The Watch - ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Loses Its Director, ‘Narcos’ Returns, ‘Twin Peaks’ Ends, and Elisabeth Moss Talks ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ (Ep. 183)

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss director Colin Trevorrow's sudden departure from 'Star Wars: Episode IX' (1:00) as well as the finale of ‘Twin Peaks’ (12:45) and the new season of 'Narcos' (28:30). Then Andy chats with Elisabeth Moss about her hit show, 'The Handmaid’s Tale', and the new season of 'Top of the Lake' (36:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello! And welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I am an editor at the rigor.com. And joining me in the studio, he just got fired by Kathleen Katie. It's Andy Greenwald! Badge of Honor. Yeah, you are the Last Jedi, my dude. Hollywood Badge of Honor. Chris, this is exciting.

Big show today. We're going to talk about Twin Peaks. We're going to talk about Narcos. I've got an interview with Lizzie Moss. Now, for the record, I checked. I can call her Lizzie Moss now. Second time talking to her, said, it's Lizzie on the phone. I was like, okay, Lizzie, we're clearly best friends.

That's dope. I can't wait to hear this interview, Andy. We, a little bit behind the scenes here. We actually recorded a big bit yesterday for the podcast. Here's the thing, Chris. Current events just bit us in the ass. Look, we thought we would get ahead of things, and we recorded Thursday's podcast on Tuesday, like a couple of chumps.

Like a couple of pros. Like a couple of pros. Tomato. And in this first segment that you are not hearing, we obviously teased. Narcos talk, Twin Peaks talk, interview with Elizabeth Moss about Top of the Lake China Girl. We self-dapt for our interviews with Ayakash and George Pelicados. Which are listenable now via your podcasting devices.

We did those. They were up when I was on vacation. I also shared a little bit of a funny story about just a brain bomb I had regarding the origins of U2's Octong Baby while on vacation. We're not going to run that for legal reasons. You understand that what we're doing sort of negates the need for you to come back in and re-record this part? I'm just saying, if we just, Zach was like, it's a little bit of a long pot. If we just do two times, let's say. Fine. I'm just saying there's a fun callback to it later in today's pot.

If you hear me screaming in an Irish accent, we do that. That's because we were making a bunch of Bono jokes earlier. So that's, we just unlocked it a little bit. We're going to, I'll explain my Octong baby theory in due time. It's going to be maybe a watch after dark pot. Good. That's good. Like way dark net.

The reason why Andy had to come back in on Wednesday, though, It's because Colin Trevereaux got left. He left. He got... He left. Mutual decision. He fleft. Creative differences, whatever you want to call it.

He left Star Wars Episode 9. We are like trauma surgeons. We got beeped and we had to come into the ER or the OR. Both. The emergency OR to chop up this dead body. Welcome to the Emergency Hollywood ER OR. Doctors Chris and Andy are here. We're just trying to find out how much we have to cut to save the patient.

Nurse, take please. Hand me my take. Second time this year that a director or directors have been let go from a Star Wars film. Third time overall since the new regime. And you could argue that there was a fourth case with Gareth Edwards where he did not quite finish the film that he started making. Correct. We're reportedly coming in to shoot the end or interiors for Rogue One.

So, first of all, obviously, it's always bad when somebody loses a job. So sorry, Colin. Like, I'm sure you're going to be fine. I'm not worried. world. This is really interesting. Why not just hire the safe pair of hands in the first place? Why always say, like, we're going to get an untested young director.

No? I'm pushing back. You don't even like the premise. I reject it. Okay. Listen, skilled trauma surgeons make split-second decisions. And my decision right now is no. Okay.

I push back on that. So you don't like this narrative. Go for it. Do you know who the safe, stable, boring pair of hands is? Colin Trevor. Colin Trevereaux is the equivalent of going to Wawa and getting a turkey sandwich on white bread with a little squeeze of Frenches. There is nothing interesting about hiring Colin Trevro to direct your movie. Nothing.

He was such a safe choice that I remember people being, I mean, let me rephrase that, I remember being very disappointed because the hiring of Ryan Johnson to do episode eight felt exciting. Because, and we have discussed this before, he is maybe not a unique case, but one of very few people who have artistic, autourist chops, but have enough experience in big budget coal mines to deliver the product. And from everything everyone has heard, that has been the result, right? The buzz, such as it is about The Last Jedi, is uniformly positive. Colin Trevor was the easiest pick possible. This is a guy who made safety not guaranteed a fine indie movie, wildly overrated. but fine indie movie, starring two friends of the pod,

Jake Johnson and Mark Duplas, jump from that straight to Jurassic World, which was an abomination. I know that you don't like it. It's so bad. I think you saw it in the back of a seat somewhere. I thought it was fine. A back of a seat somewhere.

I saw it on Delta One entertainment system. Sure. Sponsors of the Watch. Right. Right. That said, look, the, you're leaving out a very important part here. So he made the...

The Book of Henry? Yes. He made a blockbuster film. I don't think that's the issue. issue here. Well, okay. Let's just lay out the table for people to choose which dish to choose. Let me just say this. Let me just interrupt the judging chopped judges and just say, this is a complicated one to parse based on the no evidence that we have in front of us. Because he is the safe choice who is apparently let go for pushing back on the script. So he was behaving as if he was an

autore, but I believe he was from the beginning. So that's the rumor. The rumors that there were some script issues. I mean, they're always script issues. Initially, it had been reported, like, years ago, and I think that this had been dispelled by Ryan Johnson himself, is that Ryan was going to direct, I don't know him like the way you know Lizzie Moss, but Ryan was going to. I call him Rye-Rye. He was going to direct episode 8 and write at least a treatment for episode 9. Theoretically, so there's some narrative continuity. You don't have to be like, well, how are we going to recone in this? And then, obviously, Colin Trevor O came on. I believe he is co-screenwriter, named Derek Conley.

His usual collaborator. Yeah. And I haven't heard yet about these rumors about pushing back on the script stuff. The sort of conventional wisdom was that the Book of Henry, which made less than $5 million. And is considered to be one of the worst films of recent times. Yes, was just such a blemish, you know, that it made maybe the Disney brass, Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm Brass, take stock of what was happening. Now, the Lord and Miller were fired off of Han Solo in mid-production and have since been replaced by Ron Howard, who has committed seemingly extensive reshoots because he, like, pretty much edited Michael K. Williams out of Hans Solo and has now added Paul Bettney to it because Michael K. Williams wasn't available to come back for reshoots. By the way, Hollywood's worst nightmare writ large for in terms of a narrative is let's remove Michael K. Williams and replace him with a man literally white enough to be a ghost. I'm not sure Paul Bedney is not completely transparent.

Right. With this situation, obviously, they just kind of got ahead of it. And I think that we can end it right here. The ultimately lesson here is that this is just this is the new normal. You know, if these properties cost so much money, they are so important to these companies, that they are just going to make the decision, the hardest decision usually that you would have to make. It's really, really difficult to part ways with the director of a movie. That person is nominally in charge.

