Blind Plea - Listen Now: Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

We’re dropping in your feed to let you know that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has returned for Season 2 of her award-winning podcast, Wiser Than Me™! Each week, she has funny, touching, personal conversations with iconic older women who are brimming with the kind of unapologetic attitude and wisdom that only comes with age. Julia sits at the feet of some extraordinary teachers this season and of course her 90-year-old mom, Judy. Tune in to laugh, cry and get wise. All Hail Old Women!    You’re about to hear part of the premiere episode, where Julia connects with the one-and-only Sally Field. With a spectacular film career spanning over six decades, Sally – now 77 years old – candidly discusses the introspection that comes with aging, shyness and playing characters who are taking back their power. Plus, Julia asks her 90-year-old mom, Judy, when she feels most confident.  To hear the rest of the episode, head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/wiserthanmefd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the dough where cash is queen and we hardly know her, but we're still here figuring her out together because y'all season two is here. Hosted every week by me, X Maya. Remember me? I'm going to be talking to all types of people about their relationship to money. I'm talking to reality stars, entrepreneurs, financial experts, and even some of my own friends. Basically anyone who will get real with me

about their dollars, how they make money, how they spend it, and how they save it, because I'm trying to retire early, people. Season two of The Dough is out now, wherever you get your podcasts. Join us on Archetypes, a dynamic podcast hosted by Megan, the Duchess of Sussex, as she digs into the labels that try to hold women back.

In each intimate and candid conversation, Megan is joined by guests like Serena Williams, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton, Issa Rae, and Trevor Noah, as they delve into the roots of countless common descriptors of women, like diva, crazy, dumb blonde, and the B word, and redefine and reclaim each identity along the way. The complete season of Archetypes is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Lemonada. Hey, listeners. I'm thrilled to let you know that Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus is back for a second season. Each week you'll be able to listen to Julia as she has funny, touching, personal conversations with truly iconic older women, just brimming with the type of wisdom that only comes with age. Julia sits at the feet of some extraordinary teachers this season, including Sally Field, Billie Jean King, Julie Andrews, and of course, her own 90-year-old mom, Judy. Tune in to laugh, cry, and get wise. You're about to hear Act 1 of the first episode of Season 2 of Wiser Than Me.

After you listen, search for Wiser Than Me in your podcast app to hear the rest of the episode of this brand new season. You can also find a link in the show notes that will take you right there. When I look back on playing Elaine on Seinfeld, Elaine Marie Bennis, I don't really analyze the character or my performance very much. I just think of how much fun we had doing it, the laughs that we had together.

I mean, if you watch any of the blooper reels, you're gonna get a sense of it. Just how lucky I am to have been part of something like that. Actually, there's a lot of luck in the story of even getting Seinfeld on the air and of me getting to be in it. See, they made a Seinfeld pilot before I was cast, before there was even an Elaine character in the script.

It was called the Seinfeld Chronicles back then, and the pilot famously tested very badly. NBC was going to just drop the whole thing. But Rick Ludwin, a really, really sweet guy who was the head of specials and late night at NBC, talked the network into making four episodes using money from his specials budget. But NBC insisted that they add a regular female character. I'm sure they said, you know, add a girl.

And that's why Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David wrote the character of Elaine. I had met Larry at Saturday Night Live and we bonded because he was miserable there and I was miserable there. And so we were happily miserable together. We really did get along and we became good friends in New York. So when they added Elaine to these four scripts that they are writing, he sent two of them to me. I think that, I think people forget how different television was back then. The sitcom filmed in front of a live audience was the most popular thing going. Most of the top 10 TV shows were sitcoms. I mean, they weren't all shitty though. I mean, Cheers was on back then. But

there was a pattern. They were all basically set up punchline shows, set up, set up punchline, which is great if the jokes are great. But they were all pretty much variations on that theme. And the roles for women were mostly exactly what you think they were, just crap. And then I read these first two Seinfeld scripts that Larry sent over and my God, it was so completely different from everything that had come before or was on at that time. It's kind of hard to even explain. I loved the scripts and I was insane for the whole idea of the show and I had an instinct. That's what it was. It wasn't a conscious, well-thought-through thing, but an instinct that I could play Elaine

