Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Austin Butler

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Since the release of Elvis, Austin Butler has stepped into the celebrity spotlight, winning a Golden Globe, hosting Saturday Night Live, and rolling-out a list of upcoming roles. Willie and Austin got together in New York for a "Sunday Sitdown," to talk about the ride. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. I've got a great one for you this week. Really excited to share with you my conversation with Golden Globe winner and now Academy Award nominee Austin Butler. Austin, of course, plays Elvis in the movie of the same name. He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor nominated also at the Academy Awards. He's such an interesting guy. He didn't have a lot of lot of high profile roles coming into this role as Elvis. He'd done some of the Nickelodeon and Disney stuff, the Hanna Montana, the Zoe 101 stuff early in his career. He really wanted to be an actor from a young age growing up very close to his mom. You'll hear him talk about

kind of playing characters to make his mom laugh, to make his mom happy. And he just kind of rolled into this acting thing and had big dreams, big heroes, watched old movies as a kid kind of thing he wouldn't expect from he's 31 years old. So he kind of grew up in the 90s, but he was watching like, you know, old James Dean movies. And he has this long list and this long library that he loves and wanted to be a serious actor. So he went to Broadway after his Nickelodeon days, played in Iceman Cometh with Denzel Washington, who eventually recommended Austin Butler to director Baz Luhrman for this Elvis movie. So an incredible sort of thread through his life and his career.

where he's impressed a lot of people and worked hard to get where he is. And this, of course, is his big breakout coming out party. So it's fun to sit down and talk to somebody who's kind of just at the beginning of this explosion of their life, sitting down and saying, oh, my gosh, this last year has been insane. So maybe you've seen the movie. You've definitely seen pictures or the trailer. Looks a lot like Elvis. Talks a lot like Elvis.

He's got the swagger a little bit like Elvis. But I found it to be an incredibly wide. and humble guy who loves his family and just can't believe his luck with what's happening right now. So let's get right to it. Talking about the role of Elvis that has changed his life right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast, it is Austin Butler. Austin, great to meet you, man. Thanks for doing this. I'm so happy to be here with you.

I think we just had a pretty good interview already, but we'll just keep going here. Yeah, we've been talking. I'm like, let's just keep this going. Yeah, this is nice. Man, I was just saying to you, this moment for you where you've just won the Golden Globe, you're now nominated for an Oscar, the world knows your name and your face. How are you feeling in the middle of this well-deserved whirlwind you're sitting in? I mean, you know, we were just talking about it, but I feel so grateful, just incredibly

grateful, but also, as we were just saying, it feels like a dream. So, you know, I've been doing this first since I was a kid. I've never had a real job. I was 12 when I started acting. And I always had these dreams. And there were many moments in my life where it didn't feel like it was possible, you know, where you kind of end up in a certain lane and you don't get the opportunities that you really want to challenge yourself or whatever those things are. and so to now be here, as we were just saying,

to look back and kind of take a breath and be able to see, you know, my life retrospectively and go, wow, this is actually happening? This is real. It's really, I just feel very humble and grateful. I know it feels like a long last year to you because you've done so much, but I was just saying to you, that trailer, the first trailer for Elvis was about a year ago,

a little under a year ago, where the world said, my God, who is that guy? He looks exactly like Elvis. He sounds like Elvis, all of those things. Has it felt to you like a long year? Or has it felt like it does to the rest of us? Like, this guy came out of nowhere. I know you didn't.

But it feels like here you are now nominated for an Oscar with a pretty good shot at one. I mean, it definitely does feel like longer than a year. That's why when you said that, I thought, has it only been a year? It feels like a lifetime. Yeah. And it's, as we were saying, the whirlwind takes you and it's so fast that you're only ever doing it one moment at a time.

And that's why moments like this of talking about are cool, because it's kind of like when you're a kid and you can't quite tell how fast you're growing. And you draw those lines on the doorway. And then you see, oh, I grew an inch this summer or however much it is. And so to take moments like this is really nice for me. That's such a good way to put it. It's so true. So I want to go back to the genesis of this role for you. which I know that when you heard Bos was making this movie,

it was something you wanted to be a part of, at least throw your hat in the ring. But is it true that people around you, friends, sort of had a sense even before then, that you'd be a good Elvis? You know, it was never a thing in my life. Like, certain people will ask if, since I was a kid, people were saying things.

