The Daily Beast Podcast - Oct. 4 Member Bonus: Busy Phillips on Her Abortion and Embarrassing Louis Gohmert in Public

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This members-only episode was originally published on October 4, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access. Busy Phillips had an abortion when she was a teenager. It’s been known for a while, but given the uncertainty of Roe v. Wade after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, she’s determined to not let people forget. (Kind of how she and many women like her will never forget the night Trump won the election—“I was really knocked back by Trump's win to the ground. I mean, I like to the floor, like in hysterics.”) In this new members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, the “Freaks and Geeks” actor tells Molly Jong-Fast how and why she transitioned from acting to activism, and why she is so passionate about standing up for reproductive rights. “I just wanted to say very simply, you know me, I had an abortion when I was 15 and the situation surrounding it is unimportant, but I deserve bodily autonomy. I deserve equality and I'm not going to be shamed for decisions that I've made about my own body and my own life based on my own beliefs,” she said. Of course, the two had to discuss that time last year that she testified in front of Congress about her abortion. If you missed it, it was definitely a moment worth seeing, especially if you despise Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Phillips explains the wonderful moment when she shut him DOWN from her point of view. (“I have to say that was my favorite thing that I've ever done in my life was saying that to him.”) She also poses to Molly an interesting question: What if vasectomies were as stigmatized as abortions? (“They're like, well, don't be insane. It's like, well, how is that insane?”) Plus, Phillips shares her favorite RGB quote and her feelings on Trump’s “mismanaging” of the pandemic. (“The lack of empathy in this country that's been learned is incredibly overwhelming to me.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, and welcome to another the new abnormal members' exclusive episode. And we thank you so much for being here. Today, we have Busy Phillips. Busy Phillips is an actress known for roles in Freaks and Geeks, Dawson's Creek, and The Gift, as well as her podcast. Busy Phillips is doing her best. So you were an actress first. I've been an actress. I've been my entire life, yes.

I left college to be on the TV show Freaks and Geeks when I was 19. Fabulous. And then you started writing. a little bit after that. Yeah, I always worked on writing. It was a different time, you know, the 90s and early 2000s for a woman in the entertainment industry. So I had a lot of setbacks that were really crushing to me.

And so I didn't really fully. With the writing, I had that too. It is and still sort of remains in so many ways, very much a boys club. I wrote about it in my book, but I had this very dramatic situation happen with the movie Blades of Glory that I was involved in the writing of, and I got like pushed out by these two dudes and one of whom was my boyfriend and then we broke up. It was a whole thing. It was a whole very, very traumatic thing for me. But then my, you know, I wrote my book and I wrote my book myself. Yeah, but that's good. I've had that same thing. I think it all breaks your heart. In my youth,

like, they would be like, and this one is going to play you. And now this actress will play you in the adaptation. I'm like, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Like, this thing is never getting made. Let's just get me a check here. I had to have a sit down talk with. with a friend of mine who was like new-ish to the business, but a little bit older. And I was like, babes, until you're sitting in the theater and the end credits are rolling, here's what you do. You shut the fuck up because you never know what's going to happen. Yeah, exactly.

You cash the check and you just, right. The thing that I'm the most impressed by that you've done is you've really gone from actress to activist. I sometimes people do it and it's less inspiring than other times. And I have a lot of respect for what you've done and how you've used your voice. And I would love for you to just talk about how you decided to do that or whatever we want to talk about it relating to that. Well, I think for me, a big part of my life and transition from, as you say, actor to activist, which is so funny, was actually the transition from actor to sort of like more personality-based person in the spotlight, right? And also that coupled with very extensive charity work that I have done since I was young. And certainly after I have two children, I have two girls.

And my oldest one is 12 years old. And I would say after her birth and then I was on the TV show Cougar Town, I really started getting more involved in an active and participatory way in different charities that I care deeply about. For instance, the Los Angeles Public Library is something that I cared very deeply about public libraries. My grandmother was a librarian, as my dear friend said to me several years ago, when I was hosting the fundraiser in Los Angeles, the thing that's wonderful about libraries is they're the great equalizer. And so I got very involved with Los Angeles Public Libraries, a mental health charity for children in underserved communities in Los Angeles that I work with

is called Holly Grove. It's like not a flashy $4 million a year fundraiser kind of charity, but I have been volunteering there for a decade. And so it's mostly like children's charities, charities that help with education and kind of eveninging the playing field. And then I think like a lot of people, I was really knocked back by Trump's win. Yeah. To the ground. I mean, like to the floor, like in hysterics. I was a surrogate for Hillary.

