The Watch - The Poor Timing of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers.’ Plus, ‘The Pursuit of Love’ Creator Emily Mortimer.

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

It’s hard to not compare David E. Kelley’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ to Mike White’s ‘The White Lotus’ since since both follow wealthy people at ritzy resorts. Chris and Andy talk about how one show is much better than the other (1:00). Plus, Andy talks with the creator of ‘The Pursuit of Love,’ Emily Mortimer, about how she came to the story (32:18). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Emily Mortimer Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going.

Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk. walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the wrigger.com and joining me on the other line standing in front of an oddly accented Russian Nicole Kidman begging her to heal him. It's Andy Greenwald. I don't know if you've ever been that specific internet show before. I think I have. Andy, welcome to the Andy Greenwald podcast. I'm your guest

host Chris Ryan. You're Stu Gatz. Today on the pod, we are chatting a little bit about nine Perfect Strangers, which just premiered. The first three episodes went up on Hulu on Tuesday night. And so you're hearing this Thursday. And also on the podcast today is Andy's interview with the writer and director of Pursuit of Love on Amazon Prime, Emily Mortimer. I mean, I'm thrilled. Thank you for joining me on my podcast today for this journey. This was a treat. It's great to just, I feel like you're so focused on the pod right now. It's awesome. Laser focused. And the thing is, as we were saying off air with our fantastic producer, Kai, at, like, my dedication to the pod, in no way ebbs or flows with my procrastination levels on my other

writing projects. Like, it's almost, it's entirely unrelated. It's consistent. You're in every, you're like the Cal Ripkin of podcasting. Exactly. I mean, am I just churning out final draft pages in between the convos? Yeah. Yeah.

I am. Are those final draft pages the assignments that you actually have, possibly? See, I mean, who knows who's listening right now? So let's just say a blanket, yes. But yeah, I mean, for me, it's. left brain, right brain. It's not a big deal. I pivot from one to the other. And that's why, that's why you're getting all this FaceTime with me and why all these guests are piling up. It's great stuff. Yeah. So I'm excited to hear your Emily Mortimer conversation. I watched

Pursuit of Love and enjoyed it quite a bit. It's based on a Nancy Midford novel. It's about two friends growing up in the first half of the 20th century. Cousins. That's right. They are cousins. It's kind of hard to tell with English people sometimes. No, I mean, I say that as somebody whose dad is English. I mean, it's just, like the lines get a little blurry out there. If you're out there in the manner, it's like my cousin, but is it a neighbor, you know? Right. Well, I mean, in, you're actually hinting at something darker, which is that when you're at

that level of the aristocracy, everybody's related. Sure. Yeah. They've all been hunting foxes together for centuries. If you know what I mean. And stuff happens. Stuff happens. But, yeah, I mean, I can set up the interview a little bit more later in the show,

but I just love the series. It's as I think that the biggest selling point, not to be cynical, for people, but on Twitter seemed to be, when I said that it was three 60-minute episodes, and that's your commitment, it is just a, to my mind, almost perfectly realized an expertly and stylishly executed miniseries. It is a period piece set during World War II, but it's about these two women growing up in very different directions, one sort of living a very free life as if there is no tomorrow and one living life.

Embracing Bohemia. And the other one, embracing normalcy to a degree. Not unlike you and I. You know, like you're kind of like more of a stay-at-home fanny. I'm kind of a wild free Linda. It's true. It's true. The thing is about Chris is that any time, if you see the word freedom fighters in the newspaper,

you know Chris has already booked a ticket. You know what I mean? Like, Chris is just one of those dudes who's like, oh, is that popping off? Yeah. Is that, should we go? But it's also just, it's really, it's, you know, Emily Mortimer directed and we talk about this in the interview. There's just high style and acronistic in the best ways with like, like T-Rex and Slater Kinney on the soundtrack.

It's a really a terrific show with phenomenal performances from Lily James and Andrew Scott, who people know as the hot priest from Fleabag, Dominic West, who people know as McNulty on the wire, but I think would be very surprised to see what he's like when he's speaking with his real accent. Awesome show. It's funny to watch him go from like kind of the leading man Lethario, and now he's aging gracefully into the more paternalistic figure in shows and in movies. let's get into...

Again, like us. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk a little bit about Nine Perfect Strangers. And I'm going to start you here before I ask you what you thought of it. So if anybody doesn't know, which you can never tell these days. Ordinarily, I would just assume that this had been shot into the back of everybody's cerebellum. But in case you don't know, Nine Perfect Strangers is a mini series on Hulu based on a Leanne Moriarty novel. Leanne Moriarty, obviously, behind Bigelow Lies.

It stars Big Little Lies star Nicole Kidman and was co-written by Big Little Lies co-writer or writer David E. Kelly. John Henry Butterworth, who is also a very accomplished screenwriter, co-wrote. The co-created the show and he worked on the New Indiana Jones movie and Ford versus Ferrari and a bunch of stuff. He works with his brother, Jez quite a bit. Anyway, directed by Jonathan Levine, who did Longshot and 50-50 and Wackness. So great pedigree. The ensemble is bananas. Melissa McCarthy, Bobby Knavalli, Regina Hall, Michael Shannon.

Just talent overflowing. The cup overfloweth, right? Have you ever seen a bigger show more unintentionally poorly timed? As nine perfect strangers coming mere days after this triumphant finale for White Lotus where it does gangbusters ratings is still being talked about

days after its finale and now sliding in is a show about a bunch of people going on a retreat to work on themselves. Yeah, the timing is really unfortunate. And I should say, Alison Herman wrote a piece about this

on the ringer, so you should check that out because... The timing couldn't be more unfortunate and, you know, charitably, I guess what I would say is the reason, the most charitable reason why I say that the timing is unfortunate is because the projects of these shows are very, very different, even though thematically and certainly narratively,

they are similar, right? I mean, I would be hard pressed to name two 21st century TV autores with just different projects than Mike White and David E. Kelly. Yeah. Mike White, you know, is interested in smaller, more intimate, more human, more ugly, potentially moments and kind of just sitting in it, you know, and keeping you focused on it and living in it and living in the kind of uncomfortable collisions and confrontations that fuel our daily life. David E. Kelly, and so he's a small and intimate emotional storyteller, and I say this with massive respect for David

Kelly. He is a professional storyteller. I don't know if even after watching his television programs for almost 30 years now, right? I don't necessarily have a point of view to share with you that I think is his project, is his emotion, the thing that he's trying

to teach us or demonstrate for us other than the fact that 60 minutes, or in this case, blessedly, 47 minutes. For the first episode at least, yeah. Of television with a bunch of different characters rattling around in the same box

can be wickedly entertaining. I mean, that is what he does. And through one episode that I've watched, there's no reason to think he's not at it again. I mean, this is what he does best. And to analyze the pilot of Nine Perfect Strangers just as a piece of constructed television, I'm like, yeah, there you go.

