Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Charlize Theron

Episode Date: July 5, 2020

Since leaving her native South Africa as a teenager, Charlize Theron has worked her way to the top of Hollywood’s A-List. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist gets together with the Oscar winner for a virtual conversation about that journey, her new Netflix movie The Old Guard, and life at home with her two daughters. 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 a brand new episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. As you know, we've been bringing you some of our greatest tips as we're not able to get into rooms and sit down with people like we usually do for my Sunday today. Interviews that then become the extended Sunday sit down podcast. But this week, we got a fresh one for you. And it is with Oscar winner Charlize Theron. She's got this new movie out called The Old Guard. It's on Netflix.

And let me just try to get you the plot here. Basically, what it is is a superhero film. It's based on a graphic novel. And it's a group of millennia-old immortal mercenaries who've been protecting humanity for thousands of years. Does that make any sense? It's really a good premise. It's really a good movie.

So basically, you have a bunch of people who've fought in wars since BC times, all the way now up through Afghanistan, and they are immortal until they're not. Charlize leads this group. Her character's name is Andy. It's a very cool movie. So we got together the way these things are working is we're all at home. I'm doing my TV show from my garage.

So if Charlize Theron says she wants to talk about the movie, we set up a Zoom. I come over into the garage. I actually said to my wife, she saw me getting ready and walking out of the kitchen. She said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to the garage to talk to Charlize Theron. which is a very strange sentence to say to another person, particularly to your wife. But Charlize is at home in L.A.

I'm in New York, and we sat down and talked about the movie. She was great. We also got into what's happening in the country right now. She, of course, is from South Africa. She grew up during the time of apartheid and kind of came of age as a teenager when apartheid was being torn down in South Africa. So she has some really interesting views on what's happening in America in terms of a reckoning with a country's past.

She also has adopted two daughters, two African-American girls. She talked about what it's like to talk to them about everything that's happening in the news and happening in the country. Obviously, she's an Oscar winner. She's a great actress. We know all that. The movie is the old guard, but also just so interesting to get her to sit down and talk about what's happening in the world and what's happening in America right now.

I think you'll really enjoy our conversation right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. with Oscar winner Charlize Theron. Charlize, thank you so much for doing this. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to see you. So I just got finished watching the Old Guard, which is phenomenal. I'm going to use a very scientific term.

It's an ass-kicking movie. I think that's fair to say. The fight scenes are incredible. The action is great. It's just a fun movie to watch. How do you describe it to people? Because there is a moment early in the film where your team is on a mission

where you realize, oh, there's something different about this group? Yeah, they are, they're a group of immortal mercenaries, and they have this great ability to not die yet,

sometimes. They can. Yeah, I mean, I think it was interesting to try and find, when you look at immortality or characters who are immortal, Well, you run up against this little problem and that's stakes. You know, you want you, if you walk into every scenario knowing that you're not going to die,

then what's really at stake, right? And that's not fun to watch. So it was important to give them this ability to lose it so that you are always kind of worrying for them. But I would say that it's a really great sci-fi film. It's a really big, interesting world. It's global. It's diverse. Yet the emotional aspect of the story,

the themes that it explores, the characters who are at the core of it, there's something very intimate about the emotion of this film. It's a very emotional film to watch. And I think that's sometimes difficult for people to even comprehend because we think of these films as only kind of like big in scope and set piece. But the emotional drive in this story is something that people have really responded to. One of the things I loved about it, too, as you say, it is sci-fi, but it's very grounded in reality,

both contemporary reality and reality from millennia ago. And it touches on a group of people who can at once be in the middle of the Crusades and then end up in Afghanistan in modern times. So it was cool for me, and I wonder if it was for you, just to see the scope. of their immortality, the scope of their lives. Yes, it's mind-boggling. And obviously, when you jump into wanting to develop this kind of story, you realize that you have to really cross your tease and dot your eyes,

because you're trying to cover a lot of time, a lot of you want to be accurate in its history. And we were really lucky that we had Greg Rucker, who wrote the graphic novel, who obviously had extensively done so much research in this world that we could constantly go to and say, but wait a second, so 200 years ago, it was such a vast amount of time that we were trying to cover, but it was really fun to be able to explore storytelling on that level. I know you're someone who likes to, but also is able to be selective in the characters you play. And what was it about Andy as you read through the script that you thought, okay, this is worth me investing a couple of years of my life.