And I went on like a very small, really unsexy. Why do I keep using sexy as the word? I don't know why. I've literally never done that before, and now I'm like, everything is sexy. I went on a surrogate tour in Iowa and Southern Illinois that was not what you see celebrities go on. It was me and an aide in her car for two and a half days, and we would go and meet with 25 people tops. We would go into these small towns and do phone banking with the volunteers. But I did feel...

Was it exciting? I felt very strongly about Hillary Clinton becoming the first female president of the United States. And I had a lot of friends who were deep Bernie bros. You have to remember not only have I lived in Los Angeles for 20 some odd years, I'm what they call a hipster. And a hipster mom. We had a lot of dinner parties that were very heated at the time with friends who weren't going to vote, who weren't going to show up.

we now really see so clearly that elections have consequences. What a fucking privilege for you to sit it out because you weren't happy with the choice. Even my own husband, you know, we flew to New York. We were at the Javitt Center on election night. It's really such a horrible thing that we were there for it. But even my husband the next day, I was sort of, I mean, I was inconsolable that night.

I was inconsolable the next day. And he said, it's not going to be that bad, busy. They're not going to let him, they're not going to let him, destroy the country. These people just have things in place. It's just about money. It'll be fine. Wah, wah, wah, cut too, hard cut. But I think also for so many men, that was a feeling that was sort of pervasive. And I think so many women, maybe not as many white women, because clearly then we found out that they were all like checking the Trump box. But a lot of women that I spoke to and a lot of my friends, the feeling that they had immediately was that they just knew that this was different and that this was

going to be a disaster and also the feeling that you matter so as a as somebody who's a survivor of sexual assault as somebody who is a woman who has been a woman in this world for 40 years that my experience matters so little to the majority or well I guess it's not really the majority right well right well she won the popular vote but yeah but who is counting I'm curious when you decided to come forward about talking about your abortion how did you decide to because you did it just like you talked about it you found the right venue to talk about it in a really moving way that felt like it was moving the conversation forward I mean and it was important like it was important

to me oh I appreciate that thanks it's true so I mean I I'm curious to know how you got okay well I got there slowly because I had written about it in my book and but writing about it is writing about it is one thing for sure but I also felt like the story in its entirety and the complexity that I felt about my own abortion was there if anybody chose to go look. And my book, I mean, it had only come out four months earlier. So it's not like it was like the book had been out for years. And surely I think a lot of people missed that part of it. Like many people, I mean, this speaks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy.

But it didn't occur to me ever in the whatever, however many years I was like aware of things before Trump became president that Roe would ever really be on the chopping block, that it would ever be an issue. When people talk about like, you live in a bubble on the coasts, I feel like I'm incredibly aware of so many things and aware of my family and friends in Arizona and I don't know. But that was one thing that I fully had no idea was happening across the country that the trap laws were slowly being passed. This like sort of systematic chipping away at reproductive rights in this country was happening over the last 25 years because I'm a rich white. lady who lives in L.A., you know, and I just, I don't know, I just, I just didn't think about it. The extreme abortion ban started passing. I had my late night talk show, and the day that Georgia

passed, Kemp hadn't signed it into law yet, but the day that they sort of voted on this extreme abortion ban bill, I just turned to my husband, Mark, and my showrunner, Casey, and I said, well, I have to talk about abortion on the show. This is why we have this show, right? This is why we fight for representation in media because people have different experiences to bring to the table. And they were both incredibly supportive. And then I called, because I have done work in the space of activism, and I do know that you don't just go out there flying blindly by yourself. There are people who have very specific agendas in place who've been working for a really long time. Grassroots organizations, big organizations. So I reached out to Elise Hobe from

Nehawal. She's incredible. I got in touch with my friend Sarah Sophie. liquor who's an activist and like very well tapped in. I talked to my friend Sarah Thier. I talked to a bunch of people just saying like, look, this is what I want to do. Can you put me in touch with the right people? And what is the most important thing that people need to hear? And Elise was incredible. And she said, well, right now I think whatever you want to say you should speak to. But timing wise, it might make sense. Because I was also trying to figure out that. Like, when would it be impactful? And she said timing wise, it's a little weird because it was sort of like it hadn't actually been signed into law by Governor Kemp yet. So she said, why don't we wait?