That's when you put that person there. You have them collide there. You bring this around the back. Look, she's standing and watching. Uh-oh, that's a surprise. where's this going to go? Yeah, it works, man. This machine hums. But to the question you asked at the beginning, I don't want hums right now, you know, that's not, I mean, I always, look, I love, I love a humming machine. I'm going to die by this idiotic analogy that I've made. But what I mean is,

it feels much more shallow than maybe it is one episode in because it kind of is just like, like a tepid sauce of satire of something that is relatively easily satirized, cut through with television melodrama. And I am a huge fan of television melodrama. But the central conceit of Nine Perfect Strangers feels odd to me after White Lotus, mainly because in White Lotus, a whole bunch of people choose to go on a fantastic vacation and then are forced to stay with themselves on it and deal with stuff. Nine Perfect Strangers conceit is that there are nine people who have signed up to go to this very exclusive wellness retreat, all of whom seem to be there against their will and furious and shocked and surprised about what they're

doing there. And that's a tough hurdle. It creates drama in the pilot where all of them are like, I don't want to be here. How dare you do this? But also I'm like, you all paid $30,000 to do this. Right. I don't get it. Right. So that's my hurdle. I think it's going to be unfairly compared to White Lotus throughout its run. But I don't think that comparison is without educational value. I mean, obviously that there are some similar themes at work, there are some similar narrative things at work, but I was struck by how, you know,

coming out of White Lotus and you get introduced to those characters early in the season, you get introduced to the people working at the hotel, the people are visiting the hotel. And even though you learn a lot about those people over the course of the season and you see them go through various changes, the idea of like aside from who is in the coffin in White Lotus, there is really no mystery to it. And I think one thing that David Kelly has got a great facility for is keeping people interested in things by creating a sense of tension or a sense of mystery. And so everything about nine perfect strangers is supposed to be like these people aren't what they seem, I think.

You know, as you go through this episode, increasingly you're like, Like, why is Michael, why is Michael Shannon's family so fructitious? Why is Bobby Conavalli so angry? Why is Melissa McCarthy here at all? What is Luke Evans up to? What is Luke Evans up to? And what the fuck is up with Nicole Kidman? And that is, you know, that last question is amplified by the fact that she is putting up what you can only describe as a Mount Rushmore Bad Russian accent, matched only by Sean Connery's Marco Rameas in Huntford, October.

and John Malkovich saying, pay this man his money in rounders. I just want Nicole Kidman. I want somebody to ask Nicole Kidman for a refund in this show so that she can go, pay that man his money. But the thing about this show that's kind of wild to watch is it's like, this show is obviously in some ways taking itself a lot more seriously than White Lotus. Like, I think White Lotus was like, this is like a slice of life. And, like, there are really huge issues at play, just like there are huge issues in our everyday lives.

But they're going to be, like, outgrowths of somewhat natural behavior, even if it's behavior that we're satirizing. Whereas in Nine Perfect Strangers, it's like, it's trying to have it all. It's trying to be a game of clue. It's trying to be a family drama. It's trying to be a mystery. It's trying to be kind of like satirizing the wellness revolution, but also. also very much feels like it's made for people who go to spas. You know what I mean?

Trying to look beautiful. Yeah. That's the trap that I think that these, this prestige era of Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon television shows that I, and David E. Kelly is involved with a lot of them. And, and Bruno Papandrea, who was formerly Reese Witherspoon's producing partner as a producer here, it's a very tight line they're walking, right, where it's like, we are slightly, looking askance at beautiful wellness culture stuff, but also we want this show to be beautiful escapism.

That's a tough one to walk. And I'll give Jonathan Levine a lot of credit because the opening shot of this show is fantastic. I mean, that helped me a lot. Do more than most establishing shots do? I will. Yeah. The opening shot of the show is disconcerting. What am I looking at?

Oh, wait. Is this fruit? oh, those are blades. Oh, I'm inside of a blender as a smoothies getting made and all these beautiful things are being turned into a uniform mush. Yeah. Establishing shots matter. And I was like, okay, so we are going to, we're going to chop things up here, right?

It's not just going to be beautiful external perfection. And I appreciated that. I was a clever opening shot. But at the same time, you know, there's, and this is a hallmark of the older style of television that David E. Kelly isn't absolutely acknowledged and worshipped master of, there's always got to be melodrama hiding under it. You know, I mean, there's no room for suffering or pain or collision or conflict to be smallbore. And so we get things like, you know, the helpers who are played by Manny Jacinto from The Good Place and Tiffany Boone, some people might remember from the Shai, you know, they are.

are absolutely stunning individuals in addition to being talented actors, thankfully. But, you know, there's mysterious eyes. What are they looking at? What are they thinking? What are they seeing? What's going on behind the scenes? You know? And similarly, all the people are bringing with them, like, internal Chernobyl's of plot

in addition to suffering, right? And I think that, again, this is a tough comparison, but I enjoyed something like the White Lotus where people, other than Jennifer Coolidge, perhaps, at the beginning of that series, the burden everyone was bringing was more quotidian, you know, legitimate, but more familiar.

Everybody got to be the straight person and the jokester within one scene. Like there was no... I feel like one thing is that there's not a, like, a quote unquote,

normal performance going on in what... in High Perfect Strangers. Like, everybody is kind of doing a lot. And I would imagine that this series, while it's a Leanne Moriarty novel with Nicole Kibben

so I'm sure that this is going to get made either way, but this is another example of something that's very COVID-friendly to make. It was obviously... They made it in Australia. It's beautiful. So the novel is set in Australia. The show was transposed to California,

but then they shot it in Australia, and it does not look like California at all, especially California as we know it. No, but I love that. It looks like the Shire. You know what I mean? Like I think that helps the unreality of it in a way. Speaking of the unreality of it,

though, is I don't know necessarily how much, and I don't mean to, like, I have no idea. This is more of like a critique of the tone rather than like a critique of anyone. I'm sure it was like a very strenuous undertaking to make television during this time, but like it doesn't feel like the performers all like got together

and chatted about like how they were going to approach the show. Because Bobby Canavale is in a different series than like Mani Jacinto is. Do you know what I mean? Like, he's like, I'm out here. I got a bucket hat on. I've got demons. I'm driving this sports car around. I'm yelling at everybody. And then there is like this other side of the show that is this sort of serene like something slightly wrong here. But you know what I mean? Like some people are playing it really big. Some people

are playing it really like measured. This is I think my barrier to entry too. There's a lot of fissile material, as we say in the weapons industry on display here. Right. Like you have Melissa McCarthy. You You have Bobby Cannavalli. You have Michael Shannon. These are tremendous world-class performers. None of them are necessarily famous for their restraint, nor necessarily should they be because of what they are capable of. There is a vibe here that worries me going forward, which feels like all of these people

with all of their baggage and all of the characters with their baggage and the actors with their preferred performance style have all been brought in. into a pottery barn at the mall and told to keep their voices down. Like, they're all behaving. Do you have to keep your voice down at a pottery barn? Well, it's just so classic. Okay, I'm sorry, William Sonoma.

Well, I've never tried yelling at one of those places. So I did. The copper pots carry volume. You know what I mean? They transmit volume, so it resonates in a very unpleasant way. But they all feel like they're trying to, I mean, this is the nature of a piece like this, right? Everybody's different and they're brought together and that's going to cause sparks.