Not anymore. No, I know. That's what I'm saying. It's the new normal. It's happening all the time. You know, as we know, Marvel, the big engines, Marvel, DC, and Lucasfilm have their slates planned decade in advance. They have multiple writer teams working on treatments for each potential movie, which they will then basically do a bake-off and say, I like the first act from this guy. Why don't you write the second act?

Nah, I'm going to switch to the third act. The movies are going to happen regardless. It is an assembly line. Whoever directs them, whoever stars in them, irrelevant. The movies will come out to meet shareholders' bottom line. It is franchise management is the job of the director. You're stewardship. You're lucky if you get to scribble in the margins.

Or you've chosen the margins like James Gunn, who's done a good job for Marvel with Guardians of the Galaxy. It's kind of a bummer, like you said, when someone loses their job. I did not want to see another Colin Trevereaux film, so I feel like this is in some level good news. But the real question is, and I definitely just reject out of hand, people who are like, they'll never take chances. They fired Colin Trevoro.

I'm like, really? I think that there's a degree in which these productions are like political campaigns, and people are trying to win the day. And they try to generate interest in these projects by rumor mill stuff and also the hiring of people. They're not necessarily making these decisions based on like, oh, we have a guaranteed track record here of people who have made 7, 8 movies, and they know how to do this.

So I think that while there's a lot to be said for the idea that maybe none of this matters, Star Wars is Star Wars You could have you or I direct one of these movies And essentially they would make sure it came out on the other side okay At the end of the day The thing that's different now than say like when Jedi was being made Or when the prequel is being made Is it just more of an industry around the speculation of like

Who's gonna get cast in this role? Who's gonna what's the behind the scenes rumors for this role? I find it pretty telling that like almost every one of these movies With the exception of episode eight has had a huge behind the scenes expose about it you know And that has become public. Right. It's weird to me because you're playing with House Money, you're making Star Wars.

Everyone's going to see Star Wars. Everyone around the world is going to see Star Wars. It almost doesn't matter, which I realize raises the stakes internally because you don't want to be the one to screw up the cycle. Right. But it's Star Wars. This is the trilogy. They already have the story. They can keep rewriting it forever, but they've got it.

And it's a question of who's going to land the plane. Before we move on to all our other conversations, who you got? Who would you like to see? I think it's going to be Ryan Johnson. That makes the most sense. He's already said he would do enough. Star Wars movie in a heartbeat that he would love to stay in this world. Yeah.

Nothing has so far. Nothing bad has been said about episode eight. Right. He's like, I know where the sets are. I know how to do all this stuff. Like, the actors obviously have a familiarity with him. I just, I don't understand why you would go do a talent search for this when this guy could probably turn the keys over right now to him.

He's still there. He's still posting right now. Yeah. The only thing I would say, and I say this based on not. necessarily believing he's the right person for Star Wars or I want him to be doing Star Wars. But Ryan Coogler is in a very unique position. I mean, obviously, Black Panther hasn't come out yet. But what it appears he's done with Black Panther is basically walked into a situation

where the giant conglomerate needed him more than he needed the giant conglomerate. And because of that, it appears he was able to extract some creative freedom for his project. Right. That it was not granted to other filmmakers. So the idea of him being able to do that makes him kind of unique. It makes him the last airbender here. I don't actually know what that means. It just sounds appropriate.

So that alone, you have to find someone who can do it and can actually take advantage of the opportunity in a way that these other people have not been allowed to. That said, it should be Ryan Johnson. You have the guy in house and he's good, apparently? Yeah. Done. Yeah.

Just don't do something where you're going to hire Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and then six months later would be like, wait, they wanted to make fart jokes. Finally, though, this means one thing that we can all agree. is a good thing, which is another book of Henry. I'm psyched. All right, let's talk about Peaks. I'm very emotional, Chris. Something that took 25 years to make and 18 hours to Justi as we arrived at the Twin Peaks finale, we get there.

And because we need, especially for something as in some ways indecipherable as the finale of Twin Peaks, you kind of demand, like, you know, explain this to me. Give me your take. What do you think? And then I felt like everybody was like, well, this is one. what I think now. And so there was a lot of like, well, it's like Allison wrote really well about like this idea of nostalgia. Adam Neiman wrote on The Ringer about the house.

I loved it. I loved that piece. And I thought Mad Zolorsites did a really nice job, not only doing an incredible breakdown, frame-by-frame breakdowns of a couple of the scenes to kind of talk about Lynch's style, but had a really good line in there about the idea of breaking away from some of the binaries that we have when we talk about television. Yes. Now, I will say this, not to be trolly and not,

that is a allowance that not many other filmmakers, television shows anybody gets, where you get to the end and the response is, well, we can't judge this by any known criteria that we usually apply to television. I know that that is what you were probably going to say, but I have sympathy for people, including myself. Is that self-sympathy?

Self-care. It's important in these trying times. This was at times a little bit of a drag to watch over the course of the season, not this last episode. And that, you know, it was hard to understand. And I say that as someone who prides himself on being able to understand a lot of stuff. That being said, Matt, and I'm sure you will tell me that part of this is that you're not supposed to, quote, unquote, understand it in the traditional sense of this narrative made this much sense. So, yeah, I appreciate it. I think Matt cites in his long piece, which I also recommend,

ended by talking about the poet John Ashbery, who just passed away, and the idea being, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but that difficult times calls for difficult art. Incoherent times may call for an incoherent art, which was nicely phrased and nicely put. My feeling is obviously layered. I loved this. I loved this completely with every part of my being.

I'm deeply, deeply moved that I even got this. I mean, I cannot overstate that falling in love with Twin Peaks 27 years ago taught me to care about things, taught me to care about art, taught me to believe in the possibility of television, television, storytelling, filmmaking. I felt that way about Octum Baby, so, yeah. That's right, until I just shattered your dreams. So to get anything this many years later is a gift. And so I really, it was a nice feeling because of that to spend these last,

15, 16, 16 weeks, I guess. Just grateful and not engaging in instant reactions. Is it bad? Is it bad? Breaking it down. Just kind of being present in it. And there's a video clip that's circulating of David Lynch at Cannes where he premiered the first two hours, where he says stuff that I kind of, all filmmakers say this, where he's like, it's not a TV show, it's an 18-hour movie. But he also says, you know, like get a big screen, put on headphones, get as close to the screen as you can.

And that's fine. I don't necessarily vouch for it because I don't want to get also sued by people whose eyes burn out. You should be safe with your TV viewing. But what he says at the end is, and you just may enter another world. And that is what this show and this whole universe and his filmmaking does for me. So obviously, I'm on board. But to have experienced this, I'm just floored by the audacity of this project. I think this was artistic beyond measure, emotional beyond measure, creative, risk-taking, challenging beyond measure in a way that just is...