as a real person with real problems and faults and that it wasn't going to be a sitcom girl part at all. So anyway, I met with Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. It wasn't really like an audition even. We just sort of shot the shit and made each other laugh. I remember Jerry was eating cereal. I don't think I'd ever met Jerry before. I was even that familiar with his act, but it went really well. So well in fact fact, that a couple of days later, we start to make those first four shows, which if you watch them now, they're a little rough. You know, the show didn't find itself immediately. We didn't really find our characters right away, but pretty quickly it gelled and it got good. And then it got popular,

gelled and it got good and then it got popular, really popular. And, you know, Seinfeld was a glorious experience creatively and personally. And that's what I remember when I think about the show. So recently I stumbled onto one of my favorite episodes and I actually watched almost the whole show straight through, which I hardly ever do. It was the contest episode, which we shot in season four, which is something like 35 years ago, which I actually cannot believe that that is the case, but it is. And if you've never seen the episode, here's the basic plot. George gets caught masturbating by his mother. And so he tells his three friends, Jerry Kramer and me, Elaine, about this, and he says he's never going to masturbate again. And we all laugh at that.

And it leads to a wager, a contest to see which of us can withhold from masturbating for the longest time. So not only was this terribly funny, it was also terribly risky. In fact, you know, when we shot it, I was certain, certain that standards and practices, the network sensors, were never going to let this thing air. But they did. And it became a very, very famous episode of the show with the line, Master of my Domain, becoming one of those lasting Seinfeld catchphrases. And it really is a fun episode. I'd forgotten so much of it. It's pretty great. And by the way, brilliantly, the word masturbation is never spoken. Never. But here's the crazy thing I started thinking about

as I watched it all these decades later. There's a very subtle, wonderful thing happening underneath the comedy here, something new and unique. Most sitcoms of the era doing an episode like this would have made some joke, a joke like, they would have had Elaine wear something revealing, and then she'd look so much hotter than usual, so much so that one of the guys would make it some joke about masturbating to the thought of her, and then a contest between the three guys not to masturbate thinking about her might emerge. That's a sort of crappy, racy storyline

that I can see being told on about 10 sitcoms that I can think of. But on Seinfeld, Elaine was in the contest with the other guys. She wasn't a woman, in quotes. She was just another human being with a very basic equity, the equity of sexual desire. It's a sexual subject, sure, but it's equal opportunity.

It's not gender-based. It's just human. This was absolutely groundbreaking and hysterical and wonderful. It was huge. I mean, it would still be huge. Even now when masturbation jokes are a dime a dozen and female masturbation is like literally an industry, as well as a great pleasure, if you don't mind my saying so.

I mean, I wasn't playing the President of the United States or a pioneer woman who saves her family or anything, but this was a real powerful young woman, not a perfect young woman at all, but a woman with agency, a woman who knows herself, who very much is herself. Watching the episode, I was just laughing so hard at Jason and Jerry and Michael. They were all just so fucking great. But the show put a little smile on my face for another reason. I was a little proud of a very subtly progressive message about women that was woven right into the comedy, which leads me to Wiser Than Me.

Doing this podcast has been a game changer for me in so many ways, and here we are, we're starting season two. So I'm looking back at the conversations I got to have last year in season one and thinking about the themes, you know, the common threads we found that tied those women together. One major thread is this. All of these women have all struggled and fought and worked to earn the right to be themselves. And here they are, 70, 80, 90 years old, and they all say in different ways that they are now in this late chapter of their lives themselves at last. That is a superpower.

And it's what I loved about playing Elaine. She was just able to be herself. And God damn it, isn't that what we all want? On Wiser Than Me, talking to these inspiring, thoughtful goddesses, we've heard so many wonderful stories of women reaching deep inside of themselves to find the sustaining, deep, resonant power of self-realization, of women finding agency and strength and resilience. So how perfect, then, to begin season two talking to a woman who has lived just this kind of life and has built one of the greatest careers in cinema history, creating just this

kind of powerful character, Sally Fields. ["Wiser Than Me"] Hi, I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Before we talk to these awesome ladies on Wiser Than Me, we do a big old serious deep dive into their work. We read a lot of interviews and all of their books. We listen to their music.

