The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jamie Lee Curtis, the Original Scream Queen

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

Jamie Lee Curtis comes from Hollywood royalty as the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. She credits her mother’s role in “Psycho” for helping her land her first feature role, as the lead in “Halloween,” in 1978. “I’m never going to pretend I got that all on my own,” she tells The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme. But Curtis says she never intended to act, and never saw herself as a star: “I was not pretty,” she explains; “I was ‘cute.’ ” Eventually, the pressure she felt to conform in order to keep working led to a surgical procedure, which led to an opiate addiction. Curtis talks with Syme about recovery, second chances, and more than forty years of films between “Halloween” and Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out.” Plus, the chef at one of Los Angeles’s best restaurants on how to build a woman-friendly kitchen. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Jamie Lee Curtis descends from Hollywood royalty. She's the daughter of Janet Lee and Tony Curtis. But if that sort of Hollywood history isn't your thing exactly, you still know Jamie Lee Curtis, who's shot to fame in the original Halloween. Tommy, Halloween night, it's when people play tricks on each other. It's all I make-believe. I think Richard was just trying to scare you. I saw the boogeyman. I saw him outside.

The boogeyman can only come out on Halloween night, right? Right. While I'm here tonight, I'm not about to let anything happen to you. Curtis eventually started playing in comedies like trading places with Eddie Murphy, and the weirdly unforgettable, a fish called Wanda. I'm setting up a guy who's incredibly important to us who's going to tell me where the loot is, and if they're going to come and arrest you, and you come loping in like Rambo without a jockstrap, and you dangle him at a fifth-floor window.

Now, was that smart? Okay. Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics, or was it stupid? Don't call me stupid. Her new film is also in the oddly comedic vein. Curtis is one of the leads in Ryan Johnson's Knives Out, which is a whodunit comedy filled with references to Agatha Christie and to the board game clue. Curtis plays the daughter of the film's.

very, very rich and very, very dead mystery author. Mr. Blanc, I know who you are. I read your profile in The New Yorker. I found it delightful. I just buried my 85-year-old father who committed suicide. Why are you here? Jamie Lee Curtis sat down recently

with the New Yorker's Rachel Syme. Do you have a history with whodunit movies? No. I am the anti-mystery girl. I'm the anti-mystery girl. I don't like horror films. I know. I know.

How can that be? It's just sort of cute. There's not a movie that my friends haven't all said, oh, I'm going to go see this movie. And then they look at me and they say, but you can't go. You know, there's this new thing that people do where they read, it's like a whole trend of people who read the Wikipedia for a scary movie before they see it. Like they spoil it for themselves. Well, I'm going to tell you a secret. Yeah.

And this was before I became very close with Jody. Foster. But I was making my girl in Florida. And the makeup man had done Silence of the Lambs. And it was out in theaters. And he wrote me a sheet, which I took with me into the theater with a little flashlight. And I sat in the back row by myself. And it read, when Jody goes to the storage locker, close your eyes and ears, and wait for the second scream. Oh my God. And so I, I would look at my little list and I'd be like, oh, there she goes to the store talker. And I would cover my ears, close my eyes, curl up in a little ball and sing O'Clair de la Luna in my head.

O'Claire de la Luna, my name, Piero, until I heard the first scream and then I heard the second scream, and then I could open my eyes. I can see visual. It's the auditory? Auditory and the jump. The unexpected is terrifying for me. Let's talk about your beginnings as an actor. Did you resist it at any point that you could have gotten into it?

I mean, I know you went to a year of college, started acting, never went back. That's the story? No, no. It was the last thing in the world. You have to remember, I was not pretty. I was cute. The word cute was sort of attributed to me a lot. I had a lot of personality.

You're spunky. I was spunky. I was cute. Are you precocious? Totally. Yeah. Mostly because I wasn't particularly intelligent. So my lack of any school, like, success I made up for in personality.

I was like personality plus. Anyway, I went to college where my mother was the most famous person to have ever graduated. It was the only school that took me with my D plus 840 combined SAT average. Why were you so bad at school? I mean, what was the... I just couldn't. The delivery system didn't work for me. Today I'd be diagnosed with some learning disability or some learning difference.

