Hey everyone, it's Sophia and welcome back to this very special two part work in progress. Today's guest is Jason Isaacs, remarkable actor, philanthropists and someone who makes me laugh every day at work. And we had so much to talk about that. Today you are listening to part two of our chat. We're going to find out more about his life, his career, and his incredible work right here, right now. I am curious about the journey from drama school because you know, you mentioned that in college, and it's always so easy to look back right and have perspective. But you talk about how it is so common people drink to excess in school in Britain. I think probably more than, oh my god, in the US too. It's insane. I don't know what it's like in Britain, but I know that it all. I already had it. I already had it from my teens. What do you mean. I discovered drink first and then drugs, and I would do it a lot with my friends. I would do I would get high, would do pills with a bunch of stuff, and then they will go home and I carry on doing it. I just I liked it more than other people I wanted it not to stop. So by the time I got to college, it was already a thing. It wasn't really to do with the atmosphere or culture. It was me. I brought it. I don't have anything against drugs, drink, gambling, text, whatever it is that people due to excess. I already was thrilled to go somewhere where there was no adult supervision and I could just do the things I wanted to do all day, every single day, and all night. And uh and it didn't hold me back. Is at that age I was a volcano of energy and creativity and um, and I was really smart. I don't say that in a in a kind of boasting way, but is I've melted most of those brain cells. I'm not anymore. And I just I had so much potential that it didn't really hamstring me. I could still get so much done. It ground me down over the years. But what you know, it was apparent to me even then and to my friends who all did it to excess, because that's what we did, that when they stopped at night, I would carry on. So you knew even then that something was different for your brain chemistry. Yeah, I didn't know. Possibly one of the reasons I acted so much and then decided to a drama's call and become an actor is because, unconsciously, it's a profession in which no one cares. You can take as many drugs as you like or drink as much as you want, if you turn up and do your job, and if the jobs go well and you get nice reviews or a good box office, it doesn't matter. I've been around the most extraordinary excess on on sets and on stage as well, so no one cared. I worked forever out of my mind and yeah, and got fabulous reviews and got great jobs, and no one minds. Wow, Now you can't do that as a lawyer. Well no, But but to be honest, you can't really do that as an actor either. How do you, as the person in the fog of addiction say, now something's wrong? Well, it was gone too far. First all, I have a partner who you met, who has been with me right from drama school. It was quite clear that I didn't, you know, looking in her as a mirror, that something was wrong. But you know, when there's somebody else went to sing your behavior, you know there's something wrong. Um, But when I you know, when those things that I could do easily became harder and then became impossible, and I couldn't remember the beginning of a sentence by the middle, when I could never remember anybody's name ever, people I'd spent lots of time with, people I've worked with. I could always remember lines, I could do the scenes. I could be in the moment. But when I will be incredibly social and fabulous, but Emma would know what I really wanted, what I really craved, would manipulate things towards. Would be getting home and being on a lying down in as close to a coma as I can make myself. That's the state I really aspired to, or be it that I did many other things many times, what I really want to is be away. And mostly I think of those things that kind of outward on and on the inside. Um, everything is walked. You just don't care about people, yourself, You don't love anyone, You don't you know all of There is no normal thought. There is no normal in a dialogue. It's not it's not like those people go, yeah, I know, I drink too much of the weekends. I was never There are so many analogies don't quite work. But I felt like I kept the world deliberately out of focus for the only twenty years, and when it started to get sharp efter, I was terrified and needed a quickly as possible to make it out of focus again. Uh. And now it's been a focus for twenty ideas and I cannot believe that was my life. I can't believe the opportunities I missed to connect with wonderful people because I only ever sought out other people like me who wanted to take a lot of drugs. I thought they were the cool people, they were the nice people. They were they were the only people who saw the world away. It was, so how do you begin to climb that? Especially after I don't I hesitate to even call it a habit, Your your life was how how do you begin? Because I imagine there are people who might know this about themselves or who might have family dealing with this, and they say, I don't know where to begin. How do you start? Well, tell you where it didn't start. Didn't start with me because I all the millions of times I tried to get a handle on it, every Sunday night to every birthday, or these landmarks New Year's evil. When it gets to that, you know, important day and day that's when or I'm going to cut back and just do things off to six o'clock. I knew of myself having failed at those things so many times, it just wasn't gonna happen, So we don't take up the whole podcast with it. But I needed help. I needed to go outside myself, and it was difficult because I'm smart