Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Natalie Morales is trying to shake the "should"

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

When Natalie Morales was a kid growing up in Miami, she didn't just have a mango stand, she ran an entire mango monopoly. She's dreamed big ever since, finding success as an actor ("Parks and Recreation," "No Hard Feelings") and director ("Language Lessons," "Plan B"). She chats with Rachel about her new film, "My Dead Friend Zoe" and the important life lesson she learned from her dog, Taco. 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

How are you with authority? Terrible. Terrible. I think I have something that I've learned about recently, which is some people call pathological demand avoidance, which is I don't respect anyone who doesn't respect me. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is actor Natalie Morales.

So I'm like totally fine with somebody being in charge. But if I sense any kind of disrespect to me or to anybody else, it's gone. I'm out of the window. I do not respect you at all. I'm going to start today off with an admission. I watch a lot of shows, like a lot of them. Mainly on the treadmill, which is sort of my excuse. It's entertaining and it's healthy.

And I have been watching and running for like 30 years, which means. I can trace a lot of actors' careers. And I have my favorites. Actors who aren't necessarily always the lead, but I look forward to seeing them in everything they do, and I seek out their stuff. And Natalie Morales is one of those actors. And she has been in so many things.

Girls, Parks and Rec, Dead to Me, The Morning Show, indie movies like language lessons and movies with huge names, like No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence, or Battle of the Sexes, with Emma Stone. And every time Natalie pops up, something, it makes me so happy. She plays these characters that can be wonderfully irreverent and wear their heart on their sleeve at the same time. Her latest movie is called My Dead Friend Zoe, in which she plays Zoe, whose spirit is haunting her best friend from the army, Merritt,

played by Sinequit Martin Green. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris co-star. It is a beautiful movie with a message about how we care for one another and the long trauma of war. And it is my pleasure. to welcome Natalie Morales to Wildcard. Hi. Hello. That's so nice. You said so many nice things. They're all true, in my opinion.

That's good. Congrats on the movie. Thank you. Yeah. It's lovely, and we're going to have time to talk about it. But I am so excited to do this game with you. Me too. Are you a game person in general?

Yeah, I love a game. Okay. Well, and I also love getting to know people in a deeper way. Really? Yes. Well, lucky you, Natalie Morales. Great. Yeah, I think we'll end up there after this is set and done.

All right. Okay. Let's do it. Okay. First three cards, one, two, or three. Let's go with two. Two. What activity gave you a sense of freedom as a kid?

I used to climb a lot of trees, which did give me a sense of freedom. And I grew up with a mango tree in my backyard. that is a very Miami thing to say and a very Latin girl thing to say, I didn't have a lemonade stand. I had a mango stand and I sold mangoes. Did you?

Yeah, I did. Like for how much? I can't remember, but I do remember that other kids in my neighborhood were also selling mangoes and that was not cool. So I combined and I made a mango monopoly and I was quite successful at it.

But yeah, I climbed a lot of trees. And I would also, we had this little like shed in the back. and I would climb up there and just look at the highway behind my house and the sky and stuff. And that definitely made me feel it made me feel freer. I think I felt a little bit confined where I grew up. I don't know. My mom was very protective of me.

So I think that made me feel like I had some sort of freedom just to be able to look out at the world. Yeah. I think we all need that, like that sense of perspective and just reminding yourself, especially when you're young. Like it's not all here. The world is a big place. and it's bigger than the four walls that you're being raised in. And you get to dream a little bit when you have some perspective out a window. Okay.

Well, I hope we get back to the fact that you were like a monopolist at a very young age because that's really interesting. And a capitalist. There you go. Yes. Okay. Second set of cards. One, two, or three? One.

One. What's a misconception about the place you grew up? Ooh, you know, I think Miami is really, it's really misconceived. I think a lot of people come from other places and put their own spin on it. And, you know, I think a lot of people from Miami are industrious and know how to take advantage of that. They make the city what you want it to be. They make it your like vacation paradise. But that's kind of a facade that is put on for people to enjoy it.

So you were anxious to leave, though, right? When I was reading a little bit about your backstory, I mean, you moved with a friend to L.A. Was there a part of you that lamented having to do that for your career? Or were you ready to see the world, get out? There's a part of me now that laments having to do that. Not then. I think when I was, when I moved, I was 20 and I moved with my best friend Serena. We moved to L.A.

We could not wait to get out. We could not wait. It felt very, I think for both of us, it felt like there weren't opportunities for people like us there. And I think people from Miami, at least at the time that we were there, and the groups that we were in, maybe we weren't in the right social groups, were kind of, you know, just interested in like making as much money as possible and, like, partying on the weekends and like just kind of living life in this way. And Serena and I were really wanting to make art and wanting to make films and do interesting things. And people would look at us weird for that, you know.

