Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Elizabeth Olsen idolizes idleness

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Elizabeth Olsen is most famous for her role as Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But she says her own taste is reflected in indie films she's starred in like "His Three Daughters" and the new sci-fi thriller "The Assessment." She shares with Rachel why she's terrified of dying but is fascinated with death and the joy of idle people watching.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, everyone, just a heads up. There's a little bit of spicy language in this episode. What is something you still feel you need to prove to the people you mean? I think my taste. I think I haven't always successfully made choices in my work that are aligned with my personal taste. And that is something I feel like I'm still trying to prove. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard. The game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life.

Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is Elizabeth Olson. There are definitely things that I could have learned from, but I needed to make the mistakes myself. Being a supervillain is exhausting. I mean, I only imagine that's the case. You spend a lot of energy thinking about how to mess with your enemies.

using your actual superpowers as totally draining, and once you're in that super villain box, it can be hard to escape, unless you're Elizabeth Olson. She first showed up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe about a decade ago as Wanda Maximoff, and by 2021, she was flying around wreaking havoc as the Scarlet Witch in Wanda Vision.

And while Olson hasn't closed the door on that character, we have definitely seen her talent unfold in some totally different directions over the last few years. I, for one, am sort of obsessed with her performance in the Netflix show Love and Death from 2023. She plays a sweet and loving housewife who brutally murders her husband's lover. And when I watched how Elizabeth Olson held all the contradictions of that character at the same time, I knew I was going to be seeing a lot more of her.

Her newest film is called The Assessment, and in it, Elizabeth plays a woman in the not-so-distant future, living in some kind of protected society because the earth has been destroyed. And she's got to pass this nightmare of a test in order to be granted the chance to have a baby. It is my pleasure to welcome Elizabeth Olson to Wildcard. That was very nice to listen to. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I'm so happy to get to talk to you. My kids are thrilled. I mean, you're a scarlet witch to them. They're very excited.

So we're going to talk about the assessment in a few minutes. But we're just going to get right to this game. Okay. You ready? Yeah. Okay. I think so. Yeah.

It'll be fun. I promise. Okay. First three cards. One, two, or three. I'll do the one in the middle, two. Two. What do you admire about your teenage self?

Hmm. I think those years were huge building blocks for, I think, two things that are really important to me in my life, my discipline. and my love of learning. And I think in elementary school, like I got good enough grades, but it wasn't because I was super invested. And I think in junior high, I in high school, I became kind of obsessed with my teachers. Like in a good way? Like you wanted to be them? Yeah.

I wanted to make them feel validated. by caring about what they were teaching. And I'm such a people-pleaser. But it also was such a people-pleaser. But it was really beneficial for me because I really fell in love with academics. And I learned to love reading and writing essays and the curiosity that I think I kind of moved through. with the world now was really foundational, I think, investing in academics at that time. And then the discipline is somehow related to that and a part of it. But I was very disciplined with, I played volleyball, and I took that very seriously, and I took dance very seriously, and my theater very seriously, which eventually you have to choose kind of a path.

And I think that Bethlehows is clear that I am not a professional volleyball player. So I think I appreciate that a lot because I think it's been very informative. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, three more cards. One, two, or three? Two. What's something someone told you that changed your trajectory?

Flip. Flip. Yeah. Well, I have a very – some of these I have no answers to you. I have a specific answer to this one. I was working as a freelancer in Afghanistan. This is after 9-11. And then my mom got sick.

She got cancer. And I felt like I needed to come back. And I got a job at the NPR member station in San Francisco. And on my first day, I'm getting a tour. And the guy who was going to be the engineer behind the glass, pressing the buttons to make the mics work and things, he was giving me the tour. And as he introduced me to the news,

He's like, this is where you shall sit and I'll be behind the glass and we'll do this for decades. And I was like, oh, will we? And it triggered like this whole existential crisis. I'm like, I don't really want to be doing this and I'm not close enough to my mom and what. Anyway, I quit six months later. You did. And I did. And then I moved to Berlin, which was still very far away.

