Just B with Bethenny FrankelListen Again; My Conversation with Justin Baldoni
We're looking back at our 2022 conversation with It Ends with Us director and actor Justin Baldoni. Bethenny was impressed by his dedication to important causes and wanted to look back now with a 2024 lens.
So I wanted to drop the Justin Baldoni episode again because, to be fair, when I was approached about him coming on, I didn't know much about him.
So I did some research on him.
And I was impressed by him, and I enjoyed our interview. I thought he was likable. I thought it was interesting. I wished it was in person because it was a while ago, but I remember enjoying it and liking it. If I don't like something, it absolutely jumps off the page, and I just remember him being pleasant and likable, and truthfully, I want to listen to it again. I want to listen to him tell me his story again through the lens of what's happening today, and him being so passionate about this domestic violence topic, and this movie it ends with us, that's getting a lot of attention, whether negative or positive. It is disruptive and it is bringing attention to domestic violence. I did grow up in a violent household, and I'm very interested in this topic now, and he's really trying to stay connected to the meaning of the movie, and he's really focusing his press on raising awareness for domestic violence. And so now I just keep thinking about the interview and I would like to listen to it again and think about it through the lens of him today as a director and an actor in a movie about such an important topic, particularly to women. My guest today is actor, director, producer Justin Balde. You might have seen him on the hit TV show Jane the Virgin as Raphael, or you might know his work behind the camera, including the feature film Five Feet Apart Clouds or award winning documentary My Last Days. Beyond making a name as an all around filmmaker, Justin remains busy as a father, podcast host, and author. His work often tackles the culture of toxic masculinity as he aims to redefine what it is to be a man in today's society. Justin co founded a production company called Wayfarer Studios and started a nonprofit of the same name aim to serve the unhoused community in Los Angeles. I can't wait to talk through Justin's journey in entertainment, entrepreneurship, and sharing.
Love for your community. You guys will leave here feeling inspired by today's show.
Hope you enjoy. So.
How did you get into acting? Was it something you always wanted to do? Did you fall into it. Are you passionate about it? What is that part of your life?
I'm probably not going to give you these normal answers here.
There is no normal any Wars show. There's no normal bunch of crazy.
I never I never really thought that I was going to become an actor. I didn't have the self confidence. I was a bit of an ugly duckling. My dad was in the entertainment business growing up, and it was just felt so far away for me. So when I moved to Los Angeles, really it was for sports. From Oregon. I took an acting class and I really liked it. But I honestly took an acting class because I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with my life. I didn't know. I wasn't I was either going to be a psychologist or an actor. I wanted to be a filmmaker. Was that was what I really wanted to be. And then I'd found myself After a pretty devastating breakup when I was about nineteen twenty moving, I moved into this tiny office building. I slept on a couch in my dad's office. He kept his tiny office and in that building there was a manager that aked me if I was an actor, and I said no, but i'd I'd be very open to be. As it turns out, he was hitting on me. He became my manager. We ended up parting ways, but I started working right away, and wow, and I didn't know what I was doing. I learned how to act on sets. It was terrible.
I doubt that you have to have something to be to get give.
I think I I tried. I think I just maybe looked unique. I don't know, but I uh, but I learned and I am And really I just knew. I knew I wanted to be of service in some capacity. Faith has been a huge part of my life. But now what I joke about when everyone asked me, like, did you always want to be an actor or a director? You know, I look back and I'm like, so much of this was really just a trauma response of my wanting to be loved and appreciated and valued and seen, thinking that, oh, if I got on TV, then maybe all those people that were mean to me would appreciate me. Or if I just get you know, if I just had that car or that so much of so much of my especially in my early life, was driven unconsciously by a lot of those things. So I've just been unpacking a lot of that and it's informed the way that I work now and the things that I do and when I've focus my time on.
But are you passionate about acting now and being an actor? Do you actively work really hard to get roles that seem interesting to you?
No? I stopped acting, so you're not acting.
Anymore at all. Period. You don't want to act at all.
It's not that I don't want to act. I just I'm somebody that So I started a studio. I raised a large amount of money and we're financing movies and television shows now. Wayfairer right, wayfair studios. Yeah, and I direct. So I haven't acted since Jane the Virgin, which has been three and a half years now.
And there wouldn't be a role that you would create or director you'd think that would be.
The best there is. Yeah, I am. I'm there is a role that I'm going to take on for a movie we're going to finance. But it's one of these things where I don't I don't wake up thinking about it. No, answer your question, It's not like it's a huge passion It's more like there are days that I wake up when I feel like, oh, I'm drawn to it, and then there are days that I wake up when I'm much more drawn to the creative process of filmmaking or simply producing or just writing, or there are days when I just want to be focused on the business aspect of my work or the foundation whatever it is. I don't have like a one thing that I just I get it.