Yeah, it is time-consuming and especially something on this scope for sure. I think the first thing that really grabbed me about the graphic novel was that I saw great potential to go and explore something that felt so big in its scope, but where thematically it interests me, the bigger questions about humanity, your time on this earth, how it spend the meaning of it, and also, you know, the curse or the gift that immortality can be, this idea that as humans, we will always be attracted to more time, to wanting to have more time, but what does that really mean? And, you know, you're breaking down, why does all of this even matter, right?

Why does it matter? And I think that limitation in time that we have, the, The idea that this could all be gone tomorrow is something that really adds value to our relationships and to how special it is to spend the amount of time that we do have with people that we get to share it with. I think Andy was somebody who, you know, she's lived for over 6,000 years. She's lost not only faith in humanity, but also faith in herself. And I was interested to go and explore a character who you kind of meet rock bottom and have to build up again. You have to kind of bring her back to a place where she's a believer again,

where she's not giving up. But she's definitely finding herself at a crossroads where she's really questioning all of it. It's so interesting to hear you talk about this existential question about immortality. And I thought about it after I watched the movie. So I wonder what you feel about whether or not, I mean, we all assume we would want to be immortal, but is immortality appealing, actually, or does it take away from what you just described,

which is that we had X years here, we better make the most of it in our relationships and the people we touch and what we do with our lives. Would you want to be immortal? No, after making this film and the amount of time that we spent exploring that question, for sure or not. I mean, I think, you know, when you think about it in superficial,

in a superficial way, of course, yes, there's something really intriguing about it. But when you break it down to just the emotional suffering that you would have to experience over and over and over and over and over again, that never stops for you, I think you realize that it becomes a very lonely experience because ultimately everybody leaves you. And especially the character of Andy, she was the first immortal and walked this earth alone for many, many years, having, you know, trying to have relationships or experiences where she had to just constantly say goodbye to people.

And I think it's just, that's, that's heavy. That's really heavy. You know, I always, this is such a weird thing, but I did think quite a bit, you know, the closest thing to that that I could relate to as a mere mortal was, you know, dogs. They live for such a short period. And you, I've gone through three big experiences now where I've lost dogs in my life. And it's brutal. It's so brutal.

So we play with that concept in the film, you know, having to lose family children over and over and over again and not being able to go with them or to explain it to them. Luckily, you've been good at repopulating your house with those dogs, some of whom are running under your feet as we speak, I think. Yes, exactly. Yeah, we have two new members to our family, Leo and Cleo. My daughters have been begging me for their own dogs. because we've always had dogs, but they're right. They're my dogs, you know. And so they were like, Mom, no, we want our own dogs.

And I finally caved in. So they have their own little puppies now. And I bet you get to help with taking care of those little puppies. It always comes back on us. Let's be clear. Yeah. Let's be very clear. Yes.

I basically have two new puppies. Yes, you do. And you knew it was going to be that way, but you dove in anyway. I mentioned earlier on some of these fight scenes in the movie. you're obviously no stranger to that. You're no stranger to doing those kind of stunts yourselves. I'm thinking about that airplane fight scene, which is just incredible because it's close quarters.

