Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Laura Dern

Episode Date: May 20, 2018

Actress Laura Dern has a long career of big-name credits, but this past year has thrust her into the spotlight. In this week’s episode of “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist talks with the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress about her big year that’s included roles in the hit HBO series “Big Little Lies,” on the big screen in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and in the revival of the cult classic “Twin Peaks.” She opens up about growing up in Hollywood the daughter of movie stars, and what it was like to be nominated for an Oscar alongside her mother for their film “Rambling Rose.” Dern also discusses her intense new movie “The Tale” and the importance of stepping up as a leader in the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Willie Geist back with you for another edition of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Great to have you with us. As always, thank you so much for clicking, subscribing, downloading, however you get a podcast on your device. We appreciate it. This week, my guest is a great actress and a great woman. Laura Dern. Laura Dern. Come on.

Laura Dern. Who doesn't love Laura Dern? There's a term that I borrow in the interview, and I want to apologize now for it. It's the Dernassants. I don't know. Somebody's calling it the Durnaceance. Because at 51 years old, she's blown up. She was in the Star Wars movie as the Vice Admiral.

You know that. She's on the hit HBO show. Big Little Lies won an Emmy for that show. Second season now shooting with, by the way, the addition of Meryl Streep to the cast. We'll get into that. She's also in the revival of Twin Peaks. She's done it all.

What she finds amusing is that there is such idea that this is some sort of a renaissance because she's been acting professionally since she was 13 years old and doing a pretty damn good job of it. We'll talk about her long professional relationship with David Lynch. She was in Blue Velvet back in 86, I think it was, and has worked with him time and again through the years. Remember, she was in Jurassic Park, too. Her father is actor Bruce Dern, her mother, actor Diane Ladd.

She and her mother acted in 1991 in the movie Rambling Rose, and they both were nominated for Oscars. mother-daughter nominated first time ever for Oscars for the same movie so much to talk to Laura Dern about and I just say a personal point of privilege one of the nicest and most charming people that I've had the pleasure of sitting down with this I should point out as you listen to the beginning of this interview was the morning after the Met Gala she'd been at the Metball with all the fancy people and Rihanna's got the hat on and Lady Gaga was probably I don't know you know whatever they do with the Met Gala. She was there and she was nice enough to come do this interview the next morning.

So as we're talking at the top, I tried to get a little dirt on the Met Gala. We'll see how that goes. I think you're going to enjoy a great conversation with the always excellent Laura Dern. Here she is on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thank you, Laura, for doing this. Thank you for having me. So you were just telling you last night, it was you, Rihanna, Madonna, in a corner, just doing what icons do. Cizza. Don't leave Cizzo was there. Actually, that was an experience of mine, so it was amazing. Did you hang out with Siza? Yeah, she was amazing.

I love her. I love her. I mean, I loved her already, but also just getting a deep moment with a person is kind of incredible. Is that a weird night for the rest of us who haven't been inside? It's like everyone's there, and they're all in these fascinating get-ups. I know. If you're lucky, you have an extraordinary designer who dresses you beautifully, but you you can actually function as a human being.

So I just got lucky to kind of have a lovely night in that way, not just managing enormity. And you do see people you love and admire. And one thing I love about it is when people are fans, it's kind of incredible that, you know, you witness someone you admire so much fan geeking out over someone else they admire. and that has sweetness in it. But it still is unbelievably bizarre. You know, it also is otherworldly. It's like a movie production of, you know,

this grand thematic ball that I just am always stunned and can't believe I somehow got invited. And you decided to forego the quarter mile train that followed you down the red carpet. I did. It was a wise choice. Yes, this time only. Not great for dancing, I told.

Next year. Next year. Actually, last year I had a train and my designer did it so that the train could unhook itself. Ah, that was smart. Which was also brilliant, but this time I was, yeah, very streamlined and very lucky. Pruenza schooler. God bless them. So let's talk about the tale.

