody was just, you know, rehearsing and then improvising and then talking about the characters. It was just a whole other thing. And it was so fascinating to me.

So it's like you're both doing it and you're getting an education. Exactly. So then what happens? So then that movie came out and didn't really, for the budget, it wasn't really considered a success, even though it's still one of my favorite movies that I've ever done. But then I kind of like got put on lists, like the casting director lists. This is somebody. This is a new up-and-coming person. And is that like a formal thing or like a metaphorical thing?

I don't think it's a formal thing. It's just kind of like they're always like hunting for fresh blood. So I was fresh blood. I was 13 years old. And at that point, I was still going to, like, regular school. What was it, like, a regular school? Well, it depended on the year. Seventh grade was great.

It was fine. I had a group of friends. And then the summer between seventh and eighth grade is when I did my first movie. And then I came back, like, a month late to start school. It was enough time. for all of the clicks to have formed while I was away, and I lost my entire friend group. And I did have a bully.

And she just hated me. She was big, she had a page boy haircut, big eyes, name was Laverne. I don't remember exactly what she said, except for like that she was gonna kick my ass after school. Classic boy. She just like would make fun of me, and like just kind of, it seemed like,

I was always afraid of, like, turning a corner that I was going to, like, run into her. Anyway, so I did my movie over the summer. I did Tempest, and then I came back, and all of my friends were gone, and then my bully befriended my best friend. And that was just basically hell, and that, it all felt very connected to what I did, the professional thing, that I had done a movie over the summer was just, like, the jealousy. I mean, middle school is hell for everyone. Yeah.

Anything that you do that's at all different, I think, is really not looked upon kindly. No, it's just funny because it's like, it sounds like this is your first moment of actually having to survive fame. Like, this is your first moment where this thing you like to do was causing unforeseen problems that were particularly yours and particularly difficult to know how to navigate. Yes, absolutely. I felt like I wanted to be a normal kid in certain ways, but I wanted to be able to do this other thing and still be a normal kid. But then I realized that I couldn't.

Were you surprised that people were jealous of you? Had people been jealous of you in your life before? I mean, I had definitely gotten bullied before for something that I did. Like, I made a record when I was six years old with my dad. What was the record? It was a jazz friend. It was a jazz friend. record. It was called I Want to Be Love by You, Molly Sings. And the album had like a red album cover and there was a heart and there was like me in the heart wearing like a little gingham dress.

It was very, you know, I'm really glad that I did it now. But when I was six or seven years old, I remember going to school. Actually a girl that I became really good friends with brought the album to school because she had it and wanted to. me to sign it for her, which I did. But then her older brother made fun of me. Right. But in a really kind of mean way. It's like the rules of surviving grade school are don't be different, don't be special, don't be vulnerable. And so recording music is different and maybe special. And then you're doing it with your father, which is vulnerable.

And so that moment of like a kid signing the album, it's very like, risky. I guess the other thing I'm curious about is when people were reacting badly to you in school, did your brain complete it? Do you remember as they're jealous? Or is that like the perspective you have as an adult? I think that's a perspective that I have as an adult. I mean, I'm sure it's something that my mom might have said to me. And it's something that, of course, I say to my kids too. But yeah, when you're young, it's like you don't think people, are going to be jealous of you. Like, I didn't think that I was, like, pretty, or I didn't really think that there would be any reason for anyone to be jealous of me.

Yeah. Of course, I look back on it now, and I'm like, I was really cute. I was adorable. So at some point, did you have to stop being a middle schooler at the same time as being an actor, or did you keep toggling between the things? I left that school where I lost my whole friend group,

and if I stuck it out, it put probably would have gotten better because, you know, that stuff usually, I think, calms down. But it had already been difficult with going away and getting my homework. Like the teachers were not very amenable. So for a year, I went to professional children's school. Was professional children's school? Exactly what it sounds like. It's for children who are professionals.

Because in my head I was like, is it for people who are professionals at being children? It's like, that doesn't. Although it's sort of what you were doing. Yeah, yeah. So who else is that professional children's school? Well, Jason Bateman was. Oh, wow. Yeah, professional child.

Yeah. Now professional adults. Yeah. We went to school together in eighth grade, although we never talked. I kind of would sort of sneak glances at him. I mean, who's very cute. Yeah, I did that for a year, but you only had to go for three hours a day. To professional children's school.