I really get it. I literally get it more than most people. I don't either, and I just do what I think. Yeah, I do a lot of things, not because you know, someone said to me today, do you want to continue with having a production company and really focus on that? And I know that a lot of people would give me money to do that, and I could do, And I say, I don't really want to do that, Like I don't. I kind of just do what I want to do and then if I really like it, I'll execute it. But if I don't, it doesn't out how much money there is.
I just don't do it.
And it's so funny because people like you and like myself, people think that we have this big, grand chess board plan. I am aware of the board always and I but it's almost like fantasizing in your mind, like that will happen, and then that will happen, and this will happen, and I am planning, but it's not really a plan. It's sort of just like a game in my mind. Does that make any sense?
Yeah? No, no, no, for sure, I think of it. I think of it a little bit like I always say, I'm kind of a feather in the wind, going wherever God takes me, and.
So you are more spiritual about it than I am. I'm like, I don't want to do that, so I will.
I think that the same principles. I think the same principle applies. I think that it is in many ways a game, and I think this conversation also is like we can't take the privilege out of it, which is like how blessed? How blessed are we to be able to choose so that it's not feaster or famine. Although I will admit that the feasterre famine still live inside of me and govern some of the rules. Even though I have plenty, there's still this part of me that thinks I have nothing, but that comes from having nothing, right, No, I get.
It well, that comes from having nothing. But also you have the luxury and the privilege now of choosing, because back then you had no choice, you had to do anything. I mean, I had my five hundred dollars car with a cracked windshield and was broken, panicked and alone in a family. So you did all that to then now be able to say, I don't want to do X, Y.
And Z exactly. And I also think it lives in us, you know, generationally, I you know, half my family's Jewish, and so I have you know, the Holocaust in me and the Great Depression from my grandparents and what they taught my mom and scarcity, and you know, I think that lives in us to a certain extent and informed some of those things and has made me like extra fast on the hamster wheel. I talk a lot about this with my wife, which is what is enough in this society? What is enough? Is when is it enough? How much money do I need to make? What do I need to any Instagram followers? How many movies do I need to make? Is there a role that would make me feel enough? And when you dig into it, you don't you realize there is no number, There's no thing.
Absolutely no Well, there could be a number, and then after that number, just because that's also part of the game. It's not really it's not a number that really matters or really means that you're done. But then after that the rest is grave. You're playing with the houses money. You can choose to do what you want. That's and I mean metaphorical money. It's funny that you're talking with this because I'm at that place now. I've been successful. I just told an apartment in the city, and I keep taking things off the board that are very lucrative and that aren't even that much time to spend that I just even the five seconds on it.
I don't like it.
Are the people that I have to work with, I don't like them, or I don't like the way they work or their culture, and I just say no. And it's literally a lot of money. It's been millions of dollars in situations, and to say no is very liberating, and say more is not more is very very freeing.
It sounds like you're protecting your time and your energy right now more than you are valuing making more money. And that's an important it's a privilege to be able to be in that place. To do that, and then a really important step I think in all of our journey is when we really take a step back and you look at it. Time is our most valuable asset.
I say it all the time.
It is the one thing that we can never get back, and that is ticking away, and we have to be really mindful of how we are spending our time. It's not time. It's not that equation of time equals money. No, not at all, and far worse than that. It's time is priceless.
Well, and your relationship to time evolves because it used to be for me and it still is in a way. I stack work so I want to if I'm putting some eyelashes on, I want to do five things that day, and then I don't want to do things for days. But it used to be that I would stack then to be with my daughter. So I was totally present with my daughter and totally present with work. But there was no time with myself.
It's no me.
It's just you're doing that. You're doing that, You're doing this, so you could do more of that, but there was no just me, like being like a bowl of oatmeal. And I wanted that, you know, because being doing meat as a mean doing yoga, doing a massad like it just means like laying and staring at the television.
Yeah, it's very meditative.
Truthfully, as you know, it's hard. It's very hard for people to do nothing. It's one of the things that's come up for me in my healing journey. It's antithetical doing nothing right. You don't you put those two kind of things together. It's a verb else doing right.
That's funny, and that's funny, and.
It's but it's really been important for me to practice that that's funny.
Doing something is the opposite of done with nothing.
That's interesting. The world always tells me like, hey, you have to be doing something because I believe in a system, a patriarchal system, if you will, our worth is tied to our productivity. So if I'm not doing anything, i am I am trained, i am brainwashed. I've been built in a way in this system that tells me that I don't have value. Why would I ever take care of myself? Why would you ever take care of yourself? Althany if if the world has told you by doing nothing, it means you're not being productive and you're wasting your time, right, how are we valuing time? Is really what's important.