Yeah. I was just telling you, it's moved a lot of people already at Sundance. And just watching it as a person, but as a father also of a young girl, it just conjured so much. What did you see in that script and that story, which is a true story, that attracted you to it? Well, Jennifer Fox is a documentarian and a beloved one, but hadn't made a narrative film. And I first got a call from Brian De Palma and Orrin Moverman to filmmakers I so admired. And they were not only vouching for her and saying how much they loved her work as a documentary filmmaker, But they said, you know, get ready for this piece of material and understand how groundbreaking this is.

And that, because it took some boldness for everyone who really sacrificed a lot, crew members who worked for nothing to tell her story and wanted to be part of it, to want to be part of something so inescapably confronting. And what struck me the most about it first, beyond her willingness to talk about sexual abuse and her own experience in such a transparent way, was the thing that I think people are taking away from the film, which is that it really is a film about the stories we tell ourselves, perhaps in order to survive an experience. And when it came out of Sundance, one of the most heartbreaking

conversations I had was other than conversations with people who were taken by the film or had experiences of sexual assault in their life was someone who said that they realized only when they saw the film now in their 30s that at 13 they had now lived this 20 years of their life saying that their parents' divorce was the most incredible thing that ever happened to them and everybody got along and it actually made made her the person she was in this positive way. And she started weeping and said it was through the film that made me see that there was such brokenness that was so unsurvivable for me, that I painted the story for myself that

I've told into my adult life. And so that piece that Jennifer examines for all of us, not only in the Me Too movement, in the zeitgeist of this moment, where we're reconsidering cultural. experience of what felt okay, what didn't, what is egregious behavior, what is criminal behavior, what's appropriate. This narrative storytelling has shifted into just being in the truth of something and watching her recount how she survived an experience by allowing it to be a completely different narrative than the truth of it was.

watching two stories unfold because she tells the story from one perspective as this pubescent budding teen and then she has the realization that she in fact is a child and that I find that really haunting that's the thing that I think really hooked me and made me want to be part of it. Part of what makes the film and your performance so extraordinary is that you are playing a character who's actually on the other side of the camera directing the film. It's her story that she sort of lent to you and trusted you with. What were the conversations with Jennifer like before you even went out to shoot? I mean, that's a big thing for her to say, here's my story, go do it justice.

It's crazy. I mean, I know from past experience and other actors when we've said, you know, and the director knew the actual person I'm playing or the writer knew them. that felt intimate and nerve-wracking. But this was beyond anything anyone can call meta. It's just you're constantly confronted with, yes, this person directing you. But what was amazing was not necessarily toward exacting her journey. She really did understand that I had to be inside of it somehow.

So there were these challenging moments where I couldn't get my head around a few. and she was beautiful in her surrender of it. I needed to result in this, but you have to get there emotionally however you get there. You don't have to exact it internally because how could you? What I realized was how aligned we were in again the piece that tells yourself a narrative in order to be a survivor and never to be, quote, a victim of anything. You know, we've saved ourselves not only the depth of heartbreak, but we've allowed ourselves the ability to be the hero and heroine of our stories because of the narrative we invent for ourselves at times. So I don't think there's shame in it.

It must have been really hard for her. I'm just thinking for her point of view to watch, played out in front of her this formative, traumatic experience and to see it on a screen. I don't know how she did it. Honestly, it's jaw-dropping. You know, it's hard to watch, let alone that it was her experience and she's sitting there. Right. It's hard for me. I can't imagine what it was like for her. Yeah. Just devastating. But she, I think as challenging as it was, and I know deeply challenging for her, her passion for us all, for our culture to have it, to have the story. and to be the person who told it the way she did was such a must for her.

Because there are certain scenes that I think unless it was your story could have been very criticized to go that far, be that bold. And thank God she does, because it's like it is so completely in your face that there is the truth of it. And, you know, as my character, commonplace, plays my partner in the film and there are so many scenes that I think speak to the issue so perfectly but one of them is my justification, continual justification. It was the 70s. You know, I'm not a victim. Well, it was my, you know, there was love like he got me, you know,

all the perpetrator side of grooming. Yeah. And that is part of the story. too is how you are seen by someone that begins the potential for this kind of horror. I was saying to you earlier it forced me as a viewer to sort of think back a little bit. And were the things I've suppressed or people I've met or incidents that took place? I didn't find anybody but I did go through a lot of that. Did you feel that too?