Yeah. I mean, it was so like not going to school. I couldn't even handle it. I just said, like, I feel like I'm not learning anything. And then I went to a good school the next year. But I really no longer had much of a social life. I got very wary of other girls. So there was a while that I just didn't really have many friends

because I became really sort of fearful about interacting with other girls that were my age. And did you understand that, like at the time where you just like girls are scary basically or people are scary or, like, Did you understand that as related to what you were doing or not related? I knew that it was related to what I was doing. Yeah.

Yeah, but that didn't mean that I wanted to stop doing what I was doing. Yeah. It just meant that I kind of protected myself for about a year. I kind of opted out of female friendships for a good year, year and a half. Yeah. And then the summer after ninth grade is when I did 16 candles. After the break, Molly experiences an unfathomably large wave of attention and learns how to survive it. That's after some ads.

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the first of three movies from director John Hughes in which Molly starred. Movies about high school kids having crushes and fighting with their parents. Movies that at the time were revolutionary, in part just for what they were willing to treat as important, the lives of regular American teenagers. The Breakfast Club was the breakout hit,

a movie filmed for a million dollars that would make over 50. The movie's about a group of outcast kids who spend a day in Saturday detention together. Molly plays Claire Standish, the popular girl who gets made fun of by the other troublemakers because she's the popular one. Well, well, here we are. I want to congratulate you for being on time. Excuse me, sir? I think there's been a mistake.

I know it's detention, but I don't think I belong in here. It is now... 706. You have exactly eight hours and 54 minutes to think about why you're here. Molly's written about these movies in an essay for The New Yorker. She describes their enduring power and remarks on the ways that they don't entirely hold up. You should read the article. It's smarter than anything I'd say here.

But for our purposes today, all that matters is that these three movies made Molly into a teen idol. Launched her into a kind of fame that was, is pretty rare and confusing. This is a scene from 16 Canter. A teen comedy about a girl named Sam whose family forgets her birthday. Molly plays Sam. The movie opens with her character looking at herself in the mirror, hoping that she's aged. I just thought that turning of 16 would be so major that I'd wake up with an improved mental state that would show in my face. All that shows they don't have any sort of a tan left.

I better get downstairs. My family's probably pissed off. I haven't let them wish me happy birthday yet. Did you understand that 16 candles was going to be a big deal? a big deal? No. No. No, I did not. I mean, I thought that it was going to be fun, which it was.

It was really fun to do. Why was that fun? It was over the summer. It was my first movie with John Hughes, and we had hit it off, and he was somebody who I felt like really saw something in me, and we have a connection. And I knew that it was just going to be a fun movie. I didn't expect for it to necessarily be a hit or anything. How old were you when you were shooting it?

I was 15. And when did you understand that it was a hit? Like, what was the moment where you understood that either it was different or your life might be different? Well, actually, 16 Candles was not, it wasn't really a big hit when it came out. I didn't know that. It was actually, like, a little bit disappointing at the box office. but I had done 16 candles, and then I did Breakfast Club. John Hughes, he asked me and Anthony Michael Hall

just at the end of 16 candles to do Breakfast Club, which was funny because he was originally going to do the Breakfast Club, and then he wrote 16 candles over a weekend with my picture over his computer or his typewriter or whatever, his workstation. And then he sent that to the studio, and they said, we like that one better. We want to do that one first. And so he said, oh, I want to meet the girl that's in this picture.

How did he have your – because you were on these lists? Like, how did he have your – Yeah. Well, he had left one agency and went to another. I think he went from CIA to ICM or something, which is where I was at the time. And they gave him a bunch of pictures of their clients, and I was one of them. It's such a strange way – or maybe it's not. I don't know how anyone normally writes a movie.

But it's such a strange feeling to be like this adult person, has kind of had a dream inspired by you, and now you're going to walk into that dream. Yeah, it is. It is. But I was so young and didn't really have all of that much experience, although I did have more experience than John Hughes had at that point. I mean, he had an advertising background,

and then when he wrote, like, a lot of comedy stuff and wrote for, like, the National Lampoon and all of that. But, like, 16 Candles was his first experience as a director, and I think the Breakfast Club was the second. So I had done more movies than he had, but in that point in time. But, you know, I was still, whatever, 15 years old, I didn't have that much experience.

So, yeah, it is extraordinary. So then 16 candles comes out, it's not earth-shattering. Breakfast Club is the thing that is? Yes. Yeah. Breakfast Club was a huge hit, like really big. Which is also just funny because it's, like,

Like the thing that had taken you off the path of the life of a normal American teenager was largely being filmed, acting as a normal American teenager. Yeah. It's really funny because Hollywood really loves to put people in boxes where they think, okay, that's all you can do. Like, if you do something well and you succeed at that thing, then that's all you can do. And I succeeded very well at projecting this. what Pauline Kale, a famous film critic called Charismatic Normality. What did you make of that? Well, I didn't like it at the time because I was like, I don't want to be normal.