But it's not, it jumps the line for me from that's the nature of the reality within the show to this is the difficult balancing act of the production that I'm not sure they've entirely. Yeah, there's a lot of like, I don't know if you notice, but there's a few like, how did this person get into this room moments of like, I thought they were on like the other side of the resort and like engaged in some other activity and then all of a sudden they're in their hotel room and Nicole Kidman is there. So there's some funky stuff with that that I wonder whether or not is related to like what coverage they could get or how they constructed the show because of the restrictions that might have been in place on the production. I will say this as a positive about the show.

And I also have to believe this is one of the reasons why Nicole Kidman was excited to make it. there is a booming market for glossy shows with stars on TV. I mean, that's great. These things used to be movies, and now they're TV shows, and people love them. And Nicole Kidman is at the forefront of them. Big Little Lies, the undoing, two of the best examples of that over the last few years. This one, at least through the beginning episode, is not a murder mystery, which feels like progress. As someone who loves murder mysteries and made one, I get it.

but it's not just progress, I guess, it also feels, it's hard to call an expensive show like this experimental, but I do think they're trying. They're like, what other type of story can we tell with these lens filters? You know what I mean? With this color palette in all senses. And I'm not upset with that. It just feels like a tougher barrier for entry. And I'll say this again, like this isn't something I'm necessarily proud of because I'm,

yeah, I'm sheeple like everybody else. Like the undoing had glorious performances, sexy, moneyed backgrounds that are fun to watch, but also it was a murder mystery. And I was like, well, okay, I guess I want to find out. And they managed to turn Bill of Lies into that, too. Yep. Yeah. So who you got here? Like, I think, for me...

Like, what's a compelling reason to keep watching? No, but it's like, what's your power rankings almost? Because, like, I liked everything Melissa McCarthy's bringing here. Like, I almost wish that it was her show. like let's just focus here. Right. I'm really, really love when Michael Shannon

is in quote unquote normal things because he's just so deeply not normal as a performer. So his energy is very surprising. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, he's one of our great character actors and just tends to be on one in the margins of weird or cultier

or more critically beloved stuff. And then every so often they're like, you're Michael come come sit at the grown-ups table you know and he's certainly like he's one of the best actors here but it just his energy is just very different than Nicole Kidman's and and what they do with their what they do with their charisma there's a scene in the first episode of nine perfect strangers where Michael Shan's character joins Samara Weaving's character with her boyfriend in a hot tub in a hot springs and the I couldn't help but think of the scene in White Lotus's first episode, I think it's the first episode where, you know, where Rachel meets Olivia and Paula

by the pool and they kind of, they kind of like undo her, you know, like they basically pick her apart where she's like, hey, how do you fellow kids? And, and they're just like, whatever, you're, but that scene in White Lotus is played so acutely and is so incredibly observational about like human behavior and is very recognizable. And the Michael Shannon scene is kind of just, like, what the fuck is going on? Like, why are these three people in a hot spring together? Like, if it's such an exotic, expensive resort, like, don't they have separate places for people?

And then also, like, does anybody think that this guy is behaving normally? Or does anybody, nobody in this show is behaving in any way, like, a way that would be, like, you could get away with in real life. But at the same time, it's not, like, over the top. It's not a sat time. Everybody's heightened, you know? And that's, I think, this. interesting line that we're watching, more broadly speaking, this show, there are aspects of the show

that are very 2021, like getting giant movie stars together and, you know, in the whole package. That said, this type of story is as old as time. Sure. A bunch of people gather together and sparks fly or whatever. Canterbury tales, baby, right? Exactly. That was a lot more fleshlets than that. But yeah.

I think, at least TBD, I haven't watched the rest of this. series. But I think that what was very refreshing, and I apologize, part of this, you know, this is our first podcast we've done since not just the White Lotus finale aired because we had watched it and talked about it obviously in our last episode, but since the reaction to it and the great Mike White interview that he gave to Fulcher posted, there's something that I just admire so much more about White Lotus in retrospect, which was the nimbleness and willingness the show brought to quote-unquote hot-button issues of today. And, you know, I think Mike White really articulates himself very well in terms of what he

sees the point of his art is in that vulture interview. And I, I really, really liked all of that. This show, like a lot of more cautious Hollywood entertainments are still trying to have it both ways. And that's as a tale as old as time, maybe not as Canterbury tales, but as old as Hollywood, where we're going to tell a relatively familiar, soapy, sudsy, melodramatic story, but we'll also nudge and nod towards maybe having an opinion about things like influencer culture, right? Or phones. And you get that kind of like, yeah, or like addiction.

Yeah, yeah. We'll sort of look at that, but it's folded into and it's in the service of the larger Sudzy project. Nothing wrong with that. But again, the timing is causing us to. And I do feel unfair because we've, I don't think I've said, other than that opening shot, every single thing I've said has been in relation to White Lotus. And I'd like to move past that.

No, I mean, I would say, I would say that, but I've watched the, I've watched two episodes of Nine Perfect Strangers. And I think what you'll find when you see the second one without giving anything away is that it moves a little bit more into something as a foot. Now, whether or not it's like necessarily like a whodunit, it still is like the fact that it's called tranquilum, you know, like, I think it's supposed to feel a little bit off. And so you get more into like, the mysterious aspects of it

and especially the mysterious aspects of Nicole Kimman's Masha character. What do you think of what Nicole Kidman's doing in this show? I don't know. I don't know what she's doing, you know, because I think that, well, honestly, my reaction to it,

and I don't know if this is fair to her, but my reaction to her arrival on this show, her arrival on the show is actually suited to the way I think about her in general in her career. in general. She is a, at this point, becoming a completely unique television celebrity and star. You know, I am in awe, true and abiding respect for the way she looked at the landscape of the role she was getting in movies where she has always been considered since she debuted in that

Australian, was flirting her first Australian movie, but like, and then dead calm, like almost from the moment when she appeared, everyone's like, she's one of our great screen actors. Like, she's just that good. And her reputation couldn't. be higher, Oscar winner, et cetera, et cetera, and then reached a point and was like, looking at the script she was getting and her options and was like, I'm going to pivot because I love to act and I still have it and has reinvented herself as, you know, a movie star of TV. And the thing about movie stars in movies and now in this new genre or new that she seems to have created is that they are often bigger than the material. It's like when Tom Cruise, her former husband,

shows up in something, like, okay, he's playing Ethan Hunt. But he's really playing Tom Cruise. who wants to, you know, perform his death for us eventually on television on the top of a Dubai skyscraper or whatever. And when Nicole Kidman shows up, she's just like, guess what? Here comes fucking Nicole Kidman and wait till you see what her face, hair, and voice are doing this time. Right. And it's cool. She's using her center of gravity and charisma really powerfully in this by making it all about what she's going to do and look like. I just don't know if it's tuned to the right frequency of the rest of the material.

And then I end up there. Because she does feel... There's big Will Ferrell's bad guy in Zoolander, anyway. Yeah, yeah. And I just, I think that as episodes go by, maybe they'll all tune into one another. But right now, it's just like, oh, like Nicole, just the helicopter landed. And here she is, you know? Can I say two things.