How do you prepare for those kind of fight scenes? Is it any different than you've done in the past with Mad Max or any of your other films? Or was there anything unique about this experience physically for you? You know, the biggest difference I would say was just that the character really kind of dictated the way she would fight and given that she'd lived for over 6,000 years, and she was a martial arts expert in all martial arts,

which is just not humanly possible, we had to really focus and hone in on what could be my strengths and really work of those so that we could translate that part of her story, because obviously I wasn't going to master all martial arts. I had never had to fight so technically. I think a lot of the fighting that I've

done definitely skill. There's a level of skill and style involved, but I could always kind of rely on becoming scrappy, you know, like all of those characters like Ferrios and Mad Max or Lorraine and Atomic Blonde, there was always an element of them that if push came to chef, they would just get scrappy. You'd grab a pot and a pan or, you know, something. And in this case, I couldn't get sloppy. I couldn't kind of rely on that just human skill. I had to always be very consistent in the technique and making it look effortless which is a really, really hard thing to do.

It was probably the biggest feedback I kept getting it from my trainers. Now make it look easy. Okay. Easy for you to say. That's a great note. So you're fighting in that scene I mentioned against Nile, played by Kiki Lane.

She is sometimes, you probably have had this experience watching films or maybe acting in them where you look at somebody on screen, me as a viewer and go, okay, that's a star, you know, that's somebody who's going to be a star in this business. What was it like to work with her and what sort of wisdom did you impart to her?

She's just kind of getting started and you having done everything you've done in your career. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. She is incredible, and, you know, I obviously had seen her in Fiel Street could talk and she just delivers a performance that's unbelievable in that film.

And she is just unaffersonable. physical level. Like when she walks into a room, she's formidable. There's just an energy and a quality and a confidence about her that it was everything that we needed, putting aside how talented she is as an actor. Because this was a big physical role. And we wanted the character of Nile to really step into those shoes. And, you know, there's a relationship that starts with Nile and Andy in the beginning of the film that's, you know, they kind of go at it with each other in the scene that you keep, you. you just referred to in the plane, it was the first set piece that we shot on the film. So that was our first week of shooting. And I think it set the tone for the whole film. The two of us kind of going at it with each other. The thing that was interesting was we got to train together on this film,

which I've never had before. And it was, I think it really informed us a little bit about each other. She was so inspiring to be around. You know, when you train for a film, the biggest part of it is really consistency. You just have to keep showing up. And that's sometimes the hardest part. But when you train with somebody, especially somebody like Kiki, there was this element of like, well, she's showing up.

So I'm showing up. We pushed each other. And we were part of the choreography in that fight. A lot of that was kind of influenced by how we felt our characters would be with each other. You know, this element of a good fighter like Andy would, want to test Anil a little bit. She would want to see what she was capable of. And that meant that she'd have to let her get a hit in there every once in a while.

And I said, well, what if she actually does get a hit in there? Wouldn't that be impressive? So things like that, it was nice for us to be a part of a lot of that stuff. You know, if anything, she, you know, she taught me to just push myself. You know, I don't, you know, I think it's a misconception that the one with the experience, in the age brings, brings everything to the table. I think she brought so much to the table for me. She really elevated where I went with this character.

I owe a lot to her. I think you're only as good as you can be on your own. And then it's that other part, that partner that you have. And it's where they take you. And Kiki really took me to the next level. Do you have conversations with a young actor on a set like that? maybe in a trailer or eating in between scenes where they say, okay, you're Charlize Theron,

you've been down this road, you've been a young actress in Hollywood. Do you give her any of that wisdom that you've gained over the years? You know, it's nice that when you make a film, you're kind of stuck, it's like, you know, you pack up like a circus, and you have these moments that just happen, right?