Like why would you want to leave this awesome place where you live? Well, just like they didn't understand that as a pursuit because it wasn't financially driven. And also, you know, I'm Latin. I'm Cuban. I mean, my first generation, my whole family are refugees. but I also don't physically look like the, like, typical Latino woman. I don't have the biggest butt. I have an okay butt.

So that means I wasn't really, like, super successful in my love life in Miami. Shut up. No, I'm dead serious. So, like, it was also that sort of, like, I did not feel wanted by that city when I was that age. Because of your relatively flat backside? Yeah. Well, listen. Okay.

Rachel, not flat. Don't, I didn't say flat nor relatively flat at all. I'm projecting my own tush. Yeah. No, I said it was good. I said it was really good, but it's just not like incredible, right? Like it wasn't, I wasn't like J-Lo. And you kind of need that to be successful.

And Miami has that of plenty, whether it be real or enhanced. And so I wanted to go somewhere where I could, you know, forge a new path. But now, now, having spent time away from there, I do see that there were ways that I could have forged my own path there. And I miss my family so much. And there's so many great things about Miami that I've come to really love and want to represent. Yeah. Okay. One, two, or three.

Last one in this room. I guess let's go with three. Okay. Just to make it even. Yeah. How do you consciously try to emulate your point? parents. Oh, I don't. Oh, same more. I don't. If anything, I guess I don't consciously try to emulate anybody. In fact, I try to do the opposite as much as I can. However, I will say that my mom

has this real incredible sort of like quiet selflessness where I'll find out years later that she would have brought lunch every day to somebody that couldn't afford it at work. And she did it for like 20 years and they retired. Like she does like stuff like that and like never tells anybody. And that I've always really admired is her will to do good for other people without every. shining a light on herself about it or even thinking about it twice, that is something that I guess I do try to emulate, if anything at all. But otherwise, I don't. I really think it's important to be whoever you actually are.

It was such, you didn't even hesitate when I asked that question. And for some people, you know, they work hard to, they're like, oh, this, I loved about my parents and this. But it's interesting to me that the idea of replicating someone else's perspective or beliefs or actions feels like anathema to you. Like there's something, there's a real independent streak going on. Yeah, yeah. Where'd that come from? Did that come from your parents? No, not at all.

I don't think so. Actually, my mom and I were just talking about this because she showed me this, like, school picture that I had where my hair was just, horrible. It was a ponytail on just one side of my head, not both sides, not picked tail, just one side. One side pony. Yeah. Up or down? Up. And she was like, I can't believe you made me, you wanted your hair like that. And I was like, I didn't want my hair like that. You did that to me. And she goes, no, no, you wanted your hair like that. And I fought you on it. And I was like, no, you did this to me. You always gave me bad hair dues. And she's like, Natalie, no. And I tend to kind of. to believe her with that one. With most other things, I think she has a warped memory. But with that one,

I just always liked what I liked and didn't like what I didn't like. And I think from a very young age, I kind of was, I don't know, I was independent, but I also didn't like anybody telling me what to do. Yeah. I mean, that's a thing as adults, we always try to, I don't care what people think. I'm just my own person. That's a hard thing for a kid to be. Do you not care about the consequences of we're in a side pony? Yeah, I think, you know, it's not that I don't, as an adult I think, and as a kid, it's not that I, I don't care what people think is too broad of a term. I care that what I am trying to put out there is coming across the way I wanted to, right?

Like I care that I am seen in the way that. Yeah, I don't want to be misunderstood. But if I am, if you are interpreting me correctly and you don't like it, oh well. Yeah. That's always how I felt, I think. I mean, I think you should bottle that stuff up and sell it. Like, I've got a middle schooler who could use a dose of it. Please, please tell people a special superpower.

Honestly, if you understand me and you don't think it's cool, then you have bad taste. That's all I got to say. Okay. Let's pull out for a second. Okay. Because I want to talk about your movie. Okay. So the film is called my dead friend Zoe.

Yes. It's lovely. I mean, I nodded to the plot in the intro, but your spirit is lurking around in the life of your best friend. Merit is the character's name. Seneca Martin Green plays beautifully this character. It's about trauma. It's about veterans. When you read this, what struck you about it?