Well, also, I know I'm you're very cause driven, as you mentioned, and you work, you've a foundation, and philanthropy is important to you as it is to me. Sometimes it feels like a sham because it's just another transference of doing business.
It's just not for profit.
So while it's incredible and I'm so proud that we have an effort in Ukraine that's literally never been done before in history, unprecedented, it's so quickly for hundreds of millions of dollars of aid, but I've treated it like a business because it's so it doesn't So sometimes my fiance will feel guilty telling me, like it's a lot, because you can't say that to someone who's saving lives and helping people. But he's seeing the tax that it takes on me. So you're giving, but it's still like not a sham, you know what I'm saying, Like you're still working.
Oh no, for sure. That's why I think it's important to mix philanthropy with what I call secret service, which is you are physically doing things on the ground that nobody knows about. You don't talk about it. You don't post it, you don't share it with anybody, maybe your fyance, your kids, don't even know. But there's a part of every human being that lights up when we are of service. And true service has no other benefit except for who that person is serving. It's not for you now. The way God designed us is that, yeah, it feels good to be of service, so we are supposed to do it. But I think oftentimes we can get disconnected from the actual cause and be on the ground. And sometimes it's been really helpful for me to actually just go and have a conversation with somebody who's unhoused again like I did ten years ago, and hear their story and their pain and what they're up to, and see and connect with them and look in their eyes and I'm like, oh, this is why I'm doing it, Or physically talk to somebody who I've helped or who who needs help without ever making it a thing. And that's the true test of the purity of it too, which is like, oh, I don't I'm not doing it for that. I'm not doing it for that. I'm doing it for the sole purpose of helping this other person and in return, God knows nobody else needs to know. That's what we've kind of fallen away from in this very like on demand, let's broadcast how good we are as human beings world. Oh so, so it can become so it can feel like a business because again, you you're literally having to run it like a business because that's how it works. But I think the thing that can then put fuel in your tank is is doing the work that you would normally like have a team on the ground doing. That's what That's what for me, Yes, and I have.
But it's funny that you say that because I took a really big time celebrity to Puerto Rico and we had we had hundreds of houses to bring crisis kids to and this person stayed for four hours with one one one woman and held the.
Whole group up.
And I understand that that was their experience on the day, but we literally had hundreds of people in chow to help the most people. So it's it's there is a balance in.
That because oh, well, that situation is totally different because yeah, you're you're doing it for a reason and you have it's a volume business.
I can't go help one pole, one person in Poland.
Right now, or no, no, no, no, no, yeah, no, no, of course, I'm just talking about when you get drained, that's how you refill your own or yourself.
You're just saying it's private, Moday.
Yeah, yeah, I was speaking more about like you and I No, I.
Agree, I agree. I knew what you were saying. But it's funny.
It just becomes While I would also like to sit and talk to that woman in her house, I would love to do that, it's just not And that's why sometimes I feel cold because when I'm doing talking about it, it doesn't you.
Know what I mean, You're not like a touchy.
About it at the end of the day. But I do think someone once told me that our world is designed like if you think of an army, everybody has a purpose, right, So if we were designed to and everyone has a role, you need a Bethany Frankel in order to create the charity, the nonprofit that helps those millions of people to hire the people that are on the ground doing that, and like, we all have our purpose here right right, and and we can't start to you know, something that I tell myself is like, oh I wish I was more of the other person. Yeah, I wish I was, like, you know, I wish I was doing more of the work on the ground. I feel this sore disconnected, but in reality, like, okay, if there weren't a you, then that wouldn't be happening.
That's what my fiance says.
It's not it's guilt because I wanted to be in Poland the first week and my partner was on the border and said, we have no phone service. You have to be doing all this And I'm the sort of person that drives the whole opera. I'm the CEO of this thing. And so I said to my fiance, I'm not standing there. I'm not in the warehouse. He said, I don't think the head of Coca Cola is putting Coca Cola in bottles either right now.
So you have to be where you're just so there's a level that's just I haven't.
Talked about that. That's interesting, But I want to hear about your philanthropy. So you're you're I'm not.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't consider myself a philanthropist more than somebody who's just you know, I grow I was raised in the ba High Faith. Bahalah says that every human being must engage in an occupation or a trade, and that trade must be their form of service. So for me, I'm just like I'm just always looking for opportunities to be of service with my privilege in my work. And I just so happened to be able to create some cool stuff in our business, which again I battle with because I feel like I'm not doing anything and everyone's far more successful than me. But that's my trauma speaking. But what little I have done or to some a lot, I just wanted to mean something more than just for my ego or for my name, right for my brand, if you will, all because we're all brands now, I guess I want to. I want to, you know, I want to leave something behind that is more than just me creating things selfishly or to look good or or well.