People were questioning why, when I was tweeting my praise, I used the word joyful, because this was joyful to me to watch this. Obviously, there were dark things in it, but to see risks being taken, to see dream logic being interpreted on the screen for others without filter. You know, this is something that Lynch talks about in his interviews and also in his like meditation practice, that the reason he's so into transistors. meditation is because it removes the filters, so things emerge from his subconscious, and you can just translate them. Sure. I know that just because I'm a fan, I'm not the one who, only one who feels this, that when you watch Twin Peaks or Lynch's filmmaking are specifically moments in the return, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

There are things that are so unsettling and intimate because they could only exist in your subconscious. So I want to push you a little bit because I think that, like, that is, that's obviously like the sort of broad strokes, but like, can we talk a little bit about the final episode? Yeah, because I want to talk a little bit about, like, because I think one of the things that I'm sure some people were like, what do you mean by joy? I would just say that I found the finale to be quite disturbing. Very disturbing.

You know what I mean? And in some ways, I could really care less about, like, resolution for characters and when it comes to this, that is one thing that this show successfully kind of like just, I shook off all the like, how could you do that to this person, you know, kind of stuff. A lot of that is actually really challenging in a wonderful way our nostalgia and our desire to go back to fictional worlds. Because to go back means to open them up again and be alive instead of trapping characters in amber in moments where they were relatively safe. They were not dead. They were not 25 years older.

And instead we opened it back up, well, more life will have to happen to them. And so to see one of the themes of the show, and we talked about it, other times we talked about it, was history repeating itself, people trapped in cycles, the new generation of kids, moody soap opera teens. doing the same nonsense, the adults doing the same nonsense. That was Shelley, the character of Shelley's arc, basically, was to, you know, still be doing the same things that she was doing before in a way that felt more sad because her daughter was also trapped in that cycle. But specifically to the, there were two hours that they put together for the finale. I don't know if they intended that, but that was how it was aired. They put two at the beginning, too. The first hour of Sunday night was, you know, truly incredible in a lot of ways. It was, it reminds, here's something that I was thinking when I was

watching it was how Breaking Bad brilliantly ended twice. Emily Nussbaum wrote about this really well that if you watch Breaking Bad a certain way, Granite State, the episode where Walt is in isolation, in exile, with nothing but a barrel of money, and he has to pay someone to keep him company, that's the end of the show. That is a sad life-leaching away ending that felt tonally appropriate to the way some people watched it. If you didn't agree with that, there was the finale finale, Yeah. Where his plan worked and everything worked in a way. I mean, we don't need to spoil specifics, but he got revenge in a lot of ways.

That's how I felt about these two episodes. The first hour resolved really the story of this return season. It killed the doppelganger. Evil Bob was punched to death by a British guy wearing a latex glove, which is, I love saying this stuff out loud. And then, in the end, which was truly transcendental, Dale Cooper slipped the bonds of time and entered the story. The night Laura Palmer died. A scene from Firewalk with me was shown in black and white this time,

a scene that it has existed for 25 years where Laura sees something in the woods, screams, freaks out. It was revealed in this scene that that was Dale Cooper, who has gone back to that time and is now going to save her. And we get these incredible images, really moving images, of the pilot of Joan Chen, of Jack Nance, who passed away, like many of the people involved in this project, going to go fishing, but there's nobody, and he goes fishing. And I remember thinking, this is the most audacious thing I've ever seen.

The crime that's being solved is erasing itself. And that's the narrative. The second hour undid all of that in a really harrowing, harrowing way. And what it revealed to me was that the story of Twin Peaks in a lot of ways is a tragedy. It is about the tragic, the tragedy of an FBI agent becoming consumed with one case and being dogged, things we champion Dale Cooper for. But not only just being dogged about the one case, thinking he can beat evil and not just solve a case, but erase evil, undo murder. You know, that's not possible. That's kind of a trite observation, you know, but that, to see his failings made him a tragic figure in my eyes.

And it made me think that FBI agents, yes, and also TV fans who wanted resolution, who wanted everyone to be happy. One of the most beautiful things about Twin Peaks occurs like eight minutes into the pilot from 1990 when there's a lot of funny stuff and there's a lot of business and Pete Martel goes fishing. And then Sarah Palmer gets the news that her daughter's dead. And Grace Zabriski screams in a way that no one has ever screamed on television. And I feel like that scream is the black hole underneath all of Twin Towers. peaks that the show dwarf dances around horror. It's like it dives down her throat there. But that exists.

Horror exists at the root of all of this in life. And the fact that the show went back to the home, went back to this wound that cannot be fixed. It cannot be glibly taken away. And a super heroic FBI agent cannot talk to a tea kettle and fix it. Much like we can't have resolution that we want in art or in life. I mean, that was what it was saying to me. And yet it also gave us this.

resolution with Dougie where that's kind of the happy ending for Cooper fans want it, right? I mean, what is a happy ending for this fictional character of Dale Cooper? Yeah, I think that... And the juxtaposition of the finality of the red door versus these fluid red curtains really spoke to me. Interesting. What did you think of the Richard and Linda stuff between Dern and Cooper? I mean, Lynch has been long been fascinated by people becoming other people.

It's Lost Highway, it's Mulholland Drive, and here it was again. Now, they become Richard and Linda when they drive 430 miles. All of the stuff was foreshadowed in the very first scene of this series when the giant, now known as the fireman, says those things. Remember Richard and Linda, two birds with one stone, 430. I liked the idea of no matter who these people are, they can't escape themselves. Sure. You know, that's what it was for me.

there was something so I mean obviously it was first of all just in filmmaking it was deeply disturbing right yeah the sex scene the hands on the face the hands on the face the annihilation of him the way he they woke up in a different room as a different person that when I believe I might be wrong about this but I believe when he goes to the diner the duty diner and he's acting like the doppelganger when they offer him coffee I believe the cup stays empty I don't I'd love someone to go back I don't think they pour any coffee in that in that cup he never says his name he just says he's with the FBI You know, it is another universe, another dimension. And this idea that in this other dimension, he's still trying to fix this thing that cannot be fixed is deeply unsettling.

But that's the point, you know, I think Twin Peaks, and David Lynch's, David Lynch's relationship to television has always been about rejecting EZ convention. And this series itself was about that too. So it worked for me artistically. It worked for me narratively. But you can do this meta stuff too. Sure. And talk about what it's saying about nostalgia, about art, about identity. about purpose, about how we're all just trying to solve one case.

And, you know, there's been obviously, and you alluded to this, there's been a ton of great writing. There's a blog post I'll link to someone wrote on Lost in Movies, talking about how, you know, Twin Peaks often gets blamed for being the original Dead Girl show. Once again, this would-be hero, male hero, is trying to save this woman, you know, and sort of white knight her back into existence,

and it just ends in screams again and again and again, making her suffer again and again and again, making us fetishize her death in a way again and again and again. It's only David Lynch can do this and give us the Michael Sarah scene, you know, and give us these moments of just camp and hilarity. I mean, Belushi.

