Presenting: Julia on Talk Easy
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So in my conversation with Ina Garten, I talked about my Grandma Didi's insanely delicious peanut butter cookies. They're very sentimental to me because it's my grandma. I still have Grandma Didi's handwritten recipe on an old index card.

In fact, we printed that exact card in DeeDee's own handwriting onto a soft cotton tea towel. This is not your average tea towel. You can bake the cookies from the recipe printed on the towel and then clean up with the same tea towel when you're done. It's a tea towel duble. It's part of our Wiser Than Me merch collection. To check it out, head to wiserthameeshop.com. Lemonada.

Hi, everyone. I want to share my conversation with podcast host Sam Fregoso of Talk Easy. We spoke in front of a live audience at Aspen Ideas Fest just a few weeks ago, and I thought listeners of Wiser Than Me would appreciate hearing it. We cover a lot of ground, including the making of my latest film, Tuesday, the timeliness of Veep,

lessons learned in my early days in SNL, and a few pieces of writing that remain very, very close to my heart. If you aren't familiar with this podcast, the show has been around since 2016 and comes out every Sunday. What struck me about Sam's approach is he's both incredibly researched and deeply present.

If you enjoyed listening to my episode, I'd also recommend his sit-downs with writers Margaret Atwood and Zadie Smith, directors Richard Linklater and my longtime collaborator Nicole Holofcener, and actors Michelle Williams and Tom Hanks. Those can be found at talkeasypod.com or right here if you search Talk Easy with Sam Fregoso wherever you listen to podcasts. ♪

This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fregoso. Welcome to the show. Today, I'm joined by actor, comedian, and now podcast host...

Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We taped this episode in front of a live audience out in Colorado at the Aspen Ideas Festival. And to be honest, we've been talking about doing more of these live shows because they're really, really fun to do, and they bring a different kind of energy to the tape. And if you haven't heard the ones we've done with Min Jin Lee and Britt Marling, you'll understand what I mean when you hear this one with Julia, because it's just really fun to do these talks live.

That can be intimate and then also very silly in front of a bunch of people. And so we want to do more of them. And we thought we'd just open the door up to you, the listener. So if you want us to come to wherever you are or, you know, whatever the largest city is near you, you can write us at sf at talkeasypod.com. That's sf at talkeasypod.com.

Also, I should note that if you want to watch this episode instead of just listening to it, we've actually uploaded the entire conversation to our website at talkeasypod.com slash jld. That's talkeasypod.com slash jld.

I want to thank the festival again for having us out and putting on this great event. I had never been to the Aspen Ideas Festival before, but they've been doing it for a long, long time now. And we're very excited to come back next year and do another show. And so with that, here is Jinhee Kim of the Aspen Ideas Festival, very graciously introducing Julia and I as we waited in the wings to go on stage. I hope you enjoy.

My name is Jinhee Kim and I help out with public events and public engagement here at Aspen Institute. I'm about three months into the role here, so you can imagine my excitement and a little bit of terror when I was asked to introduce a session with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sam Fergozzo. So to say that I was excited actually is a bit of an understatement because you see to start with Sam, he has been called the modern day James Lipton

Roy Firestone and Barbara Walters, which you can see the consistency. They get people to cry, and this is why we watch. He elicits emotions even the interviewee isn't expecting from questions that they may have been asked before. The only thing you can be prepared for with a Sam Fregoso interview is to be unprepared for what you might see or hear or feel.

While Julia Louis-Dreyfus needs no introduction, I have the privilege of personally thanking her for being more than what we've all come to know as a comedian and actor. She's actually a true artist of her craft. With an extraordinary breadth of work from Seinfeld to Enough Said to Veep and to the most recent Tuesday, and as a recipient of numerous awards and accolades,

including the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Award and the National Medal of Arts, she is not only a fan favorite, but a force of creativity. Julia has said that she is open to any good material, and I think it's safe to say that we are open to anything Julia. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sam Pergozzo. What an intro. Holy cow. Yeah. I didn't really hear it, but I think it was positive. No, no, but it seemed great. It seemed...

Are these lights bright? Yeah, yeah. Aren't you used to this by now? I want them brighter. Right. I want everyone to see just how tired I am, so just turn the lights up. Hi, Julia. Hi, Sam. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Can we start with your new movie? Sure. I'm going to try to explain it. Okay.

