Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Claire Danes

Episode Date: June 10, 2018

For the last seven years, Claire Danes has played one of the most intense and complex characters on television, CIA officer Carrie Mathieson on the hit series “Homeland.” In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress sits down with Willie Geist to chat about what it’s like to play that memorable role and how the show’s storylines have an uncanny way of predicting the future. She also discusses her childhood growing up in show business, including moving from New York City to Los Angeles at age 13 to audition for “My So-Called Life,” as well as her latest movie, “A Kid Like Jake.” 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. Thanks so much for clicking this week. My guest is Emmy and Golden Globe winner Claire Daines. She is, of course, a star at the hit Showtime series, Homeland, where she plays CIA agent Carrie Matheson, a single mother, fixing the world's problems while battling bipolar disorder. She's won a boatload of awards for it. Just finished her seventh season. Now looking ahead to the eighth season, which could be potentially, we don't know for sure,

her last or even the show's last. So we get into that a little bit. We also talk about a long career. She grew up here in New York City. At 13 years old, she moved with her parents out to L.A. to audition for my so-called life. And when she was 14, a year later, she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress, and she was off to the races. Of course, she was in Little Women, Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. She took that little break, you might remember, and went to Yale for two years before going back to Hollywood. She was working with Jody Foster when she was a teenager on a movie. She was directing the movie and acting alongside Jody Foster. And Jody Foster said, you got to go to college.

You got to have some normalcy in your life. You got to have something to fall back on. So she went to Yale for a couple of years before diving back in to Hollywood. We get into all of that. And then we talk about how she was cast in 2011 in this role that changed her life, Homeland, playing Carrie Mathis in the intensity of being in that character, trying to get out of it, how exhausting it is. Some of the adventures she had filming this most recent season when she was pregnant,

but not pregnant enough to tell her cast and crew, so she talks about falling asleep in the middle of scenes. I think you'll enjoy it. We also get into her latest movie, A Kid Like Jake. She plays with Jim Parsons. They're a married couple with a four-year-old who's experimenting with the idea of gender, trying to figure out what gender he is, and how parents react to that, how they deal with that, how they encourage that, how some parents discourage that,

all in the context in this movie of trying to get their kid into the notoriously difficult preschool process here in New York City. One other nugget, I've got to tell you, and I'm telling you, but we didn't even tell Claire just because of the juju question. We went to do this interview with the famous Peninsula Hotel here in New York City, and we walked in and we were setting up, we were getting ready, and we were informed by someone with the hotel that where we were sitting where our chairs, mine, sitting directly across from Clare's were set up. was the very room where Hillary Clinton watched the 2016 election returns come in. We all went, wow, okay, this is kind of a historic room. She chose the room because if you look out the window, you can see Trump Tower, and there were some symbolism to that.

So as we sat waiting for Claire, it was kind of like, there's the TV where Hillary watched the returns. There's the couch where she and President Clinton watched the returns. So that's just a little bit of backdrop, a little bit of what you're going to feel. when you listen to our Sunday sit-down interview with Claire Daines. Welcome to my sweet, Claire. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very impressive. We've been wandering around because we'll never be in one again. Yeah, I feel like I'm in a Batman movie or something. It's great. Right, the bad guys at the tower, right? Looking down on Gotham. Congratulations on the movie.

Thank you very much. Thank you. For many reasons that we were just talking about, it's a special movie. When you read the script, you obviously have a child around that age. Yeah. How did the script hit you? Well, I mean, it's a really extraordinary piece of writing. It's not every day that you get a script that is this beautifully crafted

and has characters that are this nuanced and relatable. But, yeah, I mean, it's also true that Alex, my character was, her experience was kind of directly parallel to my own. I'm also a New York City mom and had a four-year-old at the time, and had just gone through that gauntlet of a plight. to schools, which is in New York is a very intense undertaking. You know, and that's a meaningful part of the story, but at its core, it's a portrait of a marriage and a family. And it's specific and I think pretty universal.

and hopefully accessible to a lot of different kinds of people, a lot of different stages of their lives. Well, to me too, it was, you know, it's about this kid who's figuring out who he is and the parents figuring out how to accept and tell the rest of the world who he is. But to me, as a parent, I felt just love. I felt protect my kid and the world's mean to him all of a sudden, how do I handle that?