Jim Belushi was in that final scene with Nepper. The Mitchum brothers, suddenly just iconic characters watching this the way TV fan might watch it being like, that's one for the grandkids. I mean, huh? Yeah. But I love it. I love it more than anything.

It's what I think, you know, this exists, but I think that it will filter down. And it will filter down into more conventional ways. It's there in the leftovers. It's there in some ways I feel it in top of the lake just genetically because of the way it resists certain kinds of storytelling convention. That alone is pretty exciting to me. Yeah, I think if anything, I'll take from it, it's that as more and more and more filmmakers and more people produce more and more television, I will be really interested to see how the conventions of narrative storytelling get challenged on on like a week-to-week episode-to-episode show-to-show basis.

I saw this movie over the weekend called Good Time. Oh, I want to see it. Talking to Fantasy a little bit about it. There's a point in the middle of the movie. It's like a very, it's very good. I really recommend it. It's basically like a really gritty Sydney Lumet crime film set in New York. Patinson, Robert Pattson gives a great.

great performance and midway through the movie it doesn't take it like a it's not a twist as much as like the movie goes where it wants to go and it's a feeling that I don't get very often I think if you see a lot of stuff you just start to be able to predict certain things and it's there's a there's a moment in good time where it like comes to life and you're just like oh my god like this movie could go any direction right now and that was part of the joy or the part of the enjoyment And sometimes, frankly, confounding and sometimes frustrating about watching Twin Peaks over the last couple of months was that feeling of anything could happen at any given moment. And I would love to see in three or four years when we're talking, like, what have some people who are going to make television in the coming years taken from Twin Peaks and been like, I don't have to do this this way or, you know, like, and, you know, not everyone, frankly, no one is going to get the kind of creative freedom that Lynch did, you know, from David Evans. But, you know, I think some of this stuff can filter down.

I think the central tension of the next few years of television, it's not difficult men. It's not, I mean, it is streaming versus network. But really, to me, it is giving people what makes them feel comfortable and safe, which is what television has always done, versus taking them on a journey or they don't know where they're going. And the best work often does a little bit of both. And even Twin Peaks Return did a little bit of both. But the one thing I reject is this idea that this was a movie. This is a TV show.

And I think the ending speaks to that too, because one of the things about TV is that it just goes on and on and on. And I think it was almost a tribute to that to end in such an uncomfortable place. Last note, no, I don't think there's going to be season four. No one has said there will be. I wouldn't expect anyone to make another one. Many of the actors, so many passed away already. Many of them, you know, you don't know if they would be willing to come back or fit to come back, especially if he waits a lot of time.

It's a mistake to look at the end of this as like a backdoor pilot or a cliffhanger. This is a definitive statement, and it is harrowing, you know, in terms of what we thought of as a hero and what we thought of as success or resolution. But we have to sit with that, and I think that's a challenge that I'm happy to undertake. I'm so happy this happened. Yeah. I'll just talk briefly about narcos. About what?

Narcos. I'm sorry. What's it called? Narcos! Watched the entire third season this weekend. And more than even the past seasons, you know, we've joked a lot about the name of the show. We just like screamed the name of the show.

And when it first came out, I think Andy and I were both like, this is just like a nice, like this is comfort TV to us. This is Wikipedia of the TV show. Yeah, and that there is a degree of which like the straightforwardness of it is almost refreshing. And I think that that is still the case. It's just super text, not a lot of subtext. I was talking with Sean about that. There was this line, like, this idea that it was like, it is what it says it is.

A little bit of Ewing theory going on in this season. So no Wagner-Mora playing Pablo Escobar and no Boyd Holbrook. Didn't know that. Much to my chagrin playing DEA agent Steve Murphy. Steve Murphy. And Pedro Pascall, who's nominally the most famous person in the show. And is honestly, like, very high approval rating on him. from me.

Like, just in everything he's in and generally just seems like a very, like, enjoyable human being. Always happy to see him. Yeah. He is not as big of a force in this show, I would say, as you would think he is. And I wonder whether part of that is that he, in this season, plays, the Pena character that he plays is actually an amalgam of other D.A. agents and U.S. people who were working on the Cali Cartel cases.

Pena himself did not work on the Cali Cartel. So he has been sort of kept around as a kind of bridge to Michael Stahl-David, whose Chris Feistel character, is a real person and did work on bringing down the Cali cartel. The season actually hinges around this character named Jorge Salcedo, who is the chief or becomes the chief of the Cali cartel's internal security. And then, I mean, I guess spoiler, but it's not that much of a spoiler, turns into a confidential informant for the DA. And it is essentially like half chase movie, half spy movie.

So I just have no complaints about that. Yes, like it is definitely like written largely in cliches. And a lot of, you know, you put your, you got to give me your gun and your badge stuff. But I will say that more than almost any show, I can't even think of another show that takes, I wrote about this on The Ringer today. that uses setting and place as a character the way that Narcos does. I've always loved that about the show. It's on location in Columbia. You can start to sense when you watch a show, like, that's a set.

Or not even that's a set, but clearly there are seven sets that they have built and all the scenes sort of run through them in a car wash, and then they have some exteriors. Like, Narcos feels like it can go flying out the window and down the street and up the hill and down into the jungle and into a hell. helicopter and it is literally searching around the next corner for action for the chase for the pursuit and it is mesmerizing to watch some great performances the guy who plays pacho or I think it's Armando Amman is an Argentinian actor and he's really good in this season

but yeah I mean like I I'll probably talk a little bit about that this a little bit later but I really highly recommend watching it just because it is just excellent filmmaking. And it's kind of like there's not a lot of like, I know that it's not going to get a lot of end of the year notice, but it does what it does exceptionally well. I love the phrase you coined in the piece that you wrote for the ringer, pulp nonfiction.

Yeah. I think that's a perfect description of it. Yeah. And I think that one of the benefits of everything getting renewed and having this glut of television is that things settle into what they are, things are often received maybe out of whack with what they actually are. Yes. Narcos premiered during a period when Netflix was trying so abjectly to be a competitor to HBO

that we treated everything that it did. And Narcos was originally, I believe, developed at HBO. Yeah, and it was like, is Pablo like Don Draper somehow? You know what I mean? Right. When, in fact, what they were doing was, first of all, they were competing with everything in all entertainment, and they were not concerned about, you know, a prestige target.

but it allows something like Narcos, which is clearly, despite no evidence that they provide, one of their highest rated programs, this can run forever. It provides a certain kind of entertainment, and I agree with you that filmmaking alone, the location stuff alone, always makes it worthwhile. I am going to watch some of this. And the season four looks like it will move to Mexico. And there's rumors that the next sort of season, multi-season arc is going to begin to track Alchapo. So it should be pretty interesting.