For people who haven't seen it, it's called Tuesday. It's about a mother and her terminally ill teenage daughter. The child is very much prepared for the end of her life. The mom, your character, is in denial, I think. Until, of course, death visits in the form of a massive talking macaw. Yes. Okay. Everyone with me? Okay. Okay.

The bird is basically a death doula. And so when you read the script, I imagine you enjoyed the fantasy elements of it. But what about its fundamental ideas around fear, mortality, motherhood, made you want to dive into this project? Well, the discussion of death

death and grief and dying, those discussions interest me. And this was an opportunity for me to delve into something dramatic, which also really interested me. This is something, it's work that is unlike other work that I've done.

And I liked the fantastical element of exploring these themes. I thought it was very much sort of a magical realism fairy tale. It feels very sort of Eastern European in the fairy tale sense. And I

I thought that that was a really interesting way in to consider the various themes of the film. You shot the film in London, right? Yeah. So this material is asking you to dive into a lot of dark, hard, thorny places. Yeah. And I'm just trying to imagine you in London, away from your family. Yes. Calling back home.

to your kids and to your husband. What are those conversations like on the phone? You know, I'm a homebody, so I call home a lot anyway, but there were particular scenes in the film

that were rather crushing to try and crush. And so they definitely had an effect on me. I felt a little unmoored, to say the least. I had to sort of remind myself who I was, as actor as that sounds, but you do have to kind of give yourself over. How would you do that in these phone calls?

I would just want to know what was happening. Tell me stuff about home. The most normal day to day. I need to hear normal things. Did the dog have diarrhea again? That sort of thing. Right. Right. Yeah. You wanted diarrhea updates. Correct. And believe me, I got them on a daily basis. We have a dog with IBS. So yes, it's true. Poor George.

We got a lemon, but we love them to death. And death is the word. Thank you right here in the front row. That's exactly what I was going to say. You're balancing levity and also the gravity of the movie. You told the New York Times that during filming, you became slightly unhinged. Yes. What does that look like for you? If you'd like to demonstrate, everyone more than...

It looks like I'm highly anxious. You know, I had just anxious, you know, just imagine high anxiety for yourself. That was me. Hard to go to sleep, hard to calm down because these scenes were, you know, with a dying child. I mean, need I say more? And that is not a pleasant experience.

headspace to be in. And yet it seemed like it was a headspace you wanted to be in. Yeah, because I'm an actor and I wanted to tell this particular story

Because I thought it was worth telling. And I enjoy even the hard things as an actor. I really love being an actor, truth be told. And so even the hard stuff has a grip on me. Well, for those who haven't seen it, why don't we take a look at what that hard stuff produced and that time spent in London and watch a clip from the trailer of the film Tuesday? Yeah.

I just don't think you understand how Tinder works. Can I tell you something? I know exactly how Tinder works. Then you don't understand how flirting works. I don't think you got here. It hurts. Where, honey? Everywhere. You make my head silent. Who are you talking to? Can you please just come out so she can see you? Adam, you need to say goodbye.

You have to get strong now. I can't. You can. And you have to let me help you. Every life ends. I felt the pain that you have. I don't know what I am without you. Who I am without you. I don't know what the world is without you in it. I love you more than anything in the world. You'll be okay.

promise promise promise promise promise promise the echo you leave your memory is how it's true i got an email um right before we started they're actually canceling the oscars this year they're just going to give it to you it's giving it to you outright um

You know, I was watching the film again last night and even watching the trailer now. It's kind of unbelievable how well suited you are for this material. Like the leap from comedy actor to dramatic actor doesn't seem like much of a leap. And yet you have this quote, this role, it's exactly the thing I knew I could do if I had the opportunity. And yet I'm certain that 20 years ago, nobody would have considered me for this role. Yeah. Yeah.

Why? Because that's how showbiz works, Sam. I mean, it seems like...

I wish every week we could have a call where you're like, and that's how showbiz works, Sam, you idiot. Because I was really ensconced in doing big fat comedy, good comedy, but my name wouldn't leap to mine for this kind of a role. But the first part of that quote is the most interesting, I think, that you knew you could do it. Oh, yeah. How did you know?

Well, I mean, I just do. I've studied to be an actor. You know, the truth is the jobs that I've gotten in my life as professionally have been comedic.