But I never put it together. I never even really felt like our faces looked that much alike. there are certain similarities but I never felt like this and I never really heard that you know but in the month prior my partner at the time she she

you know she mentioned it to me a couple times and so it was in my mind and then were you singing along to Blue Christmas or something it was Blue Christmas yeah yeah which was yeah and I just happened to I think we have we have a similar timbre of voice.

So as I was singing, it was kind of in that place already. And then I was playing the piano a couple weeks later and just kind of making something up. I would only ever sing in front of, you know, my mother, my partner, or, you know, somebody very, very close to me.

I was never a singer beforehand. And so I think I was kind of singing in that place at that time. And so I got brought up. again and then a couple weeks later then I got a call from my agent that Baz was making the movie and that was one of those moments where did hairs stand up on your arms and you think okay the stars are aligning a little a little too clearly right now so uh let's just throw all our chips on the table and give it everything that I have and so I just went all in even though I didn't know if I had an

audition you know at the day one I called a singing coach and I died pilot coach and a movement coach. And I just started working on it like I had the job, even though I didn't even know if I was going to get an audition for it. So what was it about this role and this man and this icon that was so fascinating to you that you would put this much in it without even knowing you were going to get an audition? I mean, it's it's the role of a lifetime, you know. And you kind of know that when you when you read the script or even just the idea of getting to explore the

life of somebody who had the life that Elvis had and it has either been so misunderstood and is now simply a Halloween costume for people or he's idolized to a level where he becomes larger than life. So for me it was just really fascinating to strip all that away and find the human being that is at the core of all that, you know, what is his soul. And also just how dynamic he was, the fact that he moved in the way that he did and sang in the way that he did. And I was a very shy child. And I talked about it a little last night, but this sort of shyness and self-consciousness

and reservation of releasing certain bits of yourself. Knowing that I would have to explore those things, to the nth degree with this, I knew that it would expand what I felt was possible in myself. And there were many times, you know, I told Baz this the other day, but there were many times that, It felt impossible, and I didn't feel like I was enough.

And moments where I didn't believe that I could actually do it. And those are moments that looking at Baz and seeing that he believed in me, I owe him so much for that because there was many moments where I thought, you know, especially in the preparation process where about a month after I got cast and we were down in Nashville and Memphis and I felt sort of, like an imposter, you know? And I kept waiting for somebody to look at me and go, you don't belong here, get out of here, you know.

And Baz had this faith in me. And then as we got closer and closer, it started to build, and I started to just feel the life more. And then it became the most exhilarating thing. And so I think I kind of knew at the very beginning that that, if I could get through it and could survive somehow, that I would come out the other side that different person.

Nobody would blame you to be a little nervous about it. This is a guy who knows and has an opinion about and loves so deeply and has been a part of their lives for so long. It's obviously this is going to be the defining movie about him. It's kind of a big responsibility. And you pointed to something so interesting, which is that you were a shy kid. Like you've said, you couldn't order for yourself at a restaurant.

Your mom would do that for you. To take on the role of someone whose entire persona in life is to be big and loud. and wear the jumpsuit and the sunglasses and karate kicks on stage in front of 20,000 people, the sort of paradox of those two things is fascinating. So how did you end up breaking through that in the end and saying, oh, I can do this.

I can command a crowd. Well, part of it was learning that Elvis was very shy. And that was liberating to me to learn that when he first started playing the guitar, he would turn off the lights in the house. and asked people to turn around so he would play but he wouldn't want them to watch him

and so and then even when you watch Elvis on tour in 72 and he's talking about his stage fright all the way through his career

he had that stage fright because he cared so much but then he also spoke of how once he got into the first couple songs and felt the report of the audience that then the fear sort of subsided and then he was liberated.

And so that was freeing for me to know that even Elvis felt fear. And I think that, you know, the more that I started to look at every performer, you start to see that most all of us have that, you know. And then it's in the moment that you're actually doing the thing that you love, that time sort of stands still. And fear sort of becomes something different. You know, it becomes this energy that focuses you or something. And that was my experience the first time I got on stage.