Did you find anything in your own life? One hundred percent and I think the things that I found, which as we were speaking about this time period, I think, is also doing that for all of us, is the gray area moments where you've justified behavior for years because it's someone you admire or someone you liked. And then in thinking back, for me, this experience was just, I was amazed at how I had, in fact, not only defended others' behavior, but put myself in the story as much more mature.

Well, I mean, I was so tall for my age. And so, what? My height is the reason that someone else's behavior is horrific toward a 12, 13-year-old. But, you know, the justification makes things more survivable, perhaps. Right. Well, you've talked about, too, when you were 14 years old having an experience like that. And did you feel like you suppressed that in a way until you got older or at least explained it away as something that it probably wasn't that it was more than? I think being raised with such good fortune.

You know, we've raised families who love us, who have these great passions that then inspired us. I mean, we share this good fortune. and the, you know, as parents say, you know, there are children starving and, you know, this is the rhetoric that we were all raised with. And so there's always someone has it worse than you as a scenario that I think has gotten in the way of a lot of us allowing our experience to be what it was. And for me, for sure, I know the horrors like this story that people have gone through. I know nothing like that experience. So I say, oh, nothing like that ever happened to me.

I'm so lucky. I was raised by actor parents. I knew the industry. I knew what to be. And then you, wait a minute. I wasn't okay. And I was also 12, 13, 14, working. You know, it's one of the amazing experiences I had through Times Up.

When we went to the Golden Globes, my date, very luckily for me was Monica Ramirez, who is extraordinary and runs Alianza and represents farm workers across this country. And what we shared in our friendship as we started sharing stories was that farm workers and actors are some of the youngest workers in this country. I mean, we legally work alongside grown-ups at 12 years old. And therefore, it's a ripe potential space for predatory behavior. So it's interesting when you look at it all over again from that lens, that it's, you know, how do we protect the vulnerability of children? And you're working hard to do that.

I mean, you're on the advisory board and trying to just put some rules in place and some watchdogs and keep an eye on the industry. generally. People have talked about the tale is the perfect film for this moment in Hollywood, this Me Too Time's Up moment. Do you view it that way? Is this sort of an anthem for that? Well, I think it's an anthem for everyone who it touches. Like if you need it, then how glorious. And that's what was so amazing about the response at Sundance was in all my years, I've never had that flooded with calls and emails of everyone being touched in that way and being impacted by it. I think what's extraordinary about the timing is that the conversation's in the room. So it's not that it would have impacted anyone differently, but the entitlement to the true story

is what is now here for us. There is no hiding. And I love this moment as a parent because you and I are raising children at a moment where if they don't like it, they get in the streets. And we've been missing that for far too long in this country. And so that irreplaceable transparency about everything from policy,

to an emotional experience has given, I think, for journalism and for filmmaking, you know, all bets are off in terms of what we need to be talking about and what the conversation is. That's exciting. No, there's no question about it. And you've worked hard to make sure that the conversation continues in Hollywood, that it's not a one-off from the Oscars and we move on. Do you feel the beginning of change in Hollywood culturally? I mean, you've seen it from the beginning of your life, quite literally.

Is it different now than it was even six months ago or is it at least on that track? You know, I hope so. I think there are muddied conversations. Anytime there's change, there's fear-based thinking with it. And I have compassion for that. And I think that there is a large gray area that's being focused on now as though that's what it's about. You know, it's about slightly uncomfortable behavior in a room. It's about criminal activity.

Let's be clear. This started because of criminal activity, sexual assault, you know, outrageous abuse of power. That's what I hope continues to be at the forefront of everyone's minds. But I think the gray area has taken the light off of that. to say, you can't hug somebody anymore, you know, or whatever this comment is, which, you know, to me that has absurdity because we're all re-learning what it is to navigate being human beings. People are complicated. Sexuality is always in a room. Men and women learning how to navigate their dynamic, even in the space of a boardroom. And that's separate from sexual harassment and, God forbid, sexual assault,

there's also just that the tables are turning and now boardroom isn't all men or the one woman in the room. You know, hopefully that's starting to shift with more parity. And dynamics change, and we're all learning how to change with them. And I think there's a way to be compassionate with it because to be resentful, lead with the resentment of what has come years before is difficult to affect change with. But egregious behavior is egregious behavior and criminal activity is criminal activity and let's put a light there immediately. You have had an incredible, what's called a couple of years.