By the way, FYI, totally not complaining. I have loved my career. Oh, you can complain. No, no, but I'm not going to because in this case, I mean, I love to complain too. That's not that annoying when people say, oh, no complaints. How do you have no complaints? Oh, no. Fran Lebowitz said, complaining is just telling the truth, which I really appreciate. Yeah.

But anyway, now I forgot what I was talking about. No, the thing that you're talking about is that you studied acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You knew that you could do this. That's right, yes. And I guess I want to go back to the young Julia that knew that she could do this, that had these sort of acting convictions. Yeah, do you mean like when I was doing Sorry, Wrong Number in my parents' basement and I played Mrs. Stevenson? Because that was extraordinary, ladies and gentlemen.

I heard you would invite the neighborhood to come and you would charge them admission. Yes. Didn't you get mad when people didn't do their lines right? You bet your ass I did. My neighbor, Michael Edsons, he was, I believe, six or seven, and he was playing one of the murderers, and he screwed up the line. And I was like, oh! By the way, I was 12 or 11. Never too young to receive notes. Yes.

Never too young. I wasn't going to talk about that, but I'm glad you did. Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent. No, no, I want to go to you at 18, so not that far off. Okay. You're a senior at Holton Arms. Correct. It's an all-girls school in Maryland. One of your favorite films at the time was a movie called Julia. Yes. It's starring the great Jane Fonda. The wonderful Jane Fonda, who's here, I understand. Thank you.

I don't think she's in here. No, I don't mean here. I mean here. She could be a big Julia Talk Easy fan. We don't know. Okay, so when it comes to high school graduation, it's the end of the year, and there's a yearbook that goes around. And of course, when you're a senior, you get your senior quote. Yes. And the quote is supposed to represent...

who you are and what you want to communicate to your fellow classmates. And I thought, if you wouldn't mind, we'd read from some of those pages from the class of 1979. Okay. Do you want to give context for this quote? Sure. This quote is actually a Lillian Hellman quote.

It's from, I guess, the story she wrote called Julia. And so this is the quote. Old paint on a canvas as it ages sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens, it's possible in some pictures to see the original lines. A tree will show through a woman's dress. A child makes way for a dog. A large boat is no longer on an open sea.

That is called pentimento, because the painter repented, changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged, and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

It's a great quote. It's very, very highfalutin for an 18-year-old to put that on her senior page. How was everything going in high school? I was aspirational, let us say. Also, this is another dumb question, but how many pages did they give you in this yearbook?

I think it was a full page and it was small type crunched down. That's good. It was very important to me to put this on the page. As a teenager, what about that passage articulated what you wanted to present to your classmates and to yourself? Beyond the pretentiousness of it, it clearly meant something to you.

I mean, it meant something to me, I think, from an artistic point of view. I mean, I'm embarrassed by it, but actually reading it, I think it's beautiful. I think it's an interesting consideration, pentimento. And it's an interesting...

It's a true way of viewing life. I mean, your experience when you're 18 is that experience then. And then when you are 35, you consider that experience and you might be seeing it through a different lens and something is showing through the paint. And I think that that's true of life, is it not? I mean, we're constantly reconsidering realities based on experience.

It also reads like someone who wants to desperately grow up and then not be a kid anymore. Well, let me tell you, that was definitely me. Okay, that was you. Oh, yeah. And you knew you wanted to act. You knew you wanted to do this. Yeah. I guess, you know, that yearning to be taken seriously, to grow up and become an adult, one of the subjects that you often come back to on your podcast, Wiser Than Me, which if you haven't listened to it, is very good. Thank you.

One of the subjects you come back to again and again is ambition, which for women in 2024 is a thorny subject. Is it still? I think so. Yes. It's such a shame. Okay. I can imagine in the 80s, you know, when you're first starting out on SNL, it was even more challenging. Yeah. How did you understand your relationship then?

to ambition at that age? I didn't understand it. I felt it. I felt maybe shy about it, but it didn't keep me from it. What do you mean by that? I didn't want to articulate it.