Why don't you wait until it's signed it? Work on it. Wait until it's signed till he signs it. He has until like May 10th to sign it. And I was like, great, because I knew my show was canceled and it was going off the air May 16th. So I was like, great. So it's going to be before my show goes off the air. So that's how it was decided. And then I did work on it. And Casey St. Ange, who's my showrunner. I wrote like, you know, because I always write too much. I wrote like five pages or something. And then we cut it down and cut it down and paired it down. And we just got to like the very simplistic part of it.

And the part that I felt was the most important thing I wanted to get across, which is this. I had always felt, I had an abortion when I was 15 years old. I had always felt sort of hesitant to insert myself into the discussion or the debate because sort of pro-choice. And in all of my sort of years, I had felt like a part of my experience, wasn't really represented in the pro-choice movement, which is just that, like, it's, it was complicated. It was complicated for me. And it wasn't, and even though I was 15, and I don't regret it for a day,

and it was the right choice. I came from Catholic parents. I didn't feel like screaming it at the top of my lungs. I didn't feel like putting it on a t-shirt and, like, wearing it. And part of that was the success of the other side being so loud and so honestly scary and violent. And then part of that was also just my own complicated feelings about that time of my life. And I know so obviously one in four women will have an abortion before the age of 45, right? I know so many women who have had abortions. I know many, many women for whom the decision was not necessarily an easy one and never one that they've regretted, however still held a lot of complications and feelings. Another thing I wanted to just get across, which I felt like was inspired by a turn.

Karana Burke and me too, is that you may think you don't know someone who's had an abortion, but you do. You 100% know a woman that you love who's had an abortion. And so many people, the thing that people say about me all the time as my personality, you know, as my persona is that they feel like they're my best friend. And so I just wanted to say very simply, you know me, I had an abortion when I was 15. And the reason why the situation surrounding it is unimportant. But I deserve bodily autonomy.

I deserve equality. And I'm not going to be shamed for decisions that I have made about my own body and my own life based on my own beliefs. And that's part of the reason why we're supposed to love this country, right? It's because you can hold a different set of beliefs than me. Your beliefs should not impact the way that I raise my children and the way that I decide to live my life and who I want to marry and mine should not be able to prevent you from living your life. Yeah, I know I love that. And then when you went and testified in front of Congress, right?

Yeah. Well, that was crazy. Can you tell that story? Because that's amazing. Is that? I mean, that was wild. That was truly wild. Yeah.

It's wild. So, but also what was wild was just how fast it came together. This was a real crash course for me in government and process and how all the machine, how the sausage gets made, now the machine works. They put together that. hearing the congressional hearing really quickly. And I was at my younger daughter's Friday morning school assembly, like, toward the end of the school year where like all the kids are singing. And I was sitting with a friend of mine and I sort of, you know, was zoning out because whatever,

it was boring. And I looked at my phone, which you're not supposed to do. And I had a, I had an email from my publicist saying, we've received a request for you to testify before Congress next week on behalf of Planned Parenthood, would you be interested? I was like, what? Wait, what is this? I laughed and I showed it to my friend. I said, do you think this is real? And he's like, yeah, busy, why would they, why would that not be real? I was like, I don't know, because it sounds insane. It was a really, really fast turnaround. It was just a few days. We flew to D.C. My husband's from Maryland just outside of D.C. So we brought our daughter, who was 10 at the time, almost 11. I explained to her why I was being.

asked to testify and we talked about it and she showed more understanding than many adults on my Instagram. Right. And Louis Gomert for sure. That was my favorite. I have to say that was my favorite thing that I've ever done in my life was saying that to him. If Gomer could, he would go after me because he's a publicity horror and he wants to get on Fox News, right? And I'm an actor. And he wants to make me look like an idiot. He's not going to go after the 18 year old woman who was testifying about being denied birth control after she had already had a baby at age 15 because she was under the age of consent or whatever for, you know, in Texas. And he wasn't going to go after any of the experts because he's an idiot and he doesn't know anything.