So what happened is I went to college. Yeah. A friend of mine from Beverly Hills had a tennis court behind her house and a man who had been the tennis teacher who would teach people at her house. And he said, you know, they're looking for Nancy Drew. I'm managing actresses now. And they're looking for Nancy Drew at Universal. You should go up for it. And I said, oh, okay.

I was home from college. And I went up and auditioned and didn't get the job. But somewhere somebody said, oh, she was whatever. I don't even know what they said. But they said something because all of a sudden he said, you know, you should stick around. You could get work. And all of a sudden I called my college and I said, can I take the month of January, which is a month that everybody else took one class?

I said, can I do a drama class and get credit for drama if I go to acting class? Trying to be an act. Can I break into show business in a paper for a month? And get school credit for it. And they said yes. And then I auditioned for a program which is no longer in existence, which was a contract system. They used to put people under contract. I was going to say, when I read that, I thought, God, she must have been the last person under contract.

I was virtually one of the last people. I actually told the woman who ran at a woman named Monique James, after I finished my audition, I said, look, I know that you take some time to decide, but I'm going back to college in two days. So I need to know by Tuesday because I'm going back to college. And so they called and said yes. And so I quit college and became an actor by accident. And what was your family's reaction to that? Well, my mother, I think, was thrilled. You know, Tony, I have no idea.

I don't even remember. and, you know, I became an actor and I've been an actor since that day. Never in a million years thought I'd be an actor. Really? That's so, I mean... Never in a million years. And I mean, in terms of, you say you never thought you'd be an actor. Ever.

You took these acting classes. Well, I took acting classes because I had to take them. I mean, what I want to know is how did you learn? Like, do you have a sense of what the craft is that goes all the way back to the beginning or is it something that's kind of ad hoc? that has developed over the years? Totally just sort of what I've picked up,

what works, what doesn't work. I have learned that whatever it is, there is no formula for anyone. There is no one way to do it. There are a million ways to approach something and every actor will come in with a different way. There have been times where I have felt less than because other people seemed more articulate.

I will tell you. I remember I did a wonderful movie with John Borman called The Taylor of Panama, and it stars Jeffrey Rush. It's a John La Cerey novel, Pierce Brosnan, myself, and Jeffrey Rush. And Jeffrey and John are both intellectuals, and they're both deeply into character and... They do method work. Well, they just dig deep and excavate everything. and I put on the watch of the character and am ready because I cut my teeth in horror movies. So you don't have any time. You just show up as the person and you do the work and you get a take or two and then they have to move on because there's no time. And I remember a day where Pierce Brosnan and I were sitting in this room with John and Jeffrey. And John and Jeffrey were like deep diving into things. And I remember at one point, Pierce looked to me and I looked at him because Pierce cut his teeth on Remington's steel.

Right. Which is an hour. It's a mystery, murder mystery, right? He was a detective. You know, again, television. Fast, fast. Show up. Know it. Fast. And I remember we walked out of this when we were in an elevator. And I looked to him and I said, Pierce, I feel like such a bad actor because I'm not, I'm not deep diving like that. And he goes, yeah, me too. And the two of us just stood there looking at each other because in a weird way, I think we've at that moment felt out of our depth. But the truth is there is no depth. Actors listening to this wherever you are. Yes, she's about to drop some truth. The truth is there is no depth that you have to go to. It doesn't matter. It's about

creating something real. And whatever it takes to do that, do it. But I don't. I have found that when I try to be a really good actor, I'm not a good actor because I'm all of a sudden very self-conscious. I'm thinking about things in a way that's just not the way I do it. And I have just found since I started that the best thing I can do is I read it once. I kind of know what it is. And I show up. I'm know what I'm supposed to say and it has worked out that way in every area of my life. Going back to Star Day in horror, I mean, I know a little bit of the whole origin story of how Halloween came about, but again, as a person who doesn't like scary movies, it's funny that

that should be. It's the weird irony, I know. Yeah. I just, I will tell you this. I had been on a TV series called Operation Pettycoat, which I had been. Old West thing? Well, no, it was a remake of the Tony Curtis, Carrie Grant comedy set on a pink submarine in World War II. Not what I would have guessed. That was a movie. Yeah. Where five army nurses get picked up on an island and are on this submarine and get trapped on it. They remade it at Universal when I was under contract as a TV movie. And I was cast in the part that was opposite the part that my father had played.

played in the movie. That's not twisted at all. No, it's almost incest, but not. It's generational incest. And while we were shooting the movie, it got picked up as a TV series. The show did not do well. And I was fired. I was fired along with 11 of the 13 actors.