You've had an incredible career but I would say lately between the tale, big little lies, Star Wars, come on. So fun. Nice Admiral. Oh my gosh, that was so fun. Does this feel like an exciting time in your career and in your life? It really does. I mean, I thank you for that and I love being an actor, was raised, as you know, watching

my beautiful actor parents. And, you know, to get to be at a point where you're not needing to fight for playing a different kind of character, that now you feel like you're at a moment where directors see you as an actor who can play anyone, a myriad of people. That is like the greatest moment. And that is a recent shift. I mean, I've always been given the opportunity to work with such amazing and brave filmmakers, which forces brave characters out of them and then a demand for me to try to be brave.

but now it's this presumptive space where every role is completely different than the last one. And that's just so exciting. But you've had a, I mean, we can go back to David Lynch and we can go back to Blue Velvet and all the way up. You've had a great career. You've been nominated for Oscars. You've won globes and Emmys and all the rest of it. But they call this, I think they're calling it the Durnasance. Yeah. Right now.

There was a mccanissance at one point. you're now in the Dernasseants. Does it feel to you like, hey, by the way, I've had this whole career already and this is just the next moment in it? You know, no, I so celebrate that because how gorgeous for film, for art, and as I'm raising children,

for all of it to say that this is the beginning of the height of of when someone, a woman should be celebrated. That is cool. That it's not the old story, because we're speaking about narratives, which is like, you know, like a pro athlete. You know, you have your five years as a starlet or something.

And having done this, being raised by my parents, my godmother was Shelly Winters, I was raised by all these great actors where they were building a body of work like a filmmaker. And so I longed for, that and so to be now here where you feel like oh god now it's just beginning I'm just getting started well I love your professional athlete analogy you've called it the Olympic athlete analogy as well which is that you pour everything into it in your 20s they spit you out at

27 and now it's like oh I have the rest of my life what do I do with it do you feel like that's been broken down in Hollywood by now and and it's tragic in that you know you you you're just understanding the game. That's such a Bruce Stern thing. My dad always, everything is a sports analogy. So I like that I'm marking back to it. But you do. Yes, he is.

You do. You just get into this space, which I'm just feeling like I'm always learning, but I'm truly excited about acting, like in a brand new way. So I have a fever. And it is the first time, God bless my agents and my manager who were supportive of this time period. But I was like, oh, great.

So I said yes to that, and I'm doing that, and then I'll do that. So you can't do all those things at the same time. And somehow they worked diligently with producers to figure it out. But to figure out a way to do a number of things at the same time was always a dream. And I think when I was younger, I was just so focused in a linear way. Like, I'm playing this kind of person, and I have to do my best at this, and I can't think of anything else. Right.

And now it's just like, I think because when we become parents, we're multitasking constantly. So I'm in that fever of multitasking as an actor, and it's just delicious. And big little lies obviously exploded. The cast is amazing, and somehow it got better. You added a young actress name. What's her name? Oh, God, I'm so embarrassed. I forget her name.

And like, I'm working with her right now. What is it? Street. Street. I'm being told it's Merrill Street. Lovely. She's going to be okay in Hollywood? She's very good.