But it was a lot safer than being in a room. Iraq or Afghanistan at the time. And then I went back and forth. And my mom came to Fismay. Anyway, there are very few examples of something so concrete, you know, but that really, I still think about that. I was like, yeah, I don't know. Would I have made such a dramatic shift? Maybe I would have tried to make it work had he not said that. But there was something about the infiniteness of it. And I was like, oh, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to be planted in a place for this long. And it feels. And so did, did Berlin then turn into other countries that you worked in? Or did you come back to the States? From Berlin, I sort of went back and forth to Iraq was popping off at the time. So I was sort of bouncing around. There was a lot going on in Europe at the time, too. Oh, how amazing. And scary.

It sounds scary and terrifying to me. It was, you know, but I was young and felt invincible at the time. Yeah. Okay, but you still have to answer this question. So the question is, what did someone? tell you that changed your trajectory? What did someone say that changed my trajectory? The reason why I'm having a hard time with this is because I didn't have any mentors

growing up and I felt like I was very self-motivated and I didn't listen to a lot of people's opinions within my family and I just. kind of kept doing what I wanted to do. Did your parents try to nudge you away from acting? No. I mean, we have to just acknowledge your two older sisters. Yes. We're in full house, Mary Kate and Ashley.

And so there was, it's not like it was totally foreign to you in that world. No, not at all. There's six of us in my dad's house and four in my moms. And so they... I didn't realize you had so many siblings. Yeah. And so I really felt in some ways, like, I just, you kind of, you're just kind of on your own when you have that many kids in your family.

Yeah. Which is why it's hard for me to think of something that really created a different trajectory. I mean, they're definitely kind of told you so moments from, you know, other people who gave me advice that I didn't take. You say they then came back and said, told you so? Yeah, but they could if they wanted to. Like there are definitely things that I could have learned from, but I needed to make the mistakes myself before taking advice blindly because I just, I'm stubborn in ways and needed to figure it out. So I'm also not answering the question because I really genuinely don't know how to. Is there, so I'm going to nudge on this time, is there an example that you'd be willing to share of a piece of advice that you did not take?

No. Because to tell you the truth, all the good advice that I did ignore and maybe would have benefited from came from my sisters. And it always becomes such a bigger story when I introduced things that they told me or, you know, whatever. That's okay. I understand. It's a strange thing to grow up in that dynamic with these particular siblings. Well, especially because we do all live our lives in a very private way in a world that everything's so outwardly facing now. And so when it's about my work, when it pivots, and I feel like I'm roping them into something I didn't sign up for is when I feel bad. And I had to learn that how growing, you know, through my career of how to be honest about myself, but also figure out the separation. Yeah, totally. I respect that. But it's nice to hear, obviously, as sisters do, they gave you advice and you could take it or not take it. They might come back and be like, uh-uh. And I could have benefited from taking it. Yeah. Yeah.

We're going to pull back from the game and talk about the new movie you're in, the assessment. I gave a little bit of a sketch of it in the introduction. But do you mind doing the heavy lifting? and in your words describe the world that your character Mia is inhabiting where this movie takes place? Yeah, it's in sort of near future sci-fi where the circumstances of the environment and resources have forced the world to create basically a bubble within the world. So now there's a new world and an old world.

And within this world, people are also taking some, supplements so that they can survive longer. Like we're all pretending we want to do with the transhumanist movement. Yeah, forever. It does not sound good to me. Well, no, it sounds like we're going to destroy all of our resources if we keep doing that. And so what are the consequences within them? But it creates this world where the only avenue to have a child is out of utero because of this supplement that people are taking. So you have to be approved by the government. or the state, I should say, to be allowed to have that opportunity to have a child. And so the character I play, Mia, and her husband, Ariane, played by Hamash Patel.

So we're being assessed by Alicia Vakandr's character, the assessor, Virginia, on whether or not we are allowed to be granted this opportunity to be parents. Yeah. So it does feel like post-apocalyptic stories are in the ether, as it were, right now. Yeah. I mean, in my own, like, streaming queue, I've got a lot of stuff that's of this ilk where we imagine the worst of what happens when the Earth is destroyed for whatever reasons. Political climate change, scarce resources. Yeah. Is that, do you consume that kind of stuff for yourself?