And how do I tell him how to react to that? Yeah, and I think, you know, that age, four or five, is very charged. charged and it's really, I kind of think of it in terms of like exiting Eden or something. You're in this kind of protected bubble and you have your little culture of your family and then suddenly your child is jettisoned into the world and is subjected to, you know, this assessment and social norms and labels and it can just be really unnerving and intimidating. And of course the natural impulse for a parent is to protect and that's only so possible.

So but yeah, it just, you know, and our child in this story is maybe not falling into these like strict gender norms and you know he's loves wearing dresses and is obsessed with all things princess. And you know, we don't really register that as particularly meaningful until suddenly we get this feedback from the world and it makes us self-conscious and nervous for the first time that he might be considered other or might be vulnerable to prejudice or ridicule and it's it's really about the parents' experience of that and you know the kid is fine right which is usually true the parents Yeah, it's just all about the parents' projections and anxieties about what that could mean.

So that all made a lot of sense to me. And I think it's handled really sensitively and very honestly. Yeah, this is an issue, I think the country is just coming to and grappling, especially with children, how to deal with it. And it feels alien to a lot of people that have a child who's grappling with his or her own gender. Did you feel like this was an important movie to be a part of for that reason to sort of educate in some way almost? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's very timely. I think we're all having this awakening right now and we're starting to reconsider these ideas that we've just taken for granted

for millennia. You know, it's a massive shift in our consciousness and I think it's ultimately a really wonderful one. But, you know, it's happening fast and the language is changing and And there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding it and I think, you know, a lot of nervousness about how and what to say and what's politically correct and what isn't. And the concepts are they're challenging and you can think about them in a political way or an academic way or an analytical way. But I think here in this story, we look at it from a very intimate perspective and what might that mean in real terms, you know, if you have a child who, you know, is, is a very intimate

is gender fluid or, you know, gender expansive or whatever the terminology is. And, you know, and they're loving people, they're well-intentioned people, they're liberal people, but still, they, you know, they're scared. And they, you know, and they're processing this information at different rates and different ways, and there's confusion and hurt that comes from that, and ultimately they work through that. I think that's really useful to have a chance to explore what that might mean and just have compassion for the whole experience and for every player involved. We joked about the school admissions in New York, putting that part of it aside.

I just felt as a parent, whatever is unique about your child that might become a vulnerability out in the world, it's scary. You want to keep your kid in that bubble for as long as you can, but the reality is they're going out of the bubble eventually and they're going to find people who don't like them or who make fun of them. I imagine having your own child sort of helped play this role that way. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I maybe had that privilege,

that advantage of knowing in a very visceral way what that means and what those protective impulses are. But I really think it speaks to the quality of the writing that Jim, my co-star is not a parent and also was able to plug so immediately into those feelings. And, you know, he found it as relatable as I did. So, yeah, I think it's, the reach is pretty expansive. What's it like to hear reaction from a family who's experiencing this in real life?

There are people, if you go online saying thank you for this movie. Thank you for telling the world how we feel, but also thank you for helping us sort through this inside our own family. What's it like to hear those reactions? Oh, gosh. I mean, wonderful. That's the whole point, right? I mean, that's what we, I mean, it's not a message movie, but I don't think it's reductive in that way.

But I think we are maybe illuminating some taboos or some ideas that are a little charged or a little scary. And all we want is to encourage more conversation and for people to feel more relaxed, about admitting to some of the complications and challenges that come with all of this, you know. So we were talking about your childhood, growing up a little south of here in New York City, experiencing some of these school issues. It seems to be your childhood was, you were like one of almost like a Holden Caulfield where like you were riding the subway when you were 10, 11 years old and experiencing the city.