She's someone to watch, I've got to say. Industry Secrets with Laura Dern. Can you believe the way that show took off in season one? Obviously, season two is coming. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen. But, I mean, you had the cast. You start there. The premise and the writing was great too,

but it really blew up in a way, I'm sure you can't ever expect it to. You hope it does, but you never know. You can't, and what was amazing was we were pinching ourselves every day and now with this budding goddess, Ms. Streep, joining it. We'd never worked with other actresses. You know, you have scenes with the one other girl

in the movie for years, I mean, particularly Nicole and Reese and I talked about this, all starting as kids. kids, but to have this group of women together playing equally complicated, at times broken women who also are, which we loved as we started, the piece, people watched one episode and they're like, oh my god, you know, rich women's problems. Right. And then everything starts to unfold and you see the relatability in a lot of the story

And I think that was what I found amazing, but we were already just couldn't believe people had the same experience we did of just, oh my God, just content with like more than one character and she doesn't have to just be one thing. Really beautiful. I know the answer to this question before I ask it, but can you give any hints about season two and Big Little Lies? Where are they now? Because obviously a dramatic ending to season one. They did what they had to do. Do you see how good he is? happens is he says he already knows the answer and then that rebel in you wants to

wants to question it and you go well I'm gonna give him information just because he thinks I'm not but Jedi mind tricks yes I like your style no I can't tell you a thing Merrill Street okay I'll take that as enough really do you need another reason to watch Merrill Streep's in it I mean come on And I am still playing Renata this time. That also is true. I'll be dressed fabulously. We knew that, for sure.

All right. All right, I guess I've exhausted all my gossip. So we were talking about your parents and how you started in this business, born into it from the very beginning. And you watched it. And was there anything along the way that discouraged? you for wanting to be an actor as you watched your father and your mother and you ultimately acted with your mother and nominated for an Oscar in the same movie. Were there anything along the way that said maybe I want to do something else,

or were you destined to be an actor? Well, I'm destined by my own demand and passion, but the cautionary tale being raised by actors, by actors is plenty to have you really not want to be anywhere near it. And people often think it's because of a celebrity, but it's that if you're in it for building a body of work, in any of our professions, there's an ebb and flow to a career. And when the heights are at such extremes,

it gets very quiet when an actor isn't working. And for actors who would love being creative, that's painful. So I watched that as a kid. I watched a year they've thrown their life into a play on Broadway or working with Hitchcock or Scorsese and had this just incredible moment and accolades and all those things. But aside from it, the creative of having that kind of fulfilling experience. And then the quiet, and there's no job that you go to. And you're at a certain level in your profession.

So you, in those days, even a decade ago, you couldn't reinvent or do other things, like produce for yourself or write and direct. And it's an exciting time where we're all learning to be storytellers in various ways. But that part, you know, I've seen the heartbreak of when they're not acting. And that was daunting, but very lucky. Did your parents ever say maybe you don't want to do this?

This is that up and down life and maybe something more stable is worth thinking about or trying? Very much so. I think the quote of my mother's was, be a lawyer, be a doctor, be a leper missionary. but don't be an actress. But that was also because I was the age of our daughters, saying, I'm doing this, I'm doing it now, I want to do it, and you're seeing, again, this prepubescent girl who inevitably, by becoming an actress,

I think her greatest fear was that my identity would be based on others' opinions of me. And that valuing as much as deep, Bevaluing scared her and boy was she right because that was pre-followers defining you. I don't know how children who become famous or young adults navigate being defined by a number and then the number drops and it raises and you know overnight. It's it's absurd. Right. Because we lose the protection of it being about just getting lucky to be storytellers just getting lucky to be actors. there's journalists, like, we find the thing we love, and it should just be about that. But it's definitely, you know, veiled in this other narrative

that's about culture, and that's hard to stay grounded in. It dawns on me listening to you speak that you have avoided that sort of celebrity child, grows up, has some turmoil, and even as you've gotten older, you've sort of stayed out of the pages of us weekly, for the most part. I keep my turmoil very private. Because not everyone can pull that off and be as well-known as actor as you are.

Does that take effort? Do you have to say, I'm not going to have this celebrity life? I'm just going to keep my blinders on and be an actor. Okay. Or maybe you stay around long enough they forget the turmoil they read about a long ago. So they're like, you never had turmoil. So, but I do, I think my parents gave me the great gift, my mother of my grandmother, who came out from Alabama to L.A. and helped raise me while my parents were working.

And she was extraordinary and salt of the earth and would never take any, you know, bratty teen stuff. And that was a great blessing. And just like my kids now, you know, your kids now ground you because let me tell you, they will tell you how lame you are by listening to old people music in the car. I mean, like, thank God, you know, Tupac was... Oh, you get Tupac banging in the car? Yeah, but Nirvana now, I mean, my son's found his way to Nirvana, But there are certain bands that are suddenly that's called like our music.