and articulate. I'd even lent money to friends to go to rehab. And remember thinking, mivor problem, there's so many billions of times worse than yours. How dare you go to rehab? You dial attant? So, uh yeah, the short person is the twelve step program. That's you know. I needed to go somewhere else, to these rooms that I thought i'd come across before. I thought full of tragic losers. And if I ever found myself there, I was going to shoot myself. And and I went there and I found my people. In fact, oddly, Uh can I do this up breaking anonymity? I think I can. I was on the Patriot and um, I heard somebody say, oh, I'm an alcoholic, And I went and I had been going to twelve Step meetings and doing the program for a little bit. And I whispered so by, and they said, well, let's let's put it on the call sheet. Let's see if there's any other people, and let's have a meeting. And I went, no, no, no, don't And I said why and this was put on the call sheet if anyone turns up. They turned up, I went, no, I'm not going to come. And I was mortified that anybody on this set might find out that I no longer took drugs and drink, even though for decades I've been clearly this man who had a terrible drug problem. But for some reason that stuck with me. And that's one of the reasons it's anonymous, because it makes people, you know, people will be fearful I've identify themselves. Anyway, there was this thing on the call sheet saying, come, you know, to a meeting in the in the holiday in and I put my baseball cap and sunglasses on this kind I sneaked around the back entrance the holiday and and one of the reasons I didn't want people to know on the set is because there are a bunch of really cool people. I was friendly and I like them, and I you know, I like the social aptress River set, and I just want to have this label on me, this cult label. And I went into the conference room holiday and and all of the cool people were there, all the people who I was worried would find out, they were all there in the room and they became my people for the duration of the shoot. Um. So yeah, without going you know, I could talk about it forever. One of the reasons, the other reasons it's anonymous is twofold. One is to stop people being intimidated. The other is that no person should ever say, oh, I do this thing, because when they fall from grace, it looked like the program doesn't work. The program works. Individuals are idiots and get things wrong and are not so I am no kind of spokesperson for anything. I don't do anything right or consistently. But that's what saved me, and that's what gave me in life back and that's why Emma agreed to marry me and have children with me, because she wasn't going to marry drug addict. You know, So that if anyone's listening and they have a problem, it just works. And it's I don't know, I don't want to sound like a cult figure thing. It is the only thing that works. But it's pretty much the thing that will work for you if you lean into it. And I can't recommend it highly enough. I love that. It's really interesting. I have another friend who it was a struggle for him to get sober, and a lot of us, you know, did everything we could for the multiple times. You know that it was a trial and error until the trial worked. And he's also an artist like us, and he says, God, he's very self deprecating, like you. And he just says, God, what an insufferable son of a bitch I was. I thought I was so interesting because I was this drunk, messy artist. He goes, I'm such a better actor because I'm sober and smart. I think. I mean, it's it's so ununique. I've heard it so many times, But you know, I thought I was, in my madness, the kind of you know, megalomaniac with an inferior to the complex. They say that addicts are, but I, some version of myself was a genius who was only doing this to keep it fair for the rest of mankind. Because once I took you know, once I took that breaks off Jesus, which area when I not excel in, you know, and the arswer has been none because I was just a slightly dull old man, you know, who burnt out his brain steals. But it's that It's actually part of the scary thing about getting sober is going I'm just going to be ordinary, and that's going to have to be enough. I can't be, you know, I and die young enough to leave the good looking corpse. I wasn't dead yet. I was annoyed. There were numbers of times I go upstairs, thing, I hope I don't come down in the morning. But I certainly didn't want to kill myself. I just wanted it to be over. And then when I knew it wasn't even young enough for people to go, he had so much potential that time had long gone. You know. Oh my god, So I can't quite get this image out of my head. You've painted me such a beautiful picture. You're talking about how you didn't want it to get sharp, so you kept it fuzzy for a long time. What was it like for things to get sharp? How is it for you internally? As the world begins to come into focus, well, first science. But you asked me to remember what it was like when I first three years ago. Now, I mean remember going, Okay, finally we can have a buy the house of a baby and stuff. And I'm missing I've just made you. I just we have to start dating against you. What the fucking talking about? We lived together, we bought a house together, you know, we lived in a flat together. Unless it I know, but I like, you've never known me. I've never known me. We have to start from scratch. Starting scratch took two weeks, you know whatever. Because maybe I was not that different. I don't know, maybe I was. I think I was that different because of how I felt. I do remember feeling. There was a day I walked down the stairs to my flat in West Hampstead and I stopped halfing down the stairs and had this realization that if everyone I