That sounds boring. But Charismatic is also. Yeah, but Charismatic is good. So it kind of seemed a little bit like a backhand and compliment, but I get what she was saying now. And I was like, I projected this very, like, normal teenager, but I was so not normal as a teenager. and my experience had never been like a normal teenager. So I was acting this thing that was actually kind of like foreign to me. And then suddenly I went from being sort of known as the shy girl who acted at school

to being like the most famous teenager in America. Do you remember when it became clear to you that that was the case? I remember like certain. things like when all of the girls who had kind of like dumped me at school wanted to get together and go out and like talk about what it was like making these movies and the people that I acted with. And it's just like this feeling that you get. Obviously I'm like recognized a lot more. What is the feeling feel like? It felt a little bit overwhelming and sometimes really embarrassing.

It's like being taken by a wave that's just like, okay, I know how to swim, but I can't swim in this, like, tidal wave that's taking me away. I don't know how to navigate that, so I'm just going to, like, try to get a gulp of air when I can and just sort of, like, let this wave carry me where it's going to take me. When you were talking earlier about how it feels good to be on stage when you can't see the crowd, but you can also be a person who's shy when you can see a bunch of faces, you're talking about, I think, wanting to be open in places where you feel. safe being open, and I would imagine the experience of, like, being that young and suddenly

being that famous, it means you're always going to be on stage in a way, and you're not going to have control over it, and you're never going to feel, I don't know, like the comfort that comes with knowing that your life has a backstage to it. Yeah. Yeah. I was always really jealous of people that had stage names, like Bono or Sting, or like people that had changed their names because I felt like that way it would be really clear. Like when I'm Bono, I'm doing that. There would always be people that would know the real me and then know this other version of me, but Molly Ringwald is my name. And that's it. And I'm always that person. But there's obviously like a Molly who's a performer and Molly who is performing as Molly, too, like when I'm doing interviews,

Now it's a little different because I know you. But, you know, when I'm doing interviews, not to say that I'm lying, but I'm obviously like I am a version of myself. Yeah. That I put out there and I don't talk about the most private parts of myself unless I decide that I want to for whatever reason. I feel like there has to be a part of me that's just for me. Right. And you don't really get to do that when you have things. fame that's at a certain level that's burning that bright. It's like everybody wants everything

of you all the time and every interaction that you have with somebody, whether it's a good day or a bad day, you have to be on all the time. But I don't know anybody that can be on all the time. I certainly couldn't. And I felt like it was really hard because anytime you like make a mistake or if you or just having like a bad day. It suddenly shapes this narrative about you. Was that happening like where you would say the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong way or whatever and all of a sudden it's a story? Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I could feel it sort of happening. Like I was also really worried about it too. I was like there's no way that this can stay at this level. There has to be a backlash. You knew that? Oh yeah.

Why did you know that? I don't know. I just instinctively knew. I just knew. I mean, you also, like, see it, too. You see people who are built up and then torn down. Yeah. Like, I was smart enough to know that everything is cyclical and that there is no way that I could stay at that level.

I don't even think that I really wanted to. So there might have been a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there as well. But I remember exactly, like, when my back. slash started. People Magazine had organized for me to do this story with a Lily and Gish. She was a really famous, like, 20s film star. I guess they were saying I was like the Lily and Gish of my time. I see. So they wanted to do this like old Hollywood, young Hollywood. And I was really excited about it. Like, I know who she was. I had watched silent movies. But I was in New York and I didn't have a very good sense of direction and I got lost and I couldn't find a taxi and it was in winter and I didn't

have a cell phone like tried to call and then finally my publicist said it's too late just forget it just like go home and send her flowers which I did and I felt terrible about it and while this was happening I thought oh my god here is the beginning of my back last really yeah and it was I mean, it was a better story for them because it was like, oh, young Hollywood is so awful and doesn't care. They're brats. The brat pack. It was like poor Lily and Gish was there. And she had baked me cookies.

And she was this old woman that was there feeling so sad and rejected by this brat. It was just like I could have written the story myself. And that kind of like started this whole thing. And then you get branded for like being difficult. you know, you're still famous. It's just that instead of getting this warm embrace from everyone, people like start thinking that you're a brat and you're not a nice person. It's just so funny.