I thought my life was over. I thought my career was over. I thought I would lose my contract. and two weeks later, the audition for Halloween came up. Had I not been fired from a show that only lasted two episodes before they canceled it, I would never have been in Halloween and my life would have never changed. Did you have a feeling when making Halloween that it was the thing that it would become? No.

Nothing. All I can tell you is that my name was on every page of the script. And the reason I told you the Operation Petticoat story is simply to put it into context. I would have two lines if I'm lucky on an episode of that show. And here was a movie where I had, Lori was on every single page of that script. And that was thrilling to be able to actually create something as a character. Do you know why you got the job? Did you ever ask later on?

I auditioned many, many, many times. I know you start whittling it down. You start going, oh, I like her. bring her back, bring her back, bring her back. And then it was between me and one other woman whose name I know, but I will never say publicly. And obviously, at that moment, Deborah Hill, who ended up becoming one of my best friends who co-wrote it and produced it, I'm sure that at some point when it was down to me and this other woman, who had much more experience than I did, had been in many more things than I had, I'm sure the fact that I was Janet Lee and Tony Curtis's daughter, that my mother had been in psycho, that that wasn't going to not help the promotion of the movie somehow. Like if you're going to choose between this one and this one, choose the one whose mother was in psycho, because it will get some press for you. Sure. And so I can't, I'm never going to pretend that I just got that all on my own. Like I'm just

a little girl from nowhere getting it. You know, I mean, clearly. I had a leg up because of that. But that, I don't think, played much part in the process of the auditions. And certainly didn't, you know, that does nothing for you once they say, okay, we're rolling, now do the work. But I'm sure getting the part that probably tilted it in my favor. Were you reticent to do the revisit? This current revisit? No.

No, because I read it. And the theme of trauma, speaking to you. Was it, I've always, even H2O, for those of you who've seen it and don't hate me for it, you know, the goal of H2O was both time that 20 years had gone by and we were still all in like in show off business. Here we all still were working and trauma because in that movie, she is an alcoholic and a drug addict trying to hide who she is by changing her name and running. Was it important to you that they also explore addiction? Well, it is a byproduct of trauma, by the way. Pain killers, alcohol. It is the balm that heals people when they are so traumatized.

It's a natural evolution of trauma is to end up with drugs and alcohol. Hurt people, hurt people. Hurt people seek relief. Has it been 20 years for you in recovery? I'm 21 coming up in February. Congratulations. Thank you. Has that been fairly unexpected for you, too, to be kind of like a public representative for treatment and recovery?

Public representative for a private issue. Yeah, for a private issue. I was so terrified when I got sober from a 10-year run on Vicodin and alcohol. I was terrified about being outed. I was terrified of the tabloids. I felt like that weakness was going to be exposed and then and then exploited and picked apart. And I would feel, I would feel so embarrassed by that exposure of a secret of a flaw of a human frailty. So feeling like that the great parts of my life would get taken away from me if I publicly ever talked about it.

And then I was actually doing an interview for Red Book magazine about a book for children that I had written. My teenage daughter was sitting with me at that moment. We were at the table. I believe the author is Amy Wallace. And I remember we were sitting there and I was talking about how great my life was and how happy I was and how much better. I kept saying the word better. I kept saying like Annie and I are getting along better and Chris and I are getting along better. and my life is so much better.

