Even More Women of Work in Progress

0:13Speaker 1:Hello, friends and Whipsmarties. We are continuing our celebration of some of the incredible women who've shared their resilience, humanity, friendship, and humor with all of us Whipsmarties over the years. There were simply too many standout moments to fit into one episode. So today I'm bringing you part two of our best of with even more inspiring revelations, hilarious shares and pearls of wisdom. I hope you enjoy these conversations as much as I did. And I hope they remind you to celebrate and appreciate the incredible women in your own life, including if you're one of the ladies yourselves.

0:50Speaker 1:Let's dive back in. When we first sat down, you asked sort of how I'm processing the whole thing and I just said, oh no, I'm filled with rage. Just on fire with it.

1:10Speaker 2:Yeah, I wonder why I wake up and my heart hurts.

1:13Speaker 3:Yeah.

1:13Speaker 2:It's like, don't open your phone because it's going to hurt more.

1:16Speaker 1:But in the strangest way, there is also doing my own getting naked, my own processing shame, unlearning things I've learned and that I think As lucky as we are to do what we do, I do think the inverse, you know, they say scientifically every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I think the equal and opposite reaction to the privilege is the denial of humanity because you're so privileged. How dare you be sad, upset, frustrated, whatever. And for me, one of the things I've worked on to kind of reintegrate, recalibrate, is to find what the kernel of goodness, a gift for me or someone else could come out of the worst thing. Like, what will it teach you? What will it illuminate for you? Even if it's a hard lesson, what's the lesson? And there is something about watching millions of files that tell the truth Thousands of women's stories telling the truth, the way they're being ignored.

2:36Speaker 3:Manipulated.

2:38Speaker 1:Manipulated, laughed at even by other women. And it has unlocked some little chamber in me that goes, oh, it's not, there's nothing I could have done to be believed better. We just are not nice to women.

2:55Speaker 4:Mm-mm.

2:55Speaker 1:And it isn't just me.

2:56Speaker 4:Mm-mm.

2:59Speaker 1:And I hate it. But the tiniest seedling of, I don't want to call it goodness, but the one positive for us. It's waking a lot of us up.

3:13Speaker 4:Yes.

3:13Speaker 1:Is to really see, to have the thing I've heard that my brain knows to feel it in my body and go, oh, it really is so true.

3:23Speaker 3:Yeah.

3:24Speaker 1:And this is for all of us.

3:26Speaker 2:Like we talk about patriarchy, like it's some sort of like esoteric thing, but it truly is something that is suffocating for women. And I say this as a woman who adores men. I love men. I loved my first husband. I love my son. I love my brothers. I loved my father. I love men.

3:47Speaker 3:Yeah.

3:48Speaker 2:But there's some really shitty men out there that are in power. and that do really shitty things.

3:55Speaker 1:Well, and the shitty side of men is the patriarchy, not the men themselves.

4:00Speaker 3:Yes.

4:01Speaker 1:Because patriarchy— Well, there's a few shitty men out there that are doing shitty things, and they have patriarchy protecting them. Yes, but that's it. It's the good men, because I feel the same. I have some of the best men in my life.

4:14Speaker 3:Absolutely.

4:14Speaker 1:I've also encountered some of the worst ones, but I have some of the best men in my life. And what I find to be a tragedy of patriarchy— is that not only is it so terrible and violent toward us, it's terrible for men. Men are the ones committing suicide at the highest rates in our country. Men are having a mental health crisis.

4:34Speaker 2:That aren't living up to standards that the dude bros want them to live up to. How do we change it, Sophia?

4:45Speaker 1:It gets me so frustrated because I want to change this shit.

4:48Speaker 2:Like I want to wake people up.

4:50Speaker 1:But part of the way I think it changes is by showing up as our full selves, having conversations like this one by, by people writing books, like the book you've written, you are building community for people to see and experience themselves, their lives and the people around them differently. And that, that for me is like the greatest part of the privilege is of a public career.

5:17Speaker 2:Yes.

5:17Speaker 1:Is that you can.

5:19Speaker 2:I have a bigger audience to be able to offer what I have to.

5:22Speaker 1:Give to them. I think back when the me too letter was getting put together in 2017 and it was, you know, who's going to sign this thing that's going to go in the New York times and, and, and people on, on calls that I was on about that talking about you and your work and, and the, experience that standing up for yourself and other women had had put you through behind the scenes that finally came to light.

5:55Speaker 5:You know to.

5:57Speaker 1:Have this sensational career and also to know that someone whom you simply asked to respect you as a person and your boundaries tried to get in the way of your career discouraged you from being cast in things I mean what a I don't want to put words in your mouth, but from the outside, it feels almost like a whiplash. You know, I am amazed at the grace with which you have carried yourself through all of that. What did it mean to you to know that you weren't crazy when all of that came to light? And people did say, oh, yeah, I was told not to cast you in this film or I was told not to look at you for this job. it doesn't help, but it helps. Is that, is that the right observation?