I mean, Baz curated these experiences before I ever got into filming where I was performing live in front of people. And the first couple times were awful. I mean, it was just, it's so painful. Well, you're also singing people should know. This is real. There's no lip sync. track that you're you know it's like you have to get that down and then you have to be the person

and you have to move like the person i mean you've got like 10 different things i imagine there's so many things in your head if you get one of them wrong people go oh he doesn't look like Elvis you start judging yourself you start thinking i don't know if i moved exactly right in that moment or i don't know if i saying exactly right in that moment and um and so you're you're nitpicking yourself and and uh and so for me it was this constant process of of trying to figure out how certain things could be, if I worked on them long enough, then I wasn't having to think about them anymore. And then they, they also, if I approached them from the, the impulses that were happening inside, then, then you're not watching yourself from the outside.

Then, um, and that, that was, those were the pivotal moments when it started to feel like it wasn't me, me, you know, judging myself from the outside, but it was feeling something that was there was no other way to move. It was just that, because that's how the music was in that moment. Yeah, so that's when it became fun. Do you remember the first time you looked in the mirror and saw Elvis with the hair and the makeup and the wardrobe and all of it?

Do you remember that moment? I mean, I remember the entire process. We had more hair and makeup tests than I think most people have ever done on a film because that's the way Baz is where we had just months and months of just trying things. We would try on a nose, and we tried tons of prosthetics, and then no prosthetics, and then we kind of kept going back and forth trying to figure it out.

Because there was also the thing where, I've talked about this a little bit, but in the beginning I had this unrealistic expectation that if I somehow could either, you know, with the help of prosthetics, but mostly if I could move my, the muscles in my face in a certain way, that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and Elvis. Yeah.

Well, the moment that I first saw myself. I mean, we did have so many months of the makeup tests, but it was the moment that we were first going to film. Because you kind of, you live in the possibility when you're in prep, but then the moment that you're actually going to do something between action and cut, That's the moment of truth. So that's when I really, I looked in the mirror.

And the first thing that we were filming was the 68 comeback special. And so I was sitting in the dressing room. That was Elvis's dressing room in the film. And I looked at myself in the mirror. And I was in the room by myself. And it was the moment before I was walking out on stage. And I was so nervous. And then I looked in the mirror and it was like I was seeing Elvis giving me a pep talk.

Because I'm seeing that face in the mirror. saying, you know, yes, this is terrifying. But, you know, that's exactly what Elvis was feeling in that moment was his career was on the line. And that's exactly how I felt. So that was the moment, was looking into the mirror. And it was surreal. Did he also say you look great in the black leather? Yeah.

You look great in the black leather. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Austin Butler right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Austin Butler. I have to imagine it was and continues to be so gratifying to have sort of received the satisfaction of approval from the Presley family from the late Lisa Marie and Priscilla who were there for you at the Golden Globes. And it sounds like kind of were there for you every step of the way and saying,

you got it right. And if anybody's going to say that, I guess you want to hear it from them. Yeah. that I remember the moment that they were first going to watch the film. I had never been more nervous for anybody to see anything that I'd ever done because they hadn't seen anything and they didn't even read the script at that point. And so, and they were very nervous and I really thought it could go either way. and then when Baz read me and Priscilla's email

I just burst into tears because it was I felt so much responsibility to them and and and for their family and and for Elvis's legacy and it was just yeah it was such a

such a beautiful moment and then when I finally got to meet Lisa Marie because we We didn't meet until we screened the film at Graceland. And when I, when I've locked eyes on her, it's a really surreal thing when I've been playing her dad for such a long time and been doing my best to make it as true for me as possible the relationship, you know, of,

feeling the love for her through her father. And then because of the film resonated with her in that way, suddenly now is this moment where we're standing in front of each other and we're looking into each other's eyes. And I felt so much love for her through him in that whole process that I've never felt closer to somebody quicker than I felt with her. and and then she was just the most incredible woman I've ever met and just so so incredibly honest and loving

and you had to just finally be able to give her a hug and and then to spend all those moments with her so it's really it's really sad right now yeah I mean it's such an emotional time anyway around everything that's happening for you professionally, that added layer of her passing must give us an entire new depth,

a profound depth of feeling around what's happening right now with the movie. Yeah, yeah, sure. And it's... Yeah, it's so... I mean, I've said it in these exact words, but it's just very bittersweet right now. Because it's...

I just wish that she was here to celebrate with us. But I'm, and I'm just so, I'm so grateful that everybody has received this story in the way that they have. And to get recognition for their family, you know, and for her dad, who, I know it weighed on her a lot, how misunderstood he was. And so to be a part of that, I just feel so endlessly privileged, you know. Yeah, you did them very proud. And she did get to see it. She got to see you up on that stage, getting a Golden Globe and thanking her father, which was such a beautiful moment, too.