Do you watch those shows? Do you read those books? Or do you tend to stay away from it? No, I tend to read and watch things that aren't necessarily completely directly related to what I'm working on, but things that I think could be helpful with ideas. So for this film, I read The Possibility of an Island by Michelle Wellbeck. And I found that book to be a thing to get into the mindset of living forever. That one specifically is more about... Yeah, I don't know the book.

It's more like Mickey's 17 in a way, but not. But it's a conversation between present-day Daniel 1 and I can't remember which Daniel 17 or something because we've created the ability to clone. But as you get further and further away, it becomes more. and more and more like a robot and less and less human. And I enjoyed reading that. It kind of opened up similar themes, I guess, for me to think about. And, you know, even if it's not directly related. But you look at it through a professional lens. You don't read this stuff or consume the stuff personally to the point that it is frightening. The prospect of that actually happening.

I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm the type of person that really does believe in, like, goodness and morality winning in life. I just have to believe that. I'm not, I'm cynical and I'm contrarian by nature, as we've learned with me not taking advice. And I question everything. but I think the heart of my whole mind is people who are good will ultimately win in the when I think about, I don't know, history in ways. Obviously, when you look back, there's so many things that in, you know, lots of countries

where that doesn't happen. And I don't know. I don't like being bleak and thinking that the world's going to end at any given moment. Yeah, it also can be unproductive to live in that space. Yeah, I think so. I don't know how it's helpful to be catastrophic about everything. And so I think that's just kind of how I look at all of the things that we can catastrophize as people in the world. Yeah.

Thank you. We're going to get back into the game. Great. Yeah. You ready? Yes. Okay. Next round.

Three new cards. One, two, or three. Two. How much do you rely on the validation of others? I have, I think, a very, as an actor, a very healthy relationship with not relying that much on the validation of others. Really? Yeah. Was that always the case for you, though, even when you were younger?

Yeah. God, Elizabeth! I think, honestly, I think it has to do with there being so many kids in a house that I, if I relied on, my dad believes that he, my dad being so not a socialist. The opposite. He believes he raised us in like a socialist environment where everyone was equal. Not everyone gets a trophy. That's like kind of the things he, you know, the platitudes he stands on. So I was never going to get it.

I mean, I got like encouragement. Like that was like, you know, your team won or like good job or that was a great play. Or, you know, your arms, like my mom telling me that my arms were nice. and the ballet performance I did, but it was never exhausted, like, out of place, exaggerated. I'm so proud of you're so brilliant. Like, I never got that. It felt real. It was authentic and not over the top.

And honest. And so I think I don't expect potentially that from people because, I don't know. Maybe there's a self-love issue in there for me, not one to my validation. That's, well, that you are fine, that you're filled up and you don't need it. I think it's super healthy. I also, I don't have Instagram. I don't engage in a public-facing way. I do think that creates a need for other people's approval and validation that if we were to live our lives without, we would have less of.

Maybe it was just baked into you, or maybe your parents really did do a good job, but you seem altogether balanced and together, my dear. And I just feel like the world you walk through in that industry can be really hard in those ways. I do live my life in fear of dying at all times, but other than that... That's the next round, Lizzie. Shit. We'll get to the dying. Three more cards in this round. One, two, or three.

One, please. What is something you still feel you need to prove to the people you meet? I feel like you're going to say nothing. No, I mean, I think my taste. In a creative way, I think I haven't always successfully made choices in my work that are aligned with. my personal taste. And that is something I feel like I'm still trying to prove when I meet people, especially if it's a work-type meeting and be able to express my personal taste and films literature. So I still think I have that to prove. Because you didn't really want to be a superhero?

Or am I in a conclusion? I mean, I did, actually. I really wanted, And when I started Marvel, I thought they were such great Greek-type scale stories that reflected politics, culture in a really lovely way. And so I felt really proud to jump into it. And then within the last 10 years, it's taken on this narrative of like, it's like a hot take whether an actor says they want to, they would never do a market. Marvel movie or not. But what is it about your taste that you feel insecure about? I think that is why, because I've spent so many years doing Marvel that I feel like all the other jobs I have to do, have to really reflect my personal taste.