What was your childhood like in New York? are? Um, gosh, well, it was a really different time. I'm old. New York was a different. I'm right there with you. Yeah. Um, no, I think it was, it was, you know, New York feels so padded now, you know, so comparatively safe. Um, but when I was a kid, it was a, it was a lot more unruly. Um, and it's like late 80s, early 90s. Yeah, exactly. I was born 79. So, um, you know, it was, It was rough, but it grew me up quick. And I wouldn't exchange it for another experience just because I was exposed to so much diversity

and so much culture, and I don't think I would have had a chance to indulge this incredible curiosity about performing or this passion that has fed me for so long now. You know, the resources are so rich here. I may think I really benefited from that. It seems to me you knew really early that you wanted to be an actor. I did. I did, and I don't know why.

I feel really lucky that I had that clarity and that focus that came from, you know. But at the same time, I was going to these really groovy dance classes, you know, downtown and getting cast in the Vanguard productions and the Lower East Side. You know, I think that charged my creativity. And you had artistic parents who encouraged it, right? Yeah, yeah. My parents are visual artists. They didn't know that much about performing art,

but they knew what it was to be creative and have those impulses. And they really respected that and helped me out, and I'm very indebted to them for that, very grateful. And you got serious at a pretty young age as well, right? I mean, my so-called. life you were 12 when you auditioned I was a 12 old auditioned I was 13 when I did the pilot right 14 when I shot the bulk of the yeah the show so and was that a leave for your family to say okay we're gonna invest in this and you're gonna be

in LA and all that yeah we were also naive I mean I think I was really adamant about pursuing this this career and my parents were you know permissive enough you know but I don't think anybody any of us could have really imagined where it might take us so So we were, I don't know, we were really kind of overwhelmed and in a, like, in a days throughout a lot of it. And we just kind of landed in L.A. We arrived in L.A. to shoot my so-called life literally the day after that massive earthquake

of, was it, 94? Right, 94. So there were these aftershocks that lasted for days. And it was just too apt a metaphor, right? Like we already felt like we were on unsteady ground, and then it was just reinforced literally. But yeah, I think, you know, it took us a while to catch up with the reality of it. But we just were so lucky because, you know, my so-called life was my first serious experience in the business.

And I was working with some of the most kind of wonderful people, you know, imaginable Ed Zwick and Marshall Hershkovitz and Wee Holtsman and, you know, such. such gifted storytellers and such like decent responsible people so we got really really lucky but was it fair to say there wasn't much of a plan it was like let's go out there and do this show and see what happens next there was no plan um they weren't staged parents saying like here's what we're doing next no I mean I think they were my mom was always present my you know he was always on set and stuff but there was no agenda they were not like cultivating this interest in me They were more just tolerant of my like obsessiveness.

So yeah, I was definitely the, yeah, it was all self-motivated. Did you have any sense of where that obsessiveness came from? Were there certain movies you loved or TV shows or actors you watched? Well, my parents weren't very, they were, you know, artists and hippies and not all that careful about, like, what I was exposed to as a little person. So, yeah, I mean, I remember seeing, like, the accidental tourist when I was eight, or, like, I saw Wall Street in the theater when I was around the same age, and I look back on that now and think, I don't know if that was so appropriate, but it was fine.