It's not like I went knocking on her doors and listen, I want to have a conversation. But when you find yourself, in these moments where you're just, you know, talking in general. And I think the biggest thing for me is always just, when I think of myself 20 years ago, you know, I talked a lot about this on the press junket for a bombshell, this idea where, you know, I found myself in rooms

with men feeling this pressure to make them feel comfortable that I had to like set them at ease or laugh at their jokes. And I always, you know, I always, I think that's like my biggest thing I always said a young actress. I'm like, don't take anything. And I feel, you know, I, you know, just that encouragement of like you don't have to, you don't have to change yourself. You don't have to make yourself smaller. And the nice thing about this new generation of women, you know, Kiki is a prime example of it. You know, her attitude was like, no way.

would never, you know. And so it's nice to see that there's been a real evolution, that there's a new group of women who just, you know, not their age don't come into play and they're just, they walk into the room and they don't feel like they have to be anything other than themselves. That's, yeah, that's, I'm sure I was going to ask you've seen in 20 years a huge difference. And maybe even in the last two or three years in the way women carry themselves, certainly the way they're treated in Hollywood. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, I think there's been more awareness, right? I think when I started out, there was this kind of code of silence around it.

I know that when I've been in situations that were not so preferable, people just didn't talk about it. You didn't talk about it because it felt you always kind of felt like it was your fault. Like somehow you did something wrong or that if you said anything, nothing would come from it. And if anything, you would be the one losing out. And I do think that that's changing now. It doesn't mean that it's easier for, that it's going to be easy for victims to speak out.

It's always difficult. And we have to have more empathy and understanding that. But I do think that there has now been a spotlight placed on it where, and I think social media really helped with this, where there's an empowerment around it, where women are coming together and we're sharing our stories. And it doesn't feel so alone. You just, you know, that's the biggest thing about experiencing these things. You feel, you feel very alone. And that's changed. I think also with someone of your status, an Oscar winner, as well known and highly regarded as you are, and people like Gwyneth Paltrow came out and started telling their stories.

I think America just opened its eyes and said, wait a minute, Charlize Theran was treated that way or Gwett Paltrow was treated that way. They're these huge stars. And I think for you guys to lift your voices has been important. Obviously, the victims of all these awful incidents are the real people we want to focus on. but I think it's important for people to know that it wasn't about you too and Gwyneth Paltrow and others were also worried about their careers no matter how well they were doing. Yeah.

And unfortunately, you know, it still continues. No, it does, you, there is not a prototype to this kind of violence or abuse or harassment of a woman or this kind of judgment. Well, what did you do? Are you weak? Are you, it has absolutely nothing to do with those things. And, you know, like everything that we're witnessing right now, you realize there's systemic things that we have to change. There's a social awareness that we have to get out there.

You know, what does it mean to be masculine? It doesn't mean this, you know. And I think we're going through a huge social and cultural shift right now, which is a very important one. I feel like, I do feel like history is being made right now. And there's accountability. There should be more accountability for sure where the work is definitely not done. But I do think that there's going to be a level of shame that will come your way if you are not part of this change or not on the right side of history. And if that's what it takes to get it right, then that's, then I'm okay with that.

You comment this change that you're talking about in this moment from such an interesting perspective as someone who grew up in South Africa and really was coming of age. You were a teenager at the end of apartheid and then when Mandela becomes president in 94, and also as the mother of two African-American children who are growing up in America. So what do you make of this movement, this moment over the last, call it a month or so, since the killing of George Floyd? What's your read on it, given your life's worth of perspective? I think there's a saying, the straw that broke the camel's back. And I think George Floyd will always be remembered as that.

We have to also remember that on that day, five other men lost their lives and very similar conditions. It's also not something this kind of brutality and violence and unjust has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. There is a frustration that is inside me because I come from circumstances where it was so evident, like apartheid as a system. that kind of blatant racism doesn't work. And you want to believe that we learn and we will never go back. And yet here we are finding ourselves at the crossroads. Again, I think I don't want to believe that we've lost everything through witnessing countries like South Africa deal with the drop of apartheid or the civil rights movement and what we've gained out of all of those experiences. But I think this time around what we're realizing is we can't just be changing these things on a surface level.