You have that filter, you don't. I want to know two things. What you are project or most proud of? And is that a filter? You don't create or produce or direct a project or write a project if it doesn't if it's not cause driven, or.
I don't touch anything. If it's not cause driven, I don't touch Okay.
So give me tell me one of tell me what you think is the most influential or been the most impactful cause driven project that you've created.
Oh, that's a great question. That's hard because everything is different. I started I quit acting when I was twenty five to make a documentary series called My Last Days, where I traveled the country and I told the stories of individuals who are dying of a terminal illness because I wanted to help people remember that they don't have to find out they're dying to start living.
Wow.
Because we procrastinate to become the people we want to be. We procrastinate to do everything. We always push everything off. And I looking at this and I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. Why am I doing this? I was twenty five, I wasn't happy acting. I quit. I made that show for four thousand dollars an episode. I lost everything. My house went into foreclosure, and I was the happiest that I'd ever been. And that show inspired my first film, which was called Five Feet Apart, which was inspired by a friend of mine who had cystic fibrosis. Five feet apart before the world even knew what that was, staying five feet apart. And you know, that movie went on to make about one hundred million dollars around the world, and it changed cystic fibrosis and awareness and saved lives and all kinds of stuff, and that's super impactful. But you know, and I made a movie called Clouds about my other friend from that show on My Last Day, Zach. That's on Disney, and we raised millions of dollars for osteosarcoma, and that was a very special project. But then also my work with masculinity and trying to help men help and help myself regnize that we're enough as we are. All of these things are are are both. There's a double bottom line always. Of course, I want them to be successful so that I can make more of them. But I've always said, like when I first made that documentary series My Last Days, my business partner at the time and I were looking at the YouTube comments and it was ten almost ten years ago on YouTube, and it literally broke Upworthy's website. It was how Upworthy really started. Wow, fourteen million views for a twenty two minute video. And this was ten years ago when everybody was watching cat videos and we're like, what is happening? And talk shows are calling us, and like we had no infrastructure, and we didn't know what we were doing. It cost ten thousand dollars to make that thing. But one of the comments said, I had tried to take my own life multiple times and failed. I was going to take my life today and I stumbled on this video and I now know why I'm still here.
Wow, that's the only thing you ever did in your life.
And so it was the if that was the and that's what we've said. That's so that's what I've built all of my stuff on, which is okay, if that was it. Yeah, and I got one view. Yeah, it might have been a colossal flop to the business. Yeah, but how much is his life worth? That's amazing, And that's the metric by which I'm building my studio and we do everything. I mean, look mad enough. I had a great deal with HarperCollins. They you know, paid me really good money to write the book. I write the book, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I tried to get out of it multiple times and give the money back, literally, and we finally get it done. I'm nervous, I'm passionate about it. It's it's here, It's for men and everybody's focused on it becoming a bestseller. That's all anybody's talking about is, Yeah, how do we get it on the New York Times list? How do we get on the New York Times List? And everything in me was like, this isn't why I wrote the book. This isn't why I do anything. This is the system. This is but no, but.
More you can more people will read it if it's on the list, and you'll get another book deal. If it's on you'll get another book people.
But do I want to be on that hamster reel Bethany? And that's not it. And that's a question that we don't ask ourselves often, is I don't want to do They've offered me more book deals. I don't want to do another I don't I don't need to do all of it until it comes from a creative place and I'm ready to do it.
I get it.
This was all about, But I remember it all being about the best seller list because it helps, of course, it gets the message out more, it makes it, it makes it all these things. And I knew I had this feeling like I wasn't going to make the list. It's a very nuanced topic it's about masculinity. Men are not menoriz.
I wouldn't think it would make the list if I heard the concept ahead of time, because it's women, who are you know, the target audience.
So I that, well, men are the target audience of the book.
No in the world, I'm saying, in this landscape and the talk shows, you're talking about the book and in us we eactly, but yeah, it's women.
