Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic and you're listening to a brand new season of Next Question. Thank you, Thank you very much. I'm starting this season, our fifth, if you can believe it, with a bang. Jessica Chastain is not only one of the most talented actors working in Hollywood today, she's also an outspoken advocate for gender equality who's making films and choosing roles that put women and equal pay front and center. She's also up for her second Oscar nomination for her truly transformative role as Tammy Faye Baker. Have you never done pictures without those eyelids? No, and I never will because that's my trademark. And you know if I take that away, then it's not me. We're going to get to all of that and more, but first we start with al Pacina. Don't worry, it makes sense. When I was interviewing al Pacino on Sixty Minutes, he took me through his production company, or we were walking through an edit room, and he showed me a video of you dancing in one of your earliest films, and you were dancing with your head back and spinning around, and you had this beautiful red hair, and he said, this girl is going to be a huge star. How funny is that? It's insane? I mean al Pacino was actually the one who really discovered me before I got cast a Salome. I mean, the industry had no idea what to do with me, and he was the one that really kind of was like, hey, you guys, look over here. And so it really started my career. Really, how did he how did he find you? I know you were you studied at Juilliard, but how did you cross paths with al Pacino of all people? Well? I was, um, yeah, I went to Juilliard and I was doing a playoff Broadway. I did a playwrights Horizons, Richard Nelson play called Rodney's Wife, and I had done that not thought much about it. It wasn't like I made a ton of money doing it or anything like that. I was doing it just for like the love, you know, to get to do theater in New York. And then I went to visit a friend of mine um in Australia, and I got a call from my agent that said Alfacino wants you to come in an audition for Salom. I was like, what, it doesn't make any sense. I don't know anyone connected to Alfacino, and I guess what had happened is Marta Keller, who um is a good friend of his. Uh an actress who um the what's it the Bobby Deerfield movie or or where he plays a race car driver. I forgot the name of that film they did together. But she saw Rodney's wife and um and then told him when he when he said he was going to do you know, the movie of Salome, she said, you should look at this actress. Wow. And that's really you think what started it all? Oh? Yeah, I mean I know, even like you know, I was having so many difficulties getting an audition for films. I was doing really good at pilot season, not really booking anything, but I was getting a ton of auditions during pilot season. And I remember recently reading um an article like Backstage where a casting director was talking about her experience. And in the article she said, I remember Jessica Chastain coming in and she had like four auditions that day, and she looked kind of messy and sweaty. I was like, oh God, that's probably why I didn't book anything. It was constantly like I was driving everywhere you know, I had like a whole like makeup station in the trunk of my car depending on what the character was. Um, but no luck. And then when i'm you know, if you're an unknown actor and you're playing salom A in the place salom A opposite Al Pacino in Los Angeles, everyone in the industry comes to see it. So it I could not have had a better showcase. That's such a great story. So what year was that, Jessica? Oh god? Uh so the Tree of Life came out in two thousand eleven. I made Tree of Life in two thousand and seven. I don't know, two thousand and five or two thousand and six maybe is when we did the play because I'll also, when I was auditioning for the Tree of Life, wrote Terrence Malick a letter and that said like basically, you know, I know sometimes it's when you don't know who you're casting as a lead, it can be intimidating. But I've worked with her, and um, he kind of vouched for me. That was my reference letter. Alba, Oh my god. So I mean, do you still talk to al now that we're on a first basis? Yeah? Completely, you know, he's my acting godfather. Call him on his birthday, like, he's great. I love I love him. He will always be such a huge part of my I mean he's the reason why I have a career right now. So yes, he's I I love him and I am. One of my favorite movies is sent of a Woman I show you you don't know, and I'm such I I love al Pacino two. And it's nice to hear how generous he is and how supportive he's always been to you and protective. Yeah. Really yeah, like in an industry, you know, he knew he knew the ropes really well, and he was incredibly protective of me um coming into the industry, and like really made sure that I always even like in Salomon, you're playing a character that's so sexualized, even as it was starting out, it was never like, oh you have to do nudity. It was like whatever I was comfortable with. He had always been like That's why I call him my my acting godfather. He had always been so kind and protective and nurturing and so Yeah. In addition to being a brilliant actor, like one of our greatest screen actors, he's a he's a wonderful person. We're gonna have to send him a copy of this podcast since we're seeing as phrases so much. When we come back, how Jessica Chastain took control of her career. You are kind of taking control of your own destiny because you started your own company in two thousand and sixteen, Freckle Films, after making this incredibly impassioned speech Jessica at the two thousand and fifteen Critics Choice Awards. Today's Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. So it got me thinking about our need to build the string of diversity in our industry and to stand together against homophobic, sexist, misogynistic, anti Semitic, and racist agendas. UM Martin Luther King Jr. Said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. And I would like to encourage everyone in this room to please speak up. Thank you. How did that speech inspire you to branch out and to do this on your own and to really take control of your fate. Well, honestly, I wasn't really I didn't really know what to do. I had the Critics Choice I won this kind of It was the first ever prize. It was for Someone's body work that year, and I had so much come out. I didn't really know who to thank because I had multiple films that were being celebrated, and it was like the morning of UM. I Loved Selma, I Love Avia di Verne, and I felt like, you know, I was sad that that film didn't get acknowledged in the way that it should have been. And so I just felt like, well, what if I can take this moment that I have the kind of inspires um us to like look inward um and and understand that if we're not actually making but if we're not actively trying to move the needle in terms of inclusivity, then in some sense we're part of the problem. So I just kind of took that moment to look, well, maybe I can take this platform and amplified that UM. And I was super happy because at the end of it, I someone showed me later it was like cut to Oprah and Eva, and I was really happy, like the fact that they I don't know, I just really I grew up watching Oprah AND's and I was just I loved that moment and I and I then went forward to go like, Okay, well, how can I now use whatever platform I have to help encourage our industry to move the needle in terms of um stories about women. And in fact, Freckle Films has produced three movies, including the Eyes of Tammy Faye UM and The three fifty five, which is an all female espionage thriller that came out this year. How does it feel different for you to be at the helm of these films versus other experiences when you weren't well. I guess the big difference is I get to participate in the storytelling aspect. So like with Tammy Faye, we had already had so much in her life like that was kind of tabloid e UM. And I remember my research reading about Jessica Hahn and her saying she just kind of wanted to not she wanted to be left alone and not connected to Jim Baker anymore into that part of her life. And when I read that, I thought, well, and we're making a story from Tammy face po V and Tammy and Jessica actually never met in real life. Why would we include the salacious details of Jessica Hant, especially when she doesn't really want to be included in And reminded I didn't want to profit off of another woman's trauma. So I guess in terms of storytelling, you can kind of shape a story and go, no, we're actually gonna the audience and everyone expects us to tell one story, but I'm not gonna fall into that. That's we've already been there, We've already um, you know, focused on the salacious, gossipy stuff. Let's what if we do something else that we don't expect? And so I guess producing you get to have that. Say you have been