I kept saying the word better. And at one point she said, well, what do you attribute it to? And in that moment, I remember I looked out the window. And I thought, do I, don't I? And then I thought, I do. And I turned back and said, I think because I've been sober for over two years. And I think it's interesting how over the years the stories you've been telling about your own past with opiates and addiction has dovetailed with your thoughts on maybe the exacting beauty standards in hospital. Hollywood and all and how you sort of want to push back against them such that wasn't it that um i've

read in several places you've talked about how you had a procedure done and that was yes it was an eye job because i was on the movie perfect and gordon willis the great cameraman in a courtroom scene looked at me one day and said yeah i'm not shooting her today like that because i if you look at pictures of me as a child i look like i haven't slept every picture of me as a child i've been bags under my eyes, dark circles. I have always had it. And I was puffy that day, for whatever reason. And I was mortified, just so embarrassed, so deeply embarrassed that right after that movie I went and had an eye job. Wow. And that's when I found Vicodin. And then, you know, the cycle of addiction began with that. But I have done enough plastic surgery.

attempts. I pulled some lipo on me at one point. None of it works. It just didn't work. It makes you feel worse. You know, I'm someone, you've probably heard me say it. I try not to become a broken record. There's a phrase, it's in recovery, but it's, I apply it to my life fully, which is when I wake up in the morning and I look in the mirror, I am looking at the problem. I'm also looking at the solution. Like it's in me. It's all there. It's all in you. Yeah.

All of it. And plastic surgery and all these external fixes are society. They're charlatans. They are advertisers. It's all advertising and money making. Not one of these people, not one doctor. Now, I'm not talking about plastic surgeons who fix wounded veterans. Sure.

I am not talking about people who do. altruistic help for, I am talking about these charlatans that draw you in with promises of you remove this, you remove that, you can inject this, you can inject that, and that ultimately you're going to be beautiful and feel better. And I don't know anyone who's had procedures who feels better. They look in the mirror and they feel fraudulent because it's not real. And I am one of those people. I have been, I let my hair. go gray. I can't. I have tried it. It didn't work. It felt like it made things worse in a way. And that has just been something that I've kind of carried on for a long time. Are there any roles that you've done that

you think are kind of unsung? Like no one asks you about them. Please, you know what? I get so much effing attention. It's just obscene. I mean, really. I just can't even for one second. tend to think that there's some hidden gem no one's asked you about ever. By the way, hidden gems, even if there is, it doesn't matter. I've been doing this for a long, long time. And I've been successful at it since I was 19. I have been told I'm fantastic every day. There's not a day I don't walk down the street and somebody goes, hey, love you.

You're fantastic. And I appreciate it. I get it. It's sort of been my gig. so I don't need any more attention. I get plenty of people telling me that they appreciate what it is. I've had an extraordinary life. Jamie Lee Curtis talking to the New Yorker's Rachel Syme.

Curtis is one of the stars of Ryan Johnson's Knives Out, and you can find even more from their conversation online at New Yorker.com. Knives Out was one of the big movies of the Thanksgiving weekend and looking ahead to Christmas, the most antique. The anticipated thing on the docket is probably little women, Greta Gerwig's new adaptation of the novel. Gerwig told me recently that she's got a lot of personal history with little women. That was in a community theater production, a children's production, and I played Joe.

This is in Sacramento. Yes, I remember I was wearing my hair. Joe had this line, Meg says, you're almost a young lady now. You'll turn up your hair soon. And Joe says, if turning up my hair makes me a woman, then I'm going to wear it in two tails until I'm 20. And I remember thinking, I'm sort of not saying this right, but this is all I have. I mean, I think in some ways maybe you become a director because you're, in some way, know your own limited capacity as an actor, so you get to vicariously live through other people.

I'll talk with Greta Gerwig on the New Yorker Radio Hour next week. And there's more to come this hour. So stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Helen Rosner is a food correspondent for the New Yorker, and she interprets that beat pretty broadly. She's as likely to write about the ethics of reviewing

or the Me Too issues plaguing restaurant kitchens as she is the perfect recipe for rhubarb. So she had a lot to talk about recently with the Los Angeles chef Nikki Nakayama, who's been featured on the Netflix show, Chef's Table, and whose restaurant has been called one of the very best in America. Here's Helen.