I almost didn't want people to know. It was my secret, but I had it. Right. Yeah. And you were on this show at 21. I mean, you were like the youngest castmate at the time, right? Yeah. Were you able to hold the creative person you wanted to be and the ambitious person? How did you think of yourself in that moment? Well, it was really rough. It was very hard to be... This was Saturday Night Live, and I was very... I was really...

naive and green as green could be. I'd only done, I was in college, I was doing theater in Chicago while I was in college, but then I left school to do SNL. But

You have to understand that I grew up, I was in junior high and high school and stuff in the 70s, right? So that's when SNL first came on the scene. There was nothing like that on television. It was speaking to my generation. Bill Murray and folks like that. Oh, yeah, and Chevy and Gilda and, you know, Jane Curtin, all those people.

And they were irreverent. It was like nothing like that on television. I felt like they were my people. I remember I had a, I was just thinking about this the other day, I had a picture of Gilda Radner in my bedroom growing up. It was on my bulletin board. And I, you know, I just, these were my people. So that when I get hired to do it,

It was not what I expected it to be. And by the way, it was also a very different atmosphere then. It was a different cast. It was not being run by the Lorne Michaels and his group at that time. So it was very different. And it was very...

dog eat dog and I had no understanding of that. I thought it would be an ensemble and we would all get along perfectly and I was very misguided. You were on the show from 1982 to 1985. Yes. And you've called it a grad school in entertainment in which I learned a lot. Yes. If we're sticking with the collegiate analogy, what would some of the courses be named and what did you take away from them? Well,

Well, let's see. One course is called Cocaine Does Not Make You Funnier. That's just entry level, so that's right at the top. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a good life lesson. It is a good life lesson. I remember these sketches would come to the table read. They're like 18 pages long. And there's one writer in the corner who wrote it. And as it's being read, he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And you're like, I remember thinking, what is up with him? Anyway, yeah.

So I passed that course. You passed that course. Were there any other classes you want to shout out? Oh, boy. In terms of lessons that actually mattered to you and how you move forward from this. Yes. Well, the big takeaway for me, as simplistic as it sounds, was I'm not going to do this anymore if it's not fun. Because it wasn't fun. I did not have a good time.

I mean, there were moments of bonding with certain people, including Larry David, by the way, who was there my third year, and he and I bonded over being miserable. But the...

But really, truly, the takeaway for me was if I can't get back to a place where I'm having fun, like I was in Chicago doing theater at Northwestern and theater on the stage in Chicago, then I think I'm just not going to do this because it's not what I thought it was.

And did you have an idea of what you would do if not that? No, I had no skills. Right. I still don't. I mean, I hadn't thought it through beyond that. It wasn't like I was saying to myself, I'm going to give up. I just considered, I'm going to pound at this and see if I can find a way to feel good and have...

you know, find joy, that's going to be what I'm reaching for. So the one bit of joy, the only silver lining of SNL seems to be Larry David. Is that fair? Yeah, although I didn't know it at the time. I mean, but yes, I mean, and by the way, I made friends there, so I don't want to make it sound like it was all shit, but... But you bonded over misery. We did indeed, yeah. Okay. He's pretty well known for airing his grievances. Yes, yes.

Yes. He based the Seinfeld episode on that called Festivus. For the rest of us. Right. I forgot my pole at home, sadly. He is like... That was a deep cut Seinfeld bit. That was a great episode, by the way. It is really good. Jerry Stiller. Oh, please. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. God love him to death. But he really is like the Michael Jordan of expressing discontent. And so I want to know...

Did the two of you complain about the same things? Sure. And what were they? Nobody knows what's funny here. Nobody gets what we're doing. They're not putting my sketches on the air. They're not putting me on the air. In that general vicinity. Stuff like that. Yeah. To talk about Seinfeld, we need like a whole other Aspen Ideas Festival to do that. That's fine. I'll come back. It's fine. Wow. Thank you.

What a nice offer. That's not what I thought you were going to say. It's relaxed. It feels very chill here. I like it. What are we doing? Has it been good so far? Yeah, I think. You? No, I'll list my complaints later. The lights, have they gotten brighter, though? Yeah, they are very bright. Okay, but since we're here, can we talk about it a little bit? Because I want to talk about the collaboration between Larry and Jerry Seinfeld. Because as the years have gone on,

The reputation is that it's a show about nothing and it's, you know, and because it's about nothing and moves so seamlessly, I think some people conflate effortlessness with ease. And I bring that up because when you accepted the Mark Twain Prize, you thanked Jerry in that speech. And you said, I learned a lot from Jer over the years, principally the importance of hard work.