That wraps us up, right? Do you want to get one of the thing in? Remember, the Double Down Book Club is Alive and well, and we are reading one of our favorite books, or rereading in our case, The Sweet Forever by George Pelicanos. It is relevant to your interest, I think, if you enjoy Narcos. If you're enjoying The Deuce, Pelicanos is a great new series on HBO.

We'll talk more in depth about that. We talked to George, but I think maybe next Monday we'll devote to the deuce. Yeah, we'll talk more about the deuce. You got another couple weeks to read this book. I hope I don't think people will find it a hard book to read. But we'll take a break and we'll come back with my interview with Elizabeth Moss. Yeah, let's just hear from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Delta Airlines.

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Buckle up and relax. Delve deeper into another world as you soar above your own. With endless entertainment from Delta Studio, your journey is sure to fly by. Your boy, Young Platinum Medallion agrees. Okay, we're back, or I'm back. I just wanted to set up a conversation I had with one of the great actors of our time, I think, Elizabeth Moss. I had the great pleasure of talking to her a couple years ago coming off of Mad Men. And it was terrific to get her on the phone today to talk about what is one of my favorite television shows of the year and certainly one of the best performances of the year.

Her work in Sundance's Top of the Lake China Girl, directed by Jane Campion. The first episodes premiered last night on Sundance. You could probably get it on demand. But it was terrific to talk to Lizzie, yes, she says I'm allowed to call her that. And so I will absolutely abuse that privilege about her work on the show, working with Gwendolyn Christie and Nicole Kidman, her work on Handmaid's Tale and the preparation going into season two of the Handmaid's Tale and a little preview of how nervous she is about actually winning an Emmy this month. Spoiler alert, I really feel like she's going to win an Emmy. She deserves it. Always a pleasure to talk to Lizzie. Boy, I get to say that. Here's my interview. Just going to get right into it if you don't mind. I have a very heavy question to hit you with right away. No pussy footing around it. I just have to ask you, how has your summer been?

I cannot believe. It's so out of line. So out of line. My summer is going great. Thank you. Good. Well, the reason I ask is, last time we spoke a couple years ago in New York City, very close to your home, you painted a very lovely and very norm core image of your daily life because

we were near your neighborhood. You talked about loving living in New York. And yet since then, I feel like you have never stopped working. And I don't know if you have never stopped working. time to still have that lovely life in New York, and if that's by choice. I was all lying, I mean, none of that's true. That's a life I want to have. I see it's aspirational. I've been able to be in New York a little bit more, which has been nice this year.

Basically, I've been pretty much all of 2016. I was working, and up until February of 2017, and then I started promoting. those projects that I went away and worked on. So I've spent a lot of time talking about myself, which is, you know, debatably fun. It depends on the questions, I guess. Yes, exactly. If I get really a complex, interesting one, like, how is your summer going? Then I'm in heaven, obviously.

Okay, well, I will rise to this challenge. Yeah, I've been able to be in New York a little bit more, so that's been, That actually has been really nice. I've been riding my bike and going at dinner with my mom and probably doing a lot of the stuff that I told you about last year. Okay, good. I'm just glad to hear it. So now I can get into the harder stuff.

But not too hard. Again, I'm just going to butter you up more because I'm so happy we're talking about a new series of Top of the Lake. The first one was my favorite show of 2013. I've watched two episodes of the new series. Oh, thank you. I didn't want to get too ahead of viewers. because we're going to put this up just after the first parts of aired here.

But what I've seen is outstanding, just tremendous. And, you know, I have to say, I was a little trepidacious because I loved the finality of the first one. It was a singular statement, which I think is underrated in television. I was a little worried about everyone opening it back up again. I realized now that was silly of me that you wouldn't, that you and Jane and the rest of the creative team would not have found a way back in that made sense. Can you talk to me a little bit about the genesis of this? I believe there were past notes under hotel doors.

I've read that, but beyond that, just finding a compelling reason to go back to this world. Yeah, we actually started talking about it back in Queensland while we were making season one. And it kind of came out of just being really happy working together and not wanting it to end. And so we just sort of started, I remember with me and Jane and Emile, one of our producers from Seesaw. And we just sort of almost started joking at a sushi restaurant about what it would be. And then a certain point in the conversation, it kind of became, wait, are we joking? Because that's actually kind of an interesting idea. I felt that actually there was so much left to explore from the end of season one.

I felt like there was so much, there was so much that was open-ended. So I, as a viewer as well, kind of just wanted to know what happened to happen to this little family that she had to in New Zealand. So it came out of really, like, very selfish ideas of just being like, I don't want to really, I don't want to stop this. I would like to continue playing this character. And Jane saying this has been a really rewarding experience for me as well, and I would like to continue it. And then the reason why it took so long, because it was about four years in between and two or three of those years, quite honestly, we were never quite sure if it was going to happen. and it was really only the last year that it became we were going to do it.

And that was because Jane and Jared, her co-writer, really wanted to make sure that we had a story to tell. We had all the same fears in trepidations, you know, that you mentioned, that we did a really good job with the first one and was there a reason to tell another story. And so that had to all kind of be figured out and explored because there was nobody that wanted to not mess it up more than we. Absolutely. You obviously have experience returning to a character after some time away, although, as you said, this was quite a long hiatus. I was curious about the specific experience of making this show because unlike, say, on Mad Men, where you went back to the same studio in a city in the country where you live, though on the other side of it, to make this show, you fly to the other side of the world. You adopt a different accent. I wonder as a performer, and as a person, is that particularly freeing, exhilarating? Is it scary? Is that a good kind of fear to go into on a project like this?

Yeah, definitely the last thing you said. It's a really good kind of fear. You know, there's something about being able to go so far away and the isolation that gives you and the concentration that that gives you where you don't have people around that you know and you are in a completely foreign land where everybody sounds different and things are done differently. and for me it was nothing but helpful.

And as far as the accent goes, I'm surrounded by the Australian accent. I'm surrounded by the culture. It's so helpful for me. So it felt like I kind of, you know, I'm this American girl who born and raised in L.A. and lived in New York for 15 years, and I have no business in Australia or New Zealand.

And I feel really kind of one of the most fortunate parts of my job that I've gotten to live in these places for six months at a time, you know, and really kind of become a local. And I love that part of it, you know. So for me, that's all very exciting. It's not something scary. It's something that I really, truly love about my job, and it only helped me. I would imagine it also helps the performance because Robin herself is kind of an outsider.