6:46Speaker 4:I mean, sure, but I, okay. So, and the thing is that I actually turned Harvey down three times. And when I had spoken to Ronan Farrow, I'd forgotten about the third time and it only came to mind later. But it was right after the third time that he, put the kibosh on my career and blacklisted me for 20 years. I was blacklisted for 20 years. I didn't do a large studio movie for 20 years and I've still only done two since 2018. So I was on top of the world. I had an Oscar and 1998, he shut my career down for 20 years and I still worked. I did indies and I did television, but you know, I did turn down like one television opportunity that would have taken me too much away from my little children, you know? So like I could have had a bigger career on television probably, but I was, you know, I have four kids. So, and I really wanted to be present there for them. And so, you know, I said piecemeal together, my work through Indies and movies, you know, television movies and television shows. But when I found out, because I had kind of made peace with my career, having fallen from being A-list to somewhere nebulous, you know,

8:07Speaker 4:and I still love what I do, and I still think I have the same talent and drive. But I was like, okay, I guess it wasn't meant to be. You know, I guess I just wasn't meant to continue at that level of career, right? And when I read on Twitter, it was like December, after the fall of the Me Too stuff coming out and me being part of Ronan Farrow's Silence Breaker group. And I saw that Peter Jackson had given an interview in which he admitted that he was going to cast me and Ashley Judd in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then did not because Harvey and Bob, I believe, but definitely Harvey, told him that we were crazy not to work with us, I mean, I had made four movies with Miramax. So how crazy could I have been?

9:04Speaker 3:Why did I keep hiring?

9:05Speaker 4:You know, I don't think it could be possible.

9:09Speaker 2:Right.

9:09Speaker 4:But that really sort of broke my heart because it felt like there was this dark hand of malice that had come into my life and stolen something that was rightfully mine away from me just for me not wanting to sleep with this disgusting man.

9:25Speaker 3:Yeah. This disgusting human being.

9:28Speaker 4:This evil, evil, evil predator.

9:30Speaker 3:Yeah. And that hurt.

9:33Speaker 4:And that took a while to get used to because the one thing of making peace with, okay, well, it's just not your night, kid.

9:39Speaker 1:It's just not happening.

9:41Speaker 4:It's different from I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to make sure you never enjoy what you deserve because you wouldn't play my game.

9:48Speaker 3:Yeah.

9:50Speaker 4:You wouldn't let me victimize you. You wouldn't make a deal with me. And now you're going to suffer and I'm going to make you suffer indefinitely. Indefinitely. And he had that kind of reach. Like, I don't think it was just that he told certain filmmakers. I think that Harvey had a reach with companies beyond his own, with casting directors beyond his own, and that there was literally a blacklist. And there were other actors on it that I know that are not female, that did not reject him, that he just didn't like. And yeah, and that he affected their career, dampened their careers immensely. And once the Me Too stuff came out, they rebounded. So, you know, and I've become good friends with a lot of the fellow silence breakers, and they're really wonderful women.

10:34Speaker 1:And now for our sponsors. You know, you said something earlier before we had taken our dive into the episode, but that you know, now you can reflect on dynamics, especially among the women in different ways. And I think a lot about that. I mean, I don't know the behind the scenes of your show, but I certainly know on ours, like our bosses did not want the girls to be friends. They did a lot of work to make us distrustful of each other. It took us a lot of years and a lot of work to iron through that, to go, you know, to go from being more than like acquaintances who liked hanging out sometimes at work but were scared to being real friends and the industry frankly was so terrible to women yeah you know what was that like for you girls was was there any help for you navigating your relationships or were you also so nervous to rock the boat of the show that you never really wanted to dive too deep into those things.

11:43Speaker 5:Well, it was hard because there was nobody there to guide us. There was nobody there to like bring things down a notch. You know, everybody loves when things got elevated. When there was conflict, everybody was more interested in the story, you know. And so, yeah, they would definitely rather us not get along than get along. And, you know, the writing pitted us against one another, specifically myself and Shanna, Brenda, the character of Brenda, Kelly and Brenda were.

12:11Speaker 1:Always, you know, I mean, iconic fights on screen, but I know how hard that can be off screen.

12:17Speaker 5:We were probably having a good time when we were fighting on screen. It was really confusing for us both as young women. She and I are both Aries, very strong, independent ladies. And when we weren't trying to clash our horns together, we were actually fighting. loving being around each other and like we got each other on a different level um so i you know it doesn't matter whatever happened then i know that like you just kind of think wow i was so young i didn't know how to navigate that and neither did that person so there's a lot of like forgiveness in that for me not just for them but for myself too because i know there were times when i could have showed up a better version of myself i just didn't know that version yet Yeah.

13:09Speaker 1:Oh, that's such a crazy part of it though. I think having such a public life when you're young, in a weird way, people love when you mess up, but then they also judge you for messing up and you're sitting there going, I don't have any of this figured out yet. No one my age does. And I'm trying to figure it out with a million eyeballs on me. It's confusing. Like, how do you feel like you started to makes sense of that because, you know, you write about it so beautifully in your book, you know, chapter four, oh my God, sobbed through the whole thing in a good way.