I mean, it's not funny, and I know that the experience of it wasn't funny, but as a scandal, it's so it's like this person wasn't... Tame. Yes, it's very tame. It's like this person wasn't punctual. This person disrespected their elders. It feels like it's from like another different older culture. It feels like a scandal from the...

50s or something. I know. I know. It's so ridiculous. But then that's like enough because it's just perception. And by the way, can I just also say like, oh, boo-hoo, poor me? I mean, I think in terms of like problems that you could have in the world, I've led a very privileged life. I have to acknowledge that. I don't hear a person asking for sympathy. I mean, at least the question I'm trying to ask you. And I think the question you're answering, it's not how hard is it to be you. It's just like, how did you learn to navigate a life that the one person who they could put you in touch with who had a similar life, you were late for cookies and full of your spot in People magazine. You know what I mean?

Yeah. It's like everyone's going to have an opinion about you. If everyone has an opinion about you, you can't control it. But you have to kind of learn that. And you were somebody who was trying to behave in like a hyper-conscientious way so that you wouldn't fumble. something, and then you get lost in New York City one day, and the world decides you're a terrible person. If being careful hadn't made you safe, what was the lesson you took? Like, what did you learn from that? What did you adjust? Um, I don't know. I feel like I just kind of kept, like,

trucking along and, like, doing my best, and I felt very hyper-vigilant. Yeah. Um, very, very very careful, but like to a point of where it was just exhausting. Like, I felt exhausted. Felt tired all the time because to be that vigilant when you're supposed to be like a young person just kind of like fucking up and making mistakes. Yeah. I didn't really have the chance to do that because I was expected to be a role model because I was like the perfect teenager.

I was like a good girl. It was just this image that I had that, you know, I mean, aside from standing up Lillian Gish and not eating Lillian Gish's cookies that she baked for me, I felt like there were like a lot of expectations for me to like be a certain way. Where would you, like when you were like 15, 16, 17, when you weren't getting in trouble with People magazine, where was the place you could go where you felt like you could be like a person? Like in the privacy of my own home. That was the only place I think that I felt safe.

Anywhere else. Like if I was out somewhere, somebody could take a picture or like overhear a conversation. I was followed in my car a couple times. By just strangers? Yeah. Strangers or people like wanting pictures or photographs or. Yeah, it was kind of scary. You were living in New York at this time.

Well, I was going back and forth between New York and L.A. And what would it look like to just, like, try to have a life? Like, camera phones don't exist, but paparazzi does. Like, did you pick your nose? I feel like I really was not able to have any kind of, like, a normal life in Los Angeles or in America at that point. I couldn't do it, which is, I think, why I ended up moving to France. As a way to get away from it? Yeah, I didn't realize it at the time, but I think that that choice to move away had a lot to do with fame.

That's crazy, though. I mean, it's crazy to be, to correctly look at your life. Most of the people who have to leave a country as big as America have done something really terrible. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I didn't realize that at the time, I just, just fell in love with France and fell in love with that feeling that I had there. And what was the feeling? That I could breathe. Right.

Everything felt new and it felt very colorful. I mean, it was colorful. It was summer in France. There was, like, flower stalls everywhere, and the sky was, like, impossibly blue. And I felt better than I had felt in a really long time. And did you understand how much of that was being able to, like, still be like yourself, but not Molly Ringwald all the time? I think it was pretty clear to me that it had a lot to do with feeling free. I was a free woman in Paris.

I felt unfettered and alive. And, I mean, French people have access to films. Why can you turn American fame off in France? Well, you can't now, but at the time, the movies that I had done, they weren't huge hits there. Now they're known because they've, of course, played on television. They're sort of like considered cult movies now, like iconic films, which is always kind of like surprising now when I'm in France and I'm recognized. Because it's the place where you're used to having fame camouflage.

Exactly, exactly. But when I moved to France, like there are whole bits of the 90s that I feel like I kind of missed because I was living in a country where everything was not available, like where you didn't have like every single television. channel that exists. Were they not watching Seinfeld? No. Something French instead? Yeah. Interesting.

Something French. But, yeah, the movies that I did weren't that well known. And then I also dyed my hair like dark brown. Oh, that would, yes. To kind of like blend in because the red does kind of set you apart a little. So what was it like to be able to take off like the robe of fame? Did you miss it at all? No. Not at all. I didn't. I mean, I will say like the only thing that I think I missed would be automatically being able to get a good table in a restaurant.