Not long ago, I had one of the best meals that I've ever had. It was at a restaurant called Ennaka in Los Angeles, and the kind of food they serve there is called Kaseki. Kaseki is a type of Japanese cuisine that you might not be familiar with. It's not that common outside of Japan. It's an incredibly formal, ritualized, elaborate meal that unfolds over the course of hours. There are dozens of courses. The chef at Ennaka in Los Angeles is a woman named Nikki Nakayama. I visited her in the kitchen a few days after I'd had my meal at Anaka,

and when I showed up, she gave me a tour. And then this is our dish pit area, but trust us, it's a lot more organized when we have service. There's just a lot going on because we have so many dishes. It's, like, incredible. We had to build a shed outside just to house those dishes. That's why we love our dishwasher. Clemente's been with us for three years. I feel very fortunate that people want to, like, hang out with us and stay.

And even though we want to kill each other sometimes, it's very normal. Nakayama was born in L.A., and she grew up there. Her parents are Japanese immigrants who owned a seafood distribution company, so she spent her time as a kid working in the warehouse or hanging out in the office. She figured she was going to become a musician, maybe a pop star. But she ended up spending three years studying traditional Japanese cooking in Japan. And in 2011, the culmination of all of that training and running a couple of other restaurants in L. LA, she opened Ennaka.

And then this is my work area. I work here. The kitchen at Ennaka is the first one that Nakayama has been able to build from the ground up. She designed it to suit herself. She's 5'1, and so everything is at counter height or lower. She has notes past pasted up by her workstation and near the past, reminding everyone how to feel what the mood is, what Ennaka is all about. But one of the most important notes that I had was actually stuck outside the door, because

I felt that this is a very sacred space for me. And, I mean, we've all been in kitchens where the environment hasn't always been a friendly one or hasn't been, like, very conducive to, you know, good things. So I had a note outside that said good things start now. So basically, when you walk in, it's like a reminder to tell yourself that leave all your shit outside. Don't bring it in. Don't bring it in. But that's since fallen off. But generally, everybody gets the idea.

When Nakayama talks about these unfriendly environments, I think part of what she's referring to is high-end kitchens in general. Those spaces tend to be pretty broy. Almost all of the chefs that are running those kitchens are men. And within the already pretty sexist high-end restaurant world, high-end Japanese cuisine is an area that remains particularly closed to female chefs. Nakama's response to this is to staff her kitchen almost entirely with women. And that includes her right hand in the kitchen and at everything else, her sous chef, Carol Ida. I'm the sous chef here at Annaka.

My partner and wife? Yes. Don't forget that part. You're not just the sous chef. You're important in a lot of ways. Oh, and you have the most beautiful Romanesque. We don't use a lot of Romanceco and Japanese food, but I'm sure we'll figure out a way. Yeah.

Our first and, like, our go-to thing is, okay. Okay, let's just use the standard Japanese method to cook it and see what happens. And if all else fails, we just temper everything. Kaisaki is incredibly complex and very ritualized. Chefs train for years, sometimes decades, to become Kaysakei masters. The difficulty for someone like Nakayama who's trying to make Kaisaki in California is that the cuisine developed in Japan. It's a meal that reflects Japanese seasons, Japanese terrain.

So to try to translate it to California can be complicated. I think authentic kaiseki can only exist in Japan. Even for us, we've tried to plant certain plants that are needed to Japan in this environment, and it doesn't work. Like we've tried to put moss in that window behind you, and it doesn't survive because the environment doesn't allow for it to be. It's not humid enough. I don't like to call ourselves traditional kaisaki in any way,

But I think our heart and our motive and our ideas about it feel very genuine and authentic to us and who we are. Because I think we're combining a lot of our knowledge of what Japanese cuisine is and also our personal experience of Japanese food and the things we know about it and combining that with our upbringing in America, it's hard to pretend that we don't have one or the other. So the most authentic representation of who we are is to sort of blend a little bit of both. So when you say we, you're talking about yourself and Carol? Yes. Yes.