They're talking to so we and so we and so they do all this press for it, and you know, and and I actually, for a good month bought into the hype and I was so focused on trying to help this book become a bestseller. I'm reaching out to all my celebrity friends. I'm doing all this some the mailings, and I'm like, well, this is what Why am I doing this? Right? I just want to reach that one man. Yeah, And in many ways, I was like, I have this feeling I'm not and I think it'll be better if I don't, because I want to. I want to feel that humility and be reminded of why I did this in the first place. So, of course, interestingly enough, I write a book. It's a nonfiction book, undefining my masculinity. It's not a self help book, and the feeling is probably somebody at the New York Times, a guy was triggered by it. He put it in the self help category. Of course I didn't make the list. Ironically, had it been a nonfiction book, I probably would have debuted a number two. Doesn't matter. The point was I didn't make the list where everybody was disappointed, and I always fucking relieved because you know what would have happened all then it would have been about staying stay.
It's the hamster wheel.
It's the hamster wheel. And I said, oh, and now the book stet a life of its own. It's moving, it's touching people. I'm getting those individual messages from men.
Share.
A lot more women bought the book. Women bought it for their men, and everybody wins in the end. I'm grateful for that. So so, and it's a long tangent to answer.
No, it's not I get it.
I get it. But that's how I think. That's how I'm trying to think about my place in this very strange intersection of art and capitalism.
We want to do things for the right reasons, you have to. It's like that philanthropy. You said doing on your own. That's a private moment. You want to yourself do it for the right reasons. Like Kelly, my book is called Business is Personal because they're so intertwined. And you know the blurbs. We need a blurb, We need a blurb. A blurb? What's a blurb? You need a blurb?
You need to call fame.
OK.
I literally texted Kate Katie Kirk.
I was like, semi a book. I go, I go out, she goes what I didn't read it? Just talk about me, say something, say something true, and send me a book. Kelly RiPP she was dealing with something with her mom.
I don't remember. Just send me a fucking blurb, Mark Cuban, send me a blurb. I need a blurb. They want a blurb, and then then they want.
The way read.
But right, I don't read the blurbs.
And then in six months or may, sorry, in two months, they're gonna want me then to tell Kelly Rippa to fucking tweet about it. But I'm not asking Kelly Ripple to tweet about this. That is where my line is. But I get it because but I feel bad because I'm partners with the book industry people who it's so hard to push something and and their asses are on the line too. So you're on the wheel yourself. You owe yourself to everybody.
And by stepping on the wheel you you become a slave to it in many ways.
But don't be your sup up.
You only write books because it's a top. You're writing books because it's a topic you want to pour out of you, and then you start writing and then you probably get bogged down. But I only write books because I'm like, I want to say this now, I'm ready to talk. You get a book deal and then you start talking, and then you're like, well, I don't want to hear my.
Voice anymore, so you don't want to them promote it.
You're like over yourseles. Yet, Well, for me, it's a little bit different, Bethany. I wish I had, I think ten percent of your confidence. For me, it is it's deeply personal, and the things I'm writing about, at least what I wrote about in Man enough, I'm writing about masculinity in a way that a lot of men haven't talked about it because it's so hard, so personal from stories that have happened to me when I was young, embarrassing moments, you know, things from our bodies changing that we never want to talk about, to even a traumatic you know, sexual assault that I experienced when I lost my virginity. These are things that men have never been able to talk about. Now it's very and also tying that into equality and how we should show up in the world as men with not just women and queer and trans people, but like with ourselves. How to make this world a better place by becoming not just better men, but better humans. This is a very personal, hard thing because the whole point of writing the book was recognizing how deeply unhappy I was, and how I was just wanting to be liked and loved and seen by other men and seen as enough in this world. And uh, and by writing the book, it triggers other men and the exact same thing ends up happening, where then I'm mocked and demonized and told that I'm a you know, all of the things that they call men like me who are in touch with their feelings and emotional which I believe you mean.
It's like metro or words like stuff like that.
Oh no, no, no, I'm talking about I'm talking about I'm talking about things that more, you know, uh more, it's more derogatory statements than that. Okay, well I don't care if you call me metro or any of those.
No, But you know, I think it's such a great, amazing topic because I read, you know, I have the information here about some of the things you talk about and some of the things you went through. But in talking about masculinity, it's such a stereotype and you're only allowed to you know, men aren't allowed to whine and be as sick as women aren't. There was a man I was at a spot and he was like, do you have a blanket? I get really cold? And I thought to myself, Oh, that's not very masculin, Like why isn't a man allowed to get cold?
Like I'm always getting cold.
It's such a double standard in so many different areas where men have to act more stoic, hard yeah, hardcore, because they're not allowed to be vulnerable in the same way. So where does that go? Where does that go? That's got to be trapping.
And where does it go? It turns into anger, it turns into frustration, It turns into the reason men are so violent, It turns into you know, when we can't cry. Where does that go? It just goes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until one day the well bursts and explodes.
