When Shannen and Christina Ricci met, they clicked right away and their bond shines through. In this episode of "Let's Be Clear," the friends enjoy a fun chat about their days as child actors, and their wild journeys ever since.Find out what jobs Christina lost out on, the ones she really loved, and the ones she had to take for money! Plus, Christina reveals the negative effects social media has had on her life and what she does to stay positive.
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty.
Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty. I have a ridiculously special guest today, Christina Ricci, who I absolutely adore.
Hi. Hi, I'm so happy to be honest.
I'm like thrilled that you're on. It's uh, I don't know. It brought like a huge smile to my face and I was like, oh my god, I love that girl.
When you first announced it on your in the comments on your Instagram, I wrote, I want to be on, And then I was like, don't make this about you, Christina, please, So I like took it off and then waited a couple of days and then privately DMG, oh.
You can totally make it about you. I'm fine with that.
How did we meet? We met for the first time in New Zealand, right.
In New Zealand at a con convention in New Zealand. Yeah, and I was really appreciative because it was my first well no, it's my second convention. But I felt really insecure and you immediately took charge and where we like stole some pa to drive us home in her personal car because they were taking too long.
To get the cars.
It was gonna be like an hour. Wait, yeah, it was too much.
It was good.
It was good to see too, because now it taught, you know, I learned. I learned to be more you know, not forceful, but just like, no, we're getting out of here, resourceful. Let's say I learned to be a little bit more resourceful and not just do whatever I was told in those situations, which is very helpful.
So here's what's kind of interesting to me is that we both were childhood actors. I mean, I know that you did Mermaids when you were nine, but what age were you when you first started.
I first started, you know, I was almost eight, so seven but really almost eight, and I just started going, you know, the daily auditions every day after school. Would take the bus from New Jersey to New York and go to like three auditions a day and come home. And then I started doing commercials. I got sort of fired for my first commercial because I didn't like my mother and I did not respect how they had done my hair and my mom basically, you know, and so I wouldn't be perky and I wouldn't smile because they gave me this awful page. Boy that I just thought was really unflattering, and my mom kind of looked at me and was like, yeah, I wouldn't want to be on camera looking like that either, and so I never improved my attitude and they ultimately just let me go home.
That is an amazing story.
It was one of my first jobs, and I did a lot of like voiceovers and commercials, and I did one TV pilot and then I got Mermaids when I was nine years old, so.
We have so much in common.
So I remember I auditioned for a commercial when I was young, probably like you know, nine or something, and it was for a cereal I don't think it's around anymore. It was called houses or something, and I had like braids, long braids, and all these girls had their hair all like fluffed and pretty, and one of the moms turned to my mom and said, like, don't you want to take our hair down?
And my mom was like, no, like she likes it in braids. She's a tomboy.
And I went into the room and they took two kids at the same time to audition together but for the same part, and the one kid was just so energetic and like super chirpy, and I was just like, yeah, have these great cereal and they're like, can you be more energetic? And I'm like, I don't really eat this cereal, so like I don't really know what it's about, and they're like you can go now.
I was like, okay, cool.
So I think we both had that sort of personality when we were younger.
Yeah, I remember finding it really interesting when I first started auditioning. I remember the first audition I ever went on, the little girl who again they took both of us two two at a time into the room. She knew the casting director, she had brought him cookies, and she was flirty, like eight years old, and I just remember thinking, wow, I've never seen a child act like that, really friendly, Like are we allowed to treat to talk to adults like that? And my mother later was like, yeah, that was weird.
She was very flirty.
I don't think you know, obviously she didn't have those intentions, but that's sort of like, oh damn, like very and I had never seen a kid act like that, so that was interesting to me. But yeah, I was always showing up to auditions, like I remember I went on the callback for pet Cemetery and then my mom went to pick me up from school, and I had gotten a huge black eye from playing soccer.
But I still had to go to the audition with my giant black eye.
And how did that go?
I didn't get it.
No, Oh that's okay. I think you went on to much better things. How did Mermaids come about?
I just went on on the audition, and I happened to be a competitive swimmer actually at the time, and the character is a swimmer, and.
I just I went.
On to auditions like the original original audition a callback, and then they flew me and one other girl to Boston where they were shooting, and I auditioned with Share and Wanona and like met with them and hung out with them for any evening at the production office.