So I was pretty sure he was going to go for me in some capacity. And he did. And he asked me on the anti-abortion side, they had their, I suppose, their witnesses, I mean, the people testifying on behalf of the anti-abortion side are people who say that they were failed, that their mothers tried to abort them, but it didn't work, and thereby they survived, and here they are.

And that's their story. And they cry, I mean, there's a lot of tears. I have a deep well of compassion for the woman that testified because I just felt so sad for her and her lack of a good therapist, maybe. I don't know. She needs somebody to help her with some stuff. But so his question was like,

you know, this woman's sitting two people away from me. He was like, do you think that they should have been successful and aborted her? It was like so insane. And the line I said back to him was, well, sir, even though I have played one on television, I am not, in fact, a doctor. And the whole place like sort of erupted in laughter and people trying not to laugh. And I think it really like threw him and he was pissed. And then I wish I had been a little bit more. I was so nervous. Oh my God, I could barely talk. Wait, how is that more scary than being on television? What you're talking about? Are you kidding? Because I don't know. I feel like they're congressmen. I mean, there are like a million of them. I mean, a little bit you

want to just waste time. Each Congress member only has five minutes to ask questions. And he came to me first because, you know, he was expecting me to be an idiot and whatever. And then he would look good and end up on Fox News, I guess. And so then he was kind of thrown, he was asking me a question that was nonsensical. He was asking me if I thought that these doctors should have committed murder to the woman sitting next to me. Like, it was so insane. Oh, and then I said, I'm not here to talk about birth. I'm here to talk about abortion. Because essentially, you know, this person was testifying that she was born alive and then they tried to like kill her. I don't know. It's really hard because it's so totally buck and insane. It's hard for me to wrap my head around how this indoctrination happens. I think there's a

Politico article from like 2014 about the religious right and Jerry Falwell taking abortion as their cause when it wasn't a thing that Christians cared about Catholics have always been very intense about it. But it was never a thing that Christians cared about. They were much more like live and let live unless you're black, I guess, was their thing. Jerry Falwell and those guys were gay. Black or gay. Oh, yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the political article is really interesting just because I feel like it gives a context for what's happened since Roe was passed and how the religious rights sought as a political opportunity and seized on it and then have really just indoctrinated generations of people now to think a certain way about this

like very common medical procedure that a lot of women have to go through for many, many different reasons, not just because of like the babies aren't wanted, which is like, so exhausting that that's the thing that, I mean, I can't. White Republican men telling us what to do with our bodies, I'm sorry, like you can go any tangent you want. I mean, I just think it's so preposterous. It's preposterous because also you have to hold the reverse. And if you hold the reverse for two and a half seconds,

you realize it would never happen. You just realize that if, that when someone says, okay, well then I guess what we should do is every boy at the age of, of 15 should have a reversible vasectomy that should just be mandated, right? What would happen if that were done? It's not possible. They're like, well, don't be insane. It's like, well, how is that insane?

First of all, limiting our access to birth control, women aren't even allowed to get it now. They can be denied it and their places of employment. Bless you if you have to work for Hobby Lobby. It's one of the few things that really enrages me is people like Louis Gomer trying to ask, you know, a gotcha question when you're testifying. about your own experience with abortion. It's just shocking to me. I mean, I know it's how it works, but it's just enraging.

I mean, the whole thing is enraging, right? Like, what this game is is enraging. The fact that they've essentially turned it into sports center is enraging. That we've all been participatory and we're a part of it is enraging. But the only way, I think, to write the ship at this point is to try to convince younger people to show up and to vote and that it does matter and that elections have consequences and that if we do take back the Senate,

at least we can pass WIPAA and then, which is the Women's Healthcare Protection Act, and if we can get WIPA passed and protect women's health care, you know, then this Supreme Court person that they're trying to shoehorn through, they're going to keep trying to make these runs at Rowe, right? There's already another case, right, from Louisiana.