died, everyone I knew died, it wouldn't bother me, just wouldn't bother me at all, as when I was using. And I just thought, because then I could sit in the room and take drugs all day and people will go, I know, but you heard what happened to him, didn't you. Everybody he knew it was in everyone knew was in that coach that drove off the cliff, and and thinking that about myself, and then at the time rationalizing, going, I think everyone's like that. People have fooled themselves. There's no real human connection, no real love, there no real contact. Everybody is ultimately this island, and then being sober and going, oh my god, I love people so much. I love my life so much, and having these children where to just explode your heart into a million pieces. Um, So what is it like? It's you know, I don't when we see things written about in our world in dry armor, it's always people going struggle with pick up a drink, and it's nonsense. It's just that people who drink a lot of drug addicts and or kind of addicted to other things just have fun that ways of thinking. And and it's you know, I still am. I don't think I'm normal. I think, you know, I don't think anybody's normal. But I think that people in our business, the abnormal, are drawn to it more. And so what is it like? It's like everyone else's life is life on life terms. Life is not easy. But your experience love, hate, fear, jealousy, anxiety, and the difference with adlex alcoholics is they replay those things over and over again. We're going to get in the shower and you know, we'll spend hours having conversations with the person they're never going to see again or that they haven't seen for ten years. Well, and then we should have a conversation off mike. But anyway, I do think that we do that more. I will have done that more. But really the point of the you know program at twelve steps. Again, I am not a representative of it, and there are no leaders and no spokespeople. If you need it, it's fantastic in there for you. But as I understand it, or has it been explained to me, you recover from me like you do these things and then you've got rid of a bunch of the crap from the back of it, and you think differently, behaved differently. So I don't struggle with who I'm not that person all the time. I'm a different person. I've grown and changed and there's some of it left and it's there lurking should I let it to? Actually? What's life like? It's like your life, It's like anyone else's like. What strikes me is that you've done the work. By working the program, you've done the work, and you've created new neural pathways. So you don't fire the mental highway that ran you into a near coma. You fire a new mental highway that runs you into calling Emma or one of your daughters. It's a different and fifty years old, I've lived a lot of life. I've seen a lot of things. I still sometimes have to be told to go to bed. We'll stop eating, stop eating stuff like that, which is outrageous at my age that that those things happen. And I don't know. There's labels about alcoholic You know, a lot of people struggle that some people don't know, and I'm always amazed by them. People have the one glass of wine and leave the bottle. All the people who have half a slice of cake or something. I just it boggles my mind. But I'm just not made like that. You know what I find to be lovely when you say something like how you are are not made? I loved and you said you you know, you told the story in the press about me. I got to do some bragging about you and the press interviews for our show and the same thing. Well, you know, what is Jason Isaacs like? And we were talking about the dynamics between Griff and Sam our characters on the show for everyone at home, and I just said, sometimes it's the sweetest, you know, because Jason's in his griff accent at work, the like long midwestern Detroit like. We don't say attack, we say attack like the things that I've learned from your dialect, Coach. And there's been more than once when you've looked at me and gone. But I don't want to say this to you. And it's so sweet because I see you as a father to your daughter is going what man would ever speak to his daughters this way? And it's I just I love it and the same thing I really love about you it's fun. I do. I do. I mean some of this discussion has been about not feeling like I had a place in the world, and a lot of people feel like that I had my children. It was the first time I thought, okay, so one in a good way. One foot is nailed to the floor, this is where I belong. This I will always be and have to be a father. That doesn't mean everyone naturally is a good parent, as we both know, but for me, I want why did I wait so long? I mean, Emma and I both of us like, why do we wait so long? This is what we want to do. I don't know what we've done it particularly well, time will tell, but it was what I've been searching for for a long time, just to be to be a parent. I do struggle with I mean, you know, I play your father in the show, and then sometimes he's a total funkhead. And although there is a part of me, you know, my wife has done most of them mothering because I've been you know, all away a lot. Will we traveled together a lot when they were a little bit less as the min older, and so really I lost my vote in anything in the family. And you know, when I go I think we should do this with the kids, she goes, yeah, okay, well we're not doing that. Um. Some part of me I think would have been stricter, like if some part of me would have wanted them to experience hitting the sides of the rails to build grit, you know, whatever that is. UM, and my wife can't bear for them to be in any way distressed, either of our girls. And they're great people, they really are, but I think left to my own devices. Had