Certainly this season, she's returning to Sydney for the first time after a prolonged absence and she does not feel necessarily comfortable in any interaction, at least in the early part of the season. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's absolutely right. And the same went for New Zealand as well. She's sort of an outsider there. You know, she's born there, but she doesn't really have any kind of connection there anymore

except for her mother. And then in the second season, yeah, she purposefully doesn't want any connection with anybody. She's really isolating herself. And, you know, it's really about how you can isolate yourself in... a city. Living in New York, I'm really familiar with that. You're constantly surrounded by people, but you can be absolutely alone if you want to be. And we really explored that with China Girl.

And, yeah, it definitely helped to be an outsider myself. Although you also clearly were ordering flat whites before it became trendy in Brooklyn. So I feel like that was one benefit. I know. How about that? I remember being in New Zealand and being like, what's a flat white white white? White because I had to order it in a scene, and it's like a legitimate drink over there. And then I came back and was like two years later, all of a sudden they're selling Flat White, Starbucks.

And I was like, uh-huh, I see how it is. See, Top of the Lake is hugely influential. It's just not, you know, in subtle ways. Yes, exactly, in an insidious way. The first series was so remarkable because of the way, I'm actually struggling with the adjective. I was going to say unflinching. I was going to say honest. But those seem like, you know, sort of virtuous.

words. What I mean is that there's a, what the show does is it attacks every issue with a full 360 degree humanity. There's, there's humor when you'd least expect it. There's anguish and pain, sometimes when you least expect it. The first season tackled childhood trauma or addressed it in a number of ways that were extremely moving. This season, while those scars exist, is about motherhood in a way that truly knocked me flat and surprised me. Between Robin's relationship, with the child that she gave up for adoption to Nicole Kidman's character, who is the mother of that adopted child. The idea of motherhood is often treated in a very facile way in our entertainment,

almost because it's something it can be so personal and raw for people that we run away from the harder parts of it. This is a show that runs right towards it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's all, that's beautifully put, really. Thank you.

And it was definitely something that was the most intriguing to me about doing this one was, what is that relationship between a woman who has given up her child and never knew her? And how does she establish that relationship? And what kind of a mother is she? And how does she find the motherhood in herself? And I really liked the idea of when she meets her daughter that she doesn't know her, that she's a stranger, and that she doesn't immediately feel like a mother. You know, I think that there's this very common misconception about women

that, you know, we're supposed to just have that inside of us and we're just all born with it. And, you know, we're all just sort of waiting to start, you know, having babies. And the more modern idea that is really interesting to explore is that people make these different choices in their lives. I think that's a really, you're absolutely right, it's not really talked about that much. The idea that just because you have a child doesn't necessarily mean that you immediately fall into being the perfect mother. And so I found that really interesting and I found that I love the idea that she has to find her own form of being a parent to this child that is different from Nicole's character and is different from, you know, Pike, the father, the adoptive father.

She has to find her own paths. What can she offer this child as a parent as a mother that is different and unique to their relationship? And I think it's a very modern thing to address. The scene, in particular, I believe, in the second episode where you encounter your daughter for the first time, is one of, I think, the most impressive acting performances that I've seen from you in a career that is, you know, full of incredible performances. There's a full internal symphony playing across your face of a wide range of emotions. even when you're silent and just reacting, which I think is really the key to acting.

I'm curious about how, if you'll allow the ridiculous metaphor of an internal symphony, which up to you. I love it. Okay. So what I wanted to ask was, what I wanted to ask was, that was a symphony. There are notes of that symphony that you have played before in an interesting way. Not just with Robin, but Peggy on Mad Men and June on Handmaid's Tale have also have unique relationships to motherhood. Peggy also gave up a child for adoption and wrestled with that in the workplace. June obviously had the child taken from her.

In all of these roles, you've had to carry that symphony inside of your performance. I have no question. I'm just really curious about the process for you on that particular issue. Yeah. I mean, it points to how I feel, and I've always sort of approached every character, regardless of time period and age and, cultural upbringing and all of that, you know, you've got somebody in the 60s, you've got who's quite a bit younger, you've got someone like June who's, you know, very much a modern

woman, and then you have an Australian detective who is a very unique story herself in how she came to birth this child. But to me, it points to this idea of the world, we're all kind of the same, going through the same things, though. And one of the things I always wanted to bring to Peggy was this idea that she's, I didn't really care that she was a woman in the 60s so much. I felt like there were so many parallels between her story and what 20-something women were going through at that time. And, you know, so I feel the same way about, you know, about any of the characters I play. I really try to bring them into now and bring them into the modern world and sort of show the connective tissue between all of us and especially as women and as mothers.

It is a topic that for some reason I keep encountering. I keep sort of having kids and giving them away or losing them. It's sort of a common theme. But I think there's just a very interesting, complicated story there, and I'm attracted to those complex stories. And I think that, you know, as women, the idea of motherhood in that relationship is very prevalent, whether or not you are a mother. And so for me, it just keeps kind of popping up.

Absolutely. And to your point about playing the truth of a woman in any era, the thing about the show that I find so exhilarating in the first series and in this one, I mean, this is a police show, and if you will enjoy it on that level, if that's what you're interested in watching. But to me, this is a show that cares more about the interior and exterior life of women than almost any other I can remember. There's a attention to gaze in every interaction.

I mean, traditionally the male gaze, I guess you would call it. But also casual moments have an attention to female experience that is just really bracing as a viewer of more mainstream or, I guess, just most other entertainments. And specifically, this might be even a throwaway moment, but I don't believe Jane Campion does throw away moments. In the first episode of the series, when your character is meeting her boss at a restaurant where he doesn't get to finish his plate of nacho, shows, she pushes through this clutch of tall, blonde women in heels holding drinks to get to him and then pushes through them again.

And the camera is aware of that and of how Robin feels in that group and in every group that she enters in. And it really keeps you on your toes as a viewer and engages you in a way that I think other shows do not. Absolutely. And you're absolutely right about that not being a throwaway moment that was completely designed by Jane. And very specifically, I remember she sort of getting the tallest and blondest ones. that she could to her me to push through. And that kind of a thing is, I'm glad that you picked up on that because that's a very subtle Jane Campion move.

But it really helped to set up, yeah, what is that dynamic? How does she feel amongst these very classically kind of Australian blonde and beautiful? It comes from Jane's own experience as a woman and as an Australian woman, you know, which is really, she puts so much of herself into these characters. characters and into her project. So it was very personal, I was actually a very personal moment for her. And yeah, I feel like often, like you said, there's just, there's a, there's not a lot of exploration of female relationships.

I mean, it's changing and there's more and more in projects, but there's been a lot of conversation recently about how, you know, in some projects, it's women, are only reacting to men and around a man and the male gays. And Shane does this kind of fantastic thing in this series where she completely ignores that. And it's all about the women. And it's all about their relationships to each other. And the men are just sort of almost they're put into the positions that women are usually put into, you know, of being catalysts for the female characters and for reacting off of the female characters as a opposed to the other way around.