Was that intimidating to you at all? Or were you just too young to really?
No, my data is great.
Like anytime I went and auditioned for anything in particular, Like you know, once I had to audition for this Harrison Ford movies, we watched all Harrison Ford movies, and like when I went to auditioned for Mermaids, we did a Share movie marathon. You know. I even watched Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which is so obscure, But my mom was always really good at stuff like that, like even with photographers. If I had to shoot with someone, we'd go to the library and we'd look at all their stuff because this is before the internet, guys, we would go and look at all their stuff so I'd be prepared. So I was really excited about going, and I really wanted the part, and I remember being nervous, but you know, when you're a kid, being nervous and being excited sort of meld together, at least at least to my memory. And then everybody was really nice, and Winona was lovely and so fun.
She was only seventeen at the time.
And Share was great, really fun also, and I don't know, it just all was good and it worked out, so it was great.
One of the things I love about your career I love a lot of things about your career, is that you have just sort of transitioned. It seems seamlessly from you know, blockbuster movies like Mermaids, like Sleepy Hollow, like Adam's Family Too, you know, really cool independent movies and then TV like you know, the New Wednesday.
I'm glad it appears that way it does.
It does is that I mean, listen, I know how hard it is, and it's like you want the best job possible, and sometimes you take a job for money. It doesn't buy your resume, it doesn't really look like you have ever done that.
I've taken so many jobs for money, so many jobs for money.
In fact, I was.
Told, just like I don't know, ten twelve years ago that if I didn't need, if I didn't have to take so much work for money, I could have a much more curated, better career.
And it really is true. When you don't have to work for money, you can wait.
Or spend all your time developing that perfect project for yourself. But when you're somebody who, like I don't come for money, we were very poor when I was a kid, I've always had to support myself. I've never been good with money, so like I blew all my money in my twenties and then had to like hustle to try to make it back and all that stuff.
I've definitely taken a lot of jobs for money.
They're just because, like, if you like, I've done close to one hundred movies, but only people only really know about twenty maybe of them.
What's the favorite, Like, what is your absolute favorite movie that you've done.
As an audience, as like a moviegoer a.
Movie fan, I would say, I really love Ice Storm, and I really love I love Buffalo sixty six too. I think those are really fun movies. I love this movie I did called The Opposite of Sex when I was seventeen, that yeah, it's so fun and it was such and that also was an incredible experience. So I think for me that was that's a movie where I love the finished product. But I also had a really amazing experience because Don Ruse, who wrote and directed it, became I became very close with him and his husband, Dan Bucatinski, and I ended.
Up living with them.
I was seventeen, and I did want to go home back to New York to live with my mom afterwards that I had graduated high school, so I was I basically told.
Them I would be moving into their house and they let me.
I lived with them for like six months in LA but they got to you know, and it just was like a really wonderful experience.
And it was a part where I didn't have to pretend to be.
I mean, I certainly wasn't extremes that as extreme as that character. But I had a bad attitude as a seventeen year old, and I got to just I don't know. I was always relieved when I was younger to not have to to not have to be something that I didn't respect.
I guess you talk.
I mean, most seventeen year olds, I think have a bad attitude. Yeah, you know, I mean I think that that's what your teenage and early twenty years are about, is finding yourself, discovering who you are, finding your voice, what your limitations are.
You know.
I obviously didn't learn the art of diplomacy until it was well into my thirties. I was apparently a late bloomer.
I'm still I'm still learning. So I completely get that. Yea, how you when you started nine to two and oh.
I think I just turned eighteen, like I think I did the Pilot when I was seventeen and a half.
That was just such a huge show from the very beginning.
Yeah yeah, I mean I definitely wasn't expecting it, and to me, I had, you know, I'd been on Little House in New Beginning, and I thought that I'm going to age myself. That was like the cast me out the cat's pajamas, Like that was everything to me. It was like Michael Landon and then I did our house and then I had done Heather, So I really didn't I didn't think it would get bigger than that, And I was very unaware of like myself and what I was projecting out into the public or to the people that I was working with. And nine o two when I was like a huge wake up call and one that I was definitely not ready for and prepared for, and I didn't handle it all that well at times.
You know.