Well that brings up the Will Smith thing, and it brings up I want to talk to you quickly, not quickly, but about the Will Smith's lap, but also the conversation that he had with Jada when you know, she was like, you knew about August, the guy who I guess she was having an affair with, and Will was sitting at the table and you may not have seen it, but he was just like, oh, yeah, I knew about it. But it felt like degrading, like he had to be like, yeah, I knew that you were sleeping with somebody else, like at a table, as if she was talking about something that they should be able to just talk about in front of millions of people, and.
You know, she was like, it.
Was just this weird conversation and it didn't seem the stereo type of masculine for him to just sit there and be in a discussion with Jada about the other guy that she was hooking up with and that he was presumably aware of it, and what this like triangle was with them and then I connect that to him sitting next to Jada and standing up and slapping another human being, and you know that that's that's a man saying that he's defending his woman and that he has to protect his family because he's a man. And I'm just curious what you think of that, like the whole thing.
Honestly, I think I don't really I might say it might not be cool, but I don't really want to comment on it because I feel like, here, here's what I can tell you. There are so many layers to this conversation that I don't know if two white people can can can really enter and have an opinion about With the exception of ah, we know that going up on a stage and slapping somebody is not right. That's very very clear. But you're talking about you know, when I when I look at the situation, I'm looking at from from multiple standpoints, from a from a place of the way we have devalued black women in our society forever, and how very few people stand up for them to also the need for men in general, let alone black men, to prove their masculinity. I mean, there are so many systems at play that intertwine here and then intersect into this that I don't really have a view on it other than I wish I've always loved well Smith, and I wish it didn't happen.
No, I love that you had that.
I love that you bring up that it's too black men in that perspective.
It's really just a nuanced conversation that that. Honestly, I just don't think. I just don't think as white people we really have the frame of reference to be able to unpack it because we have not lived in any of the experiences that these people have, especially the black woman.
Okay, so Bradley Cooper gets up on the stage and slaps Brad Pitt that that could happen. It could happen as much as this happened.
We do I do have to I mean, I think we do have to look at also, like you know, there are acts of white violence and things like that that happen all the time. You know, the conversations I have is, you know, the second that that it's around black folks, then it becomes this whole thing and there are again there are just there are centuries of trauma that exists underneath all of these things. And it's just really hard. So again, it's it's just it's so much more nuanced than like should he have done it? Should he have not? Because also, yeah, you're bringing up stuff that I'm not an expert on, like the situation that happened with them. I don't know that I know. I mean, I've known about it. But what I can tell you is that in our society, here's what I can speak to. In our in our world, in a in a patriarchal h fantasy land that we're living in, I can tell you firsthand that there there is a rage that happens deep down in every man when he feels as if he is being emasculated, right, which I believe is not a real thing. I don't believe it's possible for one to be emasculated because masculinity is not something that can be taken away. Your femininity can't be taken away. I can't feminate you your no, but.
I can feel masculine because I'm so tough, and that's the constructs that have been created.
But I couldn't emasculate you, Bethany, How could you emasculate me? Why is it that? Why? Why can masculinity be taken away? Why does my masculinity.
Say to me?
How does someone handle You're so tough, you should soften up a little or something like that, and that, Yeah, wow, that makes me feel less feminine.
Well but no, but here's the thing. The reason they're saying that to you is because of how you're going to make someone else feel that's a man, you should. Oh, I get it, but.
I still feel that feeling.
I can understand how the people use the term that a man can feel immasculine. I understand what that means. It's just the same.
I can understand it too. But I think the system the problem is we're talking about an overarching idea that one's masculinity.
Oh, Kenny, take it there totally, and it's got many different definitions in terms to it.
And if I am going through my life raised in this system that tells me that every day I have to prove my masculinity, how am I going to act? I'm going to be in a state of fireflight. I'm going to be ready to fight. My nervous system is always going to be on and I'm not going to be able to take feedback from anybody. The second somebody tells me that I can do better at something, or that I failed at something, my defenses are going to go up and I'm going to have to prove myself. Right. We've seen this a lot with white fragility, as an example in the conversation around race with men and women. We don't want to be we don't want to be racist, right, so we get all super defensive because God forbid, we unconsciously said something or did something that hurt this other person, right, Like, we can't be bad. Well, imagine as a man moving through your life knowing that anywhere you go, you must prove your worth, your value, your masculinity because if you don't, right, we want to go back to the old days, like to primalness. Someone can take your woman, someone can kill your kids, all of that stuff. Well, today it's just about value. Today, it's about I need to prove my worth so that I'm seen as enough that I'm seeing as a man.