Right. Well it's like when your parents would play classic rock and you go, that's old music, that's our classic rock. I know. But surely they can appreciate the Tupac's. Well, now. Oh, and yeah, I mean, I have a son who's a musician and, you know, they're both artists type, so now they love it all.

But there were a couple years that were really hard. All my references were definitely not cool. Have you encouraged them to be in the arts? I do. You know, I do worry as does their dad, if it happens too young, you want to be protective of when they find their muse, but I know, and so do he, like, you do find it as a teenager, often, and we did, and so if that's their calling, you know, it's hard to tell someone not to be passionate about something, but just giving them enough time to have a child's experience while falling in love with an art, whatever that is.

And my daughter is really interested in film. My son is interested in fashion like I was about acting. It's so interesting to watch because it isn't the world he came from. Right. Where does he get that? He's just like, he's got a vision and it's so cool. It's exciting to learn through his eyes about it. It would take him to the Met Gala next time.

I mean, he knew everybody there. He was teaching me who I was running into. We talked about how busy you've been lately, and it includes Twin Peaks, which brings me back to your relationship with David Lynch. What did you see early on in the blue velvet days that made you think, I need to work with this guy throughout my career as you have? Well, I got so blessed that, one, he chose me, and two, it was. He who must have seen that I was 16th turning 17 and this has become my maestro for, you know, my life thus far and I believe will continue. And it's the luckiest gift because he sees nothing but his vision.

He's not in the consideration of what it's supposed to be, how to make something palatable. He breaks every boundary, every filmmaker I work with or know comes up to talk about David because he inspires their work and fashion designer last night. It's David Lynch to find this collection for me, that collection for me. You know, you see it in music. He is this Renaissance man who touches artists in so many various art forms. And for me, I feel fearless in ways. I never expected. And I see comedy in a way I would never expect because he's so hysterical.

And at the moment that people think it's the darkest moment in something, you know, we'll be over in a corner laughing, because he finds humor we know in the macabre, in the complicated, in the very American basic, and, you know, a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie. So it's amazing to work with someone like that. someone like that because you're just free to be in all of it and I mean please if an actor has an ego which I don't know if you've heard they can I found a director who is like you're going to be in this movie there's four different leads you're playing all of them what okay um I mean it's crazy and you do as you're told because David Lynch right whatever he says right whatever he says

Well, you say it's fortunate that you found him, but obviously he sees something in you that he wants to come back to again and again with his work. I just can't believe it. It's so lucky. I was watching one other piece of your career I wouldn't ask you about. I was watching a clip. It was about a year ago on the 20th anniversary of the episode where Ellen came out. And I didn't realize, as I heard you talked to Ellen about it, that that was difficult for you after the fact that you were denied. and that you had, you struggled in Hollywood for a period after that. And it's hard with our 2018 eyes to imagine that in 1997, I think it was.

What was that time like for you? It's so shocking now with the world, thank God, that we live in, or certainly some of the world that we live in, that there has been such a dramatic shift. You watch Ellen herself be so embraced. day by families across the globe. That's just so restorative given that experience. But it was, as we were celebrating the anniversary, the first time that Ellen, myself and Oprah,

the three of us sat together and shared that we were all having this common and terrifying experience in the year after, of difficulty, of heightened security, of all kinds of things based on a woman coming out. And that was it, and supporting her. And that just is mind-blowing now. Even now telling my children the story,

they can't believe that's true. It's just amazing. And to watch Oprah's extraordinary life and voice in this world like Ellen's and to hear that they had this same experience. And again, it's that thing where you don't talk, You feel like, I don't want to complain, I was so lucky to be part of something. And we couldn't believe we didn't all share constantly in that time that it had been so difficult.

But, yeah, I mean, even during filming on set, you know, advertisers pulling out. Right. And ultimately, you know, Ellen not working there because she changed the course of our history with just telling the truth. It's like, what? It's amazing. The flip side of that coin, I guess, the optimistic side of it is that we can sit here now today and wonder how that was even possible, that we've been 20 years made that much progress. Our kids growing up, some of the things they hear about from 20 years ago, forget in the 1950s and 60s, there can't even process that that would be possible.