I think it was the time, too. My dad took me to see Beverly Hills cop when I was nine. Right. What kind of parenting is that? Or are we too protected? I don't know. I might be one or the other. I'm not so sure, because I really, not only.

only did I survive it just by it. I think I was like possibly influenced by it. Right. Change your life. Yeah. So I'm not complaining. I just, it was, it was a different era. No question about it. Well, what's funny too is because my so called life is so revered now that it was not a sure thing for your career at the time because it lasted 19 episodes. You won a Golden Globe. You were respected for the work you did in it. But it went away pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, one of my favorite quotes is David Bowen says, it doesn't matter who does it first. It matters who does it second. And I think that my so-called life was just really kind of progressive and advance for its time, all to do with Winnie Holtzman, the creator's genius. But, you know, at that point, there was really only network television. There wasn't, you know, cable didn't mean what it means today. and, you know, it was kind of radical in its own quiet way. And I don't know.

I think there were a lot of shows that were inspired by it after the fact that, you know, and audiences became a little bit more ready for that. But, you know, that might be why it had such a short shelf life. But it's now had this amazing afterlife. You know, I still, you know, like teenagers come up to me today. and say that they've just binge washed my so-called life. This was made a long time ago.

I'm so thrilled by that. I feel very, very lucky to have been a part of a piece of the culture that has been able to sustain itself, you know. And then you roll into little women, right? Which was a big break, I imagine, for you, because of the people you acted with on the screen. Yeah. No, that was, again, I kind of can't believe my fortune that these were my firsts, you know, my first TV show, my first movie,

and one kind of rolled into the other, and it was very pinched me. But, yeah, and no, I didn't stop working until I realized I need to, like, go to college. You know, I think it was, I was starting, I was doing that instead of going to high school and there was some developmental work that I needed to kind of tend to after the fact. I needed to do some catch-up. How did you stay normal, or how did you attempt to stay normal when at age 12 you've begun your career in Hollywood? How did you keep it together? I think my family was really informed that heavily.

I think my parents were, again, they didn't have this grand design. We were all pretty naive, but they were also very protective and I think it was always understood that I would go to college and that was a shared you know, interest and and priority. And I yeah, I think I just have to credit my parents for for kind of giving me a heads up when I started to get a little confused. or a little lost in the woods of Hollywood. Hollywood. I've heard the name Jody Foster come up a few times when you talk about that. Somebody who inspired you to go to college and maybe even harassed you to go to college.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I met Jody when I was 15. I had a little role in a movie that she directed called Home for the Holidays. And we both went to the same high school in LA. I think, you know, I was enrolled there. I was mostly on location, so I'd kind of dip in and out. But, and then, you know, I was interested in Yale, and she obviously went to Yale.

So I think she was, you know, she saw a lot of herself in me. I'm so insanely lucky for that to have been the case, but, you know, empathized. And yeah, she was pretty adamant that I go to college. And she kind of, spoke rhapsodically about her experience and yeah and she was she was an amazing mentor to find myself having as a tiny person is that a goal of yours to go back and finish at Yale eventually um oh no I don't think so I had I really got a lot out of my two years no that was enough it was it seems like a lot to me um but no but I but I but I but they were a bite

Me, seriously, they were a vital two years. They really did reset me in a way that I think was really valuable. Did you have to slow down? Is that what it was? And just sort of like recalibrate your life a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I worked really hard at Yale. I was really, I was a nerdy student because I was like a mature student or something. I really was there to learn. You know, I'd already kind of had my kind of wild,

adventures out in the world. So, yeah, I was just all about, like, doing my homework in the library. I don't think I, like, yeah, yeah. So, anyway. All right, so now we have to jump up and catch up on Homeland. Okay. Okay, just finished season seven. Yes. Ooh. Yeah, that was a workout. That was a lot. Do you feel at the end of a season after you shoot it, like, I need to get away from Carrie for a little bit? Yeah, it's, it's, it is a demanding show for sure and it's it's it's high octane and and and credibly consuming on a lot of levels and we reimagine the show every season so we're on a different location we're working with a different crew every year I mean the the core group is is

consistent but so there's there's a we can't ever get to complacent which is I think a real gift because it keeps us vigilant and I think it keeps the material fresh but it also is taxing so yeah and they just it never gets and more casual for this Carrie Matheson like they just keep raising the stakes so just when you think she's gonna settle and go home and be with her daughter no not not do it not so much but but I the The quality of the material, I don't know how the writers have been able to sustain it for as long as they have. And it really does hold a mirror to what's happening in the world.