One, I forgot to mention it before. Grace Van Patton plays Michael Shannon's daughter. I think she's a really talented young actor, so I was excited that she's in it. I just wanted to find this. Oh, okay. here's a line from the Wikipedia page. Obviously not always the most reliable source of information, but I did want to share this with you

and wonder if it rang is true for you from your experience watching the show as it did for me. Kidman met most of the other nine actors right when filming their first scene together, comma, and stayed in character as Masha during production. Yeah, I'd seen some stuff about her being like, I fucking went for it on this one. Like, I straight up just cobbled shoes like Daniel Day Lewis.

It was a real experience. I wonder if she like met the director at that point too. Look, I don't, we'll see. We'll see where this turns out. But there's something different from like Daniel Day Lewis being like, I am a posh Brit. Like I need to know how to work with my hands to play the part of a shoemaker. Yeah. Versus Nicole Kimman being like, let me fully inhabit the day-to-day reality of a

tranquilum-owning Russian ice goddess. Like I just, it doesn't strike me as the- honestly, it's like, she's, she's, the performance I most reminded me of was Kate Blanchett from, like, Lord of the Rings. Like, she's fucking glad reeling out. Yeah. That I didn't get much of a reaction from me. You're not a big Hobbit guy, man. You're not much of a, you don't really rep, rep the shire like I thought you would.

What I thought actually, what I appreciated about what you did is that's, first of all, no. I'll just, I won't leave that unanswered. I, I do not. I do not. But I just felt like you were, you know, no. and correcting. Like I said she was like Mugatu and Zoolander, and you said she was like Galadryl, which I think is more flattering. And I think that that's the one we should use. I won't ask Kaya to edit it, but I think that you were correct. So I was mostly just impressed.

We can wrap it up there. So you're going to stick with this. I have to admit, I'm a little bit surprised. I mean, it depends how much I'm procrastinating into next week of my work, because this isn't, no, everybody, this isn't for me. This isn't the kind of thing that I like to watch. But there is something that is very very, very much. odd about it and I can't tell if it's odd in a compelling way or odd in a oh oh nine different trains are about to crash off the track kind of way it could go either way I'm can't I would guess it doesn't crash because of the pedigree of everyone involved but it is a little it's a lot well we're just we're just watching TV at the switching yard you know Chris I would say this comes

up and this is a segue into my conversation with Emily Mortimer like as we get into these shows that were all either interrupted by COVID or had to readjust on the fly because of COVID, like, there's going to be things that we don't normally account for. You know what I mean? Like just maybe hopefully some moments of inspiration and magic, but also just some like, that wasn't supposed to be like that. And there was nothing we could do despite our long professional pedigrees and careers. The show that I'm most kind of curious about for that is succession. I'm deeply fascinated because they had, you know, they were so. They were so, uniquely hit the Succession and Better Call Saul. Both were like thrown off their cycle so significantly.

And Succession got back after it. Like they were shooting in New York. What? Like in March? Yeah. They were up by February, I think. But the other thing about Succession that we keep talking about, because we're so interested, is that show is so, you know, it needs to feel zeitgeisty. And so it's going to have to. No, it needs to feel alive. It can't feel like there's only two people in this room. needs to feel like there are people in the hallway and they're coming into the office and they're leaving the office and then they might get up from the office and go outside of the building. You know, like, it has to have like a little bit of a liveliness. And I wonder what they're not going to super spread. It has to. It was interesting talking to,

Emily, because she, as she says in the interview, Pursuit of Love was the first production back in the UK. Wow. And it was earlier than anything was filming here. They, they started filming. I think they were supposed to start filming in February, March, and they filmed in June, they filmed in the summer. But she says that it was, because one of the things I love about the show, and I hope people check it out, the interview does not spoil anything

as much as a show like this can be spoiled, is that there's just such a sense of palpable joy in it and breathless, like, excitement, and all the actors seem to be having the time of their lives in an appropriate way. And she said that a lot of that has to do with the fact that, like, you know, six weeks before, most of those actors were like,

am I going to work again? And she said Andrew Scott turned to her at one point and was like, I can't believe I'm out of party. Like, I can't believe we're getting to do this. So in a way, it played to the show's advantage, even though at great, obviously great global cost. Last thing, just big Emily Mortimer fan, lover as an actor, all the way back to one of the great movies, lovely and amazing, Nicole Hall of Senors movie, which I spoke to Emily about at the end of this interview. And, you know, it's just cool because she is a great actor and then adapted and directed this thing, having not directed anything else. Yeah, Emma Thompson moved from her. And really good at it.

Yeah. Thrilling. Can't wait to see what she does next. And it was a long conversation, but I think a really energetic and creatively engaged fun one. So I was excited to do it. Okay, cool. So we'll be back on Monday. Check out Andy's interview with Emily Mortimer coming up next.

Thanks for listening to The Watch. And thank you to Kai McMullen for producing. The playoffs are here. And you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes. swishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch.

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Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Price Line. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Do you find that interviewers often try to hide their cards? Like if they're interviewing you about a project,

they don't want you to know how they feel about it so that there's some. Oh yeah, it's awful. It's awful. And also you go out to dinner sometimes with people, friends who have either just watched the thing that's been on the television or in a movie or have come to see in the theatre. I've had that way.

You've got to dinner after a play and they just don't even mention the play and you're just sitting there all through dinner, making polite conversation. I've just strutting. my stuff in front of me for like two hours straight, you could at least lie. I think people just, I think people just have a, I think honesty is an overrated virtue in this, in this instance. Like, it's much better just to lie. And then you can have a nice conversation and get on with something else, but you just say, I loved it. And then on you go. Yeah, or you could, or you could say something that you could unpack later and realize this suspicious, like, how fun or.

Exactly. Well done. What a great... You must have worked so hard. Ooh, that's hitting you while. You're hugging. I think we've already started, but I will for the sake of our listeners. Just say, I'm so thrilled to be joined by one of my favorite actors and the writer and director and co-star, occasional co-star, of the absolutely fantastic Amazon series, The Pursuit of Love, Emily Mortimer. Welcome to The Watch podcast.

So happy to have you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. I was just saying, I don't know if we officially started or not, I absolutely loved the show. And it's the best kind of thing to me that can happen in this era of too much television where suddenly the clouds part and there's just the exact thing you want to be watching. And it's just the right exact length. And thankfully, I devoured the show in three nights and you were nice enough to come on to talk about it almost instantly. So I do appreciate that.

I'm really happy to, pathetically happy, as you see. I was so easily, readily available to be here that you enjoyed it. And yeah, and I'm actually at the moment in Cleveland, Ohio, where my children are in a movie. So I have a lot of spare time being a kind of stage mom. So this is the perfect time to do your podcast. But also incredible because, as you're saying, you know, if you're in a play and then you can go out to dinner and talk about it afterwards, and hopefully people say nice things. That is one level of experience.

But to be writing and directing and acting and show running and being involved in posts and giving so much of your time and life to a project, the silence afterwards must be crazy. You've put it on the world and it's not yours anymore. Are you generally a controlling person when it comes to your artistic product? Was it easy to let go and walk away after all of this?