obsessed with Tammy Faye Baker for for quite a while, han't you? What is it about her and about her story that felt so compelling to you? Jessica, Well, you know I was on the press tour for zero Arc thirty and talking about that film a lot, and when when I saw the documentary again, you know, I was jet lighted somewhere, and I guess I focused so so much on playing a character who was very an eye for an eye, you know, so much was about revenge and you hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you, and I'm gonna hurt you worse. And you know, it felt like when I was watching the documentary was like this healing bomb. It was such a different thing that Tammy Face stood for. She was really into UH forgiveness and UM believing that everyone is deserving of love without judgment, which is like kind of like it's a beautiful, radical act of love if that's truly how you can live. And when I saw that, I was like, Okay, I just felt like something I wanted to tell just because of what I had already spent time focusing on UH. And then also I wanted to go back and celebrate her the incredible things she did. I mean the Steve Peters interview, her bringing him onto her show. He was an openly gay minister with AIDS and she it went it completely went against the all the conservative evangelicals at the time, I mean, politicians weren't even talking about the AIDS epidemic. And she brings Steve onto her show and she looks into the camera and she reminds Christians what it means to be Christian and you wrap your arms around people and you love through anything. And I just found that so moving, in such a radical act of love, and it was a political act in some sense, and she was never acknowledged for that. That was incredibly strong and brave and right of her to do that, and so I wanted to celebrate that act of courage. Tammy Faye was really caricatured in the media and and became almost cartoonish in her portrayal. I remember you no covering her in the nineties, Jessica and I had one of those shirts that said I ran into Tammy Faye Baker at the mall or Tammy Faye at the mall that had two big mascara stains on it, and um. She was really I think underestimated and mischaracterized because of the way she presented herself, wasn't she Absolutely? I mean that's something the media really does though, right, I mean that's something society does, and society women in the past have been taught to be as small as possible, to take up as little space as possible. Your voices have to be quiet, beefin, be demure, you know, be submissive, don't you know, don't talk to don't take up too much space talking. Let the men do things. You know. It's all about being as quiet and small as possible. And she was the opposite. She was like, you know, gonna sing as loud as she could. She was gonna laugh and cry and let her motions be everywhere, and we're the makeup. That was just what society could say was garish, but she because she was saying, this is my expression of how I feel. It was like this. It was like drag. You know. She was expressing how she felt on the inside on the outside, so much so that when people kept trying to change who she was, she tattooed her face so no one could really like, no one could wipe her makeup off, no one could change Tammy Faye. And um, I think she was mischaracterized because of that. I think it was because she refused to play the role of the quiet, submissive minister's wife. She was a minister in her own right. She went to school for it, she ministered, and she was her own person, separate from Jim Baker. Did you have assumptions about her that were that were shattered by the documentary because you probably consumed information about her and read about her and saw her in the way she was trade by the media. So what chattered those assumptions? Was it the documentary or was it doing research for this film? Tell me how your perception of Tammy Faye really shifted? I absolutely had assumptions about her. I mean, the church lady on SNL bringing Tammy Faye, like the Tammy Fay on Tammy we have a bit of goop on our face. Oh I'm sorry, that's mascara. Excuse me, I'm sorry, or Tammy Faye on the Drew Carey Show. It was like playing up the joke, like what you say that T shirt? I mean she would hold the T shirt and laugh. She loved camp, she loved um making people smile and laugh, so she in some sense was like okay to be in on the joke, to be like the butt of the joke. I still think it hurt her probably. Um My assumptions were what I read on the tabloids. You know, she was, for me as a child, an example of what I didn't want to be. Um. I didn't want to be someone who society deemed was unattractive, you know, because of like how they you know, or a thief, like all of these things that the media had put on her. That's what I assumed. And then definitely even like the mess this is crazy, the mascara running down her face. There's so many people that I've talked to about this film. And they go, oh, I remember sitting in my room and watching an interview with She's crying and there's mascara running down her face. And I always go like, are you sure that happened? Because the or or are you remembering a comedy sketch where mascara is running down the face, Because the reality is I watched everything I could get my hands on. There's not one photograph or one video of Tammy Faye with mascara running down her face. But we all have this collective memory of who she was bay on satire and tabloids, and we see that as we saw that as truth. And so I guess that's it. Reading all of her books, watching you know, seven years to research her and and prepare for the character. So it really very quickly got rid of any misconceptions that I in misinterpretations that I had. Do you admire her when all is said and done, or do you see her as a flawed person? I mean, after all, they did, uh, you know, live high on the hog, as they would say, with contributions to the church, and you know, did a lot of things that aren't particularly admirable. I'm just curious how you feel about her now. That you know her intimately. Yeah, well I love her now. I mean I've never met her. I love her, and I can tell you for me personally, I don't believe the prosperity doctrine. I don't believe. I think money always corrupts. I think this idea, but it's in every religion. I mean, look at the Vatican. Money is so closely tied to faith, and I think that's absolutely an issue. Every Sunday we passed the played around um to donate. I think with tele evangelism, it's your congregation is now like so many people, the money just becomes more it's it's more intense, but it's it's still this every it's still the root of money corrupts. And so when money is closely tied with faith, is that a pure thing? I like, look back at everything that happened. I don't think she ever lied to the public. I think she was not very intelligent when it came to money. Because she wrote four books and she recorded over twenty albums. All of her royalties went straight to the church, and then she took her salary from the church and in the reality, what she should done. It's kept all of her royalties and then take nothing from the church, and I think that would have given her a better perception from the public. It's heartbreaking at the beginning of the film Jessica to see how she was other rise from the very beginning, having been born to a mom before she was married, and made to feel different than her siblings. It was heartbreaking, and yet she was able to overcome that with this incredible inner strength. And maybe because of that she developed this incredible inner strength. But where do you think that came from. I don't think, you know, it's interesting. I don't think she was confident. I think she played that she was confident. I think you know, she was an EmPATH, and she had a very like unstable childhood, you know, the father left, and then she became the embodiment of the shame of the first marriage in this Pentecostal community. And I think you know, with an EmPATH, what they do is they walk into a room and they find the dark energy because they try to fix it. They try to like, if someone is suffering, they want to fix them, they want to make them feel better. And so I think her confidence comes or what looks like confidence, is more of her trying to heal because she felt that by healing someone who felt unloved, she could heal herself. After the break, Jessica does her best Ammy Faye, and we talk about what progress women have made in some areas is quickly unraveling in others. You spent hours upon hours in makeup chair, didn't you, And it took a pretty serious toll on you. Can you talk about that? Yeah? So the first I mean the longest it was was seven and a half hours, and the shortest might have been three and a half four So every day it was quite a journey. I mean I would wear compression stockings because after a few days I started to get nervous. You know, when you sit still. I don't know how people say they can sleep in the makeup