We watch them on the screen. We watch their everything. So with today's guest, I got to watch her dance on the beach as Gidget, fly around San Juan, Puerto Rico as the flying nun. The flying nun, Jesus Christ. Try pitching that series today. And then I got to see her transition from TV to movies, a feat so few women pulled off back then and make these crazy 70s action comedies like Hooper and Smoky and the Bandit. And then I watched her transition again into the Oscar-winning star of Places in the Heart

and Norma Rae. And I get a lump in my throat just thinking of her standing on that table in that textile factory holding the sign that she's made that says Union, one of the most recognizable moments in cinema history. These are the movies that just killed me when they came out. There's something about her vulnerability and goodness that makes me root for her. I want her to win. But she doesn't stop there. She then goes back into comedy for Mrs. Doubtfire

in Soap Dish and fuck, do you have any idea how impossible it is to have that kind of range? To disappear into that many iconic roles, to be just excellent all the time. I bet she doesn't even know how many movies and TV shows she's been in, but it's a staggering number, and the breadth and scope of her performances,

Steel Magnolias, Lincoln, Forrest Gump, My Name is Doris, I mean, it's cuckoo bananas. It's no surprise then that last year, the Screen Actors Guild gave her their Lifetime Achievement Award. Oh, and she can write. Her autobiography in pieces. Well, I honestly, I couldn't put it down.

It's a spectacular read. She has always been an advocate for mothers and women's rights and gay rights. And in fact, during her 2007 speech when when she won the best actress Emmy for her role on Brothers and Sisters, she said, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn words in the first place, which Fox famously cut from the broadcast, first shutting off the sound and then going to commercial

until she was off of the stage. Idiots. On the screen and in life, she puts herself on the line for what she believes in. I just love her. I love her and I'm crazy about everything that she does. Yes, the great, great Sally Field is here and she is so much wiser than me. Hello, Sally. Hello, Julia. Hello, hello. Thank you so much for being here. What a treat it is to talk to you today.

Thank you. So, Sally. Yeah. Are you comfortable if I ask your real age? Yeah, I am. And what is your real age, Sally? My real age is 77. I had to think for a minute. You know, I find that every one of the big big decades are really monumental, not only in how you are physically, but who you are. I mean, how you see the world, how you see yourself. You change so much from decade to decade.

It's almost like it isn't until you really get up there in the numbers that you can look back and go, wow, that really is true. When I hit 40, when I hit 50, when I hit 60, and when I hit 70. And so there's part of me that's going, gee, I wonder what 80 is going to be like. How old do you feel? It depends. It depends on the day. Because I want my body to be what it was when I was in my 40s and could run and do all of those things, but I can't. I have a little frame and I'm very lucky in that things that are challenging me are

not the big ones, not the big ones where you just lean down and kiss your ass goodbye. It's osteoarthritis and that I don't have any more cartilage in my body. Is that true? Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. So at first was a shoulder that I needed a replacement because I couldn't lift my arm up.

I was on stage and started to notice, oh my God, I can't lift my arm up to hug. it just got worse and worse so I had to do that one. And then slowly now it's going to be, I need the knees and then I'm hoping that it's just knees and I can hold off on any of the others and then just be old for goodness sakes. Do you still have your hips? I have my hips. My hips are good. My hips are okay so far. I'm so happy you've had this good luck with your health and you're still working. Yeah. So okay, let's talk about acting, the craft. I certainly feel as an audience member watching you, when you perform,

people are rooting for you, Sally, no matter what character you play, they're rooting for you. And I think that's because there's an enormous amount of vulnerability in your work. You wear your heart on your sleeve. Do you think that's why? Do you think, what would you describe that quality? If you can, I don't know if you can step outside yourself to recognize something like that, can you? I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I rarely look back or rarely even recognize that I've accomplished

anything because I've always felt I had to keep my head down, that you can't look up, you can never pat yourself on the back, you just have to look for the next place to land. But I guess lately or over the last few years, I go, oh, huh, is that right? Is that me? What do you mean when you're watching yourself? No, just when, you know, when I, like you said, the SAG awards or whatever. Yeah. And then I have to write about myself.

I have to write about when you get an award, you have to give a speech. And then I have to think, well, okay. And then it forces you to look at what you've done. I don't know. Part of me always likes to think it's because people have known me so long. And maybe it's my way of sort of discrediting the work and saying, ah, it's just because they're confusing craft with endurance. No. I don't know. No. I studied with Lee Strasburg at the actor studio.

I was lucky enough at that time when the actor studio had just started a wing of their work in Los Angeles, and Lee would spend six months out of the year there. And that was right smack dab when I was doing The Flying Nun and I was so depressed because I didn't want to be doing it. And so the wonderful Madeleine Sherwood who played the mother superior took me to the Actors Studio and it changed my life because I saw what I wanted. What I wanted to do is learn how to do this. Learn these tools.