We were talking a little bit before we started about that speech at the Golden Globes where you 10 years ago, you 20 years ago, would not have been able to process. I'm the one up on the stage holding the trophy. I still can hardly process. That's it, and Quentin Tarantino, and all my heroes in a room looking up at you receiving this award for Best Actor. What was that like? It still sort of just feels like this dream that's hard to wrap my head around, you know? I, yeah, I mean, that moment was really wild.

I mean, as I said in the speech, Quentin has meant so much to me for so long. Baz has meant so much to me for so long. Watching Romeo and Juliet redefined the way that I saw, films could be made. And I've looked up to Brad Pitt since before I even started acting. He was the last person that I touched before I walked up on stage, and he just said, get on up there. And, yeah, it's hard to believe that it's actually real.

Another one of your heroes, Leonardo DiCaprio, said had some kind words for you afterwards as well. Yeah, you just said, I'm so proud of you, buddy. And, I mean, we were talking before the interview started. And, I mean, between Brad and Leo, they were the guys that I looked up to so much. And I still look up to them so much. And I shaped so much of the way that I worked because of, I mean, looking at Leo's career and the way that he invests so much of himself in every project that he ever takes on,

and the fact that he was able to go from being a child actor and then transition in such a flawless way, and the choices that he's made, I have so much respect for him. and as we were saying before you know I I looked at okay who are the acting coaches that he works with and I found Larry Moss and I read his book when I was 13 years old and then and then eventually then Larry became a mentor to me and and we worked together and now we've worked together for years and and so all of that to then have a moment like like the Globes and and to look at Leo after afterwards and hear that from him. It just meant so much to me. I love hearing you talk about your 12, 13 years old studying acting in such an intense way. And again, going back to a kid who's very, very shy, I think is the way you put it. So where does the acting come from? That's sort of counterintuitive to people that a shy kid wants to be up on a stage or he wants to be on a screen in front of cameras and lights

and all that stuff. How did you find your way to acting? I um well so I mean when I look back at it I was so shy in public but then I would do anything to make my mom laugh and and so and I think that's how a lot of kids kind of start or how a lot of kids even shy kids are you know when I look at it and so I would be so silly for my mom I would just do anything um and then I also love I loved watching movies. I watched tons of movies. And I didn't really like to hang out with other kids, so I spent a lot of time at home. So I'd watch a lot of films, and I would recreate scenes from my mom.

So that really, I think, was the genesis of it all. And then I mean, if you want to hear the story of how I actually got into it. I had a, I told this before, but I had a stepbrother for, for a brief period of time. My mom got remarried. And my stepbrother's dad was a hairdresser.

And he, my, this brother in mine, he always wanted to have an afro. And so his father permed his hair. And it didn't turn out as an afro. It just was this wild curly hair. So he had a very unique look.

You're being kind when you see he was a little kid. And he had this perm and he ended up going to the Orange County Fair. And he got scouted by this background talent agent who said, you have a very unique look, you should come up to L.A. on audition. And so I just tagged along when he went up to do this audition. Turns out the audition is for a background talent agency. and we didn't know what that meant, but you basically pay them some money, and they get you head shots, and they get you to do extra work.

And so as a little kid, they needed child extras. So I just tagged along, and when they saw that my mom had another kid, they said, you know, why does he do it as well? And something came over me that day where she said, you want to do it? And I said, yeah. And I was so nervous, my legs were shaking. not later they didn't even have film on the camera. But I had to do this thing in front of a camera

of reading like a Welchis Grape shoot, juice commercial or something. And I remember my legs actually shaking. Like I could not hardly stand up. And then they, you know, they ended up getting me into doing extra work. And that was the thing, was getting onto a set.

It was the kindness of the, everybody that I worked with. It was seeing how the whole dance of filmmaking works and there's just something that sparked in me where I fell in love with the whole process and then it was going to acting classes at that time and that's the thing that started to give me tools to get out of shyness.