It was also, as you know, a very different time in the business, particularly for women, and if you were young and working and you had a strong mom, like my mom always went to set with me. She'll be the first person to say that she wasn't always the strongest person, but she learned in going to sets with me and then taking care of my dad, who was sick the majority of my life, that she learned how to find her voice and be strong. But moms would always get labeled as stage moms if they stuck up for their child, and then as we got older into that like seventeen eighteen nineteen category. If we stuck up for ourselves, we were branded difficult. I don't know if you were ever. I know I was one hundred percent branded difficult a bunch of times. But you really had to fight for yourself.
Yeah, there was this awareness of it not being okay to speak up that when you fid when you did speak up, there was a lot of kind of resentment in it. I would hold my tongue and hold my tongue, and by the time I spoke up, I was songat because I'd had to muzzle myself for so long.
And then that's where I would.
Actually be very unpleasant, because I was mad and I'd finally like gotten to a point where I couldn't help but say something. Whereas now it's a little bit you're allowed to express yourself and there's just so much more empathy, I think, and collaboration and understanding.
I agree.
I mean, I still think that we've taken huge strides for women in the workplace period, whatever job that you're in, but there's still, you know, restraints, there's still a ceiling. It's still you know, a business, our business run by a lot of men, and they still have, I think an underneath sort of mentality of especially if you're not at like the Julia Roberts, Nicole Kiinman, George Clooney level, where you know, you're like, please tell me all of your thoughts, But when you're at my level, it's more of shouldn't you just be grateful that you have the job? And I'm always like, God, Like, what a weird way to exist in a business and in the world as a woman where I have to just be grateful as opposed to also having an opinion and a thought.
Can I hear you?
I feel the same.
And still I feel like I'm expected to feel incredibly lucky, you know. And I was told that from the beginning too, that I was so lucky and it was all just luck.
And being in the right place and time.
And I do think that that is a mechanism to keep somebody from really being in their power.
You have two kids, as we know, your two year old is going through a sleep issue, and you still, you know, have to work.
How are you Because I don't have kids. I have a dog. She's like my child.
But it's obviously a lot easier for me to sort of pack up and go to a movie set or a TV set, be away all day, Like, how do you actually manage having a family life, taking care of your kids and working all at the same time.
It is tricky.
It is tricky, and I also am very I do have an awareness of not making it about that.
It's difficult for me because I.
Have children, because I don't want anyone to be like, well, you just won't use her because it's so difficult for her because.
She's a mom, you know.
So I'm really aware of that. But at the same time, it is really difficult. You know, my kids do not like it when I travel. When I'm away. I try to take my son with me as much as I can. But you know, and even though taking my son with me with my two year olds, like I found the last year I was commuting back and forth to Vancouver for Yellow Jackets, she didn't know.
Me, you know, we had no bond, so that was very upsetting. But I can't.
But you know, with TV too, if you're a series regular, you have to pay for everything, so I can't.
Every time I go up and down, I can't.
Pay for four people, four flights, you know, and the rooms that you would need and all it like, it's just too expensive to travel with everybody all the.
Time, so it is difficult. I try to manage it. I try to just get back as often as I can. I think really the thing that I.
Learned, especially with my son, was just mixing him into my work life.
You know, why can't he.
Come for the weekend to a convention and see what it's like. You know, he came that one, you know where I saw you and.
He wanted a job.
So we ended up taking all the selfies at the table for everybody, and you know.
It was for me.
I've been able to sort of mix him into my work life in a way that's been good. You know. There are certain things like my son was never sleep trained because I had to.
I had to go back.
To work when he was two months old, and my husband at the time wouldn't help me at all with anything, and I had to do all the night stuff and get up and go to work for fourteen hours and be on camera. So the only way I could do that was to lie with him, and he would breastfeed whatever he wanted and sleep with me. And I had to have him in the bed with me just to get enough sleep to be able to work the next day. So that like again like set me up a little bit for him not being sleep trained, which isn't great, but I but I was doing it basically on my own, So that part is tough. But I think, you know, we just get through it, just keep going. It's not I just repeat to myself all the time. It's temporary. It's temporary.
Yeah, but I mean, you have a two year old, so it's like.
Now I have a wonderful husband who does more than you know, because again, and I went back to work when she was two months old. I went and shot Wednesday in Romania when she was two months old, and marked it every single night all night long. Like I just slept and worked the next day, and it made such a huge difference. It was so much easier this time around. You know, you have to have a good supportive partner.