Because as much as I love being a part of this world and I'm proud of what I've been able to do with the character, it's not really the art that I consume, which I've been very, I think, I'm honest about. And so I, I, I, I, I, I, I feel like I, I have to really focus on what to couple, all of those films and shows that I do with Marvel with to showcase my taste. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, again, in the short time I've known you, it, you are, you're an intellectual person, Even just now, you're reading of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Greek tragedy and all the things. You're bringing an intellectual event to it that I don't know if 90% of the population will bring. But I can tell that it is important to you to be respected by your peers and for you to be understood for the full 360 degree dimension that you are, not just this one part of you. Yes. So, yeah, even though I don't see the word necessarily validation, I do want this kind of understanding of the bigger picture of me as a creative person in the world and what my goals are. Yeah.

This is the last round, Elizabeth. Okay, okay. This is beliefs. Okay. Okay. One, two, or three. Three. Three.

Three. What is an instinct you have learned to trust? If I feel safe. I love traveling so much. And because I like going to lots of strange places that maybe as like a woman on her own in the world should be like looking around and make sure she's okay. And I think even if you're out at 3 in the morning or something that, you know, I'm like walking in the middle of a strong. because it's the brightest part of the road just in case someone pops out of a car. So I'm always ready for someone to attack me.

And I, you know, when you're carrying your bag, how you're carrying your bag, I'm pretty, I think I have a good instinct for that because it so far, knock on wood has not put me in a bad situation. Yeah. I remember having a conversation with my dad. he since passed, but we were, I don't know what brought it up, but it was about being a woman in the world. And he had read something that made him want to ask me, like, do you really, are you really assessing people all the time? And I'm like, yeah, all the time. Yeah. You know, where's the door?

I don't know. Especially your interactions with parking lots to me are terrifying. They're the worst. Especially when I've lost my car, which happens more. times than I want to admit. And I'm like beeping, trying to listen for the card. I'm like, I better find this thing before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. I got it. Yeah. A few more cards. One, two, or three. Three. Do you think there's more to reality than we can see or feel? More to reality than we can see or feel. My instinct is to say, yes, I've recently

become not obsessed but very interested in trying to find language of non-tangible things that I believe are real. And I don't like the word spirituality personally. I feel like there's just a lot of connotations that I put on to it that have to do with a set. of belief that I don't feel aligned to. Can you give me one example of a belief that you let go or something that doesn't sit with you within the construct of spirituality? I, let me think, like moon circles or something, like when people celebrate like the full moon. Sure.

I don't actually believe in the power of these. icons or it's also organized religion, which I think are, you know, great for people. Neither feels like home to you. Neither feel like home to me. Moon ceremony or organized religion. No. And yet, the word that I have now adopted are atemporal. A temporal is a good word.

It's a good word. Yeah. But it's like a, it's a thing I feel. feel that I don't feel like I have language I like for. And so I've started using the word atemporal. Like there's the temporal body and the atemporal body or the atemporal self, which is the things we can't quantify. Like you can't quantify love. You can't quantify creativity. You can't quantify. But it exists as a part of a person. Do you think when you die, you just die from dust to dust? Or does something else happen after that?

No, I think dust to dust. Mm-hmm. That's what I think. And I believe what carries on our stories. Like I do, I just believe. It's like how it's how we treat people and how what our effect is on others is the thing that carries on and lives. Right. Touching people or being a part of someone's lives, making an impression that will continue.

Yeah. The dust-to-dust thing, does that make your preoccupation with death? Does it help or make it worse? It makes it worse, I think. Yeah. Anytime I have this conversation about, because I love actually talking about death quite a bit, when people are okay with death, I, I, like, wish I had that feeling. I do not want to do it. I'm scared of it. The dying. Yeah. No. I don't, I'm not interested. I don't want it to come out from a corner and surprise me and be like, oh. In the parking garage, right. Death is terrifying to me. But you also said that you love talking about it. So is there?

Because I want to know when people say that, like, if they, like, I know I can't flip again. But if are you, how are you cool with the idea of death? I mean, I'm not cool with it. But there's, it's just, it's an inevitability, right? and I don't want to be, I want to go out being okay. Like my, not to get too, my mom was so afraid of dying. She died of cancer a long time ago now, 16 years. And watching her go through that was really hard.