I been a single dad, I would have let them, made them even or let them suffer more and been tougher with them. I don't think I would have been right necessarily. Will never know until we know do a double blind placebo test with a bunch of twins. But so some part of me is going to live out through Griff what I didn't get to do at home. Never will interesting. How do you make decisions like that? When you think about characters. You have obviously endless amounts of fascinating observations for Griff, for the dynamic of Griffin Sam, for what's going on in the hospital. You've played so many fascinating characters, and I'm all walks of life. Yeah, well, I mean yeah, I'm old. I'm old. I've been working decades, haven't had a career like yours. That's also you've been in long running TV series. I've done lots and lots and lots of jobs. I've never been a long one, and so you're right, I played hundreds of characters. It's so cool if any of my series had gone to nine seasons. But how do you decide, you know, what what was it? When you read the script that you said, Yep, that's the next one. That's the one I want to do. I think it was partly what we're talking about. You know, I'm a dad of these girls who are coming into their power. They already think that I'm an idiot and everything I say is wrong and they can navigate the world better. And I I'm not entirely convinced that they're wrong in some areas, at least. We were recently all the way on holiday and we got all got COVID together and how to isolate, and I stepped up and did manage to get us an isolation apartment so we didn't have to go into the barracks where we were. And I saw, just for a second they looked at me and when all dad can do some stuff, but they normally don't think dad can do anything. And I was interested in coming into this women only environment where you were the leader. I've been the lead in most shows that I've done, you know, and I'm older, and it's about you, and it's the story is about a young woman being in her power, and it's run by to me young women. I'm sure Katy jenuine Ja to that label. Probably not, but younger women than me who are in their power and a running big you know, media companies and running a big show. And I was curious what that would be like. I wondered if it would be as it has turned out to be a much more supportive environment, much less toxic moment. You know, you have some very un difficult, challenging experiences on TV shows. So did I Not in the same way because I wasn't a young woman. But some difficult people I've worked with in the past, Um, some lovely ones too. I made the last couple of times I did television series on the o A and on Dig and stuff, I really fell in love with the people I was working with. But I've worked some very toxic people. And I just looked at this and I thought, um, it has a positive feel to It's from some people who want to put something positive in the world and explore families and love and and that there's a medical people in my family, and they lead lives of service. You know, for all that they may be difficult with each other, for all that me our character difficult each other. Um, they say people's lives every day. They've they've dedicated their life to saving lives, whether they have a good or bad bedside manner, whether it's because they're more comfortable with organs than they are with people or something. You know. They just it was a world of something very positive to dive into, run by positive people, um that I thought would be interesting. Plus, I've done indie indie movie after indie movie, lots of them, and I love doing them. And I love the stories they tell life that they complicated, nuanced stories that reach a tiny audience, if any. I've done many movies that don't come out. My experience has been great because I love walking in other people's shoes and minds. But this is broad entertainment to reach. You know, millions of people watch our stories, and I kind of I wanted there's that too, That element is in there that you get to tell the story and you know that people watching it. You know, in some ways it's cycles circles back to what we're talking about before that, you know, in the world post Trump and post fact ah. Sometimes I think it's fiction now that will most touch and affect people, most open their hearts, most make them amenable to human contact or to seeing other people not as the enemy but just as other people. I think that fiction softens people up in ways that um that news and current affairs maybe no longer has the power to do yeah, because they don't have a preconceived notion of what it is. It doesn't necessary so they can say something about this person, not realizing that it actually applies to them, or to their feud with their sister or boss or whatever it is. Is it always a sort of analysis of the times and and what you might want to experience or explore in a particular time that leads you to making a choice for a part. God, I wish I had a sensible answer for you know. I know that Will Smith there is that he would do one comedy sci fi movie and one for the Oscars, and one company side with one other. Like I have no pattern at all for anything. And when I go, oh this is time for me to go back on stage, I end up doing tellient series. When I go it's time to do a teleigent series, end up doing a little film. And it's just something I don't know, and it's very often inconvenient. I'm in a little film called Mass at the Moment, which is really beautiful and had a phenomenal response, and I read it when I have to do this. It was incredibly inconvenient. I was on the other side of the world in Australia doing a film. I hand see my family. There was no money, I had to fly myself in. It was probably not going to get finished, no one was going