We have to dig deeper and we have to put systems in place that really protect everybody. And until that happens, it doesn't matter if you're walking through your life and you're not a racist or you don't think you're part of the problem. You are part of the problem if you are voting and actively living in a world that supports a system that is telling people, minorities, people of color, that they have. less value that our judiciousism will not support them. Our social programs are just our everyday life, small businesses, how we go about the structure of our community. It has to change. We have to, I feel like this time around we're really demanding deeper change and a deeper look into why this keeps coming up, why this keeps happening. But it is really, you know, it's interesting for me because my

oldest girl's eight, she's eight years old. I had this moment the other day where, you know, it started with the pandemic. This, you know, that was just, you kind of go like, wow, I've never been in a lockdown. And what are my kids making of this? And then all of this other stuff that then

followed. And I had this flashback where I remembered vividly, my God, I was eight years old when the AIDS epidemic had South Africa. And we were going through the first real struggles of having apartheid be dropped. And this kind of, you know, that country almost broke out into a civil war. And I had to really reflect.

It really helped me in a weird way to kind of navigate how we went about telling my girls what was happening right now in a way that wouldn't freak them out or scare them or wouldn't feel appropriate, but also felt truthful. And that's a, yes, a tough conversation. you don't want your eight-year-old daughter or your five-year-old daughter to, there's a sense of innocent loss, like their innocence, you know, there's a little bit of their innocence that we're there before that's not there now. But in a weird way, I see how it's empowered them, you know. They've definitely been empowered by all of this, and that's a good thing. Yeah, I think we've all had conversations with our children.

I feel that too, that loss of innocence where they go, wait a minute, people don't like other people based on that. It doesn't even make sense to them intuitively. But what is your, the react, your kids are young, but what's their reaction then when you start to tell them all these things that they may well encounter in American society? It's a mixture of a lot of things, right? It's shock. The, the, the, the, the, a level of grief, a level of then fear. And, you know, I feel like it's a, it's not one conversation. It's many conversations. And the conversation is continuing. Like, we find. moments every single day where that conversation is continuing. And they are, they are taking the information and I think processing it in their own times. My two children are very much their own little individuals. And they process things differently. You know, in a weird way, one of my kids

is she's more sensitive to it. And I have another child who she's not so sensitive. She's more like, you know, she wants to be proactive. Okay, so then what am I going to do? What do we do? Okay, we make signs. We have signs in the car. She's that kid. So I'm trying to have them just do it on their own time. I'm there when they have questions. I try to ignite a conversation with them if something comes up that I feel like we should talk about.

But I also, you know, I want them to, it's like I think all parents will relate to this. You can talk to your kids, but the question is, are they listening, are they hearing what you're saying to them? I want to get to a place where they're actually hearing all of this and it's it's penetrating in a deeper sense for them where they can actually make their own sense out of it. It's so fascinating to hear you talk about the echoes of your childhood and what you see today. I was going to ask you if you see any familiar signs from your time in South Africa to what we're seeing today. And in another sense, the sort of truth and reconciliation aspect of it.

Obviously, South Africa went through that in an official sense. It feels like now in America we're going through an unofficial beginning of that where we stop and say, wait a minute, we've made all these assumptions. We've marched down with our lives. But what got us to this point 400 years ago and all the steps that we've taken to get here? Do you see an America that's starting to reckon with some of its past? Yes, I do. I mean, I also, you know, I worry when we start patting ourselves on the back a little too soon and become complacent. But I do see that.

I would hope that, you know, we don't get stuck in some form of complacency where we just go back and become so comfortable with a little bit of progress that we've made. I don't think it's going to happen. I feel like this time there's something different about the energy and the intensity of it. But I do think we're finally at a place where, you know, I know for myself where I want to take a step back. and I want to be just, I want to be educated. I want to know more because, you know, there is a real danger for all of us who think we're so woke that we are not part of the problem.

And I think we are now painting with a very, very fine brush here and we're all realizing that we have some part that we are playing in this. And we have to look deeper into that. And so I'm trying to start with myself, you know, take a step back, listen. try to learn as much, ask as many questions, instead of kind of just, you know, thinking that I have all the answers. I don't. And it's been nice to see, you know, a community kind of taking a step back and handing the microphone over and saying, tell us, like, tell us your story. Tell us what it's like to be a black man or a black woman. We should have been doing that a long time ago.