That's amazing. It's amazing. Sort of happened by happenstance. But I guess that is part of it, right, that's one way to do, which is I'm uncomfortable in a real world situation, but if I can get behind a character or read a line or something. something. Yeah. You can kind of be that person. You could do all those things that, you know,

are maybe frowned upon in real life. Right, right. Letting out bits of yourself that, that, you know, they don't really let you do in the rest of the world. That's right. That's right. Well, clearly you made it from the background to a little closer to the camera. You had an amazing run of Disney, Nickelodeon, all the CW shows. What did you take a, away from those experiences. What did they teach you about acting and about where you actually wanted to be sometime, hopefully, down the road in your career? That's the, that's a good question.

It was, as a kid, you sort of taught all these, you sort of taught to be professional. And so I learned how to find my light and hit my mark and remember my lines. And it helped me to deal with, uh, the anxiety that comes from when action is called and everybody's looking at you and you're nervous and how do you sort of deal with your nervous system responding in that way going to tons of auditions and hearing no and I imagine it would be different if I wasn't a kid but at the time I think it allowed me to be able to deal with rejection a little bit easier because I was so young.

And, yeah, so I had people tell me early on, you know, the odds are plan to go to 100 auditions before you book one. And so, and then another 100 before you book one. And eventually those numbers kind of, it starts, the fraction starts shifting. But in the beginning, I just treated it like a numbers game. and the amount of awful auditions that I had where I was so nervous, I'd forget lines or have a complete meltdown or my hands would be sweating. And I could never eat before an audition.

It just helped me to be able to deal with nerves, I think, a lot. But you did pretty well. I mean, you booked eventually maybe. Eventually. I mean, it took me a couple years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then by the time I was about 15 and I was actually working and then making money. Stick around for more of my conversation with.

with Austin Butler right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Austin Butler. Yeah, and I mean, you book some big name shows, and you sort of come out of that phase of your career, and it sounds to me, like you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you were looking for that next thing. As you said, you grew up loving, Agent Bull and James Dean, and you're watching all these movies,

and you're like, how do I get to something like that? And maybe it was frustrating, fair to say, for a little while that you weren't finding that? Yeah, and I lived in comparison. as well. I was comparing myself to Leo, you know. And so I saw he was nominated for an Oscar when I think he was 19 or something. It's been a while since I've looked up that, but it's in my mind as I think he was 19 for a Gilbert grape. Yeah. Yeah. And I may be off on the age, but either way, I was, I always thought, oh, I'm behind, you know. And I'm doing a young adult TV show when he's working with Scors. Sasey or whatever those things were.

And that's really what I mean, such a good lesson for me was everybody's on their own path. And you just got to just go on your own path and keep your sights set

on where you want to go and work as hard as you possibly can. And for me if I had had had some big break when I was younger. Maybe I wouldn't have sought out the teachers that I did and learned. I wasn't ready.

I wasn't that good, you know? Yeah. I really took a, it takes a long time. Acting is a, it's a weird thing, and it's not an easy thing, you know, for everyone, especially. I mean, certain people just have gifts, but I had to really work at it because I was not very good for a long time. And I still have so much to learn. You know, I still know that there's just so much to learn when you see certain actors that, you know, are just at the absolute top of their craft, you know.

It's so inspiring to me. It's been those couple of years before you make it down the street here in Broadway with Denzel. Was there ever a moment, Austin, where you were like, maybe this just isn't going to work out? Yeah. Maybe I'm not going to ever be Leo. Maybe I'm not going to have a career as a professional actor. or did those doubts start to creep in for you at all? Yeah, and there were many times, many, many times.

And I would, you know, I'd really question it, but I didn't have a plan B. I didn't, I tested out of high school when I was 15. I didn't go to college. I've never had a real job. I can't, I didn't have another option. So I thought about it for a while. and I, you know, I mentioned this in a roundtable I did recently, but I had a moment, especially

after my mom passed away, where my whole world sort of shifted. And I started looking at material that I was working with and just going, this is, it just feels so vapid right now. And is what I'm doing, does it, does it matter at all? and and is there is there I was having trouble finding joy in it and then and then that shifted when when I did the Iceman Cummeth because it was such a a mammoth task that that it required me to really invest so much of myself and I was getting to act with with Denzel and David Morse and these just titans and working with Eugene O'Neill and you know his writing is just so

it demands so much of you and and so that just shifted so much for me yeah it feels like that was a huge inflection point yeah for you because also coming out of those as you said the sort of Disney and and Nickelodeon years you wanted to a bigger challenge and be taken more seriously and all that. And boy, what a way to do that, to come to Broadway, number one, to be an iceman comment number two, and then to sort of share scenes with Denzel Washington. Was that daunting to you? Because you did a pretty damn good job. You got great reviews the minute you stepped down to the stage and people saw you completely... I was not expecting reviews to be good at all. Because I really thought an L.A. kid coming to New York, they're going to rip me apart, you know.