Yeah, I mean support systems, supportive partners.
Like even if you had lived with your like I don't know, if my mother had been younger, I would have been like, come, you have to move in and help me, and you know, all those kinds of things, so or you know, living I think that mommy communes are a really good idea like a bunch of moms living together with children sounds like a really good way to go. I was just just telling someone recently that I thought that was great. They looked at me a little crazy, but whatever. I mean.
It's an interesting idea because it's literally a community of women all sort of in the same position, being able to lift each other up for each other, take care of each other's kids, and have you know, this sort of built in secure support system that so many people don't actually have. Yeah, you know, the single moms basically like you were in your first marriage, where you were doing everything on your own.
Too.
You're having to go to work because first off, it's what you do, it's your career.
You love it, it feeds your soul.
But also what pays the rent or the mortgage, the car bill, the gas, the food on the table, and you know, not coming from money. Much like myself, I didn't come from any money. I had to work for everything, just like you.
You have the added responsibility of two children. It's a lot.
Yeah, and I think too, I just I remember how bad it felt, and I've gone I've actually gone through periods as an adult where we were really, really broke, and you just have that thing of like, I don't ever want to feel this way again, Like it's a visceral feeling.
I don't ever want.
To feel this like helpless, because I think that's really not what Not having a lot of money makes you feel like, it makes you feel very helpless. And so yeah, there's a ton of that pressure and it's hard. It definitely is because you have to work to support your family. But at the same time, you working takes away.
Time from your family.
So yeah, it's it's difficult. But I'm in a pretty good place now again. I have like a really supportive husband, and I've figured out a way of at least bringing my son with me places and just have to work it out in the future with my daughter.
It's so funny because talking about like I never want to be broke again. I never want to be in that position again. There are times where I started getting controlled heavily and it was like, do I fight back. Do I continue on my path of being truthful and honest about like my life, life experience with you know, cancer, my childhood, my friends, with my career with different co stars, or do I back off and continue to play it safe, and a friend of mine sent me like all of the profiles of the of the like four or five trolls that were, you know, posting, and they were like, do you notice that they have zero post, zero followers, zero anything.
It's a bot.
It's like a make believe account that you know someone's created in order to troll you, Like this is what happens. It's such a hard place to be in as an actor and as a human being because a you know, our natural instinct is we want everybody to like us.
We don't want to be hated. We don't want to be trolled.
We're having to put ourselves out there on social media because it's now a part of our job. It didn't used to be and nowadays, and there's also a part of it that's great because you're getting to connect with people that you know are actually really supportive and lovely.
And there'll be you know, a million ten people commenting.
A million are great and ten are terrible, and the ten are the loudest in your head worse.
Yeah, And it is a very I mean, you know, social media in general is just so it puts you in such a vulnerable position and there can be a lot of really crazy people out there, and you do hear the negative stuff the loudest, and it's tough. I mean, I have experience with a person who just like his whole thing is posting horrible, nasty things about me. It's just and it's like all stuff that's like made up horrible things about my children, my family, like, and so I've just really had to I just had really had to ignore it. And it's like that school ground mentality of like ignoring the bully or the people that are nice to you, but on such a huge level and such a public platform. But I think it really is important that people experience their lives with what's right in front of them. You know, you go through your life and you should be in your body, living your life and dealing with what's tangible and in front of you. And a lot of these other concepts like fame or what somebody you don't even know thinks about you, or all these things that they do exist, but they're not real and they're not in front of you, and they're not going to directly affect your life. And so I've always been very much somebody who's refused to let that stuff in because it made me feel really upset, and so I've always kind of just dealt with what is directly in front of me and what makes me happy. Not to say that I have always done what I wanted to do without fear of judgment, but just that I try not to let those things knock me off my path.
I needed to hear that from you because I'm extremely sensitive. I'm actually going to tear up talking about this. I think going through cancer has made me even more sensitive. It's like all of those walls that I was able to build up from you know, being young in the business, that protected me from everybody and where I was like, oh, they have a bad opinion of me, I don't care. All those walls with cancer got taken down. So there's no shell. There's nothing to sort of guard and protect me. And I take everything to heart and it really really really really impacts me, and at the same time it's hurt. As I get I find that I still get very angry about it because it's a bunch of people telling me what happened in my life that they didn't live, versus like my actual reality that I lived.