Well, I had never experienced anything like this. So I don't, there's no generally about any of it, you know, I have found the experience of making it one of the weirdly most kind of relaxing times of my life. I felt very relaxing isn't quite the right word, but I felt very unstressed and very unneurotic comparative to how I normally feel. Partly I think because there's just not enough time to literally not enough time to think, which in my case is a good thing. I mean, My tendency is to think way too much about everything. And when you're directing something,

it turns out there's just no time to think and about anything. And so you don't have the time to sort of send yourself mad. And I really loved the experience and I felt very kind of like it was the least neurotic feeling, just trying to tell this story in the best way possible. And that being my main focus, it's just like telling the story, giving the people that I was making the television show for the opportunity to experience the story, the book,

to get the same sort of feeling that I'm from watching the show, hopefully that I had from reading the book, and to give people a treat. And that felt very kind of stress-free comparative to the rest of life somehow. But then I wasn't accounting for the moment afterwards, which you've just described, which is sending it out into the world.

and waiting to see what people think. And yes, unlike a play where there are an audience there and it's all over and done with and you kind of know quite quickly what people think or a film too where this is a much more sort of less, it's a much more sort of gone out into the sort of ether in this sort of strange way. And it's at the same time just incredibly exposing and terrifying.

And there's no one to blame but myself if it's not good because, I literally wrote and directed it and I'm in it. And so it feels incredibly exposing, but also sort of strangely kind of empty. And especially when you're in Cleveland. Yeah, I was going to say, you're already in an emotional, metaphysical Cleveland of the mind. And now... Totally.

So, yeah, so I'm only too happy to sort of have an excuse to sort of keep talking about it, really. Well, let's rewind it all the way to the beginning, because for people who don't know, the show is based on a book by the British writer Nancy Middrefer And can you talk a little bit about how you discovered the book and how long of a journey this has been for you in terms of wanting to put it onto the screen with your vision attached? So I knew the book when I was a child or a teenager probably. My father was a writer. He died 10 years ago now, but he was a British novelist and screenwriter and playwright and also a big criminal defense. Rumpel of the Bailey was a very big deal in my household growing up. That was your father's, yes.

Wow, yeah. So he wrote this character for the television called Rampal of the Bailey, but he also, he just was very prolific writer, and he adapted the big, I don't know whether everyone's probably much too young to remember, but in the 1980s there was a big adaptation of Brice had revisited, the novel by Evelyn Waugh that Jeremy Irons starred, and my dad adapted that. And he was, so he was,

was a big fan of the of the mitfords. And so when Nancy was part of a kind of infamous family of mostly daughters, there were six girls and a boy. And they were the children, the kind of feral children of this very kind of mad, bad and dangerous to know, you know, aristocrat lord called Lord Reedsdale and and they grew up in the English countryside between the wars and this guy, their father refused to educate them, but they were all incredibly bright. He didn't believe in education for women. A lot of this is rendered in the novel, but it was, it's all based on the true story of their childhood, this family of, of siblings. And so yeah, the one boy was sent to Eaton, but the girls weren't sent to school at all. And, and

And they kind of gathered together a sort of magpie collection of sort of odds and ends of knowledge and taught themselves basically how to read. And there was a library of books that they had to sort of, you know, read in secret. But they kind of educated themselves in this sort of autodidactic way. And they all grew up to be kind of extraordinary characters and extreme characters, these six girls. And one of them was Nancy. One of them was, you know, a Jessica who was a communist who ended up running off to fight in the Spanish Civil War with Churchill's godson. And Churchill sent a warship to bring them home, which was very embarrassing for everybody. And one of them was a fascist.

Two of them were fascists. One of them married the leader of the fascist party, Oswald Mosley, in England, and ended up living out of the war in prison. as a result. And one of them, unity, had an affair potentially. It's not known, but definitely fraternized with Hitler, possibly had an affair with him. When the war broke out, shot herself in the head because she felt so confused and sort of guilt-ridden about her relationship with Hitler and his cronies. And my father knew all these stories, partly because he knew all about Evelyn War and Nancy Mitford was Evelyn War's best friend. Nancy, he was the writer.

She was more of it. She was on the left wing side of the family. Anyway, my father, when I was little, was always talking about these Mithfords, and he had written a radio play about unity, about the one that potentially had the affair with Hitler. And he would tell me stories about them all. And so they, I mean, obviously, clearly,

I grew up fascinated by, you know, unsurprisingly, this extremely fascinating family of extreme people. and most of them women and had read Nancy's book, had loved it. But a couple of years ago, a producer came along and said to me, would I adapt that book, The Pursuit of Love?

And I thought, oh God, I don't know, does the world really need another sort of period drama with people in a sort of posh house in the British countryside somewhere in costumes? But then I read the book again and I realized it really spoke to it. me. It felt very kind of iconoclastic in a way. It felt very radical. It felt really funny. It was very entertaining. It sort of just, I felt forgiven reading it. And I felt like, no, the world does

need this. And I'm going to do it. So that's how it came about. That was a very long-winded answer to that, very simple question. Sorry. It was a great answer and it was exciting. And maybe I've lived in LA too long now, but I immediately started thinking about the Midford expanded cinematic universe. because clearly you could put a tag at the end of this one setting up the next movie in the series where they all form some sort of supergroup. The thing that struck me right away about the project is that there's just sort of this joy in every frame of it.

I mean, it's bursting off of the screen. I think it's got high style. It's got aesthetic vision in the direction, but also particularly in the production design. When you had that moment of, oh, this still resonates with me. There's something here. what was the process like of saying, okay, this was, I don't want to make another period drama of people in a fancy house. This is a period drama with people in a fancy house, but this one needs Latigra on the soundtrack or this one needs to be as alive as this book just was in your most recent reading of it.

Yeah, I guess I just felt like the book had a real punk rock soul. And I think there's a kind of, I think Linda as a character is a kind of punk character. character. Like, she lives life as if there's no tomorrow. She's fearless when it comes to kind of authority. She has her own sense of what she wants and what she cares about and she doesn't really let anyone else get in the way of that. And it's very exciting and kind of heady to be in her company, but she's also a dangerous character in a way. And I just felt like there was a kind of unapologetic celebration of her, which wasn't denying the kind of the ways in which she's, you know, she's dangerous and the way the choices that she makes make life painful for herself and those around her, but nonetheless was celebrating it, like the way that she hurls herself

at life and was, you know, exciting, particularly to read that character in the form of a woman at that time, but also at any time, even now, I think. feel like a lot of how I hope that the generations younger than me, my daughter being one of them, don't quite have the same twisted up sort of preoccupation with being good or being seen to be sort of good. But I definitely suffer from that in my own life. And a book that was celebrating this character that was kind of not scared of living in a way where she might be deemed not good felt kind of punk rock anyway. And so I felt like I needed to honor that in the way that I adapted it.