And I guess we can take that as a step forward. It's incredible to me. This idea of not even needing to label or identify in any given way culturally about race, about sexual preference, you know, I mean we were used to as children, you know, every form we ever filled out. We were going to the doctor and you had to define who you were in your religion and your ethnicity. Right.

It's amazing. And now, I mean, there's. Now, I mean, there is a fluidity to who you want to be. I mean, it's why we become actors. We're just in this good fortune of always continuing to blur the lines of playing complicated beings who are learning maybe incrementally and many of the films that I've done about evolving.

But to see a generation of kids that don't even need it, they don't have time for it. It's like amazing. When your mother was telling you to go be a missionary or anything other than being an actor, how did you continue to pursue that career? I can't believe that I became quite clever and somewhat strategic, stealth even, by going to my mom's birthday party in the corner of the agent and saying, will you let me come and read a monologue for you and tell me if you think I have talent and if I do will you send me out on an audition?

Wow. How old are you? 11. Really? I couldn't believe that. So clearly I was obsessed and driven to do it. But also I think I had already learned from them how to do it. So I wanted to understand if other people thought it was worth me doing it, which I realized

was rather clever at that age. And then also finding by good fortune people who really understood my longing to following my parents' footsteps. I was like, look, I watched my parents work with Hal Ashby and Merence Corsese and, you know, Alfred Hitchcock. So I want to work with filmmakers. I want to build a body of work. I never want to be pigeonholter type cast because my dad said it was really hard playing bad guys for so many years. And, you know, this 12-year-old, I was there like, okay.

She seems like a lot. Yeah. So, but I did find people who understood that I shouldn't just be cast at 12 or 13 into an eight-year commitment on a TV show. Right. That I maybe should do little parts and things. And I did get lucky that way to get a few small roles

with beautiful filmmakers and learn and not be hurled into it because my parents wouldn't have let me leave school. school. So I could only do little things. And I think that's a very smart way to do it, Jaya. Use this moment. You don't leave school. You only leave her five days max. Maybe she'll listen to you this way. If she's not listening to you in the car, this is a way to get to her. Yes. I know you won't answer me right now, but I'll use the only guy.

This is a strategy. We'll put it out there. You can use me. use me. Yes, exactly. Before I let you leave, I have to ask you what's next on the horizon, because people are very into the, I'm going to say it again, the Dernicants? The Dernasons. I didn't make that up, by the way. That's online somewhere. It's really great, and I love hearing you say. I hope you'll just use it periodically. Freely, I'll drop it into conversation. Confusing everyone at the table. I'd like to have the Durnasins. Right away, sir. What are you excited about down the road? Well, being in the thick of big little eyes.

I'm very excited. And a couple of films coming out. I did this unbelievable story of a film based on an article that Ed Zwick directed called Trial by Fire, which is a true story of a death row case in Texas. And that'll be out in the fall, and that was an amazing thing to be part of. And starting up new and exciting, not yet to be disheart. discussed work in the next six months or so that will be quite fun. No, I know you won't tell me what it is, but what is it?

Did it work this time? No, no. See, now I was prepared. I telegraphed. But I got excited because you gave me permission too, but still, I'm not going to do it. Yeah, you can tell me now. Wait, I see red lights, I'm confused, but there's a green light too. Does that mean go first off?

Thank you, Laura. Thank you. Oh my God, it's a pleasure for me. Always so great. Thank you. My thanks to Laura Dern for a great conversation. Her movie The Tale premieres on HBO on May the 26th. It's really good.

It's intense. It's so well-acted. As we talked about, the director is directing her own life story and trusting Laura Dern with it, which is a crazy, cool thing to watch. My thanks to all of you for checking out the Sunday Sit Down podcast to hear more of our full-length, unedited interviews with all of my guests. Make sure to click subscribe so you never.

miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to see him with your own eyes and not just your ears on Sunday today, every Sunday on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.