I knew that's what you were going to say. I absolutely knew that's what you were going to say. Restaurants. Yeah, that's it. I feel like it was, there was something really nice about feeling like, if somebody responded to me, they were responding to me, like the real me, or as much as they knew, the real me. You weren't constantly in conversation with your own reputation or wondering what someone was reacting to or what they wanted or how you might disappoint them. Yes. Yeah. Which you probably hadn't had as an adult, like just the normal levels of self-consciousness that a normal person has. Yeah. It felt like I suddenly was. somewhere like without a weapon.

I didn't have this fancy sword or whatever. It was just me and my muscles got strong because of it. Were there things you had to learn how to do? Well, yeah, speak French. I mean like, I mean more like, I don't know, I imagine that if you're very famous in America in the 1980s, you probably don't know how funny you are because people are going to like laugh at your jokes a little bit more or something.

Like you don't know what your level of charm is separate from people's excitedness to just like see a person that they've seen in a film. Yeah, definitely. And then also you throw in the extra thing about being American, too. And so you're dealing with the French have. They sort of don't like you. Yes, yes. And were you acting in France?

I was still acting, but I think I definitely put my career on the back burner. Like it wasn't as important to me. And I also felt kind of like burned in Hollywood. would. I felt like I wasn't really valued at that point. But also, I will say, because I've thought a lot about it, too. I'm like, did I kind of tank my career because I moved to France, or were there other elements at play as well? And I had done one of Miramax's first movies that Harvey Weinstein produced, and I had to sue Harvey Weinstein. Back then? I did. I did. I did. Yeah, not for any sexual impropriety.

I was very lucky in that regard. He just didn't pay me what he was contractually obligated to pay me. He just didn't. He just like, the film was not a success, but I had like a percentage of the gross. And he just didn't pay. And he just didn't pay. And my lawyer called and said, Harvey Weinstein's not paying you for this. And I think that we need to go after it.

And I said, go ahead. And she did. And I got paid. but it was just coming into an era where everything interesting that was done pretty much was done by Harvey Weinstein. So I think that might have had something to do with it. I don't know. It was just kind of like this period of time where I wasn't obscure, but it was just like I felt like everyone was kind of like waiting for a comeback. Did you want to come back?

I wanted to do movies that were interesting to me. Yeah. It's hard because the fame is a double-edged sword because the fame makes life kind of difficult to navigate on the one hand, but then if you have a certain level of fame that it enables you to do the projects that you want to do. Like all movies get made basically, you know, somebody has to raise the money and the only way that they can raise the money is if they go after this list

and they'll say, okay, for this part, if you get Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, whatever the list is. Yeah. And for a while, I was on that list. And then I kind of got booted off that list. And there's only so many parts to go around. Yeah.

And then the older that you get, the less parts there are. So for a big chunk of that time, I kind of like took myself out of the running for a lot of interesting things, or it just wasn't considered, I don't know. Did you regret that? Because it also sounds like it was what you needed.

I, no, I think it was what I needed. I mean, to come back to your point about how I am sane, which my kids would debate you on that. But I think as actors go, I think I am pretty sane and I think I am pretty centered. And I think the only way really that I was able to do that and to have that kind of longevity was to go away and do what I did and to sort of opt out of that like hamster wheel that I was in.

After the break, we asked Molly the question that got us here, the mechanics of her sanity. How do you survive fame? It's after some ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there whose job is to help your clients keep more of what they earn, Vanguard is here to help you with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds.

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subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Hey, business owners, the NFL season is a big revenue driver. Now there's a smarter way to get ready. Everpass is the only authorized commercial platform for NFL Sunday ticket delivering every live out of market regular season Sunday afternoon game. Locking the best offer now with up to 40% off saving up to $2,500. For the first time, you can pay over nine months. Get up to six free devices and a free bar kit. Sign up by April 27th. Visit Everpass.com. Limited time offer. Terms apply. Wait, what's the actual question again? How do you survive How do you survive? How do you survive being a public person, if you prefer that?

I really believe that it is something that is genetic in you. Like, I think it's in your DNA. And I think you're the kind of person who can withstand that sort of public scrutiny and be okay with it and even maybe want it. But you have to ask yourself if that's something that you really want and know that that's what you want. because once you get it, it's always there. Like, you might not be able to sort of keep a certain level of fame. Like, hotness comes and goes. But once you become famous, you're always famous.

From that perspective, it's like, that makes you almost like someone who got, like, a face tattoo when they were 12. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I remember being in California after I came back from France. and I was with my husband, and it was Matilda, my now 20-year-old daughter, learning to ride a bike for the first time, which feels like a private moment. And obviously it's something that you can't do inside,

so we were outside, and then paparazzi pictures came out, and it felt so gross because I, well, for one thing, I was also like I had no idea, so that was like a creepy feeling. It was kind of like how it must feel if there's like a private investigator, I mean, we were just teaching our kid how to ride a bike, but it was just this really creepy feeling that there's somebody there and you didn't see them, didn't know that they were there. And yeah, that's just kind of the stuff that you deal with.