I think that forever after I've spent my life exploring those tools, and those tools were always about exploring yourself. Of finding how the characters pieces interwove with your own somehow. Yeah, exactly. And it made you recognize how connected we all are. We're all these humans that you may interpret your life differently or behave differently, but you have the same feelings and drives and longings and loss and anger and rage and confusion and sadness as everybody else.

Right, exactly. And I think you're really talking about being empathetic and finding your truth in the work. And that is seen as an audience member watching you and it's what certainly I try to do. You try to find an in to a role that speaks truth to you. I know sometimes people have said, well, if you're playing a bad guy, if you're playing a villain, you as an actor don't approach playing that role like a bad guy. There's no judgment. You're trying to figure out how does this character who's made terrible choices come to these terrible choices? And how can I find some overlap there in my own experience?

Exactly. Do you think about Lee Strasberg a lot? Is he on your mind a lot? Not him particularly, but certainly his words. And he would say things that just stayed with me. Like what, Sally? I mean, things that you'd have to be there to understand. He would say things like, do not capitulate to the moment. Ah, yeah. Now people would go, what?

What? What does that mean? Well, it means if you're saying something sad, it does not mean you necessarily need to go, because many times saying something sad and not going with it, holding it back, is much more, do not capitulate to the moment. He also taught these things of repeating yourself in your body behavior, which is very interesting, very hard to do. If you talk very fast, you're a person that's giving this whole speech and you're talking

very, very fast, very, very fast, and you said, if you're going to do that, then move very slowly at the same time. Yes. It's extremely hard to do. Yes. You're talking about, you're always pushing against something. Watching somebody try not to cry is often much more moving than seeing somebody bawling their eyes out, right?

Right, exactly. That's so interesting. By the way, In Pieces, your book, In Pieces, is a real work of art. Congratulations. Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. Sally, really honestly, I just, it's just beautifully written. Oh, thank you. So insightful about human behavior and so honest. Anyway, I thought it was a real work of art.

In the book, you talk about finding your voice in character and having confidence while you're performing. So when you're in between jobs, does that sort of fade away? Does your confidence, where does that voice, the Sally Field confident voice live? In reality, I think I am more confident as an actor than I am as a human. Oh, really? Still to this day? Yeah, I think probably. And I think probably part of it comes from that I still suffer from so much social anxiety and shyness that part of me just is backed away from pushing, constantly pushing to change that and make that different. It's just who I am and when I'm working, that's all gone. Even like in between takes or on down days, you're not on set. It's gone then too.

Yeah. Is it because you're a part of a team? Do you think? Yeah. Yeah. It's cause I'm in this family. Yes. You don't have to make friends with the family.

They don't have to like you. Yes. You just, you need to be there and everybody needs to do their work and everybody knows what their work is. Sometimes you flub up and then you got to get back in on the horse and do it better. It leaves off any kind of social norms, as you well know. You go from meeting someone that you don't even know and all of a sudden you're intimate friends. There's no barrier between stranger and close friends.

It's just there's no guard gates. They're all gone. There's an intimacy, a closeness there that I don't think I've ever found anywhere else except with my children and my grandchildren. But even then, there's a different dynamic. Sure. You know, there are my children, but in work there is a safety in the danger of it all. Yeah, I totally get it. I think also because to your point, it's a sort of a singular focus and it requires the intimacy that you speak of because everybody's

assuming they're worth their salt, everybody's doing that work that we discussed earlier, going to the most true, honest, authentic place to bring your best work out. And you're doing that with other people. So therefore, you have to trust them. And that is the intimacy I think that you're speaking of. Yeah. But I mean, like with your family, with your kids, it's multi-leveled. It's, you know, I mean, it's a straight up fucking relationship. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, also the other thing that, in fact, you may even speak about this in the book, I can't quite remember, but so many of the roles that you have so carefully taken in your life are about women who are trying to take back their power, you know? And I'm assuming that's something that you're aware of, right?

You know, I am, I could see that now, I could not see it at the time, but I have to honestly say it wasn't like I was sifting through, you know, five or six really good scripts and picked that one. I would be lucky that one came my way. Every single solitary year of my life, of my career was such a goddamn fucking struggle. And especially getting to work that I wanted to do. I mean, there was a few things that came my way. Places in the heart came my way.