I get that, and I also get that the undertow of what could have been going on, and it could have been the perfect storm that went on to get up to that stage, but I don't. When I go to the supermarket and I encounter one hundred different people, they all have their own undertow. And if I'm only in a supermarket where there's only one hundred African Americans or you know, then they all have their own undertow. But people can't just act out on that. I think it talked about out Hollywood so many things.
When Hollywood all of it, there's an intersection, there's an intersection of all of it.
I think it's just a woman needing to be defend a woman, not just a black woman, a woman needing to be defended by a man entitled Hollywood. Yes, rage and things going on.
Put it all put a pot, makes it together.
Yeah, I think it's interesting soup. So I think I like you because I think.
But just to my point, Bethany, that's what I go back to is the only thing that I can share from my personal perspective is knowing what it feels like when my masculinity is being challenged and knowing that I have done which is one of the reasons why I wrote the book that I have over the course of my life said things and done things and acted in a way that I didn't want to act like because I felt like I had to puff up.
Then you do well, you should speak on it because you have a better perspective than most people do.
That's well, every man has that perspective, right, every man knows knows the feeling of being challenged and needing to step up and pup out there and do something performative to earn that back. And then if you layer in actual physical abuse, being young and seeing that you have again this person, this this melting pot of all of these traumas that coexist to form this unique situation. But that is the experience of many men. Many men have been taught that they solve their problems with their fists.
Right, you're not talking about the what you disagree with the what You're just talking about.
The Oh, I'm not talking about the issue at all. I'm talking about what's underneath the issue, which kind of relates back to masculinity in my book, which is all we all are told every single day that we have to prove our masculinity. And my point is that I don't believe masculation really exists because I don't think you can take one's masculinity away. I think it's a perception, and I think that's how we've been raised. I think that you even admit it yourself. What you what you talked about when you said, oh, well, why does that that's not very masculine, that man doesn't want a blanket. That's called internalized misogyny. Yeah, okay, And women experience this too. Belle Hooks, the late great Bell Hooks, who was one of the most prolific black feminist authors, writes about this that in a system such as this, women experience internalized misogyny as well, which then reinforces the need for us men to be this way because when we're getting it from men and then we get it from women, well, how the hell are we going to ever change?
True.
It's so interesting because my fiance had a different feeling when he first heard about this lap than he did a day later. It was like lasagna the next day, Like it just was different. He first was thinking, like if someone said something bad about his mother or someone around him, how he'd feel that rage inside, and how you have to do something about it and pan your chest. But obviously Intel actually knows that it's wrong. I think it's a I think this is why it's so provocative, this particular issue an incident, because it's bringing up so many things that have nothing to do with celebs and bullshit pop culture, just that have to do with human beings between so many, so many things going on.
So that's why I would look at the way I would look at it, Bethany, is that it's a Roschack test. People are going to see what.
They see totally very interesting.
And that's how I kind of look at what happened. But what I saw is I saw, I saw myself, I saw I saw men that I loved, I I saw that I saw I saw the pain of the people in the audience. I felt. I mean, I'm an EmPATH, I felt everybody and but that but that's how I also moved through life. Yeah, that stuff, that stuff happens every day. We just saw it in a way that most people have not experienced it from people that they would not expect it from. But this happens every single day everywhere, and so now it's in our faces and we have to look at it and wonder why why was our reaction the way that it was. But I don't think we can have that conversation without also including all of the unique individual traumas that exist and gender.
And that love it. It's amazing, wow wow's and I love I'm glad I asked you. See, you didn't have an opinion, but you had an opinion. So the last thing I wanted to ask you was your rose and your thorn of your career.
That's so funny. Every single every day, every night I ask my wife and I talk to our kids about their roast and their thorn of the day.
We do too.
It's funny because I we always used to start with rose, and then I was like, you know, I'm gonna start with my thorn. I want to end with my rose.
We can add the kids. The pedal is like a we just made it up.
The pedal is like a thing that you like to see happen, like a you know, a goal or a dream or something.
So my rose and thorn of my career thus far, I feel like I'm at the beginning of my career. I would say my I would say my thorn isn't an event or a thing. I would say, my thorn has been my giving in my allowing the unconscious need to be seen and valued, to accelerate the hamster wheel, like to keep me on it, to keep me creating. When I could have very well stepped back and said, no, I've done enough for this month, or I need to go to sleep. I think that I have fallen victim to that system that only measures worth via productivity and just kept going and prided myself in many ways on being a machine. I used to get so puffed up and feel so good about myself when people are like, dude, you're like a how do you do this? You're like a robot, You're like a machine. How do you keep going? And I would feel amazing when someone said that, But machines break down. Machines do not live forever. And my body started breaking down, and I started feeling the weight and the pressure mentally and physically. And I don't pride myself on being a machine anymore because a machine isn't human. As men and boys, we've been taught that we need to be more machine like than human like our entire lives, when in reality, we need to be more human like. Rest is important, doing nothing is important, Peace is important. So that would be my thorn is for years and years and years not listening to my body when it said stop not listening when my kids needed me, and I was like, now, not only send one more email, which still happens. Yeah, not perfect. Yeah, that's my thorn and existing thorn that I'm going to constantly be trimming and working on and trying to pull out over the course of my life. I would say, my roads. It might not be a great answer for you, but here's what's coming up. This is what I feel my bad I would say my rose is acknowledging my thorn.