13:47Speaker 5:I was just like, oh, I feel this in my bones.

13:50Speaker 2:Oh, good.

13:51Speaker 1:But I think it's so special when you can look back and really unpack things. And when you choose to be so generous with your audience and tell your story so maybe other people can see themselves. But when did that journey start? Was it becoming a mom because you did that young? Or was it a moment into motherhood where you were like, hang on, I got to go back and pull these threads apart so I can do something else?

14:17Speaker 5:I think I survived it by not partying. I would go be with my parents. We had a I had bought them a place up north in Santa Barbara. And so we kind of recreated our farm life up there. And I got horses and trucks and all that, you know, that was like how I spent my money. And I would go up there every weekend. And then I had a baby. And when I was 23 or four, I was pregnant. I was not married. But I was like, I know I'm supposed to have this baby. So I'm absolutely going to have this baby. And, um, that was the best thing I ever did. That was the best decision in my life because it took off like the, it's, it took off like my attention that I would normally be placing on myself. And, you know, we get as actors, I think we are, people often associate us with being like self-centered or self-focused and it's hard not to be because we are our business. Like So of course we're going to focus on like getting the next job or being the best that we can or whatever. But at that time I was so lucky to have something else to focus my energy on and always like running right back to my trailer to be with her and getting

15:37Speaker 5:her home. You know, it's just, I'm, she saved my life probably like honestly having, having Luca.

15:43Speaker 3:Wow.

15:44Speaker 1:That's really cool. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. There's a great book called The War of Art that was based on the art of war. And it's like the idea that if you just continue making things to make, we'll continue finding you. I think there's something really powerful in that.

16:10Speaker 3:I do too.

16:11Speaker 1:How do you kind of balance though then, you know, always being at work, especially when you've been on a series for so long and then the periods where you do want or need a a break where you do want to go somewhere with your family or work on something else for a moment of freshness. Like how, how do you, uh, how do you grapple with those things?

16:39Speaker 3:It's super hard because I have, I have three kids. So if I, if, if work that isn't paying the bills is not like, if I'm on a break from that, then I'm like, okay, full on mom, you have me every second, every minute. every hour, every day, you know, and I'm trying to get better about that, you know, like setting some time aside for, for just my mind, for just to, for just staring off that in the, you know, into space at the wall and, and being open for the muse or whatever. But it is, that's, it's really hard balancing that and like just daydreaming and, and then making, making the conversations happen and the meetings happen that, you know, somebody tells you of an idea or like you come up with something and it won't leave you alone. And actually, you know, honoring that to go after it and to keep cultivating it. I definitely think it's a skill, a learned skill that, you know, like I said, I'm trying to get better at honoring that.

17:44Speaker 3:Because it's really easy when you're when you do feel like you have a job that fulfills you and I get to go to work every day and I get to, you know, figure out some kind of puzzle and that's satisfying to me, you know? Yeah. And there's, there's also a ton of other stuff I want to do. There's different worlds. I want to, you know, different characters. I want to inhabit different people I want to work with. So, but like I said, work begets work. And right now I'm doing, I'm doing like, it just feels really good where I am getting to be the mom that I get to be. And all of that stuff at the end of the day, I fall asleep very well. Like my head, my head lays on the pillow very nicely at night, you know, like the things that I feel like I'm getting done. And, you know, it's like, you know, you know, you need to set, set some more time aside to, to, to just daydream and, and, you know, and like have those conversations follow up on those, on those inklings of things that you're like, that's, that's something, you know, and I have done that, you know, and, and it hasn't gone very far yet, but you know, it's,

18:52Speaker 3:it's going to, and, and I'm going to keep working at it and like, and, and working with Mariska and seeing all the things that she's, you know, it took her a long time to make a movie about her mom and she did it, but it took her a very, very long time to get to a place where it was possible, you know, for a heart, for a brain and, and things come at the right time. You know what I mean? But it's, it's certainly nice working with a good role model like that, you know, who's years ahead of me that I'm like, okay, all right. I see you, you know, like that's when you did that. That's, That's the decade that comes, you know, and that's kind of awesome being a woman and just seeing another powerful woman get after it and do the things that make her happy.

19:42Speaker 3:So I'm so happy I have her as a role model.

19:46Speaker 1:Well, and I think, you know, for you certainly at work and in your friendship but I would say that that ripple effects out you know also having worked there and seeing it for your crew when you have someone like her in the position of number one on the call sheet the world is so vastly different from what it could.

20:08Speaker 3:Be without her Absolutely.

20:11Speaker 1:And a person who leads like that and manages to bring such professionalism and also such humor into a space where like y'all are dealing with a lot of really heavy stuff.

20:23Speaker 3:Yeah.

20:24Speaker 1:And you manage to laugh a lot on that set. And I think that's really profound.

20:29Speaker 3:I do too.