You know, and it's kind of exciting to see it shape-shift and evolve with the times. You know, it's the themes are different. It's actually amazing if you look through the sort of soft. the Paris attack coming, predicted that, a president under congressional investigation, fake news, Russia being involved. All those themes were on your show before they actually happened in real life. Yeah, it's pretty uncanny. Is that a product of you all doing research and talking to people in the intelligence

services? Yes, I think it largely is. I mean, we have this, we have something called spy camp. I've heard this. Yes, we have spy camp. So one of our writers, Henry Bramell, his dad was in the CIA. He passed away a number of years ago, but he's a lot of years ago. His dad was in the CIA, and his cousin was a mentee of his father's and was also in the CIA.

And he's recently retired. And in his retirement, he curates this week-long event for us homelandians. And we lock ourselves in a clubhouse in Georgetown and interview people within the intelligence community and in politics. and like we Skyped with Snowden one year. I mean, it's, and we get this really wonderful insight into what's happening right this moment and what's going to be relevant in six months or a year's time when the show finally airs.

So, yeah, I think we didn't have that chance to have those conversations and, you know, dig in that soil. we probably wouldn't be in the position that we are today. I guess it raises the question, what's going to be in season eight so we can know what's going to happen in your life before it happens. Well, I don't know. And now I'm pregnant, so we usually start filming around the same time that I'm going to be producing a person. Is that you're producing? Producing, yes.

I think you're executive producing, actually. Yeah, I'm executive producing a child. So yeah, so I think the writers are afforded a little more time to crack it So hopefully that's a good thing but I love the stories you've been telling about being pregnant but not being ready to tell the cast and the crew Yes and feeling terrible oh yeah You're in your first trimester and people are like what's going on yeah no I mean well it's it's the level the kind of fatigue that you experience in the first trimester is is just It's it's otherworldly Yeah, it's hard to describe.

So, no, I was worried that people were thinking that I was like on these benders or something. And I'm like, no, no. Quite the opposite. Yeah, yeah, quite the opposite, believe me. Yeah. What's the one story where I think in between takes, you sort of passed out on the market or something? Yes, no. My, I got really into knitting this season and that interest kind of caught fire.

so all these kind of latent crafters suddenly started. And my dresser was a cro- did a lot of crocheting and she crocheted this wonderful bag for me. But in between takes I just face-planted on this crocheted bag. And they woke me up, Claire, Claire, it's literally, it's time for your close-up. And I had this like crochet impression.

It looked like I had suffered third-degree burns or something and they had to massage it and then take a hair dryer to it and made like half an hour past you know time is money yeah you get into overtime it was so stressful it was so embarrassing I'd like drool down my face anyway I need the joys of the joys of pregnancy that's the kind of fatigue only a pregnant woman can appreciate exactly exactly so anyway and so season eight is coming you've said publicly it'll be your last season on the show yeah I mean that it's it's I can't say definitively that it's my last season

that that's what it feels like that's how it has been presented to me up into this point but you know I in my in my old age I have learned that many things can happen so yeah it's not entirely conclusive but so you're not closing the door completely I'm not closing the door completely but it it that that feels like the direction we're heading in that the show will be done after eight seasons or most of you will be yeah I'm sorry I'm like wavering no I understand yeah but I I think it's maybe both. I don't know.

So you don't know. I guess I don't know. In conclusion, I have no idea. Yeah, how's that? One of the parts of Carrie that so many people appreciate is the way you treat her bipolar disorder and her mental illness. And I've talked to people. I interviewed Glenn Close one time.