But, no, I don't want to be afraid in the end because how that makes the people, in your life feel? Because I'm going to check out and I'm not going to know that I'm gone, but the people are left and they're going to be left with a memory of how you exited the world. Right. And I, you know, you're a people pleaser too. I want to do it right. I want to. Yeah. I want to. Take away their burden as much as you can. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm afraid of how I'm going to be. I don't know if I'm brave enough to do that. I can talk a good game about it. but maybe I am going to be scared. And it's not a sad thing either. It's like a, I mean, it is, obviously.

But we have to do it. We have to do it. It is not to bring it back to the assessment, but to bring it back to assessment. If we don't die and we continue to just use, use, use, use, and get old, stay old forever, like, what is that world mean? I'm not into forever. Yeah. No. No.

It's too much. Or even like longer than, you know. Like I don't like 120. I don't know. That doesn't sound right to me. It's just too much forever. Okay. That was good.

All right. It's the last three. Okay. One, two, or three? Two. What truth guides your life more than any other? What truth guides my life? I don't know if I'm answering it correctly.

Being kind. Sometimes people act in really strange ways, and it is usually reactive of like insecurities or fears or inability to communicate. And if you could just like be nice and be normal, just calm down. But that's like my truth. That's like my barometer of things. And so I guess that kind of constant perspective. I mean, sometimes it's so hard. Like there are things that are inescapable responsibilities that we have that come up with loved ones or work or whatever,

just these responsibilities that. sometimes feel like a chokehold. But those responsibilities aren't excuses to be assholes. Truth. Truth. Like everyone's got something and the perspectives are going to be different. What might not be a big deal to you could be a big deal with someone else and it doesn't matter. And as long as there's just kindness, I think that's helpful.

Elizabeth Olson, words to live by. Don't be an asshole. Don't be an asshole. Don't be it. It's pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine.

So you get to go back to one moment in your past. It is a moment you would not change anything about. It's just a moment you would like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose? Like I'm thinking about, because I just left London and I'd been living there for a couple months and I've lived there throughout work. I think the parks there are really like magical places. And I was living in Hampstead by the Heath. And there is a day where there is this father and daughter who had these very fancy,

pond boats that they together, they were electric, would, you know, and she was, you know, probably 16 or something. And she was with her dad playing with these boats. It was clearly this thing that they do. And I found it to be so boring that watching them do this. And I was thinking, and I just had the most. You tell me how moving it was. No. It was one of those things where I was sitting and I was having a great time. Like I was with, my husband and I were just, just like sitting on this bench. We were just like chatting away about people that were watching. It was a perfect like cold, but sun was out. But it was like cloudy also. It was like all the things you want London to be in that time of year. And I was watching this with his father and daughter.

And I was thinking, this is a perfect example of like in 30 years. She is just going to glorify it. And like the actual tedious boredom it was, it seemed. But in her memory, she's going to romanticize it and think about how lovely it was to. Wait, this is so meta. Your memory time machine is transporting yourself back to a place in London where you were judging someone else's potential memory? I guess that's the thing. But I think it's because all I want to do is just, I don't know, is one of those. days where I was just endlessly fascinated by the things we choose to do in idleness.

Maybe it's kind of amazing to watch people. Being present and watching people. Yeah. Be idle and their hobbies that they do in idleness. I enjoyed. And you're in this kind of timeless city in a park that could kind of be at any, you know, any time in the world, the world's history. And it just kind of felt fun to just sit there and admire human behavior and choices. Elizabeth Olson, you can see her now in the film The Assessment, which is out at this very moment.

Thank you so much for doing this, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thanks for the show. If you like my conversation with Elizabeth Olson, go back and check out the episode we did with her Wanda Vision co-star, Catherine Hahn. They've had similar trajectories in their careers, and they can navigate the Marvel Cinematic Universe with as much warmth and depth as they bring to the indie films that they're also known for. If you want more with Elizabeth, check out this week's Wild Card Plus, where she shares her secret to de-escalating heated situations. It's really disarming.

Yeah. And they just, people don't know what to do with it. You can hear that answer by signing up her Wild Card Plus, which is an excellent way to support. our show and public radio and listen sponsor-free. Find out more at plus.npr.org slash wildcard. This episode was produced by Romel Wood with help from Chris Benderev and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni.

Our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org. You know what we're going to do. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. you then.