So when you opened in Naka, Carol wasn't in the picture. Did you guys know each other then? No. But then you met and started dating and then you decided to work together? Yes. And it all happened sort of by chance and it was a little bit crazy because I'd love lost my sous chef that I'd been working with for nine years. And then she's like, well, I know dashi and I know Japanese cuisine.

Maybe I can come and help you just, you know, do some of the basic things that are really important. And my initial reaction was like, no, you're going to see what a mess I am and how crazy it can be behind there. So everything is all together. Yes. You and Carol have, you were on the Out 100. You've sort of appeared together as a couple.

You're often described in the media as, you know, like a lesbian chef couple, Carolita and Nikki Nakayama. Do you think that that's an important part of your identity as chefs and Nakah's identity as a restaurant? I originally, I didn't want that to be out there because I felt that it's already hard enough to be a female chef to be judged for so many things. And another level of judgment is not what I want people to focus on when they're, coming to eat. I want them just to think about the food and what we're creating. But as time has gone by, I realize and recognize that it's important to sort of put a voice out there to sort of encourage more support and more acceptance. I don't necessarily think that it's very important to tie us to that identity, but I understand how if we are positive about

it, it's a good thing. How has it been difficult to be a female chef? Sometimes one can't help but wonder how serious people are taking you. There are times in the kitchen, I was like, if I was a man, they would never question me about this. But I don't know if that's true or not. I really, really don't. I don't know because I've never been a man. And I don't know what the opposite reaction would be, but sometimes it's easy to sort of fall back on that just to make yourself feel better. but overall, I feel that I've been very fortunate with NNaka

and that it's not an issue anymore. It used to be an issue with the other restaurants that I have, but for here, no. You've told the story a couple of times of being at your sushi restaurant, was it? And what was it, that a man came in and realized that he was going to be served by a woman and got up and left? Basically, when he walked in, there was a couple of them, and then they walked in and they saw us and then just turned around and left.

And I understood that, oh, he probably thought we weren't a serious restaurant or, oh, this is not a good restaurant. So they just sort of didn't even try. Sushi seems to be a uniquely sexist culture, even within the already difficult universe of fine dining sushi is really still the realm of men. That is very true. I think for men in Japan to have a woman in the kitchen is a distraction for them. And there's this constant belief that women have certain roles that we need to play. And when we're not doing that, we're being rebellious to structure. And rebellion to structure is like a number one no-no in Japan.

So all of your diners here at Anaka know who you are, right? You're pretty well-known now. You've been on TV. You've been on a lot of magazine stories. Why do you still cook with the screen closed in front of the kitchen? I cook with the screenclothes because, well, overall, I do enjoy the ability to completely focus on the work. And I feel that it's a lot better for the environment to not have it be open kitchen. It's very intimate, and the industrial feeling of the kitchen is very overwhelming and not conducive to a nice, relaxing feeling.

But most of all, I want people to come here and think about the food and not think about who's cooking. So how has Anaka changed since you were on chef's table? So what happened? So, okay, so the first day chef's table came out. We were still taking reservations that were, like where the phone was being forwarded to my cell phone. And I remember that it got really hot and then we had to turn it off. And then we just, Carol and I just sat there and stared at it for a bit. And we're like, what are we going to do?

I was like, she's like, this cannot happen. We've got to figure out a plan. And then I was like, who's going to take all those. messages. I'm not going to take it anymore. I mean, we were booking out maybe like a week ahead, or at least every day we had customers in a good stable amount. But after chef's table came out, we became like a restaurant that was booking out three months in advance. But seriously, when that happened, Kara and I were like, we need to have a meeting with our staff because expectation levels are going to be really, really high. And we need to make sure that people

come in, don't get disappointed. So that was the first thing on her mind. It's like, let's not piss anybody off. Nikki Nakayama, the chef at Anaka, speaking with Helen Rosner of The New Yorker. I'm David Remnick, and that's our show for today. Thanks for joining us. And next time, I'll be talking with Greta Gerwig,

the director of Lady Bird, about her new adaptation of Little Women. I had a terrific time talking with her, and I hope you'll join us. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of W. NYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Rianan and Corby, Karen Frulman, Callalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Isaac Jones, Adam Tychultz, Allison McAdam, Monk Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.