And this is like at a level of fame that's not even like it was, I think, when I made those movies. Right. When I've had friends who have had film or television success, what I've noticed is this feeling of you're in public, like you're at dinner or something like that and there's a feeling that I will arrive too late which is that the attention of the room has begun to bend towards them

and maybe in a way that needs to be navigated like someone's about to come up and say something or whatever and my radar to that is so dull and I've felt very badly for them that their radar for that always has to be on like if someone takes their cell phone out are they taking a picture of them or are they texting somebody if somebody's like wandering at the table

you know what I mean? Oh yeah no I have a very very finely tuned radar to that. Like, I can tell, by the way, that somebody, like, pulls out their cell phone, like, the way that it's, like, angled. Right. There are certain words that I can pick out. Obviously, my name, Ringwald, Molly. I can hear that. I can hear the word breakfast.

Like, I can hear, like, 16. I can hear pink. Yeah. I definitely feel like I'm somebody who is okay with a certain level of things. I just want to have some autonomy over my life and over the choices that I make, which is one of the reasons why I didn't let my kids act professionally when they were kids. They wanted to. Oh, yeah. I mean, this was like the argument, the non-stop argument that I've had with my daughter, Matildas, and she was eight.

She wanted to start acting when she was eight, and we wouldn't let her. We made the choice to not have her be a professional actress. And she said, why? And I said, because I grew up in this business, and I think, like, if you're talented, that talent's not going to go away. Yeah. I just think that you should learn how to do it

and be really prepared. So when you start acting, you'll know what you're doing, and hopefully you will have grown up a bit. And it was a real bone of contention between us. I mean, she was furious. She's still mad at me. And she's done her first movie now, like a big movie. Like, she has a supporting role in this movie with Anne Hathaway that's coming out on Amazon.

So I feel like I gave good advice. I feel like I made the right choice, but she's still mad at me. And I don't know. Like, I was super driven like she was. You know, I wanted to do what I did. But, like, the difference is that I did it. And my dad was like a jazz musician in a small town. My mom didn't know anything about the business.

They were artistic people, but they didn't know about the business. But I do, and I have been through that. And I also feel like, you know, it's hard to make a transition from being a younger actor to being an adult actor. So anyway, when I would say all this to Matilda, she would say, well, you did it. Well, you did it. And you're fine. You're smart. You're all of this stuff.

Like, so why are you different? and why can't I do it if you did it? That's such a hard question. What do you say? I say that I think that I'm an outlier. I would say like the majority of kids that act are not okay. Do you remember even being like in your teenage years and seeing people with different relationships to their fame or their success where you thought like I can see them making a mistake that I'm consciously trying not to make? Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this long enough to where I could see people just completely burning out and becoming really self-destructive, whether it's like drugs or alcohol or, yeah, making bad choices, just putting themselves out there too much.

I've also been doing this long enough and worked with enough young people that have had to sort of navigate fame that comes to them, like, all of a sudden. Yeah. And it's interesting, like kind of observing them from a little bit of a distance and sort of seeing, oh, okay, I can see the people who are going to be okay and the people that aren't going to be okay. You can see it. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Totally. And you can see the people that are just like all of a sudden get so big-headed and they feel like it's going to last forever. And yeah, you just see it. And you know the way the business works. Yeah. But you really think that the thing that made you okay might not have been something. you learned or did, but it might have just been a way that you were. Yeah. I think that it is a little

bit my DNA, but it's also my personality is somebody who is able to kind of step outside and like observe myself a little bit. I feel like I have a certain amount of self-reflection that not everybody has. I agree. I mean, one of the things I remember noticing you did, doing, I was like, oh, you can learn from this. As you mentioned offhandedly once, you just said, like, I don't read reviews. I don't read my reviews. And when you first said it, I thought, oh, Molly doesn't find her reviews interesting. And then later, I was like, no, probably Molly's figured out that reading reviews does things

to her that she doesn't enjoy. Yeah. Exactly. That's what it is. I make a deal with myself where, I mean, it's not something that I really have to do now with the Internet, but I stopped reading reviews so long ago that I made this deal where I would save them. Like all the reviews would be saved. And so one day, if I wanted to read them, I could read them. Do you have them in a shoebox?