Oh no, that's totally good.
I would say that my rose from my career is acknowledging that I have that thorn and being aware of it so that I don't let it drive me. Because I could very easily have the type of personality where I wake up when I'm eighty five one day and I've accomplished so much and I've made millions of dollars, But at what cost m H. And I would have missed my life because I was so focused on the producing aspect of it. That is the value that I see in recognizing the thorn, and that would be the rose.
That's amazing. Wow, Well, it's been so great to meet you and to talk to you and to go on this little journey that anyway, thank you. Nowhere where I thought we'd go. So that's what I love about it. And it's great to talk to you.
It's so nice to meet you, and good luck with everything, and thank you for doing all of your work from that high level place.
And I hope, oh, thank you.
I hope every once in a while, getting your hands dirty we'll reinvigorate you.
Absolutely absolutely.
Oh it's so, let's talk to you. We'll have a great day, and love to her family.
Bye. M M.
Justin is so kind and gentle and interesting and opinionated and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed the conversation a lot. Every conversation is so different, and it invariably goes in a direction that I never knew it would. But I'd like talking to people who dedicate their life to service but still have success from I don't explain it, have success from like what other people receive as a superficial metric, meaning he's had commercial success, but everything that he does is of service, which I really I think you can do great things and still be successful and profitable, Like it's what a great Isn't that the perfect convergence in someone's life. I'm really glad that I asked Justin's opinion on the Will Smith saga that continues because while when it first happened, I did think about the joke, the undertow, the subtext, the meaning, the anger, the preamble, the history that we don't know about either between them and making jokes, et cetera.
It also.
Chris Rock handled himself with grace and dignity that needs to definitely be said. But you know, I'm not a black man, and I don't know what that feels like. And I don't know what Will Smith is going. I don't know what So many of us are so appalled and outreached by what happened that we're not thinking about what happened before, because you know, when you take a situation too far, when you push something too far, you close off the conversation. Meaning I've said this before, and Will Smith gotten on stage and won his award and said, I just want to mention that I think what Chris said was probably unintentionally but definitely hurtful and disrespectful because alopecia is this, and you know, he doesn't have to go into his whole life and his back history with his wife and infidelity or whatever's enraging, and that we don't even know about. But he could have said something and then the conversation would have been about alopecia, and Chris Rock would have not been in the best part of that dynamic. So you can flip things upside down by what you do. So while it's great to have the luxury of thinking about all of the things that go into who somebody is when they do something and have compassion for that, you know what about Jesse Smillett, not that that's the same thing. Are we having compassion for what he's done? And we have a compassion for Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lower or Roman Polanski or Kanye when he took away Taylor's award or Mike Tyson when he bit off Evander Holyfield's ear.
Because Michael Rapport brought that up in.
His podcast so much, how much license are we giving to people for what's going on ahead of time? They mean, Megan Kelly, of all people, was talking about privilege and how people got one hundred and forty thousand dollars gift back. So it's kind of hard to think about the plight of Will and Jada with what's going on in the world. Everything is relative. I'm sure, he's pain is as real as someone else's, but it's hard when you're walking out with one hundred forty thousand dollars gift back to think about oh Warwill and what he's been through as an oscar winning man whose wife has had an affair and who is a black man and what that has entailed. So it's just hard. You have to conduct yourself in a certain way unless you're certified, like you know you have to. You can't just do what you want. Sometimes I want to be a bitch. Sometimes I want to, you know, slap somebody like I literally Sometimes you're like, I would like to get too a fire right now, so you curse somebody out. You feel that, you feel that at the you feel that if you haven't slept, you feel it if you're PMS, you feel that, if you have menopause, you feel that you're at the fucking market. You've been driving hours, you've worked five jobs, you're exhausted. You feel that you can't act on So while it's interesting to bring up what's going on with someone, they didn't create a space where we could think about that, because you just can't act irrational.
So that's what I say. About that.
So anyway, thank you for listening. Remember to rate, review and subscribe, and tell me your rose and your thorn, for your clear or your life wherever you want. So have a great day and thank you. Got to pick up of her