And you feel like.
You have to constantly defend yourself and it is a huge waste of time and energy for anyone, but particularly when you're going through cancer treatment.
And it's just the lowest of the level. Also for somebody to attack you, especially to attack anyone, and that's what you you know, that you don't know, like why go out of your way to do this stuff? But also for them to go after you, to see you as a target when you're going through so much and you have dealt with so much and you're being so honest and open and vulnerable, for someone to then want to like stick the knife in is really low and reveals so much more about that person's character that anything negative they could ever say about you.
You know what I mean.
Like it's like the school It's again like the school bully.
Like if you're so ugly inside you need to do this, then actually all you just did would show us that there's something really wrong with you.
And I know, and that can be really and I can't imagine being in that position, you know. I mean, I'm not going through what you're going through, you know.
I don't.
I don't have all of that additional concern and stress and pain, and it it's just gross that people go after you in that way, and I don't know if maybe you can step outside of yourself to judge them the way that I would judge them, or somebody outside of the situation would look at it, because once you do that, you're just like, oh, this person is this is this is garbage.
Yeah.
I think I said in a couple episodes prior, I said that I felt like my podcast was free therapy, that it was very cathartic, And I think I now owe you like two hundred and fifty dollars for the hour, like a therapist.
I fall that job a therapist.
You're really good at it. You're very, very very good at it.
Well, no, I mean I have to say though, I mean again, not to the same level at all. But when I started doing press for Yellow Jackets and having to post on social media images myself, just even as somebody over forty, I had a really hard time. I had a really hard time seeing these images. I had a really hard time reposting them. I really couldn't reconcile caring about what I looked like so much. The Instagram beauty standard that you see where you see like other people retouching your photographs and you're like, oh, I didn't realize I needed that, But now I feel really weird about myself. I had such a huge it was so hard for me. But we have to find way is to navigate it where it doesn't emotionally drag us down.
Yeah.
I don't know why anyone thinks that they have the right to comment on someone's look. I was looking at somebody else's Instagram who I think is absolutely wonderful, Paris Jackson, and she posted something and I thought she looked gorgeous, and people were, you know, trolling her. I imagine that she probably gets trolled heavily. And meanwhile, she's this beautiful girl, very talented, just seems very sincere. I don't know her personally, and it really hit me. Why do people think that they have the right to say such nasty, mean things about another human being while they're like behind you know, their phone, their device, whatever they're using to be on social media.
They get to be anonymous. They're not being.
Trolled by me, by you, by Paris, by any of those people, and yet they feel the need and what you've said is right, Like, what is it about them that's so ugly inside that they that it does it really make them feel better about themselves to tear down another human being? Because I don't imagine. To be clear, for me, tearing down another person doesn't ever make me feel good about myself. Being truthful about the things that have transpired in my life is just me being truthful. But there's never ill intent. I don't carry any hate for anyone in my heart, and I would never purposely go on somebody's Instagram and be like, oh my god, you know you've aged, You've and I've had that happen to me where people are like, dude, like cancer.
Is wrecking your looks. You look terrible, and I'm like.
Oh my gosh, oh I had when I was pregnant. I had this a couple of people, I think only two, thankfully, who wrote and were like, no more babies, Christina, you're ruining You're ruining your looks, And I was just like, I am pregnant. But I always immediately delete the comments and block the people like ruthlessly.
I'm just like, nope, we're not doing this. You don't like, get off my page.
So, knowing all of this about social media, is your son he's only nine?
Is he on social media?
No? But but it is interesting. He's desperate to have Instagram, to have a phone. Just recently, I had to make sure Safari and all search engines were taken off of his iPad because he's become really into anime and unfortunately, when you search for anime shorts, you get porn. So yeah, and it's really a problem. So we I've had to like really take Safari off his iPad. He has no more access to adult YouTube. Kids YouTube is just fine for nine year olds, but he's obsessed with having a phone, and I'm always.
Like, who are you gonna call?
You don't need to call anyone, You're fine, And he really has. He wanted TikTok for a while and would stop badgering me and Instagram.
But I really believe that it's not that it is uh.
I really think it's bad for kids and especially teenagers, and he's not gonna have it.
He's just not.
I'm not. I just think they can have it when they're older. And then also, if you're being bombarded with what you should look like, what you should dress like, what you should be listening to, what's wrong with you?