And she has mental illness in her family, including bipolar. And she out of the blue, without my prompting, started talking about you. Oh, that's so nice. And the treatment you gave it and said how accurate it was and how it's important not to caricature that. You know, not unlike what you're doing in your film right now is you're representing something bigger than you

and it's important to get it right, I have to believe. Yeah, thanks for saying that. I absolutely believe that and I'm really interested in that kind of pathology. And, you know, at my two years ago, I was, you took a lot of psychology classes, And I think that's what I would have done had I not pursued acting. So it's kind of amazing that there's this natural dovetail.

My two interests are interwoven in this way. But the more I research this subject and learn about people who are wrestling with this condition, just the more respect I have for them, the more empathy I have for them. And it is such a huge challenge that we don't kind of appreciate, I think, enough as a society. So to shed a little light on it or, you know, to consider it for a minute and a piece of fiction I think is useful. I mean, look, we take a lot of liberties with our show. It's obviously a very exaggerated representation of a lot of experiences. But, you know, ultimately she's a hero.

And she's a hero who, you know, is wrestling with something that's very painful and has been stigmatized for a long time. now so I think ultimately that's constructive you do a really good job with thank you thank you I I find it fascinating and I again it just I think my insistence on kind of getting it right really comes totally from my admiration for you know how these people what they what they carry with them every day so yeah you've also recently raised your voice in the me too conversation where do you think Hollywood is now that it wasn't six months ago? Is there progress already? Is awareness the start that you needed and now the rest has to flow from here? Yeah, I think it's, I think it's

incredible what's happened. It's happened kind of with so very quickly. I mean, I started, as I was talking about how consuming, filming a season of Homeland is, and that's really when all of this started. And I feel a little bit like Rip Van Winkle or something. I woke up and the world was changed in a really terrific way. But I think we're still making sense of what it all means. And I'm just so glad that the conversation is being had. And women's grievances are being taken more seriously. So that's a vital shift.

I was talking to one actress recently who said there's not an actress in Hollywood who hasn't in some form been sexually harassed. Right. Do you agree with that? Absolutely. I don't think there's a woman in the world who hasn't been sexually harassed. The difference is that that might kind of matter now. You know? It was just so taken for granted that that was normal and something that we had to accommodate and internalize and now we might not have to.

And that's huge. Is that something you've experienced in Hollywood? Yeah, again, I think more just like a woman in the world, as much as a woman in my industry. And I think, you know, the changes that are happening in our industry are starting to reverberate into every domain and every field. And that's really thrilling. Yeah.

Okay, so if, although I can't get a straight answer, If you're finished after season eight of Homeland, do you have things on the horizon that you want to go do now? If Homeland wraps up and it will be this amazing chapter of your career, you're thinking about other things yet? Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. I can't say what they are. Is it acting? Yeah, for sure. No, no, no.

I would, I, it turns out I really like to act. I'm still into it. You're good at it. You should keep doing it. But I'm really kind of amazed. this many decades in, I haven't tired of it. So I will definitely want to continue doing that. I think, if anything, I might want to produce material as well.

I've gotten to learn what that means within the context of Homeland, and that's been really exciting. So, yeah, I'd like to do more of that. So you're not going to go out be like an accountant or something. I don't think I would do all that well in the world of accounting. Yeah. It's too late to learn now. No.

No, that's not for me. Keep going with the acting thing. Exactly. Thank you, Claire. Thank you. Thank you. It's fun. Yeah.

I appreciate it. Thank you. My thanks again to Claire Daines for a great conversation. Her new movie is a kid like Jake. It's in theaters now. And you, of course, can watch all seven seasons of Homeland on Showtime. And thank all of you for checking out the Sunday Sit Down podcast this week and every week. If you like what you hear, subscribe for the full-length, unedited conversations with all of my guests.

so you'll never miss an episode. And of course, don't forget to tune in to Sunday today, every Sunday on NBC. We'll talk to you again next week, and we'll see you on Sunday today. I'm Willie Geist. Thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.