And it's something that comes so naturally to Jane that, you know, she just wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm curious about working with her if there's a shorthand that develops because of that, because you have the unique experience of working on long projects, television projects, with male creators and writers, directors, who I believe would call themselves feminists as well. Matt Weiner on Sopranos, Bruce Miller on Headmaid's Tale. I'm not asking you to pick favorites or play one against the other, but I am curious about working with Jane at the top of the production

and having a woman making those decisions from the very beginning. Yeah, I mean, I've been really lucky, like you said, the male bosses that I've had has been, you know, tried and true feminists and have a very good understanding of, you know, women and have written really great female characters. I do think there's something about, obviously, about a female leader, female director or writer that is different. You're going to get that moment that we talked about where she pushes through the group of tall blondes that I don't know if he would get with a man. You know, and maybe you would, but I don't know.

And you're going to get a certain perspective that is unique to being a woman, just as there is perspective that is unique to being a man. But I think if you're telling this really complex female story about motherhood, it's obviously you're going to get things from the female showrunner, if you will, that are going to be really helpful and unique. Because it's the same thing, you know, on The Handmaid's Tale, when we hire female directors. We're looking for that perspective. We're looking for what you can bring to it that is different,

just like we would be looking for what a man could bring to something that is different. I also think it's an opportunity to give performers, different opportunities. And specifically I'm thinking of Gwendolyn Christie, who is so magnificent on Game of Thrones, which is why many people know of her. And that's a role that calls attention to her physicality. This show on top of the lake, it also calls attention to her physicality, but the part that she plays allows her to be goofy and romantic and silly and funny, which, you know, I didn't doubt she was, but I didn't get to see it in this way before. It's a treat. Yeah, I mean, right? It's such a treat.

And if you get to know, Gwen, you realize so quickly how much of that is in her. I mean, she's an incredibly funny, sharp, brilliant woman. And she has a sense of humor that is absolutely devastating that comes from her intelligence. And, you know, you can see that she brings that into other roles like on Game with Thrones. You can see that intelligence. But to get the chance, I think, for her and for all of us as an audience to see, so much more of her for me was absolutely

just thrilling and I was just in an awesome time kind of getting to watch this person work in a way that I hadn't seen and she has I think that is something that these characters in top of the lake and that Jane kind of brings

as a female director that is really interesting where she breaks down these preconceived notion of what a strong woman is you know and we don't actually a strong woman doesn't actually mean that you know how to use a sword or that you're dressed in

armor. It can, and you can do that, but a strong woman has also has many other qualities that are interesting. And, you know, Gwen brought this, she has an innate strength that we can't get away from. But she brought this vulnerability, this sense of just, this sense of this glass cracking, you know, that she was just this fragility that was just sort of remarkable. And I loved the juxtaposition of this taller woman who is so fragile with this smaller woman, me, this shorty, who is quite strong, you know, and how the outside of them does not reflect what's on the inside. I think is really interesting.

And speaking of Strong, Nicole Kidman is on one in this. She is just incredible to watch. There's a ferocity to her performance that is thrilling. And I just have to ask, I mean, you've obviously worked with tremendous actors throughout your career. In the scenes between the scenes that you share are so heightened, so alive. I wonder if you have that same excitement that I've heard. You know, the champion tennis players talk about how like when you get to play the best, it brings out the best in you, like McEnroe when he played Borg or Federer when he played Nadal.

There's something about that that I thought of when I watched you share these scenes together. Thank you. It was very thrilling. You know, I kind of, we came on equal footing because we've both worked a chain before. You know, I had this history with my character and experience with my character that she didn't have. She was exploring a new character, but she had all of her experience as a giant movie started back her up. So we sort of It was we did kind of come at it with this sense of

Ooh this is gonna be fun Like this is this is something new And then given the story how we're sort of pitted against each other Every time they encounter one another It's fraught with this tension and it's fraught with this battle You know I think one of the episodes is called the Battle of the Mothers And it's it's you know it's that's really exciting And it lends itself to this underlying tension and a theme

you almost don't have to, you almost don't have to do anything. It's just, it's just there. You know, it does a lot for you, the context of the, of the scenes. I also loved what we discovered really quickly, which was that you sort of suppose that her character is going to have the upper hand, given her position of the adopt, being the adoptive mother of Mary. And you very quickly realize that personality wise, Robin, because she has a security and she has a strength that Julia doesn't have. And it was really interesting to see how Robin's sort of quiet strength and her ability

to actually just be very still physically, the juxtaposition of that was Julia's more frenetic ferocity, as you called it. You know, it was really fun to play with. I mean, Nicole Kidman's performance, there's such a neediness to her performance while still being ferocious and strong that is so layered and so palpable. It's really exciting to watch. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to take too much of your time. I did want to, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask a little bit about Handmaid's Tale, because by the way, congratulations on two incredible performances and successes in one year. Are you already filming season two? Is that coming up?

Yeah, we start filming September 19th, so we're deep into prep right now. There's like a countdown, of prep days happening that is supplying sufficient amounts of stress. But it's exciting. We're all really happy to go. You know, obviously, we're thrilled to go back. We have such a great team. And, you know, it's just, you just, when you make a show like this, you really hope that you just get to make more. And that's the very bottom line of what you want. And so the fact that we get to go back is, I mean, it's just, you know, we're very lucky. You know, I talked to a film actress recently, and she said that she struggled with taking a TV offer because she couldn't imagine a character that she'd want to spend more than two hours inside of. You've obviously played remarkable women on the big screen, but you now have created three just indelible characters on television and been able to slip back into their skin, into their head.

What is it about, I mean, because we're talking about Handmaid's Tale, maybe we should talk specifically about June, but I'm curious about what is it that distinguishes for you a, a character that is a one and done and one that you could live with for a while? I'm a director that it distinguishes that. For me, I don't really draw the lines. I just kind of go for what's the best material. And, you know, even with several projects that I'm producing that are in the stage as we're not even decided if they're a film or a miniseries, I couldn't care less. It's just about what's going to tell the story the best.

And some stories lend themselves to maybe six hours or ten hours or thirteen. And some you can get done in a couple hours, you know. It's actually, there's sort of strengths and difficulties to both. But for me, I never really make a distinction. I'm just sort of attracted to what the character is. I do think with something like June, with Handmaid's Tale, I love the opportunity to get more time to explore the character. I mean, for me, it's much easier if I've got six hours than rather than two.

You know, it's much easier if I've got all this time to tell backstory and to bring this character along. I don't like to do anything too quickly. You know, I like to be subtle. And so for me, that's why I think I keep kind of gravitating towards television is, and what I loved about Madman was this opportunity to live with a character for so many years and see them grow

and see them change. And to me, that's just, I remember telling people back in the day a few years ago when television, it was a new concept that, you know, television was a good thing to do was a relatively new concept. And I remember talking to actors and being like, guys, it's great.