And I actually think not just that character, but there's a sort of seam through English posh person that has something in common with a kind of punk rock attitude. And it's not to say, it's not to condone. I mean, this book is a satire on the British aristocracy and doesn't kind of let it off the hook by any means. But there's something about these people that have lived for thousands of years

without having to give a shit about anything that makes them kind of completely unapologetic in a way that's both kind of appalling and dangerous and also kind of really quite exciting. And, you know, it wasn't for nothing. It's not sort of a coincidence that Marianne Faithful one of whom's tracks is in the show, give my love to London,

but, you know, was to be found in a fur coat, in a castle, in Ireland that actually belonged to the, one of the nephews of Nancy Mitford, you know, with Mick Jagger, you know, and a Mars bar or whatever, as the story goes.

But so, like, it's all connected somehow, like this kind of not giving a fuck that goes a lot. with being kind of from that class. And I felt that that hadn't really been, it hadn't necessarily been truly reflected in the way that kind of that class has been depicted on television up until now.

And I don't know, I just felt like it merited it. And so that was part of it, was trying to kind of bottle this character, this Linda, who was such a person. product of her of her background and this kind of mad, bad and dangerous to know father who was also a thrill seeker and how we could sort of bottle that in a way that felt really exhilarating and punk and yet also kind of joyful and to be celebrated despite the sort of associated dangers somehow. Yes, I mean there's there's an abstract. There's like a decadence that's almost abstract at the

point at this point with these characters because there actually isn't anything. to lose, so they're capable of doing anything, including painting their birds hot pink, which is an incredible moment. There's also just kind of a breathlessness. It's not just in the soundtrack and in the colors, but I think in the efficiency of your storytelling, I love that this is three episodes and out. It doesn't feel like there's anything missing. You know, it's absolutely entertaining throughout.

And I wondered if that was, and I think obviously everything is a factor of many things, particularly with something as naughty as a television production. But was that more a factor of this is what you had negotiated and the amount of time you had? Or was that also a factor of having been in so many television shows and movies, worked on so many projects? And because of that, you have a taste for what's working and what isn't and not being too precious about it, wanting to just do the best version of the story and get out. I definitely felt that when I was writing it, I didn't want to. eke it out in that way that sometimes you feel things are eeked out just cynically,

you know, just for financial economic reasons. Like it's just, it's more profitable to have a show that six episodes than three, you know. And I just felt like I didn't want to do that with this book. It is, it goes along at such a lick when you're reading it. And that's part of the character of the experience of the novel. It's like there's a complete sort of lack of earnestness that is, she's allergic to earnestness, Nancy Mitford. Like, so she doesn't sit in or wallow in any kind of moments. It just trips along.

And you're like, blink and you miss it. But, you know, one of the very first lines of the novel I've gotten the show, which when she's describing Uncle Matthew, and she says, you know, had he been poor, he no doubt would have been sent to prison for beating and refusing to educate us. And you'll just like, you read it and you sort of, you skip along with it and you're like, wait, what did I do? And it's so kind of there's something sort of, it would have been sort of disrespectful to the novel and not in keeping with the novel to have sort of wallowed in anything.

It just had to go by to lick. And I think that's partly why then there are moments in the book where an emotional punch is really packed. It's like a sucker punch somehow just when you're least expecting it, when she does allow you to sit in a moment of kind of pain or whatever. And it's all the more effective because she hasn't allowed it up, but she rarely does that. So I feel like so much of the character of the experience of reading the book was about just sort of blink and you miss it. And I wanted to recreate that to the show. I won't spoil anything about the ending of the series,

but that is one of those moments that you're describing. And I think that it's a really impressive tightrope walk that you accomplish because trying to find your way into this tone that would allow emotional moments to resonate, to allow the show to have an emotional way to it, while also staying true to, you know, as you describe it, what's true of the book, which is there's a kind of an almost comical stiff upper lip to everyone, right?

Like we're just going to keep getting through this. Horrible things happen all the time, which obviously is a hallmark of that era in general. But I found it quite affecting because ultimately over the course of the three episodes, there seems to be an attitude of, well, life is life, whether you are having an incredible love affair in Paris or you are literally waiting by a telephone for 15 months. Time is going on, you know. And there's something kind of, it's moving ultimately. I've really felt that way, my two, and I'm just.

so happy that you felt that way, but I felt that way about the book, certainly, that and you know what was so interesting was that I started doing the adaptation before COVID and we were about to start filming before COVID and then, and then lockdown came, so we stopped. But in the time that in our little hiatus while we were waiting to be able to go off and shoot it, it suddenly, we suddenly went through something that was not, same as the Second World War, but we suddenly were experiencing what it might be like to live at a time where you didn't, where life was fragile and you didn't know whether the people that

you loved were going to live or die. And Nancy wrote this book in 1945, just at the end, literally at the end of the Second World War. And there's something, I love the tension in that where there's something where she's just not going to, she's not, it's almost like it would be too painful to kind of actually go into the real pain of sort of life. And it's just too awful. What kind of culturally she's just been through and what the rest of humanity has just been through. And the only response is to kind of see life as an absurd joke. But there is a feeling of exactly that, that time is time. And maybe someone who lives their life as if there is no tomorrow, when there really has been, you know, no tomorrow might be somebody to be taken more seriously than

you might think. And I really felt, we really felt, I think, community as we were filming the thing, that suddenly there was a sort of, you know, a kind of poignancy that, and that kind of something very moving about the story, about what it was getting at, and about its refusal to be sort of dwell in an emotional space. And yet somehow it was sort of heaving with emotion at the same time was really kind of felt really right for the moment. I want to grab a word you just used, which was communal, because one of the other pleasures of the series is the sense of community

that you seem to have fostered with the cast, all of whom are uniformly excellent. But what struck me the most wasn't just the brilliance of any individual performance, but there's so much happening between the margins of the story that you're telling. And a moment that really struck me is, I think it's in the third episode when there's the rescue mission to Paris to rescue Linda from the happiest time of her life. And Davy and Merlin are having the best time of their life. And the actors in that moment seem to be having the greatest time of their life. And what's so wonderful about that is this is something that I always talk about in terms of. of what we love about TV in general, which is when supporting characters become people you adore,

and when you feel you recognize their behavior almost before they do, that they've slipped into your subconscious in a way. The economy of doing that in three hours is remarkable, but I guess somewhere in this is a question about fostering that sensibility so that the actors on the, you know, no one is unimportant in the story, but the actors who are not the leads of the show feel as essential, feel like there's a backstory and relationships. I mean, even, even the way Andrew Scott and Dominic West look at each other over the course of the series, is it self-worthy of a podcast? Totally.