We just got the sort of okay ruling. Also about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in thinking about how I wanted to talk about my abortion on my late night talk show, knowing that it would probably get a lot of attention in press. She has one of her quotes is, fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. And so that was the thing that I was thinking about. Like how do I, how can I, this, this is a, a taboo subject, a thing that a lot of women whisper to one another and don't want to, how do we, and certainly there have been many different types of campaigns like shout your abortion and here's, you know, my abortion story and all of these things. And I just felt like for me, I just wanted it to be sort of as simple as possible and just one and four women have had an abortion. You think you might not know someone. Will you do? Because you know me. And I wanted women to be able to like have that to, like, have that to, attached to their own experience. That's really cool. Yeah, I'm so, I'm glad that you did that.

That's really cool. What's your career like right now in COVID? Like, what are you working on? What are you doing? I was very committed to helping my daughters finish first and fifth grade, respectively, last year. Oh, so hard. It was so hard.

And we didn't have, I mean, I did the thing. Like, we have, Mark and I both work. And so we had a full-time nanny, and we had a housekeeper that came once a week. And when the lockdown orders happened, I was like, okay, guys, I guess you have paid vacation for as long as this takes. And then cut to, we were on some Zoom parents night for one of our kids' schools. And someone asked a question. They were like, so our nanny doesn't understand the Zoom schedule. I was like, people have nannies?

Like, I'm like, like, tearing my hair out doing another dish in the house. I can't return an email. Mark's like, I have a script that's due. I have to go write this. I'm like, you can't. Like, we can't do a thing. and people kept their nannies every day. So I was very sort of paralyzed in the beginning of the lockdown

and I just couldn't do any work. Mark was kind of too and I was just really focused on the kids and I was really upset at the state of the world and continue to be really upset with how mismanaged and mishandled and what a terrible, terrible tragedy this pandemic has become for our country when it didn't need to be this way. It really didn't need to be this way. And we know that.

And everybody knows that. And the lack of empathy in this country that's been learned is incredibly overwhelming to me. And also is something that makes me deeply, deeply sad. But you're doing this podcast, which is great. Thank you. So then I had sold a podcast a year ago with my business partner, Casey St. Ange, who was my showrunner, I'm busy tonight. And it was a part of a whole thing.

We were planning our next steps in the business. And we were doing all this stuff. And we felt really good about it. We were recording the podcast. And then COVID happened. And I couldn't think. Then in June, I sort of just thought, well, I have to say George Floyd's murder and the Black Lives Matter protests really got me out of my own head, you know, in my own world. And once I reengaged in that capacity, I was able to think about work and about things other than just the four walls that I was living in.

And so then I was thinking about the podcast. I was like, well, it doesn't make sense to release our podcast for a thing that has gone away because of COVID. So what should we do? And then I started thinking about like how that's the question that everyone is. is kind of asking themselves in this moment what the pivot is. Where do we go? Like, what are we doing? And I think it's just a moment where collectively, as a country, we're being asked to pivot

in so many ways and ways of thinking and jobs and how we're schooling our children and what's important to us and where we want to live and the people we want to be. And so I thought, well, let's just change the podcast. So we changed it to, it's still the same name it always was going to be. It's called Busy Phillips is Doing Her Best. And it's me and Casey St. Ange and then one of our writers and performers from Busy Tonight, Shantira Jackson. And we discuss what we're doing our best at that week, what we're working on, what is happening in the world and who's doing their best and who's not doing their best. And then we talk to some famous people. We have an interview with someone who, and we ask them about times in their lives when they've been forced or had to make some sort of change or pivot or a time when they lost a job or got divorced. or things didn't work out the way they thought they were going to and how it affected them and the things they learned from it.

And so we've had some really interesting conversations and everyone's got a story. And I think in this moment, it's really helpful for all of us to hear how it can actually work out to be the best. It sounds great. And it must be hard to get people to like really talk about stuff too. I imagine. I mean, sometimes it depends.

I think people do really like talking to me. And if I do say so myself, That is good. But I also think that I share so much that people feel a lot of times more open and vulnerable to share with me. And, you know, podcasts are just sort of exist in the ethers, you know, like hypothetically to people, you know, that they feel more comfortable being a little bit more intimate sometimes. But we've, Rosie O'Donnell, I think the Rosie O'Donnell episode was really fantastic. And she was, she's an incredibly open person and was really honest and lovely. And we just talked to David Letterman.

That'll be in October, I think that airs in October. That's fantastic. Yeah. And that was actually really, really interesting. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. Who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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