Why you're not just like everybody else?
That it's just I feel like it's just way too much social and emotional pressure.
There's beauty in everyone, and to find your own version of beauty is so incredibly important, and I don't think that that can happen on social media right now.
It's too no.
And I also think it's really not healthy to be so self obsessed. I also sometimes think, like, do I want to post about this fantastic vacation that I'm on that I've been given for free because I'm going to post about it when other people are having trouble paying the rent.
You know.
I just think there's not enough compassion in that direction of this sort of like is it helpful for everybody else for us to flaunt what we have? And I guess it's a really impossible question because that is how a lot of people.
Make their money.
So again, who am I to criticize? But I personally, I'm always very aware of that. And I also got to a point too where like I was putting filters on my face and trying to make myself look perfect all the time.
And then I was realized.
I realized, like, this actually isn't really helpful for another forty three year old woman who who probably looks the way I look without a filter. But because I put this filter on, I'm setting I'm sort of creating disappointment in somebody else.
Possibly it's an unrealistic standard.
You know, it's already been set by you know, let's start with like the fashion industry that had fifteen year old girls, Like, okay, you get to a certain age, nobody's gonna have skin like a fifteen year old or like an eighteen year old. You know, trickle down from that into people getting a lot of fillers or botox or this or that, and then and then using filters, and it's setting a very unrealistic standard. And listen, that's not to say like, of course I always want to look my best in a photo. I definitely, uh you know, I will retouch here and there. There are moments when I'll just post something that like has me looking terrible because I don't care, or I'll like take a photo and try to find like the best light. I mean, look at me now, like i've you know, my house is nothing but like a big you know, open blak. Yeah, it's like it's beautiful, Like if I turn that way, it's going to look completely different, right, So obviously I found like good lighting, but.
I think that that's different.
Good lighting is different than like literally going in with the eraser and like or the face tune where you're like, let's like my face a little thunner, my checkbones a little water and then like, you know, wow, and then it's almost embarrassing when you have like the pictures you took on your Instagram versus the ones from the red carpet where you actually.
Look the way you look.
I'm always like, well, this is well, this is really embarrassing. I just I don't understand, like it's gotten me too obsession with like being perfect, and like if I show my age, then I failed, and it's like, well, we all get older, it's not a failure.
I love what Pamela Anderson's doing. I love it.
I do too. By the way, I also think she looks amazing.
She's got such like an interesting, strong, beautiful face. You can see her personality so well, and I just I just love her.
She's great. She's great.
Yeah.
I think she's definitely you know, challenging that idea of what beauty is. And to me, she's far more beautiful without the makeup than she was with the makeup, and I think that there are certain women that have gone out there and challenged that idea and just been themselves. And I mean this has been good because we've got a lot of things. We're not listening to the noise of social media, the haters, you know, accepting our looks. By the way, like if anybody said anything about the way that you look, I would stalk them myself and have.
A little content.
You know, you're you're beautiful and you're What I really like about you is that I think i'd like your brain the most.
Well. I try to work on my brain the most, because you know, I was never really anybody who was successful for the way I looked. You know, it was never about that for me, which I think has been very lucky for me. But then as I got older, I got caught up in all this stuff, which is interesting because in my twenties I didn't really care. Like I was very punk rock and I was you know, I was chubby, and everybody talked.
About how fat I was, so I was like, you want to call me fat?
Watch this? You know, So I it was it's only like as I got older and wanted to be this like lady that I've actually started caring about my looks and I would like to go back to the other person because I think she is so much more fun and just you know, again, I should listen to my own advice. It's really about what's going on in your brain.
Yeah, it's just a healthier place to be where you just go, Okay, I'm done, I'm done caring. It's just it's it's very hard to get there. But you are to me. The most beautiful women to me are the women who are intelligent and thoughtful and eloquent and graceful. And that has absolutely nothing to do no, but you speak with grace, you know.
I don't know, I appreciate you saying that. I clearly can't take a compliment.
So yeah, I've noticed that, and I'm just going to keep showering them on you because I love you that much. And you also do work with a foundation. Do you want to talk about that at all?
Yeah, I mean I was Rain's national spokesperson for a long time, like I think almost ten years. I used to go to DC and talk to the Appropriations Committee about fully funding the Violence Skins Women's Act and all that stuffs and RAIN is Rape Abuse Incess National Network. And basically what they have done is that any time you call like a rape crisis hotline, everybody it's all connected and everybody's been trained in the same way, and.