Jerry killed himself to make Seinfeld good. He and Larry David worked so hard, it is actually impossible to describe. It was very emotionally charged, the way you said it. Which for Seinfeld is such a no-hugging, unsentimental show. No hugging, no learning was the edict. That was going to be the title of this talk, too.

But six years removed, like where does that quote land with you? And how do you and how have you come to understand their collaboration? Oh, well, it was it was obviously unique.

It was, you know, lightning in a bottle, I would say. They're actually very different people in a lot of ways, but they had a shared comedic brain. But they came at moments from a slightly different angle, but they came at the same moment. How would you describe each person's angle? Oh, God, this is impossible to answer.

I have to think about that. I'm so sorry, you guys, because it's like it's in my practically in my body. It's hard to sort of articulate it. Yeah. Larry was a hand wringer. That's no surprise. Jerry was more open. And the combo, I wonder if they would agree with me on that. And the combo of those things was.

They would not give up. They were a dog with a bone. They were two dogs with the same bone. Right. Yeah. There you go. That took forever to get out. Sorry. You know, the beautiful thing is, we're grateful for everyone here, but people will listen to this later. It will be edited. We're going to sound great. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Oh, I appreciate that. Just go straight to the dog and the bone thing. The diarrhea joke, definitely. Dog and bone. Yeah.

You said recently that you don't think Seinfeld would get made today. Why?

Well, I say that because I think it's very hard today to get anything that's off the beaten path made. You know, people are a little bit more nervous these days. And Seinfeld barely did get made, by the way. They did the pilot and then they ordered four episodes. Like that was a huge stamp of approval. Right.

But anyway, it was not like the standard sitcom on television back then. You know, it was Cosby and Cheers, and it was very...

the comedic structure of those shows was recognizable. And by the way, I'm not taking away from those shows in terms of the quality of them. I'm just saying that there was a way of coming in and telling a joke that was pretty recognizable. And that was not the case on Seinfeld. You know, when I asked that question, and it's happened a few times, this front row I'm loving, they answer it a little bit sometimes for you. And I think someone said political. And I'm thinking, like,

Political correctness in comedy is a subject that is brought up almost exclusively on CNN podcasts or around a dinner table where people are bored and want to fight about something. That was the first joke you liked. Okay, good.

You have even worked with some people that have lamented this era of political correctness and that we're out of the golden age of comedy. I'm not going to name names. But when the New York Times asked you about it, you said, I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing. When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness, to me, that's a red flag because it sometimes means something else.

When you say it sometimes means something else, what are you thinking about exactly?

I think what I want to say is that I want to double down on being sensitive. I believe that looking at material and art through a different lens can be helpful. I would posit that if you were to look back on any art 30, 40 years ago, you will find things that might not stand the test of time today.

And that's interesting, isn't it? And so it then stands to reason that there may be things we're doing now that don't stand the test of time. And it's perfectly okay to consider that all the time. I'm a fan of comedy.

Even comedy that fails, and I also said I reserve the right to boo what I think is shitty material or offensive material, but comedy is about taking risks. And I think this PC talk is bullshit, to tell you the truth. That's what I think. After the break, more from our live show in Aspen with the one and only Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Stay with us.

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in such a vacuum because it often ignores how much good stuff is out there. Yeah. As if it's not happening. And of course, I'm thinking about Veep in this. Which completely flies in the face of political correctness or whatever that conversation is. And so for those that may need a refresher. Oh, good. Hmm.

I thought we would play a scene from Veep that not only didn't get you canceled, but won you many, many Emmys. Okay. This is from season five of Veep in which President Selina Meyer is trying to convince a congresswoman from Colorado to be in support of her bill.

Let's cut the shit, Selena. Oh, here it is. All roads through Colorado go through me, and the toll just went up. You're playing a very dangerous game of chicken with the head-fucking-head. Because if I don't win the White House, O'Brien is going to sink your stupid boats, and you're going to look like a hair-sprayed asshole in your 1980s mother-of-the-bride dress. And if I do win...