I knew that my parents, I think, collected everything, but like my mom, she's not organized enough to, I. actually ever do a scrapbook or anything. So they're like in boxes that are probably like falling apart and probably part of like a rat's nest and like a garage somewhere. I don't know. It was just this idea. It was kind of like tricking the brain in a way to keep myself from having to read them. There was this idea that I could read them someday. It kind of made it okay. Because reading a review, it's like the dopamine of the good review, it's just exactly like getting that thumbs up. Oh, yeah. But then the bad review is exactly like being trolled.

I mean, it's just, for me, there's just really no upside to it. Yeah, and also, like, the good reviews are very addictive and the bad reviews are very sticky. And, like, the compliment never lasts as long as the insult. And the compliment kind of just makes you want another compliment. Yeah, exactly. It's like it never feels good as that first high. After that, then you're just chasing it. And then you're just a person who's just chasing that approval.

And yeah, I just don't want to be that person. Yeah. That doesn't mean that I don't care what people think, but I care much more about the opinions of people that I really respect. Like my friend Meredith always says, protect the head, protect the head. Like, there's certain things that I know are just self-protective. And not reading my reviews is one of them. Not spending too much time, doom scrolling is another.

Like, I just have these rules like, okay, I fell into this pothole numerous times. And then eventually you walk around the pothole that's in the street, and then eventually you learn to take another street. And I feel like I've been doing this for long enough to where I've learned to take the other street. But some people don't learn that. Some people never learn that. Yeah. One of the ways people react to pressure like that is to just like really act out. But it sounds like the way you reacted to it was to just try to complete the assignment.

Yes. Exactly. Why do you think that was? I feel like I had a lot of practice like from the time that I was little. Like, wow, this is great. This feels like therapy. Thank you, PJ. I haven't done therapy in a while.

This feels really good. Thank you for talking about this stuff. I feel like I started out by wanting to please my parents. Like, I feel like everybody. Yeah. But like, you know, the fact that I was performing with my dad and like his... What was so funny? You said, what was the name of the album, the first jazz album?

I want to be loved by you. Right? I know. I didn't name it. I didn't name it. I didn't name it. And it was one of the songs that I sang. But I think I had a lot of practice on, you know, sort of performing and getting, what's the word, approval?

Yeah. Getting approval from my dad or my mom and then from an audience and then from, like, the world. And I had to complete the assignment. But so it's like, by your description, there's this assumption most people would make about a person becoming for a time. I'm like the most famous teenager in America, which is probably since fame is like a hard thing to find, that person must have really wanted it. And what you're saying is like, no. What you wanted was to act, to not disappoint people, to fulfill the assignment, like to do a good job of what you're asked to do. And by virtue of your skill at doing that and time and circumstance, you just end up in this position where the pressure is extraordinarily high and where you're experiencing a life that a lot of people want but wasn't the thing that you'd produce. wanted.

Yes. This is very confusing. You just synthesized it so well and so succinctly. Yeah, it's hard because, I mean, now I feel like we're dealing with levels of fame that feel like so beyond what I had. It's sort of crazy to hear Molly Ringwald, a woman whose face was on the cover of Time magazine, say that, Actually, the fame she experienced, much weaker than the plutonium-grade stuff being manufactured today.

But I think she's right. And generally speaking, I wish famous people talked about what it means to experience attention this openly. I get why they don't. It's risky. You don't want to be seen as bragging or worse complaining. But it's a shame. Because one thing that has changed since the 1980s is that the problem of how to navigate public attention has become a skill that even regular people need to learn.

Civilians have been offered the problems of fame, if not its benefits. The government doesn't issue American teenagers a publicist when they get their first Instagram account. So what have we learned about surviving public attention for Molly Ringwald? She believes the ability to withstand pressure is more about who you inherently are than anything else, and that you won't know who you are under pressure until you find yourself there. But that said, Molly's instincts have led her to make choices that are really smart, anybody could copy them.

A teenager could. I think I will. So here they are. Doing what you love might mean you don't get to be normal or invisible. Sometimes people are going to dislike you. You shouldn't assume it's because of something you've done. It might be because of what you represent. You can't actually be vigilant all the time.

If attention is hurting you, you can walk away from it. Keep your views in a box and keep the box closed. Protect the head. Did I answer? Did I answer? Totally. Oh, my God. It's so...

Did I do well? Was I perfect? You completed the assignment. Thank you, Molly. Yes. Thank you, PJ. Molly Ringwald. She's an actor, a writer, mom, a sane person.