You get a local person.
So you call the rain hotline and you get a local person who then will be an advocate, meet you at the hospital, help, be a person in between you and the police, make sure everything will be collected properly, that you will be treated properly. So it's really an incredible organization. I went through the training, the sort of hotline phone training as well, just so I could understand a little bit more about it, and so I worked with them for.
A very very long time.
I have done a little bit less with them recently, and especially since I became a mom, to be honest, but yeah, I'm you know, I've been very involved in that kind of field for a while and other women's issues for sure.
And again going back to your career and like how you know, incredibly diverse. I mean, I have your resume in front of me, and I'm always like like, oh my god, that's right. She was a nut and she was a nut and she was in that like you have worked consistently. But and I already said this to you, what really really always stands out to me is how diverse your career has been. But I always felt like your talent always shines through and every single thing that you do, And to me, you just have an amazing career in one that I know that a lot of actors, including myself, are very envious of, because it's the people that you've worked with, and it feels like you've stayed very true to who you are and to yourself. But as an actor you've been able to like spread your wings and show your depth. So two parts here to this question is one, is there any process that you go through as an actor when you take on certain roles? And two is there a part that you haven't played yet that you really want to?
I would say my process is very, I guess, very cerebral, you know, I like to you know, I'll read a script, take in the character, and then I find myself just like that character lives in my head. So as I'm going through the day, I'm in the back of my mind thinking about that person. And just as an actor, I think that triggers you trying on feelings in a weird way. You know, I guess this person would feel this way about that, and then you start feeling that way, and it's sort of like a slow process of just really becoming that person in your brain. For me, in my brain without really trying to that happens to me all the time where I realize halfway through doing something that I am not behaving like that choice. I didn't make that choice. The character I'm playing made that choice, and I didn't necessarily mean to do it, and I definitely so for me, it's just like it's completely internal and it's completely slow and almost subconscious.
In a lot of ways.
But I also but that also means that because I don't do actual, like conscious work, I can't play a character that the second.
I read it, I don't understand the character. I don't get it, you know what I mean?
Like, if I read something and I don't understand who the person is, I can't play that character.
Right.
There's amount of work that will ever get me there because of the way my process is. It has to be something I immediately sort of understand to connect to and then can sort of live with in my head. And in terms of what would I like to play that I haven't gotten to play yet.
I don't know. It's a hard one.
Listen, people ask me all the time, and I'm always like kind of only recently was have I been able to actually answer that where I was like, I want to play you know, an old lady version of John Wick, Like I want to do something like that, right, like fun and you know there's still some you know, drama and emotion and in there, but there's tons of action and you know, your kick ass like of course, I would love to do that, but I've only recently been able to answer it. And before when everybody, when people would ask me that question, I would be so annoyed because I'd be like, how do I answer this?
And then I just put that off on you.
Sorry, No, it is difficult, and I should have an answer because people do ask me that and I just can't come up with anything.
And it's interesting because even as an actor like.
I really am very guarded emotionally, I don't like to I hate feeling pain, like I just don't ever want to feel it, and even through a character like so, even the idea of playing things that I think would be incredibly cathartic, My my My reaction is like.
Oh, I don't want to feel I don't want to feel that, So I don't know. It's a bit childish.
If you didn't become an actor, what career do you think you would have chosen for yourself?
Well, I don't know.
I always kind of feel nervous when I think about about that, because I had a really, really not so great childhood, and I've always kind of felt that if I didn't become an actress, I probably would have had a very hard teenage and life and twenties and you know, and I'm not so sure how things would have gone. Had I been able to pull it together and actually just focus and done well in school, I think I would have wanted to I would have wanted to be a therapist or a psychiatrist, although god knows I couldn't have gotten through med school.
So let's go with therapist.
All right, Well, feel free to be my therapist.
I'm absolutely willing and able. I love telling me you'll have to live their lives.
Thank you so much for being Thank you, adore you, love you. I cannot wait to see you next time. You guys, thank you so much for listening to uh let's be clear. With Shanna Doherty and my special guest, Christina Ricci, we love you, thank you.
I love you too, thank you so much. I can't wait to see you all right.
Bye bye
Mm hm