I will have my administration come to your shitty little district and shake it to death like a Guatemalan nanny. And then I'm going to have the IRS crawl so far up your husband's colon, he's going to wish the only thing they find is more cancer. Good. So, can I count on your vote? Or do I need to shove a box of White House M&Ms up your stretched-out six-baby vag? Yes, you can count on my vote. I think I want to hear a...

Okie dokie, Annie Oakley. Okie dokie, Annie Oakley. Super duper trooper. Aye, aye, aye. I just want to be clear. When she says shitty little Colorado district, she is not referencing Aspen or any of its beautiful surrounding areas. She's probably referencing wherever Lauren Boebert comes from. Where is that, by the way? Can someone say that?

Here. Lauren's here with you? Oh, there it is. Wow. Okay. Quickly change the subject. We'll change the subject. So, the election. Hi. Hi. The lights are definitely brighter, right? I know. Right? Brighter and brighter. So, the show, I really do, I mean, though, like, you watch that clip.

Not canceled. You have more Emmys than fingers. You're good. Thank you. But I mean, like, those jokes can happen, and it's fine. It's fine. I feel like we all need to reset a little bit on that conversation. Can we go to September? Sunday, September 17th, 2017. You make history that night when you win the sixth Emmy for playing Selina Meyer, which I think is the most anyone's won for playing one character. Mm-hmm.

The next morning, it's Monday, you get a call from your doctor. When you replay that call in your head, what does it look and sound like? Well, the call was from my doctor saying that I had breast cancer. So...

It was like a cartoon, you know, just when you thought you'd made it, you know, you got crushed. I got crushed in that moment. I actually started laughing, believe it or not, but that actually makes sense. It was hilarious to get that news on the heels of the night before.

And then, of course, I started to weep. And then I just got into, you know, let's go mode, you know, after that. I mean, pretty quickly. What did that look like?

you know, finding out what kind of cancer it is, meeting multiple doctors, interviewing doctors, talking to people that I knew that had breast cancer. I mean, the list goes on. The crash course in breast cancer and finding the right doctor for you. You said in the past that you didn't allow yourself to think about the bad outcome. Yeah. How did you do that? With a sort of

blinder-like focus. I liken it to a long, long time ago, I was with my husband and we were in the Bahamas actually on a scientific boat and we were doing some stuff and I was swimming in the water and I was far away from the boat and my husband came to the bow and he said, "Jules, I don't want you to panic, but there's a shark in the water."

and it was in fact like a 12 or 13 foot bull shark so it was a significant uh animal and uh

And he said that, and I saw the ladder on the boat, and I just swam towards the ladder. And I just kept my eyes on the ladder that I was getting to the ladder. And that's exactly what I did with this diagnosis. I did not, I could not allow any other thing to come into my head. You focused on the ladder. I focused on the ladder, yeah. And it got me through.

David Mandel was a showrunner on Veep. You worked with him back in your Seinfeld days. Yes, and also on Curb. Just the best. Yeah. And he gave a quote to The New Yorker because he was asked about that time, that period when you were sick, and the changes in schedule of the show and all that, and also what it did to him. Yeah. And he said something that I have to tell you has just stayed with me, sorry, all week. So I'm just going to read the quote and see if it lands.

We keep touching the foot. I'm sorry about that. Oh, it's fine. I didn't notice it. These are wedges, so it's probably not a problem. It's fine. It's okay. This is me putting off the emotional quote. Okay. I had the sense of the walls closing in on me. And I was wracked with guilt and other weird Jewishness, and I was a goddamn wreck. She seemed great. Then we watched her go through chemo.

and you can see its effects on her she got thinner and thinner and we couldn't hug her because we were afraid to get her sick it was the first time that all of a sudden she looked her age and seemed human and vulnerable did you feel those things too in that time

Which things? Human, vulnerable. Very. In ways that he makes it seem like he had never seen from you before. Well, it's a very dear thing that he says. And I love Dave Mandel with my heart.

You know, it's funny because he did something and actually hearing that it sort of I'm thinking about this in a new way. Speaking of Pentimento, originally when I was first diagnosed, I had this idea that I was going to still shoot the show of Veep in between chemo treatments. I had this. Oh, yes. I can keep working. It's going to be fine.

You'll squeeze it in. I'll squeeze it in. Yeah, squeeze it in. And, you know, we may have to slow the schedule down, but I can do it. Well, obviously that was, and he was like, sure, sure, sure. Bless him. And then that was not possible. But what was possible was I had chemo treatments every three weeks. And in that third week before the next treatment, I would start to feel better.