trailer. I cannot. You know, when someone's touching my face, I'm like, okay, look this way, look that way. I look up down. I had earbuds in and I would watch um the hundred. I had hundreds of hours of unused footage that the documentary filmmakers gave me for research. I was constantly every morning in the makeup trailer, studying her, sending her voice, watching her interviews. So by the time I got to set, I felt like ready and like, really, Keyton, did you watch her final interview I think with Larry King when she was she was I think dying of colling cancer at the time. She died a few days after that interview. Did you watch that? Because obviously the film doesn't cover that. Yeah, I mean we thought, like, are we going to cover that part of her life? Um? And ultimately, like there was a scene in the documentary that I found so incredibly moving, um where she goes back to do a concert and she's really scared and it's the religious community, and you know, there was a woman who was kind of mean to her and then or like saying mean things about her, and and then she walked up to this woman, not even knowing that that there was this behind her back happening. She's like, hi, honey, how you doing today, and like reached out to her, and then this one was like in the front row, like clapping for the concert. I just thought it was so beautiful, like switching the energy around, like you can be getting something negative and just like that usually means that someone needs some love. So if you return that with love, it completely changes their demeanor and I liked that ending for her. I didn't UM. I didn't want to really go into the cancer and her you know, physical ailments that came after. I really, to me, wanted to connect to her faith and her relationship with love UM because I thought that that would be the most healing, and especially you know, at the end the whole speech of like God looked at me and said, Tammy, Phil I love you, and I love you just the way you are, and God loves you just the way you are. That's actually something she said in one of her performances. And I wanted to end with that. I wanted the audience to feel connected to humanity in a different way. And I felt like if we had gone, um, you know, the route of her physical ailments, it would have taken away from that. You know. The role makeup played in her life obviously looms large in this film as well, and there's a very touching moment after she almost accidentally overdoes on some prescription meds. She catches herself in the mirror and she sits down and she puts on lipstick. She's interrupted by Jim and she says, Jim, can we talk about Satan later? I'm just starting to feel like myself. UM. Tell us about that moment. It it kind of illustrates Tammy phase I don't know, happy place or comfort zone, um, and the role that that this played in her whole being. Yeah, I think you know. We started that scene, we had to cut it out. It was too expensive. But her favorite song was Kasassa, so I was like humming it getting my diet coke. It was like she loved her die coke Kaserasra. But then there is the moment she looks in the mirror and still is like after like even a full face of makeup, she feels like, I'm not there yet. I'm not I'm not feeling like at my utmost so she sits down to put more on uh, and then Jim coming in with his energy. I think it's the first time we see Tammy have a boundary. You know. So much of the film is this codependence where she's taking care of Jim. She's trying to lift him up and like and make him feel like more of a man and and all of these things that he needs to be. And the beginning of that scene, she's like, I'm hanging on by a thread here. Let's can we talk about Satan and what you're going through later and just like give me this moment. I And I like that because I think also we as women need to do that more, just say whenever, like we need our moment to say, let's talk about Satan later. There's also a great scene where she plops herself down at the men's table with a baby on her hip, and you know that was kind of a radical act back then, where she didn't go to talk about, you know, female things with all the women and and a lot of this is about the patriarchy of the evangelical movement, to which wasn't obviously limited to the evangelical movement at the time. But she just wanted to kind of crash through those doors, didn't she. Yeah, And I think for her she never even saw it as a door. I think you know, she went to college and she was a minister, and when you know, right when her and Jim got married, Jim would actually stopped showing up to study, and their teachers showed up and said, listen, dude, your wife is going to be like she's gonna be the star of the family. Like you gotta like show up and apply yourself. Because I think she always had that drive. She always wanted to connect to people through faith. And when she you know, sees all like the Fallwell and Pat Robertson and all of them at the table talking about the state of faith in the United States, I think that's far more interesting to her at that time than like, I don't know, like what the kids are eating or what you know, like what's happening. She wanted to talk about work and you know, and God, Oh, I don't want to debate to Jerry. I love you, I love all of you guys. Reverend follow Yeah, we love you too, Jammy Faye. God is my witness. I made a pledge to continue to expose the sins in this country. The Bible explicitly forbids homosexuality. There's no gray area. Um well, you know, I I don't think of them as home sexual as. I just think of them as other human beings that I love. You know, we're all just people made out of the same old dirt and God didn't make any junk. I love that moment too, because you really see the different forks of the road that faith can take. And you know, there's like the Tammy phase way of you know, everyone is deserving of God's love without judgment. And then there's the Jerry Folwell way. And sadly, when I look at this country, I kind of see I wonder what would have happened if Tammy Faye hadn't been um taken down from the scandals of her husband, and if we had we had known that faith can be all encompassing and include everyone, and to have a more soft approach to that than this like hard line of um, if you don't agree with me, then you're wrong, or God is on my side. God this God believes that you're wrong. I'm right. I feel like we're kind of in that phase right now, which is the Jerry Folwell um way. It also made me wonder what if Tammy Faye had emerged as a national figure now versus when she did, and have things evolved enough that she could have been as prominent as her husband been, uh publicly right, if she wouldn't have had to retreat so much behind him. Absolutely, I mean, even if you look at her life right after she left uh Jim, I mean she hosted a show with Jim J. Bullock, who was like an openly gay comedian. Um, she was on the surreal life like she she did a lot of things. She was absolutely a celebrity in the public eye, and she wasn't hiding or or she wasn't in the shadow of any man. I think had she emerged now, Um, what would have been so beautiful about her is she was someone because she knew what it was like to feel unloved or unacknowledged or cast aside and cast out. She would have looked at any group in society that felt that and she would have connected with them and been like um, the healing bomb that they needed to feel part of something bigger than who they are. So I you know, in any time, it's wonderful to have someone who represents that. You know, so much of her life she was mocked and and ridiculed and shamed, and I think in retrospect it says much more about society than it does about Tammy Faye and how we treat certain women who become a caricature of of themselves. And I imagine that's something you wanted to address in this re examination of Tammy Faye. I'm very interested in how the media perceives women, whether it be like UH political candidates, like what do they say, regarding female politicians versus male politicians. Um, you know, people working in the media, news anchors, you know, what are the standards for each person and in terms of like the voices, the clothing, um, you know, even like recently who was like Taylor Swift came out and starts talking about the difference between you know, she's her being a female songwriter and male songwriters. And there's this the sense in the media that if you're as confident and you acknowledge your talent, in some sense, you are um beyond your station as a woman, Like it's like know your place, Like you're lucky to get to do this, and so thank the people around you who gave you the chance instead of saying actually, no, like you're welcome. You know, like you think me, you think me. Like Sean de Rimes has a great quote when she said, you know, all the the articles came out about like Netflix and her deal, and it was almost like they lured her to Netflix with all this money, and she goes, no, no, no, I am the candy. I'm not being lured by candy by someone else. I'm the andy that you guys want. And it's that idea that we need to understand, and society also needs to look at like women don't need to be um giving thanks for everything they get the reality of society needs to start thinking women for everything they give. I love that. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a pillow with that. Good. Um. I have to ask you about the voice because it was uncanny, and I want you to do Tammy Face voice for me a little bit. I mean, and how you kind of used your throat and your nasally and how did you do that? Because it was spot on? Oh thanks, oh god, it was. It's not it was not an accent that came easy to me. I worked with Liz Hamilstein, who's an amazing dialect coach, and Um, first we started just you know, with the drills for the Minnesota accent. Everyone thinks Tammy was from the South. She wasn't. She was from International Falls, Minnesota, which you know, gave her a very folksy way of talking. And also I realized by watching so many interviews the way she said Jim, that was my way in all the time. Jim, am you know, it was so cute. Jim, Oh come on, you know, And as she talked to my voice, my voice is much lower. Liz would always try to get it up. So I do these drills. I did the Steve Peter's interview every morning. Um. I did it kind of as a monologue to get me into character. You know, we're life from l a. Like the way she talked. I just loved her voice. And I'll tell you when when it finished. It took me a long time to stop speaking like her because I just wanted to. I just wanted to talk. It's just the cutest way of talking. And and also the like the how she would do like her shoulders, and what about her laugh? What about her laugh, Jessica, you two are here to learn the way, Oh my god, her laugh and her smile, there was so much that I just studied, study studied. Like when she smiles, I smile like with both my teeth, like I have a big smile. She smiled, she only lifted her top lips, so it was like like like you only saw these teeth here. It took forever, like listening to her laugh and listening to her voice and looking at myself in the mirror and trying to figure out how to smile like her. But I loved it. I mean listen. If I'm going to spend seven years studying someone, I want them to be like Tammy Faye, someone who makes me feel good about like loving others and also makes me laugh. She loved camp, so she loved to laugh, and so she was ridiculous and and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Before we go, I wanted to ask you about You have been such a champion for gender equality, and I wondered if you think things have changed, because I know you are walking the walk. You negotiated equal salaries for for fellow actors like Octavia Spencer. Do you think things are changing in Hollywood? Jessica, I definitely think things are changing, which is great. It doesn't mean that they're like fixed, right change. Everything should always be changing. Everything should always be in motion and fluid and evolving and growing. And but I look at the industry. This is what it's shocking to understand. I've only been in the industry ten years, and the change from when I started to what I see now is monumental. I mean, many years ago, I said, Okay, I'm gonna start working with a female filmmaker. Every year. It was hard to find female filmmakers because women started in the industry, but they were being like excluded and then they had to go find other jobs to support themselves and support their families. Now we like we are encouraging female filmmakers and they're being given an opportunity. So that's a big change. I can look at sun Dancing, Oscars, and can in Venice San Sebastian. You look at all these these places. Last year a female filmmaker won the Top Film Prize, which I don't know ten years ago, a woman women winning the Top Film Prize would have been a huge story. The fact that all of like the major like festivals and awards shows, a female filmmaker won the top prize for her film is amazing and um, it's exciting to me. So yes, things are changing. Also, uh, being on a set and seeing more women in leadership positions in terms of you know, as screenwriters, as producers, as directors, it changes everything. It changes the idea of what a female character is. It changes even love scenes like something you don't even think about so much. But I was doing something the other day and our female producer said, well, wouldn't like in this scene like for a woman and it would be like this and like talking it through and you just think, Wow. In the past, that was never even a part of the conversation. It was like a bunch of men would be in a room and dictate what the love seeing between the man and woman should be, and no one would really even give a thought to that. A woman also has her own sexual pleasure and desire, and um, what does that mean in the scene. Um, so a lot has changed and that makes me very happy. You know, as we see progress being made in certain areas, we see things being unraveled in others. And I know you've been a vocal supporter of planned parenthood, and yet now we're in a situation where Roe v. Wade may very well be overturned by the Supreme Court. And I'm curious if you are going to get involved in that in speaking out, because I know you've been such a fierce advocate for women. By the way, if you don't want to address this, we don't know. I'm happy to talk about this. No, no no, no, I'm very happy to talk about this. I support Planned Parenthood. I pay them, I give them a donation every month. I you know, they provided me with birth control pills when I was a teenager, and anyone who are argument is oh, you should just not have sex is living like in the dark ages, because guess what women like sex? Sorry to tell you women like sex. This is what does men do. And women also would like to go to college and have a life in a career and plan their families. Um. So planned parenthood absolutely gave me the tools to do that, um, you know, being able to have birth control pills. So I'm an active supporter of that. I also believe that the morning after pill should be an easy thing for women around the United States to get. And I look at history and usually in cycles, usually when something negative happens, we can live in that energy, in that vacuum. You know, there were a lot of women who were really disturbed when Donald Trump became president. That also was the year we had the Women's March. Then we had me too, Then we had all of these incredible things happened for women. So sometimes, you know, a negative thing does not happen in a vacuum. It creates a reaction. And what I believe a reaction should be is that there should be over the counter, um morning after pills for women to get anywhere. There should also be over the counter medicine for women with U T I s. There's women's health should needs to be more readily accessible all over the place in this country, and so I think that's something that needs a mass overhaul. But what about the right to an abortion, if in fact that is necessary to terminate a pregnancy. I believe every woman has a right to her body, has a right to have an abortion, and I will absolutely continue UM funding and and donating into plant parenthood. Well, I love talking to you, I love seeing you in so many different roles and in so many different movies and and streaming series and scenes from a marriage and everything that you're doing. Um, So I'm just so happy for you. And is there something that we can look forward to featuring Jessica chas Sdain in the future. Well, I'm currently doing UM George Jones Tammy went at mini series right now UM with Michael Shannon, of which I'm very happy about. And then UM, I have a film I did with Eddie Redmain called The Good Nurse, directed by Tobias lind Home, which I'm very also very very excited about and that I think they're locking picture on. So that'll be coming out hopefully this year. Well, you're a busy woman in and we're better off because of it. Thanks Jessica. Great to see you again and and we love you. Thank you. Katie. I'm so happy too. I love you. I'm so happy to talk to you. You can stream The Eyes of Tammy Faye right now on HBO Max. Thank you all so much for listening to our season debut. We've got some really exciting episodes ahead. Big names, big ideas, big conversations, So make sure you subscribe if you haven't already, and if you haven't had enough of me in your ears, you can get more of me in your inbox every morning does not sound exciting With my newsletter Wake Up Call, go to Katie currek dot com to sign up. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of My Heart Media and Katie currk Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Curic, and Courtney Litt. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter Wake Up Call, go to katie currect dot com. You can also find me at Katie curric on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic and you're listening to a brand new season of Next Question. Thank you, Thank you very much. I'm starting this season, our fifth, if you can believe it, with a bang. Jessica Chastain is not only one of the most talented actors working in Hollywood today, she's also an outspoken advocate for gender equality who's making films and choosing roles that put women and equal pay front and center. She's also up for her second Oscar nomination for her truly transformative role as Tammy Faye Baker. Have you never done pictures without those eyelids? No, and I never will because that's my trademark. And you know if I take that away, then it's not me. We're going to get to all of that and more, but first we start with al Pacina. Don't worry, it makes sense. When I was interviewing al Pacino on Sixty Minutes, he took me through his production company, or we were walking through an edit room, and he showed me a video of you dancing in one of your earliest films, and you were dancing with your head back and spinning around, and you had this beautiful red hair, and he said, this girl is going to be a huge star. How funny is that? It's insane? I mean al Pacino was actually the one who really discovered me before I got cast a Salome. I mean, the industry had no idea what to do with me, and he was the one that really kind of was like, hey, you guys, look over here. And so it really started my career. Really, how did he how did he find you? I know you were you studied at Juilliard, but how did you cross paths with al Pacino of all people? Well? I was, um, yeah, I went to Juilliard and I was doing a playoff Broadway. I did a playwrights Horizons, Richard Nelson play called Rodney's Wife, and I had done that not thought much about it. It wasn't like I made a ton of money doing it or anything like that. I was doing it just for like the love, you know, to get to do theater in New York. And then I went to visit a friend of mine um in Australia, and I got a call from my agent that said Alfacino wants you to come in an audition for Salom. I was like, what, it doesn't make any sense. I don't know anyone connected to Alfacino, and I guess what had happened is Marta Keller, who um is a good friend of his. Uh an actress who um the what's it the Bobby Deerfield movie or or where he plays a race car driver. I forgot the name of that film they did together. But she saw Rodney's wife and um and then told him when he when he said he was going to do you know, the movie of Salome, she said, you should look at this actress. Wow. And that's really you think what started it all? Oh? Yeah, I mean I know, even like you know, I was having so many difficulties getting an audition for films. I was doing really good at pilot season, not really booking anything, but I was getting a ton of auditions during pilot season. And I remember recently reading um an article like Backstage where a casting director was talking about her experience. And in the article she said, I remember Jessica Chastain coming in and she had like four auditions that day, and she looked kind of messy and sweaty. I was like, oh God, that's probably why I didn't book anything. It was constantly like I was driving everywhere you know, I had like a whole like makeup station in the trunk of my car depending on what the character was. Um, but no luck. And then when i'm you know, if you're an unknown actor and you're playing salom A in the place salom A opposite Al Pacino in Los Angeles, everyone in the industry comes to see it. So it I could not have had a better showcase. That's such a great story. So what year was that, Jessica? Oh god? Uh so the Tree of Life came out in two thousand eleven. I made Tree of Life in two thousand and seven. I don't know, two thousand and five or two thousand and six maybe is when we did the play because I'll also, when I was auditioning for the Tree of Life, wrote Terrence Malick a letter and that said like basically, you know, I know sometimes it's when you don't know who you're casting as a lead, it can be intimidating. But I've worked with her, and um, he kind of vouched for me. That was my reference letter. Alba, Oh my god. So I mean, do you still talk to al now that we're on a first basis? Yeah? Completely, you know, he's my acting godfather. Call him on his birthday, like, he's great. I love I love him. He will always be such a huge part of my I mean he's the reason why I have a career right now. So yes, he's I I love him and I am. One of my favorite movies is sent of a Woman I show you you don't know, and I'm such I I love al Pacino two. And it's nice to hear how generous he is and how supportive he's always been to you and protective. Yeah. Really yeah, like in an industry, you know, he knew he knew the ropes really well, and he was incredibly protective of me um coming into the industry, and like really made sure that I always even like in Salomon, you're playing a character that's so sexualized, even as it was starting out, it was never like, oh you have to do nudity. It was like whatever I was comfortable with. He had always been like That's why I call him my my acting godfather. He had always been so kind and protective and nurturing and so Yeah. In addition to being a brilliant actor, like one of our greatest screen actors, he's a he's a wonderful person. We're gonna have to send him a copy of this podcast since we're seeing as phrases so much. When we come back, how Jessica Chastain took control of her career. You are kind of taking control of your own destiny because you started your own company in two thousand and sixteen, Freckle Films, after making this incredibly impassioned speech Jessica at the two thousand and fifteen Critics Choice Awards. Today's Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. So it got me thinking about our need to build the string of diversity in our industry and to stand together against homophobic, sexist, misogynistic, anti Semitic, and racist agendas. UM Martin Luther King Jr. Said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. And I would like to encourage everyone in this room to please speak up. Thank you. How did that speech inspire you to branch out and to do this on your own and to really take control of your fate. Well, honestly, I wasn't really I didn't really know what to do. I had the Critics Choice I won this kind of It was the first ever prize. It was for Someone's body work that year, and I had so much come out. I didn't really know who to thank because I had multiple films that were being celebrated, and it was like the morning of UM. I Loved Selma, I Love Avia di Verne, and I felt like, you know, I was sad that that film didn't get acknowledged in the way that it should have been. And so I just felt like, well, what if I can take this moment that I have the kind of inspires um us to like look inward um and and understand that if we're not actually making but if we're not actively trying to move the needle in terms of inclusivity, then in some sense we're part of the problem. So I just kind of took that moment to look, well, maybe I can take this platform and amplified that UM. And I was super happy because at the end of it, I someone showed me later it was like cut to Oprah and Eva, and I was really happy, like the fact that they I don't know, I just really I grew up watching Oprah AND's and I was just I loved that moment and I and I then went forward to go like, Okay, well, how can I now use whatever platform I have to help encourage our industry to move the needle in terms of um stories about women. And in fact, Freckle Films has produced three movies, including the Eyes of Tammy Faye UM and The three fifty five, which is an all female espionage thriller that came out this year. How does it feel different for you to be at the helm of these films versus other experiences when you weren't well. I guess the big difference is I get to participate in the storytelling aspect. So like with Tammy Faye, we had already had so much in her life like that was kind of tabloid e UM. And I remember my research reading about Jessica Hahn and her saying she just kind of wanted to not she wanted to be left alone and not connected to Jim Baker anymore into that part of her life. And when I read that, I thought, well, and we're making a story from Tammy face po V and Tammy and Jessica actually never met in real life. Why would we include the salacious details of Jessica Hant, especially when she doesn't really want to be included in And reminded I didn't want to profit off of another woman's trauma. So I guess in terms of storytelling, you can kind of shape a story and go, no, we're actually gonna the audience and everyone expects us to tell one story, but I'm not gonna fall into that. That's we've already been there, We've already um, you know, focused on the salacious, gossipy stuff. Let's what if we do something else that we don't expect? And so I guess producing you get to have that. Say you have been obsessed with Tammy Faye