Yeah, there was a lot that struck me about it. So Kyle Hausman-Stokes, who directed it and co-wrote it, he wrote me this incredible letter and described to me how this is based on his life and an experience that he had and with his best friend and how he went through exactly this and how he hoped to help people that that, that, may be going through the same thing by just sort of talking about it. And also, yes, Ed Harris was attached and so was Seneca, who I didn't know at the time, but is just the most incredible actor. Like, she's unbelievable. And you really are kind of standing next to her as she does all this, because you're like a spirit. Yes. And so you're sharing physical space, but not the scene. I feel like the way that I saw it was less that it was a spirit because it's not really a ghost. I mean, you know that she's dead from the beginning because the title tells you so. But I felt like she was more like a guilt demon, you know?

Yeah. And yes, it is about these people happen to be veterans, but I think it's sort of universal. I don't necessarily think it's only for veterans at all because I think a lot of people have survivors' guilt in these experiences. And that's what Merritt Sineco's character is going through. She has the survivor's guilt, and she just kind of has her best friend just always there. And this guilt demon has fun, because that's how her friend would have been. But also, it's a manifestation of guilt. So it is manipulative.

And that was really interesting for me to play, because it's not really a human person. It's this like manipulative force in your life, trying with many different tactics to keep you in that place. Outside of the creative director of the whole film, did you talk to other veterans? Yes, in fact, most of our casts were veterans, which was amazing. I mean, I think Seneca and me and Ed were the only people who weren't veterans in the whole movie. Really? Yeah. Is Morgan Freeman a veteran?

Morgan Freeman's a veteran, yeah. Wow. And we had long conversations with all of them, and particular female veterans who were there, who, of course, have a unique experience to this. And, you know, there also aren't a lot of films about female veterans. Right.

And that was another reason why we kind of wanted to do it in this way. That was a choice Kyle made, because it was him, it's his guy friends. Yeah, Kyle. Kyle, you know, kind of brilliantly and made this choice where he was like, there's enough movies about this, there's enough movies about like white guy veterans. And he was like, I want the avatar for this to be something we haven't seen as often. And I think, you know, not to put words in his mouth, but I think it allowed him also to separate himself a little bit more from this. I think it might have been a little bit too close to home if it was someone that looked like him and someone that looked.

like his friend. So I think it allowed him to build some separation there. But I think it was a wise choice and not only because it allowed me to star in it, but because I think it made the movie more interesting, at least to me, I would watch it now. Totally. I'm not really a war movie person. No, it's lovely. And it's like a beautiful portrait of a friendship too. It's just a beautiful look at two people who so truly care about one another and you can't always meet one another's expectations. We know friendship either. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing all those things. Congrats again on the movie. Thank you. It is completely delightful and beautiful. Thank you. And we're going to pull back into round two.

Okay. Okay. First three. Okay. One, two, three. Getting deeper as we're down. Three. Three. How are you with authority? Oh, we are touched on this. We're terrible. Terrible. I think I have something that I've learned about recently, which is some people call pathological demand avoidance, which is I just don't, I don't respect anyone who doesn't respect me. So I'm like totally fine with somebody being in charge and being at the helm of something and telling me what to do and that being their position. And I'm fine with doing that. But if I sense any kind of disrespect to me or to any sort of. else, it's gone. I'm out the window. I do not respect you at all. So I'm pretty bad with authority unless they are, like, I don't respect people just because they have any kind of title. Right. It's really hard for me to do that. I, you know, if I were to meet some sort of king or queen and they were like, these are all the things you have to do, you can't look them in the eye or

something, I can't do that. Like, no, no, no, no, no. You're a person. You're a person. You're a You're a person. You have diarrhea like everyone else. You're not anything special. Like, I don't care what titles or things you've had. I don't know. I have a hard time with authority unless just because it was given to them. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, no. Is that easier or harder in Hollywood? It depends on the metric. I think it's probably harder to advance in something. way if you're not brown-nosing, but I wouldn't know. I just have never been able to do it. And yeah, I just don't, I do have a hard time with people telling me with the perceived demand of something if I don't understand why you're asking me to do it. No, I get it. I'm not crossing you. Okay, three more, one, two, or three.

Let's go with one. What's a goal? You're glad you gave up on. Oh, that's a nice question. Hmm, thank you. A goal I'm glad I gave up on. You have a skip and a flip if you don't like that. Being president. Come on. There's still time.