Yes. I mean, I think, I think I would like to say, oh, that was all me. You know, I sort of managed to sort of foster this extraordinary, you know, atmosphere on the set. And I hope, I hope, I mean, I hope that sort of I'm an old person now comparatively. and I've been on a lot of sets my whole life. I'm nearly 50 and I've been doing, I've been acting in movies and TV shows for, you know, 30 years. So I do sort of have, I guess, a sense of the kind of vibe that I respond to,

you know, on a film set. And so I hope that I made it feel pleasant enough to be there. And a lot of the people that were in the thing are friends of mine anyway. And so there was an, and I, you know, my kids were in it. I had, my mom was in it, my nephews with the sort of, you know, extra kids running around. And there was a feeling that actually started with me and Dolly when we did Dolly M together, another TV show that I did with Dolly Wells, who's in the proceeds of love and is my big sort of collaborator and best friend. And we did a TV show called Dole and M for HBO. And we worked out kind of on that that that.

you know, if generally the people you are related to and love or are friends with are people that you think are really, you know, are very, you know, to my mind, the people that are very good at what they do and I'm most interested in anyway. And I want to surround myself with. And, and there's something sort of heartbreaking about our job, the heartbreaking part of our job is that you generally leave the people you love best in the world to go off and do it somewhere. And on Dolan Em, we kind of learned that you didn't necessarily, you could kind of bring them all with you. And the thing didn't suffer from that. In fact, it kind of made it sort of special in a way. And so that principle I sort of followed on the pursuit of love. And I think there was a vibe of that. There was a feeling of like, you know, a family somehow, even for the people that weren't necessarily already friends or family to begin with. But I do think that there was something that was really helped by this COVID thing that was about, you know, just a feeling of, I mean, and God, you know, heaven knows one wouldn't have wished it on the world ever. But there was a feeling of we, it was the first thing back in England. And actually nothing had, nothing had come up. Nothing had, productions hadn't started up at all in America at that point. But it was the first thing back. And I had.

flown over to England from New York, you know, in June to start this thing, thinking, I don't know what the hell is about to unfold. This is just like mad. And why am I doing this? And I first all never directed anything before in my life. It's like, well, why am I the first person? I'm not as responsible for millions of pounds of people's money, but I'm also responsible for like lives. And I've never done this before. And this is just so unfair. Cynically, that might be why you were the first. They were like, well, last one in, first one out or the other way around or something like that.

Totally. Exactly. I mean, I was just way too naive. Most people were probably saying, what the hell are you talking about? There's no way we're going to do this now. But I was just like, all right, you know, and off I went. But because all of the actors, it didn't matter whether you were Andrew Scott or Dominic West or, you know, a lesser known actor had been sitting in their houses and their.

their apartments and wherever for the last however many months, thinking they weren't going to work again. Right. They thought, everyone thought there wasn't going to be for many more months that there would be every universe in which we would be back working. And then all the musicians and the dancers and everybody, all these, the crew, everybody that relies on communal experience to do their work felt that that was going to be impossible for many months to come.

And suddenly there we were. And I can remember Andrews saying. to me in the middle of one of those dance ball sequences. He was like, I can't believe I'm at a party. I was like, I know. And it felt like that. It felt, we just felt incredibly fortunate

that we were being allowed to do it. And we all were so happy to be there. And it also felt like there was a kind of a responsibility to, A, enjoy it, but be, make it the best that it could be,

communally and make it something that was going to be entertaining. You know, make it a treat for people. Like I think that felt a sort of almost sort of moral imperative as we were all shooting it. And here we were and here were these dancers, these incredible. And I never would have got half. I don't think I would have got half the actors. I don't think I would have got.

I certainly wouldn't have got these incredible dancers and this choreographer Arthur Pitta, who are normally doing like extraordinary, things, you know, all over the world. And I just would never have got them, were it not for COVID. And so I got them, but they were doing it with such sort of joy and excitement and love in a way that, you know, wouldn't have been possible. I feel like there's no way of knowing, but now I feel that that's part of that palpable sense that you get from the production. The most I was imagining before I realized how much COVID actually affected this was that Dominic West,

was just happy to finally be using his accent again. Like, because for the majority of Americans, like, who is this brooding American cop? You know, and then you see him with a mustache and an accent and a whip. And you're like, oh, he's in having the time of his life. Like, I feel like we've done him a disservice. We have to let him be free. Well, he's so funny. I mean, he's just so funny in real life as well as as a performer.

And I think I'm really happy that America got to get a taste of Dom's. kind of wicked hema. So going back to the idea of the larger themes that resonate then, and now as they did then, I think what you were speaking about some time ago was this idea of, you know, feeling the pressure, societal pressure, especially as a woman, to be good or to behave in a certain way. And one of the interesting things about the story that is, as you said, still sadly very relevant, is that what Nancy Midford is done is basically given us a world in which there's only one choice, right, to be a bolter or a sticker.

And we kind of, I don't, I love your thoughts on just how, how are we doing as a society with that? I wonder if we're, or are we just perpetually doomed to always just sort of be ping ponging between like the opposite of what our parents were because, you know, that that's what we see play out among other things in this, in this project. I mean, it's such a good question and I like to feel like it's going to, on the one hand, I think that they're, I mean, I think it's a universal problem that is never going to be resolved because, and I don't think it's just a female problem.

I think like sort of whether you live your life as if there's no tomorrow and hurl yourself at experience because you might be dead. And heaven knows there's that feeling now more than ever. Or whether you live your life in an altogether more careful and considered way is something that we as human beings are sort of, battling with from the minute we are born to the, to the minute we leave, this shuffle off, this mortal coil. It's just the central paradox of being alive in a way. And so to the extent, you know, that there was a carpenter on the set that came up to me one day and said, he said, I think you should get caps made, you should get baseball caps made with I'm a Fanny or I'm a Linda, written on the top of them and we should give them out to all the crew. And he said,

you know, because I'm a fanny, but my wife's more of a Linda. Thank you, God, that's so awesome. I feel that certainly speaking for myself, anyway, you know, that that battle of trying to work out what the best way to be is raging within all of us. And yes, it has been more kind of, it has been more pressing as a sort of, but basically that defined you as a woman that defined you your ability to sort of make a relationship work and stick with it

as opposed to that relationship breaking up and you you going on to pastures new was the sort of defining factor of your life as a woman up until really quite recently and so I think that that's luckily no longer the case. But I don't know. I definitely think, I do think that the sort of, you know, it was very interesting for me not just using Nancy's voice as a writer,

but inhabiting that character of the Bolter as an actor. And, you know, realizing that I am as a woman, extremely apologetic. I feel

completely sort of so kind of painfully aware of my own shame I am constantly sort of feeling guilty and not good enough and to be able to play a part of a woman who is totally unapologetic

has no sense of her own shame is completely shameless in fact and is being slight I mean, as being mocked, but is also being celebrated at the same time, felt really liberating. And as an actor and as a woman. And then to be able to kind of speak in Nancy's voice as a writer also felt liberating. And I'm, you know, as I said, I'm not a young woman, but I'm a woman living in 2021.

and to be able to sort of, to feel liberated and given some sort of freedom by this writer who was writing, you know, in 1945 is sort of extraordinary and bizarre and really does show that she was a sort of radical in a way that her attitude to life was a radical. And I think it summed up best by, by, there's a line that actually isn't in her book, but her. her sister wrote in her memoirs of their growing up together, which I put in the show where the mother that was raising these six kind of feral, reprobate daughters would tear her hair out, Lady Reedstale, would tear her hair out with sort of despair about how they were going to kind of be proper women of the world. And she would make them in a desperate bid to sort of drum some sort of normalcy

and convention into them would make them sit down every so often and write out on a piece of paper how they would economize on a household for £200 a year. And Nancy, every time, according to her sister, would write, at the top of her piece of paper,

£199 flowers, was her way of economising for a household on £200 a year. And I put that in the show, I attribute it to Linda, but in fact it was Nancy herself. And that to me is the absolute kind of distillation of this sort of this punk rock attitude of this book and of this woman. It's like, because it's such a fuck you to kind of, you know, conventional kind of attitudes about how you should be as a woman.