Baker for for quite a while, han't you? What is it about her and about her story that felt so compelling to you? Jessica, Well, you know I was on the press tour for zero Arc thirty and talking about that film a lot, and when when I saw the documentary again, you know, I was jet lighted somewhere, and I guess I focused so so much on playing a character who was very an eye for an eye, you know, so much was about revenge and you hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you, and I'm gonna hurt you worse. And you know, it felt like when I was watching the documentary was like this healing bomb. It was such a different thing that Tammy Face stood for. She was really into UH forgiveness and UM believing that everyone is deserving of love without judgment, which is like kind of like it's a beautiful, radical act of love if that's truly how you can live. And when I saw that, I was like, Okay, I just felt like something I wanted to tell just because of what I had already spent time focusing on UH. And then also I wanted to go back and celebrate her the incredible things she did. I mean the Steve Peters interview, her bringing him onto her show. He was an openly gay minister with AIDS and she it went it completely went against the all the conservative evangelicals at the time, I mean, politicians weren't even talking about the AIDS epidemic. And she brings Steve onto her show and she looks into the camera and she reminds Christians what it means to be Christian and you wrap your arms around people and you love through anything. And I just found that so moving, in such a radical act of love, and it was a political act in some sense, and she was never acknowledged for that. That was incredibly strong and brave and right of her to do that, and so I wanted to celebrate that act of courage. Tammy Faye was really caricatured in the media and and became almost cartoonish in her portrayal. I remember you no covering her in the nineties, Jessica and I had one of those shirts that said I ran into Tammy Faye Baker at the mall or Tammy Faye at the mall that had two big mascara stains on it, and um. She was really I think underestimated and mischaracterized because of the way she presented herself, wasn't she Absolutely? I mean that's something the media really does though, right, I mean that's something society does, and society women in the past have been taught to be as small as possible, to take up as little space as possible. Your voices have to be quiet, beefin, be demure, you know, be submissive, don't you know, don't talk to don't take up too much space talking. Let the men do things. You know. It's all about being as quiet and small as possible. And she was the opposite. She was like, you know, gonna sing as loud as she could. She was gonna laugh and cry and let her motions be everywhere, and we're the makeup. That was just what society could say was garish, but she because she was saying, this is my expression of how I feel. It was like this. It was like drag. You know. She was expressing how she felt on the inside on the outside, so much so that when people kept trying to change who she was, she tattooed her face so no one could really like, no one could wipe her makeup off, no one could change Tammy Faye. And um, I think she was mischaracterized because of that. I think it was because she refused to play the role of the quiet, submissive minister's wife. She was a minister in her own right. She went to school for it, she ministered, and she was her own person, separate from Jim Baker. Did you have assumptions about her that were that were shattered by the documentary because you probably consumed information about her and read about her and saw her in the way she was trade by the media. So what chattered those assumptions? Was it the documentary or was it doing research for this film? Tell me how your perception of Tammy Faye really shifted? I absolutely had assumptions about her. I mean, the church lady on SNL bringing Tammy Faye, like the Tammy Fay on Tammy we have a bit of goop on our face. Oh I'm sorry, that's mascara. Excuse me, I'm sorry, or Tammy Faye on the Drew Carey Show. It was like playing up the joke, like what you say that T shirt? I mean she would hold the T shirt and laugh. She loved camp, she loved um making people smile and laugh, so she in some sense was like okay to be in on the joke, to be like the butt of the joke. I still think it hurt her probably. Um My assumptions were what I read on the tabloids. You know, she was, for me as a child, an example of what I didn't want to be. Um. I didn't want to be someone who society deemed was unattractive, you know, because of like how they you know, or a thief, like all of these things that the media had put on her. That's what I assumed. And then definitely even like the mess this is crazy, the mascara running down her face. There's so many people that I've talked to about this film. And they go, oh, I remember sitting in my room and watching an interview with She's crying and there's mascara running down her face. And I always go like, are you sure that happened? Because the or or are you remembering a comedy sketch where mascara is running down the face, Because the reality is I watched everything I could get my hands on. There's not one photograph or one video of Tammy Faye with mascara running down her face. But we all have this collective memory of who she was bay on satire and tabloids, and we see that as we saw that as truth. And so I guess that's it. Reading all of her books, watching you know, seven years to research her and and prepare for the character. So it really very quickly got rid of any misconceptions that I in misinterpretations that I had. Do you admire her when all is said and done, or do you see her as a flawed person? I mean, after all, they did, uh, you know, live high on the hog, as they would say, with contributions to the church, and you know, did a lot of things that aren't particularly admirable. I'm just curious how you feel about her now. That you know her intimately. Yeah, well I love her now. I mean I've never met her. I love her, and I can tell you for me personally, I don't believe the prosperity doctrine. I don't believe. I think money always corrupts. I think this idea, but it's in every religion. I mean, look at the Vatican. Money is so closely tied to faith, and I think that's absolutely an issue. Every Sunday we passed the played around um to donate. I think with tele evangelism, it's your congregation is now like so many people, the money just becomes more it's it's more intense, but it's it's still this every it's still the root of money corrupts. And so when money is closely tied with faith, is that a pure thing? I like, look back at everything that happened. I don't think she ever lied to the public. I think she was not very intelligent when it came to money. Because she wrote four books and she recorded over twenty albums. All of her royalties went straight to the church, and then she took her salary from the church and in the reality, what she should done. It's kept all of her royalties and then take nothing from the church, and I think that would have given her a better perception from the public. It's heartbreaking at the beginning of the film Jessica to see how she was other rise from the very beginning, having been born to a mom before she was married, and made to feel different than her siblings. It was heartbreaking, and yet she was able to overcome that with this incredible inner strength. And maybe because of that she developed this incredible inner strength. But where do you think that came from. I don't think, you know, it's interesting. I don't think she was confident. I think she played that she was confident. I think you know, she was an EmPATH, and she had a very like unstable childhood, you know, the father left, and then she became the embodiment of the shame of the first marriage in this Pentecostal community. And I think you know, with an EmPATH, what they do is they walk into a room and they find the dark energy because they try to fix it. They try to like, if someone is suffering, they want to fix them, they want to make them feel better. And so I think her confidence comes or what looks like confidence, is more of her trying to heal because she felt that by healing someone who felt unloved, she could heal herself. After the break, Jessica does her best Ammy Faye, and we talk about what progress women have made in some areas is quickly unraveling in others. You spent hours upon hours in makeup chair, didn't you, And it took a pretty serious toll on you. Can you talk about that? Yeah? So the first I mean the longest it was was seven and a half hours, and the shortest might have been three and a half four So every day it was quite a journey. I mean I would wear compression stockings because after a few days I started to get nervous. You know, when you sit still. I don't know how people say they can sleep in the makeup trailer. I cannot. You