And so what we would do is we would all gather and have a table read of the next script.

And I realize now that they were sort of, it was a kindness, you know, and because we would all gather and we would read these scripts and I would give notes on the scripts and stuff. But it was, it was a real gesture of love for them. And it kept me, it kept me looking for that ladder too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, it was really dear. It's odd how kindness can move us like that. I know, right? At the time, I thought I was helping them because I was working on the show with them. We were working on, for real, you know, coming in. This doesn't work. We need to retool this. You know, giving all these. But I think it was the other way around. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't even considered that until this moment. I love that.

You know, there was another very supportive person within the first week of your diagnosis. It's my understanding that then Vice President Biden called you. And, you know, most people don't get to speak to the president or any of the elected officials that we are asked to take a leap of faith for. And I wonder if there's something in that call with him, in that exchange, that the public should know about the president. Like...

Something they perhaps don't. Well, I hope they know that he's a genuinely kind and decent human being. He wanted to know how I was doing, who my doctors were, did I need his help. He was working on the cancer moonshot. Bear in mind his own son.

had, I believe, was struggling then, or perhaps he had just passed away. Forgive me, I don't know exactly that timeline. But this was something that he was living and breathing, and he took the time to really reach out in a very fundamentally kind way, and because he is a fundamentally kind person.

You know, you've done so much work, activist work, electoral politics, both locally and nationally. Yes. In 2020, you were part of the Democratic National Convention. Oh, my God. Yeah. How much fun was that? It was terrifying. It was during COVID.

It was a COVID production. It was a COVID production. And let me tell you something. It was hard work because, you know, I had it was the fourth night of the convention. So that's the big night.

And because and it was new, it was early days of COVID. So it was like I was in a room that's like an eighth the size of the room that we're in right now. A black box. There was a cameraman. And I want to say there was a boom operator. And that was it. Everybody else was elsewhere because we couldn't get close to people. Anyway, we were dealing with COVID.

The White House were dealing with the DNC. It's like Paramount and then Warner Brothers and everybody was giving notes. And it was very broadcast news-like in terms of the material changing as we were going because it was live. But I will say that I was really scared going into it because obviously I felt enormous responsibility. There was so much on the line. What do you mean?

But as soon as I got the opening, whatever the opener was that I did to introduce, and I don't even remember who it was at this point, and it landed and we knew it worked, I just, I'll never forget sort of,

because then they broke away to somebody else and God only knows where, because we were bouncing around the country. And I looked at my husband, Brad, and we had been working on the material together along with Dave Mandel, by the way. And I looked at him and we were just like, yeah,

We just had such a, we felt like we had righteousness on our side. It was so exciting to be doing, because it was comedic. A lot of the material was comedic. And of course, I was pushing the envelope much further than the powers that be wanted me to go. But it landed, it worked. And it was like, it was doing that in service of what I thought was the correct move for the country. And it felt great. It was really exciting. Thank you.

There were a lot of good bits that night. You really did a good job. Oh, thanks. I don't remember any of them. I blocked them out. It was all so crazy. I don't have them here for us. That's fine. Don't worry about it. The late Norman Lear, who I know meant a lot to you, meant a lot to me, probably a lot of people here in this room. He often said that celebrity is something you can spend. Yes. How are you thinking about the ways you want to spend whatever capital you have as we enter this election?

I was trying to find the adjective, but I just don't have it right now. Well, it is an election, Sam, for sure. I'm really focusing on down-ballot races because I think that this is where democracy lives in state legislatures, certainly nowadays. And so I'm taking whatever spotlight I have today.

to bring to those races and hopefully shine light on significant races that were, it may be tight and we have a shot of winning the good guy winning. You said in 2020, when you and your husband were preparing the material, it was a,

It was a big moment. It was an existential moment. Yeah. Do you view this election in the same light? I do. I do. I view it in exactly the same light, except even more so now, because I believe that the other one, the one who shall not be named, has made it clear who he is. And so that frightens me. And I think we know what will happen if he's elected.

elected and so it must not happen. I know the Biden administration has brought in some comedy writers to help. Would you ever go in and give notes? Yes, if they ask me to, sure. We'll have to make that happen. Jane Fonda, I want to bring it all the way back where we started a little bit. I'm thinking about how she talks about life in three acts. It's like 0-30, 30-60, 60-90.