You can see her in the new Ryan Murphy miniseries feud, Capote v. Swans on FX. It's out now. One last thing before we go. Our editor found a very enchanting song online. with just a few hundred listens and wanted to know how had this beautiful song gotten to her? Let's have her some minutes.

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. First Citizens Bank. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile Bill? Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot.

Good news. Bring your AT&T or T Mobile Bill to Verizon and we'll give you a better deal. So get away from that unfortunate phone bill and get to Verizon. Run, ride, canoe. Whatever it takes, we'll be here. Bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. A better deal. No surprises. That's Verizon. Best network based on route metrics, best overall mobile network performance U.S. second half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person who are giving me the deal. Additional Terminidion, additional conditions and restrictions apply. Welcome back to the show. Our editor at search engine is Shruti Pinnaminaniani. She's the person whose mind and editorial tastes you're constantly hearing on the show, but whose voice you never hear on Mike.

She had a question that made her break her search engine vow of silence. Hello. Hello. Can you just tell me your name, introduce yourself? Who are you? What do you do? I am Olympia Vitalis. I'm a singer. I'm 24 years old from London. And yeah, I'm on the podcast. I wanted to talk to you. Man, now it seems like ages ago, just a couple weeks ago,

when I first, the first time I heard your song, Curles. It's funny because so I don't use Spotify that much. Like I work in radio. I listen to a lot of music and podcasts, but generally not on Spotify. And there was this one evening after work, I was doing like a deep clean in my apartment. And I was like, I'll just try a Spotify playlist today. Love that. And I heard your song.

It so took my breath away that I just sat there and played it on repeat for a very long time. And I did the thing that I would normally do, which was look you up. And just, I was like, whatever else she's made, I will buy it right now. And I realized, like, there wasn't much out there. There was, like, a couple songs. And on Spotify and on SoundCloud, the listens were at that point in the hundreds. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I might be hearing a person who's, like, stepping out into the music world, like, right now.

Yeah. It's quite funny. like when people talk about curls like that, because I'm sick of it. Do you know what I mean? Like, I am so bored of that song. But people come to me and they're like, I just couldn't believe it. And you're sick of it because you've been playing it for so long or singing it for so long? Well, yeah. I mean, you know, like in all kind of creative processes, it's such a long turnaround time, like from writing the first few lyrics in the notebook to having it mastered and then released. Like, curls was probably a year in the making in total. But it's

really cool that it connects with so many people I'm supporting Kiefer on tour at the moment. And like, people are coming up to me and saying, like, that song is mad. And I'm just like, what are you hearing? Because I'm just hearing my song. Is this the first song you've put out? Or what am I, like, what stage of Olympia am I hearing? So it's the third song technically, but I'm 24. And COVID kind of took away two and a half years. So I kind of say I'm like 21. but I've been in a gospel choir I was in a gospel choir for seven years so the idea of getting up and just belting

like I love it it comes second nature to me at this point but I think the exposing part of it is the lyrics I don't tend to write about love I have no interest in writing about love it's boring I just think DeAngelo can do it better than me do you know what I mean

and so you record this song it sounds like about a year ago and then how does it get on that playlist that I happen to listen to beats me the thing is with editorial playlisting is like 100,000, 10 million or a million

I'm not going to say this right but shedload of songs get submitted onto these editorial playlists every single day so the chances of getting on a fresh finds which is a global top 100 tracks of the week or whatever is it's not going to happen

do you know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah it's just wild because before I was like whatever editorial playlists list doesn't matter. And now I'm just like, I need them. I need them all. I must feel like once you get it, you want to do it again, but it seems so mysterious how it happened in the first place. Yeah. What's funny, I don't know if you feel like this as well, but in the creative industry, you kind of hit one target and you don't even really pipe yourself on the back. You

just go, right, what's next? You know? Like, I've got a song coming out on Friday, and I'm praying with every part of my body that it does well, because then it kind of just gives you momentum to get more looks in, but I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself. But that's like asking England not to rain. It's just not going to happen. Olympia Vidalis. That song that she was feeling so much pressure about, it's called Marty, and you're listening to it right now.

It just came out. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, Shrithy Penamini, and Pee. and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John, fact-checking by Sean Merchant. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armand Vizarian. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Burman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Porello, and John Schmidt.

And to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Cawley, Kate Hutchison, Matt Casey, Mora Curran, Josephina-Franc, Kurt Courtney and Hillary Schoff. Our agent is Orrin Rosenbaum at UTA. Our social media is by the team at Public Opinion, NYC. Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJ Vote now for free

on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you would like to become a paid subscriber and support the show, head over to pjvote.com. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.