I don't want to, though. I don't, listen. Are you Josh and me? Was that actually a goal? It was a goal. I was the president of my. eighth grade class and of my senior class. And I did, there was a time when I was like, I feel like I could be in politics. I wanted to be a lawyer. But I'm glad I gave up on that because I would hate it. I would not be fun. I don't, because I don't play games like that. I can't play that game. So it would be hard for me. But yeah, I'm glad I give up on politics. I mean, I also, I was also the president of my

eighth grade class. And I was the- student body vice president. I didn't want all the responsibility of being president apparently, but I thought vice president in high school was appropriate. And I also took the L-SAT because I, my dad was a lawyer. I thought maybe I was going to be a lawyer. Did you pass it? Is that too much? I mean, did I pass it? I think I passed it. I don't think I got, no one was there with a t-shirt cannon when I finished it. I was doing like logic puzzles for fun, not that long ago, like a lot of them all the time and someone was like, that's basically the L set. You should try that. And I was like, I kind of wanted. That's where we're different. That's where we're different because I did not

enjoy that process. But I bring this up because I remember my dad, God bless him, was like, you should go talk to other lawyers. Don't just rely on me. He loved being a lawyer. He's like, here's some other people you should go talk to. And one of them looked me in the face and said, he said, if there's literally anything else that you want to do in your life, at least do that thing first. That's so funny. And then if it didn't scratch, then fine, go be a lawyer. But I was like, wow, it's really hardcore. That's what people say to actors. Well, it's a good test, right? Yes, it is. It's hard to do those things. Although I would argue that the, I don't know, the satisfaction that comes of being a really successful actor is, well, I'm not. I'm a lot.

I don't know. There's a lot of really happy lawyers. I should not besmirch them. There's a lot more chance to acting than there is to being a lawyer, I think. Yeah. Yeah. This is the beliefs round, Natalie Morales. Okay. Okay. Ready. First card. One, two, or three. I'll do two.

Two. Does the idea of an infinite universe excite or scare you? Both. It's scary and exciting. It's scary to feel. feel small and it's also liberating to feel small. There are some people who think that the idea of forever is just is fundamentally unmooring. I understand that. Yeah.

I think there are so many things in life that are not explainable that you have to start to, if you want to keep going and you want to make sense of anything, you have to accept that you won't know everything. And you have to go like, I always think about this. My dog, my dog taco. He's the best. He flies with me sometimes. And he's one time when he was, he's used to it now. But earlier he would sit on my lap and he would look out the window like he does in a car, right?

And as the plane is taking off and it's taxing down the runway, he's looking at all the things as he would at a car window. other people walking around other cars, things going. And then the plane takes off and everything gets smaller and smaller. And as I can tell that it's not making sense to him that everything's getting smaller, he just goes, eh, well, and then gives up and then sits down. And I think about that all the time because I'm like, I feel like he just moved on in his life. He went, well, everything shrunk, and I'm just going to turn around because I don't get that. I want Taco to be my spiritual leader.

Like that kind of of acknowledgement. Yeah. Just let it go. Just get over it. That's kind of what you got to do with a lot of stuff. Like, yeah, I'm not going to understand that. I wasn't. My small brain is probably never going to get the idea of an completely infinite universe.

But it's there. And so I have to kind of marvel at it. And also then just like decide what I want for lunch. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. God bless Taco. Okay.

Three more. One, two, or three. I like these are red now. Three. What's the most religious thing about you? Ooh. Let's skip that one. Let's skip it.

Okay. Great. You don't even have to explain why. So then I pick one randomly over this. Have you made peace with mortality? Oh, that's a good question. Okay, I can answer that. Okay.

Yes, I think I have made peace with mortality. Maybe. I don't know. You know, one time I, in my nightly think about everything in the world before you fall asleep moments, I was like, my lights were off, but the moon was shining in my room, and I could see my furniture and my stuff. And I was just kind of looking around. And I went, oh, you know what? all this furniture, like my dresser and my bed, is probably going to outlive me. And, like, somebody else is going to own that.

And there will be, like, a tag on my toe someday. And I was just kind of looking around at the things in my house, all the things. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, I've never thought about how the things that I own will probably outlive me, most of them. Oh, my God. I was just thinking about this, honestly, because I have this, well, I have this chair that was my great-grandfather Skies. Sky Scarborough was his name, which was like a beautiful name. What a great name. I know, right? And he was a teacher and a carpenter, but it's unclear if he made this chair.

I don't get to know this because my parents are gone now, and it was a question I wished I had asked. But this chair is sitting in my bedroom in the corner. It's really ornate. And I don't want the chair anymore. I don't, I'm not like attached to things. And I look at it. I'm like, I don't know. What is that doing? It's like holding our dirty clothes. But then I started thinking about him. And I'm like, he at the very least owned this chair. And now I'm going to like get rid of it. And then who remembers him?