Glory hallelujah. And, you know, and then Mrs. Doubtfire came my way. But then again, I had no idea what it was going to be. I just thought it would be great. I'll work with Robin. But it was hard for me to accept to do Mrs. Doubtfire because I at that time was at the height of my career. So I was like, okay, so I'm going to take a supporting role. Wait a minute. Is this a good idea?" And then part of me said, back. Just go where the work is.

And the work was, it was this high comedy. It was Robin who I had such admiration for. I did Mrs. Doubtfire and then went right into Forest. They were like right on top of each other practically. And I did it because Tom called me and I had worked with Tom when he was a baby in his career in his movie career in a movie that I had produced called Punchline. And I played a struggling housewife who wanted to be a comedian and he was the troubled, dark, but incredibly talented comedian. And he sort of takes me under his wing because

I kind of mother him. But then he gets confused as to what am I? Am I a mother or am I a girl? And I had done that with him previously and so he called me to be in Forrest Gump. And I just loved the script so much and it was Tom. So I said, yeah, okay. Who knew? What about saying no? Are you good at saying no? I am. I am. I say no a lot now because it was like, who's making this movie? Who would be making this thing? I have to say no to something this afternoon and can you do it for me? Yeah, tell them to give me a call.

Is there any role that you really wanted but you didn't get it? I don't think so. I don't think so. And also, I am incredibly competitive and a real creep. Many times I don't go watch movies. I don't want to watch the movie. I don't want to see her do that. I don't want to watch it. I am not exactly generous. I mean, if I ran into that actor face to face, I wouldn't be a total creep, but I hope.

But like I say, I'm so always saddled with this social anxiety and shyness, I probably wouldn't be out to meet them in the first place. Uh-huh. Got it. Got it. I had one hideous experience once. Do you remember that movie? Oh, God damn it. What was the

name of it? It had Jim Belushi and it was a play in Chicago and they made a movie about it. Okay, it'll come to me. Yeah, it's going to come to me. But anyway, I was up for a part and I went in and I read and I read terribly, like terribly. And I knew that I could do better than that. So, and so I did this bold thing, I say in air quotes, and I wrote a note to them and I left it, they were at a hotel and I left to the hotel saying, would you give me a chance to come in again and read? Because I, you know, I was off my game, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they very kindly did. Yay. And I went in and as I got there, Demi Moore was there.

And I sort of entered and she was about to exit, but as she was exiting, she did sort of this little twirl of a confident twirl she was owning the room. Oh dear. And I thought, oh fuck, I'm fucked. No. And then I room. Oh dear. And I thought, oh fuck, I'm fucked. And then I read, I read and it was worse than the day before. Oh no.

Yes. Anyway, I didn't get the part and I'm going to, it's called About Last Night. That's the name of the movie. Oh yeah. Okay. Anyway, I wasn't in it and I didn't see it either. I remember one though actually in the 60s or 70s. This was early on.

I was still stuck in early television when you were, before you were born. I wanted to do True Grit so badly, but they wouldn't even consider it. I mean, I was doing The Flying Nun. No one wanted to see me. What, are you crazy? I knew this was my baby. I could have killed this. I could have killed this. I could have killed this.

Oh. But no, they wouldn't even let me in the room. I was not in them. Oh. I showed them. You showed them those motherfuckers. We have to take a break now. My conversation with Sally Field continues in just a bit. Do you ever get hit with a cringy memory of your 13-year-old self out of nowhere and suddenly you're panic sweating and laughing at the same time? Don't worry, don't worry, we all get that.

It's because being an adolescent is one of the most visceral shared experiences we have as people and we want to talk about it. Join me, Penn Badgley and my two friends, Nava and Sophie on Podcrushed as we interview celebrity guests about the joys and horrors of being a teenager and how those moments made them who they are today. New episodes of Podcrushed are out on April 24th wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, hello. I am José Andrés. Maybe you know me from my restaurants or maybe from Wall Central Kitchen, the organization I founded to feed people after disasters. Well, it's time for you to know my podcast, Longer Tables.

Each episode, I get to know fascinating people in the most intimate way, through foot. Stacey Abrams, Jojo Ma, Jane Goodall, Padma Lakshmi. I will answer questions from listeners too. Join me in building Longer Tables, not higher walls, whatever you get your podcasts.