And she's lived so many lives in that. But it also makes me think about her work as an actor and like your more dramatic work in the past decade. The vulnerability of films like Enough Said, You Hurt My Feelings, Tuesday. I know in the beginning you said 20 years ago they would have never offered me that. Mm-hmm.

But now that you have, do you think like the work, it doesn't just come on the heels of the past few decades, but it's a result of them? The journey we've talked about. Yeah. In some way, I don't know, do you imbue those performances with that experience, with that lived experience? Oh, without question. I mean, well, I mean, I couldn't have played Selina Meyer when I was 15.

38 because I didn't have the life experience that I could inject into that woman. I had a better understanding of who she was given the life experience I'd had up to that point. And in, for example, in this movie Tuesday, I'm a mother of two grown children. I have lost people very dear to me in my own life. I have experienced both parenthood and death.

deep and profound loss, I can bring all of that to bear in the film. So that's not, I could have tried to find a way into it if I hadn't had those experiences, but having had them, I can bring them to bear. So sure, you bring all of that. Yeah. The parrot or the macaw as a death doula.

You mentioned all the loss you've endured, and we haven't spent that much time talking about your father, but he wrote a book of poems. He did. That he finished, I think, two or three days before he passed. Yes. It's called Letters Written and Not Sent. And it's so, so good. Oh, thank you. I just think it's fantastic. I thought, before we go...

if you would be open to reading a piece from that book. Oh my God, I'd love to. That's so nice. This is incredible. Oh yes. This is a poem that my father wrote. It's called "Explanation." "God must mean for us to reason that the flower, first in bloom, taut and shining, is not altered even in its dying season.

God's the present ever missing till we meet it when we die. Life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye. That gives me goosebumps. Did you and your family put that on his tombstone? Yes, I put that on his tombstone. Yeah.

life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye. I mean, I think that applies to everyone. That quote is so linked to this new movie. Yeah. To Tuesday. Yeah. And there's a line in it where the macaw, and again, you have to see it to believe it, but the macaw says to your character, a mom that's in denial, a mom that doesn't want to say goodbye, that how you live it is how she lives.

And I'm thinking, like, in the Fonda 3X structure of life, you just started your 60s. How do you want to live it? Oh, my God. Fully. Openly. With arms outstretched. It's funny, you know, I feel...

youthful in that way. You know, I want to try new things. I want to keep fighting the good fight. I want to look for good art. I want to fully live my life and be hopefully a good person doing so. I love that. So basic, but I think everybody feels that way, right? What's kind of amazing is your first two acts,

you've lived so fully. So to imagine the next one is kind of impossible. It's going to blow your mind, Sam. It's going to blow my mind. And obviously, we're going to have to come back to Aspen to talk about it. No fucking way we're not going to.

But truly, I so love all that you have brought into this world. Thank you. In Act One and Act Two, and whatever happens next in Act Three, I'm so looking forward to it. And I thank you profoundly for the time tonight, truly. Oh, that's so nice of you. Thank you. This has been really fun. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Bye.

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And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, be sure to leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you do your podcasting. If you want to go above and beyond, you can share the program on social media, tag us at TalkEasyPod. We do like to repost those. All of this really does help us continue making this program each and every Sunday.

I want to give a special thanks this week to Lindsay Krug and Hannah Dullen at Origin PR, Ava Hartman and the team at Aspen Ideas Festival, A24 and the team on Tuesday, and of course, our guest today, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her new film, Tuesday, is now showing in select theaters across the country. If you want to check out her podcast, it's called Wiser Than Me. You can listen to it wherever you are listening to this right now.

To learn more about her and her work, visit our show notes at talkeasypod.com. If you're looking for other great episodes, I'd recommend our talks with Tom Hanks, Nicole Holofcenter, and Gloria Steinem. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on iHeart, Apple, Spotify, wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talkeasypod.com.

Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick Sabravo. Today's talk was edited by CJ Mitchell and mixed by Andrew Bastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Krish Chenoy. Our research assistance comes from Callie Conley. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Carrie Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Tara Machado, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohn, and Jacob Weisberg.

I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.

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