And I just kind of thought, this is how you cut your teeth. They're going to rip me to shreds. Right. Part of the process. It's part of the process. You go up there, fail on stage, and so that was a surprise. But it was incredibly daunting. I, so much so that I, out of just sheer terror, I just worked so hard ahead of time. And I memorized the entire four-hour play,

everyone's lines before showing up to the table. So that way I could. Wow. I, you know, everybody that was in the scenes. Yeah. And so the first table read, I wouldn't even look at the script. And it was like I had this, I had so much to prove, I felt. And meanwhile, Denzel's the most relaxed, you know, just absolute top of his game.

And he's watching me, the whole table read just, I'm just going for it 100% the entire table read. And, and I think because, because he saw certain things in just how much I cared about it. Then he started to kind of take me under his wing and he was very kind to me. But getting to watch him in the rehearsal room was the most amazing, amazing experience because I got to see how many different ways

one scene can be done. And there's this thing with acting where often you feel like there's a perfect way to do it, that you got to, you got a, you know, there's this perfectionist sort of mindset sometimes. I don't know if everybody else has it, but I definitely have. Where there's like this ideal way that the scene should play, and you're trying to figure out what it is.

But what I learned from him is that that's not true, that it's just truth, that there's so many different ways. If you're newly alive every night, I would see him one night on the stage do the most brilliant thing I'd ever seen an actor do. And you would think he would do the same thing next night because he knew it was great. The audience knew it was great. Every actor on stage knew it was great. And you would think, okay, he's going to do the same thing again the next

night and he wouldn't. And I'd never see him do it again. Instead, he'd do something else that's brilliant in a different moment. And because he's not, he's not holding tight to some idea of perfection. Instead, he's just, he's just alive. And that's why he's so compelling, you know. So I learned a lot from him in that way. What a gift to have dense. Washington as your mentor. Yeah, I mean, just to soak into osmosis, a little bit of that brilliance that he has. And there was some beautiful poetry to that relationship.

You thanked Denzel on stage again in that Golden Globe speech, and it wasn't just for being your partner in Iceman Comet, but because he called Baz and said, this kid is really good. You got to give him a good look for Elvis. I really, I'm so grateful to him for that. Yeah. I mean, what a list of people you had to thank up.

there on that stage. There's so many. I didn't have enough time to thank everybody. I got a long list. Obviously, up on that stage as well at the Globes, you thanked your mother. I mean, talk about somebody who was there when you weren't sure you could be an actor and was sort of encouraging you in that direction. And sadly, what didn't get to see where you are now, what do you think she's thinking

as she watches what's happening to her son, what he's done in this last year? I think she'd be very proud. And, yeah, she sacrificed so much. You know, like she quit her job to drive me to auditions and drive me to acting class and she'd wait outside and then drive all the way back down to Orange County. Also, when she was in high school, she wanted to be in. actor and so I think I'm sort of getting to live this life for both of us in that way and she was just she was my best friend and so I think she'd be happy. Is she part of the motivation? Has she been

part of the motivation in those years when you weren't sure to say okay she's with me let's keep going yeah yeah yeah there's so many I mean she was also just the most kind person you know she was so she lit up every room and she was so vibrant and um and so um and so um and so there's so many things that i just go i just want to make her proud you know i just want to i just want to um let her sort of live through me and in the lessons that she taught me and in the way that she she was you know so yeah well you've done her very proud thank you and not just for your performances, but for the way you treat people based on everything I've heard and people I've talked to. We were talking about this before, how kindness goes a long way. You've seen some

role models in the way they've behaved on set, and you're clearly doing it yourself as well. So thank you. Congratulations on everything. A lot of people are emotional today. Now, listen. We've had our Oprah moments. No, I didn't. Jeez. I didn't mean for it. It just happened. No, no, you're just, you're so present, and you're just such a great person to be around. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Austin. I really enjoyed it. So great to talk to you. So nice to talk to you. Thank you.

My big thanks again to Austin for being so open in a great conversation. You can stream Elvis now on HBO Max and keep your eyes peeled for Austin at the Oscars. And my thanks, as always, to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of these conversations with our guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.