But yes, it's the chicest kind of fuck you. It's like, I'm going to spend all my money on flowers. And that's how I'm going to economize for my family. And so to me that feels still really daring and kind of iconoclastic somehow and brave and cool. Well, I think there's also something equally quietly powerful and a little bit radical to the way that you've staged your own performance in the show, whereas, you know, their appearances in all of the episodes and constantly the boulter is constantly spoken about. I mean, she's a celebrity, but it's kind of infamy until she arrives at the end with everyone else. she's the happiest character on the show. Exactly.

And all of a sudden, you realize that whether realizing it or not, you've been viewing her and her choices through the lens of those who are either aggrieved or jealous or judgmental, and she's not bothered by any of it. And that's one of the things that you leave us on, which I think is quite well, quite well done. Yeah, exactly. I definitely, and it's not saying, I mean, there's a total suspicion of, of, of anything morally certain in all of Nancy Mitford's writing.

She's, you know, she's not interested in moral certainties. So she's certainly not saying the balder is a good person. She's definitely not. But she's not judging her and shaming her, like quite a lot of the other characters want to. And that feels very refreshing and, yeah, and exciting. And punk, I think. I mean, I'm over using that word.

there is. There is a real danger to it that's sort of slightly thrilling and sort of, you know, subversive, I think. On a Wednesday in Cleveland, you can say punk. I think it's totally okay. You've been so generous with your time. I just had two quick questions if you could spare them that are separate from this project, although one kind of is connected. Of course. I did just want to mention that this year, and I was shocked to look it up and see it, is the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite films of all time, lovely and amazing. which I can't believe it's 20 years ago. But I did want to just kind of ask about it generally, but more specifically, because, you know, the impact that movie had on me about watching a movie made by a woman with women talking about things that had nothing to do. Pre-knowing the word Bechdel test, that's not what that movie was about. And it was very powerful and impactful. And it's, you know, and its characters are funny and rude.

and everything that people are in life, and the intimacy of it, you know, the sort of effortless intimacy. And that is a thread that I saw in pursuit of love as well. I don't know if that's too grand a connection to make across two decades of time, but that movie still resonates in a lot of ways, I think. Oh, wow.

Well, God, if there's, I mean, it's my proudest sort of, and it's sad to think that it was 20 years ago, and it's my proudest acting experience that movie, but it still is, I love it. And if there's anything that, you resonated and made you feel that there was crossover with the Petit of Love, then that's the best review I could possibly have had. But yeah, I just think that that movie is,

it's so honest and funny. And again, in the same way, yes, I guess it doesn't sort of, it doesn't dwell in earnestness at all. And yet it's incredibly emotional somehow. and I love it. I really love it. I feel like it's it deserves a sort of rediscovering on some kind of streaming platform. Yes, at an anniversary screening or something or a conversation.

We should work on that. But the last thing I have to say is that this is not the same as stage parenting in Cleveland, but generally now when I leave the house to go to do an interview or something, my older daughter's asking me who I'm speaking to. and I said your name and she wasn't familiar with your name. And I said that one of my favorite actors who made this great TV show. And then I said, oh, she was grown up Jane in Barry Poppins returns. And then she just looked at me and she said, you talk to the best people.

And so I did have to ask just generally, you know, you mentioned being on sets for 30 years and all these experiences. What was that? There's something that is still, it was surreal watching. You know, this God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars Disney production that's decades in the making. with animated sequences, et cetera, et cetera, and then you and Ben Wishar holding down the emotional gravitas of it. I mean, I guess I'm just wondering

what that experience was like being on the other side of it. It was really nice. I mean, Ben and I, I just love Ben. And that experience of doing that. And I hadn't met him before. So I sort of, he became and has become one of my great close friends

as a result of that of that working experience. So I associate that with him. But it was, and it was altogether a wonderful experience. And Rob Marshall is the most kind of elegant and extraordinarily nice person you'll ever meet and that kind of somehow being connected to the sort of, to the Broadway, which is, you know, in that kind of the musical theatre of Broadway, which I would never otherwise have anything to do with because I am tone deaf. cannot put one foot in front of the other without falling over.

So I somehow, but of course I've sort of watched every episode of fame and, you know, that somehow I got whiffs of sort of like leg warmers and I don't know. And that kind of and that real sort of rigor and the show must go on attitude that from sort of this old Broadway sort of vibe that was going on all through that production and that came from Rob was really kind of amazing to be part of and then to feel that you're connected also to, you know, Dick Van Dyke was in the thing, like, and, you know, talking about Walt Disney and hanging out with him. And so it felt very kind of lucky. It felt like cool and like kind of just sort of bizarre that I should be allowed to be part of it and wonderful, but also very strange.

Yeah, as you say, like suddenly being this, because those children are so iconic and to be playing them and wondering what on earth one was meant to do to try to render that was a very bizarre experience, but kind of incredible to have the childhood, normally you're having to create the childhood of the character that you're playing

and imagine what it might have been like. There you had it. You had these children and you knew their parents. I mean, to know that your parents were those parents from the original Merrick-Robbins film was something that was quite extraordinary. That was really what I went on. I was just like, okay, I can imagine being those people's child and that was quite fun. Like, that was quite good backstory stuff. I also think that my older daughter is now eight.

And so her total adoration in the eyes she made was not so much that you got to go flying with Mary Poppins. It's that Lin-Manuel Miranda romanced you, which I think as a Hamilton superfeit. That's really, I mean, it's cool and then it's cool on top of cool. I had a, that was really painful because I'm terrified of height. I mean, I'm not only cannot sing or dance, but I can't, I'm really, really, really, really scared of being up high

and we had to be up on very, very high wires to be flying. And I was having to hold his hand. And I just had the sweatiest, you can tell your daughter that poor Lin-Manuel Miranda is very understanding if you've got clammy hands. I was like, I mean, I was just like, it was just dripping my hand. And he was having to hold it for hours at a time. I became known as something like,

I can't remember quite what the phrase was, but it was like, mistress clammy hands or something. I'm like, oh, this is just dreadful, but he was very forgiving. Mistress Clammy, I can't do better than that. Thank you so much for giving you all this time today. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you. And the show is so great. I hope, I won't pry, but I hope that there are other projects ahead from you as,

not just actor, but writer-director because this one was really special. I'm so pleased you like it. It means the world that you, of all people, should dig it, because I really rate what you think. so thank you and you spoke so sort of intelligently about it. And I hope I didn't bubble on too much and you'll be able to get something that makes sense. No, it's great. And generally we have a rule.

If guests talk too much, but if they then end up talking about like affairs with Hitler and Churchill sending ships, then it's fine. You know what I mean? Content is everything in this medium. And I think we're good. Those are memorable stories. This is not just. I hope it makes sense. But anyway, really, really, I'm really, really,

psyched and, you know, honored that you did it. So thank you. Oh, thank you. Well, please come back for the next one and enjoy Cleveland summertime. Thank you. It's never going to end. It's never going to end.