know, when someone's touching my face, I'm like, okay, look this way, look that way. I look up down. I had earbuds in and I would watch um the hundred. I had hundreds of hours of unused footage that the documentary filmmakers gave me for research. I was constantly every morning in the makeup trailer, studying her, sending her voice, watching her interviews. So by the time I got to set, I felt like ready and like, really, Keyton, did you watch her final interview I think with Larry King when she was she was I think dying of colling cancer at the time. She died a few days after that interview. Did you watch that? Because obviously the film doesn't cover that. Yeah, I mean we thought, like, are we going to cover that part of her life? Um? And ultimately, like there was a scene in the documentary that I found so incredibly moving, um where she goes back to do a concert and she's really scared and it's the religious community, and you know, there was a woman who was kind of mean to her and then or like saying mean things about her, and and then she walked up to this woman, not even knowing that that there was this behind her back happening. She's like, hi, honey, how you doing today, and like reached out to her, and then this one was like in the front row, like clapping for the concert. I just thought it was so beautiful, like switching the energy around, like you can be getting something negative and just like that usually means that someone needs some love. So if you return that with love, it completely changes their demeanor and I liked that ending for her. I didn't UM. I didn't want to really go into the cancer and her you know, physical ailments that came after. I really, to me, wanted to connect to her faith and her relationship with love UM because I thought that that would be the most healing, and especially you know, at the end the whole speech of like God looked at me and said, Tammy, Phil I love you, and I love you just the way you are, and God loves you just the way you are. That's actually something she said in one of her performances. And I wanted to end with that. I wanted the audience to feel connected to humanity in a different way. And I felt like if we had gone, um, you know, the route of her physical ailments, it would have taken away from that. You know. The role makeup played in her life obviously looms large in this film as well, and there's a very touching moment after she almost accidentally overdoes on some prescription meds. She catches herself in the mirror and she sits down and she puts on lipstick. She's interrupted by Jim and she says, Jim, can we talk about Satan later? I'm just starting to feel like myself. UM. Tell us about that moment. It it kind of illustrates Tammy phase I don't know, happy place or comfort zone, um, and the role that that this played in her whole being. Yeah, I think you know. We started that scene, we had to cut it out. It was too expensive. But her favorite song was Kasassa, so I was like humming it getting my diet coke. It was like she loved her die coke Kaserasra. But then there is the moment she looks in the mirror and still is like after like even a full face of makeup, she feels like, I'm not there yet. I'm not I'm not feeling like at my utmost so she sits down to put more on uh, and then Jim coming in with his energy. I think it's the first time we see Tammy have a boundary. You know. So much of the film is this codependence where she's taking care of Jim. She's trying to lift him up and like and make him feel like more of a man and and all of these things that he needs to be. And the beginning of that scene, she's like, I'm hanging on by a thread here. Let's can we talk about Satan and what you're going through later and just like give me this moment. I And I like that because I think also we as women need to do that more, just say whenever, like we need our moment to say, let's talk about Satan later. There's also a great scene where she plops herself down at the men's table with a baby on her hip, and you know that was kind of a radical act back then, where she didn't go to talk about, you know, female things with all the women and and a lot of this is about the patriarchy of the evangelical movement, to which wasn't obviously limited to the evangelical movement at the time. But she just wanted to kind of crash through those doors, didn't she. Yeah, And I think for her she never even saw it as a door. I think you know, she went to college and she was a minister, and when you know, right when her and Jim got married, Jim would actually stopped showing up to study, and their teachers showed up and said, listen, dude, your wife is going to be like she's gonna be the star of the family. Like you gotta like show up and apply yourself. Because I think she always had that drive. She always wanted to connect to people through faith. And when she you know, sees all like the Fallwell and Pat Robertson and all of them at the table talking about the state of faith in the United States, I think that's far more interesting to her at that time than like, I don't know, like what the kids are eating or what you know, like what's happening. She wanted to talk about work and you know, and God, Oh, I don't want to debate to Jerry. I love you, I love all of you guys. Reverend follow Yeah, we love you too, Jammy Faye. God is my witness. I made a pledge to continue to expose the sins in this country. The Bible explicitly forbids homosexuality. There's no gray area. Um well, you know, I I don't think of them as home sexual as. I just think of them as other human beings that I love. You know, we're all just people made out of the same old dirt and God didn't make any junk. I love that moment too, because you really see the different forks of the road that faith can take. And you know, there's like the Tammy phase way of you know, everyone is deserving of God's love without judgment. And then there's the Jerry Folwell way. And sadly, when I look at this country, I kind of see I wonder what would have happened if Tammy Faye hadn't been um taken down from the scandals of her husband, and if we had we had known that faith can be all encompassing and include everyone, and to have a more soft approach to that than this like hard line of um, if you don't agree with me, then you're wrong, or God is on my side. God this God believes that you're wrong. I'm right. I feel like we're kind of in that phase right now, which is the Jerry Folwell um way. It also made me wonder what if Tammy Faye had emerged as a national figure now versus when she did, and have things evolved enough that she could have been as prominent as her husband been, uh publicly right, if she wouldn't have had to retreat so much behind him. Absolutely, I mean, even if you look at her life right after she left uh Jim, I mean she hosted a show with Jim J. Bullock, who was like an openly gay comedian. Um, she was on the surreal life like she she did a lot of things. She was absolutely a celebrity in the public eye, and she wasn't hiding or or she wasn't in the shadow of any man. I think had she emerged now, Um, what would have been so beautiful about her is she was someone because she knew what it was like to feel unloved or unacknowledged or cast aside and cast out. She would have looked at any group in society that felt that and she would have connected with them and been like um, the healing bomb that they needed to feel part of something bigger than who they are. So I you know, in any time, it's wonderful to have someone who represents that. You know, so much of her life she was mocked and and ridiculed and shamed, and I think in retrospect it says much more about society than it does about Tammy Faye and how we treat certain women who become a caricature of of themselves. And I imagine that's something you wanted to address in this re examination of Tammy Faye. I'm very interested in how the media perceives women, whether it be like UH political candidates, like what do they say, regarding female politicians versus male politicians. Um, you know, people working in the media, news anchors, you know, what are the standards for each person and in terms of like the voices, the clothing, um, you know, even like recently who was like Taylor Swift came out and starts talking about the difference between you know, she's her being a female songwriter and male songwriters. And there's this the sense in the media that if you're as confident and you acknowledge your talent, in some sense, you are um beyond your station as a woman, Like it's like know your place, Like you're lucky to get to do this, and so thank the people around you who gave you the chance instead of saying actually, no, like you're welcome. You know, like you think me, you think me. Like Sean de Rimes has a great quote when she said, you know, all the the articles came out about like Netflix and her deal, and it was almost like they lured her to Netflix with all this money, and she goes, no, no, no, I am the candy. I'm not being lured by candy by someone else. I'm the andy that you guys want. And it's that idea that we need to understand, and society also needs to look at like women don't need to be um giving thanks for everything they get the reality of society needs to start thinking women for everything they give. I love that. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a pillow with that. Good. Um. I have to ask you about the voice because it was uncanny, and I want you to do Tammy Face voice for me a little bit. I mean, and how you kind of used your throat and your nasally and how did you do that? Because it was spot on? Oh thanks, oh god, it was. It's not it was not an accent that came easy to me. I worked with Liz Hamilstein, who's an amazing dialect coach, and Um, first we started just you know, with the drills for the Minnesota accent. Everyone thinks Tammy was from the South. She wasn't. She was from International Falls, Minnesota, which you know, gave her a very folksy way of talking. And also I realized by watching so many interviews the way she said Jim, that was my way in all the time. Jim, am you know, it was so cute. Jim, Oh come on, you know, And as she talked to my voice, my voice is much lower. Liz would always try to get it up. So I do these drills. I did the Steve Peter's interview every morning. Um. I did it kind of as a monologue to get me into character. You know, we're life from l a. Like the way she talked. I just loved her voice. And I'll tell you when when it finished. It took me a long time to stop speaking like her because I just wanted to. I just wanted to talk. It's just the cutest way of talking. And and also the like the how she would do like her shoulders, and what about her laugh? What about her laugh, Jessica, you two are here to learn the way, Oh my god, her laugh and her smile, there was so much that I just studied, study studied. Like when she smiles, I smile like with both my teeth, like I have a big smile. She smiled, she only lifted her top lips, so it was like like like you only saw these teeth here. It took forever, like listening to her laugh and listening to her voice and looking at myself in the mirror and trying to figure out how to smile like her. But I loved it. I mean listen. If I'm going to spend seven years studying someone, I want them to be like Tammy Faye, someone who makes me feel good about like loving others and also makes me laugh. She loved camp, so she loved to laugh, and so she was ridiculous and and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Before we go, I wanted to ask you about You have been such a champion for gender equality, and I wondered if you think things have changed, because I know you are walking the walk. You negotiated equal salaries for for fellow actors like Octavia Spencer. Do you think things are changing in Hollywood? Jessica, I definitely think things are changing, which is great. It doesn't mean that they're like fixed, right change. Everything should always be changing. Everything should always be in motion and fluid and evolving and growing. And but I look at the industry. This is what it's shocking to understand. I've only been in the industry ten years, and the change from when I started to what I see now is monumental. I mean, many years ago, I said, Okay, I'm gonna start working with a female filmmaker. Every year. It was hard to find female filmmakers because women started in the industry, but they were being like excluded and then they had to go find other jobs to support themselves and support their families. Now we like we are encouraging female filmmakers and they're being given an opportunity. So that's a big change. I can look at sun Dancing, Oscars, and can in Venice San Sebastian. You look at all these these places. Last year a female filmmaker won the Top Film Prize, which I don't know ten years ago, a woman women winning the Top Film Prize would have been a huge story. The fact that all of like the major like festivals and awards shows, a female filmmaker won the top prize for her film is amazing and um, it's exciting to me. So yes, things are changing. Also, uh, being on a set and seeing more women in leadership positions in terms of you know, as screenwriters, as producers, as directors, it changes everything. It changes the idea of what a female character is. It changes even love scenes like something you don't even think about so much. But I was doing something the other day and our female producer said, well, wouldn't like in this scene like for a woman and it would be like this and like talking it through and you just think, Wow. In the past, that was never even a part of the conversation. It was like a bunch of men would be in a room and dictate what the love seeing between the man and woman should be, and no one would really even give a thought to that. A woman also has her own sexual pleasure and desire, and um, what does that mean in the scene. Um, so a lot has changed and that makes me very happy. You know, as we see progress being made in certain areas, we see things being unraveled in others. And I know you've been a vocal supporter of planned parenthood, and yet now we're in a situation where Roe v. Wade may very well be overturned by the Supreme Court. And I'm curious if you are going to get involved in that in speaking out, because I know you've been such a fierce advocate for women. By the way, if you don't want to address this, we don't know. I'm happy to talk about this. No, no no, no, I'm very happy to talk about this. I support Planned Parenthood. I pay them, I give them a donation every month. I you know, they provided me with birth control pills when I was a teenager, and anyone who are argument is oh, you should just not have sex is living like in the dark ages, because guess what women like sex? Sorry to tell you women like sex. This is what does men do. And women also would like to go to college and have a life in a career and plan their families. Um. So planned parenthood absolutely gave me the tools to do that, um, you know, being able to have birth control pills. So I'm an active supporter of that. I also believe that the morning after pill should be an easy thing for women around the United States to get. And I look at history and usually in cycles, usually when something negative happens, we can live in that energy, in that vacuum. You know, there were a lot of women who were really disturbed when Donald Trump became president. That also was the year we had the Women's March. Then we had me too, Then we had all of these incredible things happened for women. So sometimes, you know, a negative thing does not happen in a vacuum. It creates a reaction. And what I believe a reaction should be is that there should be over the counter, um morning after pills for women to get anywhere. There should also be over the counter medicine for women with U T I s. There's women's health should needs to be more readily accessible all over the place in this country, and so I think that's something that needs a mass overhaul. But what about the right to an abortion, if in fact that is necessary to terminate a pregnancy. I believe every woman has a right to her body, has a right to have an abortion, and I will absolutely continue UM funding and and donating into plant parenthood. Well, I love talking to you, I love seeing you in so many different roles and in so many different movies and and streaming series and scenes from a marriage and everything that you're doing. Um, So I'm just so happy for you. And is there something that we can look forward to featuring Jessica chas Sdain in the future. Well, I'm currently doing UM George Jones Tammy went at mini series right now UM with Michael Shannon, of which I'm very happy about. And then UM, I have a film I did with Eddie Redmain called The Good Nurse, directed by Tobias lind Home, which I'm very also very very excited about and that I think they're locking picture on. So that'll be coming out hopefully this year. Well, you're a busy woman in and we're better off because of it. Thanks Jessica. Great to see you again and and we love you. Thank you. Katie. I'm so happy too. I love you. I'm so happy to talk to you. You can stream The Eyes of Tammy Faye right now on HBO Max. Thank you all so much for listening to our season debut. We've got some really exciting episodes ahead. Big names, big ideas, big conversations, So make sure you subscribe if you haven't already, and if you haven't had enough of me in your ears, you can get more of me in your inbox every morning does not sound exciting With my newsletter Wake Up Call, go to Katie currek dot com to sign up. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of My Heart Media and Katie currk Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Curic, and Courtney Litt. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter Wake Up Call, go to katie currect dot com. You can also find me at Katie curric on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.