And I think there has to be an empathetic way we go about this now. We have to be able to truly understand. Yeah, that's really well said. Before I let you go on the just general quarantine question and the movie business, do you see a day soon somewhere on the horizon where you're back on a movie set with directors and actors and extras and everybody else making movies again? Some people are trying in their own way to sort of step back in and put their toes in the water. But do you see that day?

And if so, what does it look like to you? I do. I mean, I want to believe that we are moving in the right direction as far as what the new normal will be. And I think when we, I think if we can get to a place where there's a vaccine and we know that we have success with that, I think we can go back to some normalcy. But I do think it's going to change. I think we will think differently about just viruses in general. And I don't know how that couldn't inform us and how we go about our everyday life. I don't know what it's going to look like.

I feel like, you know, my industry is a tricky one. It's one of those jobs where it takes a village. You need a lot of people in order to do it. And I don't know how we're going to do that anytime soon in a safe manner. I know that a lot of my colleagues are actively trying to, you know, be inventive and trying to figure out ways where we can do that. But I don't know, I honestly don't foresee a very, very near future where we're just going to go back to making films the way we used to.

Well, you're going to have to get back eventually because based on what I saw at the end of the old guard, I think there might be another movie coming. Am I under something there? Yeah, you're a smart man. Very astute of you. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more.

more from Charlize Theron after a break. Welcome back to the Sunday Sitdown podcast, now more of my conversation with Charlize Theron. So Charlize, we talked about the dogs. That's been a big part of your quarantine life. What else has it been like to be home, not able to go out, not able to work, and just kind of being with your girls, going through school and everything else? interestingly I I found myself in a place right before a lockdown happened where I had just come off the award circuit just that whirlwind that is and and prior to that a press junket for a bombshell that was quite intense and I had been working quite a bit that previous year and so I was actually really ready to just be home. And I had said to everybody in my life, listen, I'm taking a break. I need to be

home. I just need to be with my kids. Don't call me. I don't want to go anywhere. I just want to be in my pajamas. And then quarantine happened and lockdown happened. So, you know, I wasn't craving to really be out there in the world. I'd say the biggest challenge for me was just homeschooling. It was a really, really hard. I can't see. It's that hard. I talk about it and things break. It was mentally just really challenging for me because I was alone with two small children and I didn't, you know, I had one kid downstairs and one kid upstairs and, you know, the other one could have very well just burnt the house down and the kid. And the other one upstairs, you know, was complaining about what a terrible math teacher I was.

So it was incredibly stressful time for me. And I will make any action movie over and over and over again before I homeschool again. That is, I think my children will agree with that. Are you like me that you were shocked at how bad you are at math? I thought, oh, I could. Well, hold that. I mean, listen, I'm telling you my child's perspective, I don't necessarily agree with her perspective. I think I'm a really excellent teacher.

And no, I probably, no, I'm a terrible. She was very specific. She said, I don't think you're a very good math teacher. There's a lot of that just like, well, why? I said, because it just is. Look at it. You're not explaining it, Mom. I thought myself doing the same.

Just jump to the answer. All right, go on the next one. Just that's the way you do it. And right? new, a brand new appreciation for teachers out there. I mean, always appreciated them, but now just a brand new appreciation for them. 100%. 100%. Charlees, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. My big thanks again to Charlize for taking the time to join me virtually, me and my garage, she in her basement talking over Zoom. You can catch her new movie,

The Old Guard, streaming on Netflix this summer. And my thanks as always to all of you. for tuning in. We're going to keep adding more of these new virtual interviews for you to enjoy, but for now, be sure to check out our library of conversations with all of my guests. And don't forget to tune in, as always, to the Sunday Today program on television every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. Thanks again for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.