You get all this time to explore the characters. And sort of like trying to convert people to this idea of like, it's awesome. And I think it, I don't know if it was, I don't think it was me that did it, but something sunk in. No, you are responsible for flat whites and peak TV. So we thank you for both. You're welcome. I don't know which I'm more proud of, frankly. I would imagine one of the challenges, I'm sure there are many, but one of the challenges of playing June over time is, you know, the challenge of playing the life of someone versus the sort of hopelessness and death that surrounds them, you know, to be fully alive as a non, as a person who has not given up in a world that is

so viscerally bleak for both the characters and, you know, at times for the audience. Is that, is that safe to say? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's the thing that I think, um, I love the most and that attracts me the most. I, I, I admire June. I, you know, I look kind of, I look up to her. I think she's kind of this amazing heroine. I hope that in similar circumstances I would be as strong as she is. But that was one of the initial things that attracted to me about the part was this idea of a woman who, every reason to give it, every reason to go either way. Either you give up or you go crazy.

And she doesn't. And she just will not give. Modulating that as we go through the series and modulating that. as we go through the seasons, that's the challenge of finding the moments when she has strength and finding the moments when she almost loses it. You know, realistic that would be how much can one person take? And I think that's something we're exploring in season two. How much can a human being actually withstand?

Won't reveal anything, but there is a breaking point for everybody, you know. Can you pick yourself up after that? One last question for me about Handmaid's Tale. One of the things that fascinated me about the series was the way that it in some ways felt like a time capsule because this was a project that had been championed, greenlit, written, and I believe mostly filmed in what to me, and I think many listeners, feels like a different world. It was in Obama's America. We were expecting, many people were expecting a president, Hillary Clinton. And then the show arrived in a very different time and was received as such, you know,

was a lot of writing about either parallels or fears or the sort of visceral reaction it brought out in a lot of people living in this new era. This new season is being written and conceived and filmed in this new era. Now, I would never think that, you know, the show will become overtly political in a way that is relevant to our world any more than it already was. This is a novel that was written a number of decades ago. But I am curious how that may have affected the production, your colleagues on all sides of the camera here and even in your own performance. Yeah, the election happened when we were filming episodes four and five, so about literally halfway through.

You know, we admittedly all sort of thought that we were going to have a female president and still felt that the show has this relevance, the same relevance that the book had, you know, in 1985 when it was written. Because we're not just talking about our country. You know, there are a lot of other countries right now. now that are, you know, run by a theocracy and are dealing with the issues in Gilead in one form or another. And so we, I think after the election, it just all got very close to home. And the ideas and concepts and things that we were exploring that were very much

based in reality had either happened in history or were happening currently, all of a sudden were happening closer to us. And so it just, it just was a sort of deepening of our convictions, I suppose, the deepening of our ideas. The ideas didn't change, and they haven't changed, but it's going into season two. But there is a sense of them being more personal, more grounded, closer to home, of things being even more sensitive than they might. It doesn't really change anything as far as story goes. Honestly, unfortunately, we sort of just keep doing things and then they happen or things happen, and then we've already written them. There's just so this parallel

that's happening is very sort of unconstructing, which is unfortunate, but the truth. You know, we're constantly reading things in scripts and then sending it out an article to each other going, well, this is weird because this is now

happening here, you know, so it's not designed. Unfortunately, it's been very circumstantial. It's helped made the show, you know, it's not always an easy watch and it never was going to be, but it's made it. It definitely has changed, I think a lot of audience reaction to it and the viscerality of it. I was just going to say, I mean, I've had many interesting conversations with Margaret

Atwood about the show and about the book and about history, and she's one of the most intelligent people you'll ever meet. And, you know, what she says, history repeats itself. There's not really a lot of roadmap. We've got to look at the past and what has happened. You know, what she wrote in that book had happened before. It's kind of something that It's a lot of truth then. Yeah, it's not always a happy thought, but it's actually a nice bit of, in a way, nice callback to what you were saying earlier about playing every character with present concerns, you know, alive in the present because in a way, every character is, history is always alive with every person that you've played and with the audience. Exactly. You've been so generous with your time.

I know you probably have to film two more movies that will win the Palm Door before you film Season 2 of Handmaid's Tale. A movie, by the way, we didn't even get a chance to talk about, but I have to say in a couple of weeks, right before you start filming, we'll be the Emmys out here. You've been nominated before. I personally feel like you are going to win this year. I certainly hope that you do. Is there anything that you can tell our listeners, like, is there a way to, when they put your face up on the screen and they do the split screen of everyone, what face you will make regardless of the outcome and what is actually going on inside of your mind during those moments, especially after having gone through it a few times? for a moment because it can be you can be very relaxed about the whole thing until that moment and then you almost have a weird sort of out-of-body experience where time suspends itself

for a second and you it's a very odd sort of slightly terrifying moment and it's a and then it's over very quickly you know it's like ripping off a band-aid and for me you know seven times before, it's almost been, it's kind of a relief, whatever happens. You know, you're just kind of happy that the moment is over. Yeah, but this time... And you can, you know... There's always the risk that you're going to be asked to do something that we don't ask of anyone. We don't even ask heart surgeons to do this, to go from that out-of-body moment to saying,

okay, now you have to walk down this pathway and stand in front of millions of people and give a thoughtful speech. No, we don't ask that of any other profession, other than actors. It's so true. I remember the only time I've won two awards, and one of them was the Golden Globe, and I was just shocked out of my mind that they called my name because they never called my name. And I always thought that I would remain relatively composed and be able to give a thoughtful speech. I have no idea what I said to this day. I completely blacked out.

I was shaking. I remember just thinking, I was wearing a dresser. that was short in the front. And there were all these famous movie stars, the tables really close to the stage. And I just remember thinking, oh, my God, these people can see my leg shaking. It's so embarrassing.

I think that you can't possibly, like, prepare yourself for that moment. So, you know. Well, I feel bad wishing you more moments of public leg shaking, but I really think this is your year, and you certainly deserve it. I thank you not just for taking the time to talk to me again,

but thank you for these performances. which are extraordinary as always. Oh, well, that is very, very kind to you. I know you're a very intelligent person, so I very much appreciate your feedback. Thank you. And thank you also for the coffee, because I think flat,

jokes aside, it's an excellent order. Okay, I still don't really understand what it is. Don't, don't, talk about ripping off the Band-Aid. Don't rip off that Band-Aid. Everyone was sold. I know. Is it a latte? Is it a cappuccino?

I don't understand. I think it's a classy latte. I think it's a classy latte. Exactly. Exactly. It just sounds cool. Well, best of luck with season two, best of luck at the Emmys, and I hope I'll get a chance to talk to you again when it's time again next year.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks, Lizzie. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Delta Airlines. I want to thank them again for their stewardship. Delta offers every type of entertainment for every passenger free with Delta Studio. Delta Studio grants you access to over 1,000 hours of entertainment. all from your seat back or your own device 100% free.

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