And it's just having it around a vehicle for me to remember him every once in a while. And if I don't have the chair, is he forever forgotten? And then I got all up in my head about it. Yeah, you feel irresponsible to be the steward for the chair. Maybe. I have a solution for you. What? What would Taco do? That's my question.

I think you write something, maybe a note or something that might last. And you write, this chair was either made or belonged to, this guy at this time. Yeah. Please take care of it. And you put it under the chair on the bottom of the seat. And then you sell it or give it away. And whoever gets it is going to see that. And they will know. And then he won't that.

I love that. The fact that he had the chair won't be gone, yeah. But yeah, some people will have your furniture someday and they won't know it's yours. And some people will have my furniture and they won't know it's mine. Yeah, I don't know. I think I've made peace with it. Yeah. I don't know.

Where are we? Yeah. It's going to happen. Wrong to die and our furniture is going to live us. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yeah.

And the more that we are okay with that, the more we get to like really appreciate what we have while we have it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Okay, we have one more. One, two, or three. One. One.

What truth guides your life more than any other? Rachel, these are so deep. I know. You know, this is going to sound really super simple, but it was kind of life-changing for me, and it was something that I really came to, believe in the last like five years, which is that no one is supposed to be anything other than what they are. Like you are not, there's no supposed to, there's no should, there's no none of that. You just, there's no right way to be you other than what's already there.

I think that so much time is wasted and energy is spent and there's so much strife in like trying to be something the right way, the right kind of mom, the right kind of daughter, the right kind of radio show host, the right kind of person. And it is already there. And so, like, I really try to listen to my gut and my instinct and whatever the expression of me feels right and feels solid and doesn't feel like a betrayal to myself. And that's what I really try to let guide me in life in general. I always want to have, like, integrity with myself and, like, at the end of the day, go, like, oh, I didn't. betray myself in that moment at all. Was there a big should in your life? I think there were many, many big shoulds.

There was a lot of pressure, especially like in the career that I had, there's so many examples of, you know, should, right? Like, of what you should look like. And then I realized that the most, the people that I really admired and the most successful people were the people that just did it the way they wanted to do it. They just were themselves. but also in life, you know, I think I wanted to do it right. And then it kind of was like, oh, there is no right way.

There's no right way. There's just what you are. I mean, every, not to get to, like, I don't know, petty about it, but like a flower just blooms. It just does what it does. It doesn't look to the side to see how other flowers are looking and, like, how they're doing it. It just does it. And it faces the sun, it faces the day.

it just blooms the way it's meant to. And that's kind of what I try to think about all the time. That is a lovely, lovely idea. Yeah. Thanks. Okay, so we end the show the same way every time. Okay. With a trip in our memory time machine.

Okay. Okay. We're going there. All right. You pick one moment from your past. You don't want to change anything about this moment, but it's just a place you'd like to linger in a little longer. Which moment would you like to revisit?

You know, the first thing that came to my mind is a really nice one, and I'm going to use that one, which is my grandfather, who raised me, sometimes in the afternoon would sit in his, like, lazy boy recliner in the living room, and he'd sing. And in the, like, afternoon light, he'd just sing quietly some, like, old Cuban boleros like to himself. And I would watch him from the end of the hall. It'd kind of just like peek and listen to him. And sometimes I think about the light and the shadows and his voice. And he was just doing it for himself. It wasn't really that loud. It was just kind of like

quietly singing. And I don't know anybody else that really does that. I mean, I know some singers that kind of like sing while they're doing other things just around the house, but he would sit and sing.

And I'd love to time travel to that just a moment longer. Natalie Morales, thank you so much for doing this. Her new movie is called My Dead Friend Zoe. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you.

Likewise, Rachel. So nice to meet you. So nice to meet you. So nice to meet too. If you like this conversation, go back and check out my episode with Natalie's frequent collaborator, Mark Duplas. Both of them have figured out how to be comfortable in their own skin and to listen, really listen to their own instincts, no matter what anybody else says. If you want to hear more with Natalie, check out this week's Wild Card Plus, where she talks about a recent dream she had featuring 90s pop icons Hansen. Turns out she's a big fan.

Not a single inch of my bedroom walls was not covered in posters of theirs. Like, I was a big fan of theirs when I was 12 years old. You can hear that answer by signing up for Wild Card Plus, which is a supreme way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen sponsor-free. Find out more at plus.npr.org slash wildcard. This episode was produced by Share Vincent. It was edited by Ramel Wood and Dave Blanchard and mastered by Patrick Murray.

Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni. Our theme music is by Rom Teen Arableau. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We will shuffle the deck and we will be back with more next week. Talk to you then.