to see it, and I went. But it's brilliant. I want to bring those words to life. I want to bring that human being to life. If there's a misconception, I don't know. If you get it, you do get it. I know I've seen it online when people thank you for your work and thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. It's completely selfish for me acting, you know, in many many ways, I want to be in someone else's heart and mind and trying to persuade someone else or something get that. I want to be in the story. I want to be living that life. And if people see it and get something from it, that's great and I but in the moment of doing it, maybe it's in the moment of doing it, I'm not thinking about an audience or what they get from or not. I just want to be seeing what it's like. I'm frustrated. I resent the fact we have to have just the one life I resented. If I love my wife I've been with the thirty or four years, I imagine that we will be together forever. But I also want to have a billion other lives and partners and sexuality. So I want to experienced life with twenty kids and no kids. I want to be you know, I want to be all the people that I've played and many more. Anyway, there's no the point. The answer is, there is no pattern. This didn't make any sense going to Toronto possibly for nine months at a time. That's not It's not a great thing for me to do in my life. I don't need to do that. Financially, I'm lucky how the work does come in to do other things that, um I just fancied it. I don't know. I just fancied it. Mat Katie knew who you were and thought that looks like one mm hmm. I also didn't think about it being a series, by the way, because we did a pilot, and I have many friends who who haven't done TV serious like you and I have done, and they get offered the pilot and they go, I don't know, seven years in Vancouver, and I go, it's not seven years. It's three weeks. I don't think about it. Most things don't go, most things aren't picked up, most things don't run past the first season. Don't just think do you want to go and do this job? And I thought I fancy going for three weeks, little that I know that would still be making the pilot two years later. I know it's pretty incredible. I love that though, the wanting to be something. I've read so many great scripts that I've really enjoyed. But I know I either see the movie. It's like when people describe out of body near death experiences and they're up in the corner watching themselves in the room. That's how I see a script or I don't. And if I don't see it, sure like I'm watching my life. There's no way I'm gonna be. Sometimes I read something I think it's great, and I pictured another actor in it, and I go, I shouldn't take this job. I think that's at Norton or whoever the hell you know. I think that's whatever. I just don't. I don't see me doing it, and it's not. I don't have any criticism of the piece at all. That's the other thing, and say, why did I do it? So, Katie was great. I thought the writing was great. I thought she You know, the last television I did was a Star Trek. I think, wasn't it all the other way? Which one did I can't remember which one I did that first? Either way? So different? Well, you finished The Way before we started the pilot. In when we first met, I said, Hi, Jason, it's so nice to meet you. I have to emotionally leave the room for five minutes and then I'll be right back. And in this moment, while emotionally I'm outside the door, I'll be standing in front of you, fan girling and talking to you about how. The Way is one of the most important television that I've ever seen, and I need to talk to you all about it, and I need to know what it was like to play How and we needed we need to discuss the writing. And as soon as I can stop talking about this, I promise I'll never bring it up again. I could talk about that forever. So anyway, I just this was such a different world. Katie writes broad entertainment to accident that everybody should have access to. You know, she wants to write something to reach lots of people. Salent britt right, very specific, very you know, a very different kind of story. I can't imagine there's a single viewer as an overlap for good sound between the other and then both well you and me and the people who follow us. But I just thought, God, that's not like anything I've done forever and want to. She just seemed great sometimes she just like people. I mean, her writing was great and she seemed great. Yeah, there's the the story I shouldn't tell her Mike about how great she is was the time. I will tell it, but I'll try and be discreet about it. There was the time I was badgering her when we were filming because I there was an old yunits word to Nidda. I was knittering her. It's like poking someone and poking them and poking the losing. Can we change this? Can we do this? And she was always going, yeah, no this, yes, no, how about this, Let's try that instead? And I did, I did, I did it. And then at some point, um I thought she needed to sit down, and she was a bit hot in the studio and she got flushed and she said, no, okay, do that, and she gave me an answer of generous answer, and then I realized she got flushed because I was bulldozing her. It was me that brought that on. And even in this moment when I've given someone a physical reaction to me, she was so generous and loveling, loving, loveling, whatever that word is. And I thought, yeah, I thought, God, that's a special person and I should learn to shut the funk up when I see those signs as well. It was really it was a magical moment with me. I'm sure she experienced it very deffinitely, but for me, I thought, I don't know that I haven't met anybody like that. She's incredible. Listen, I think it's kind of amazing. I think the best people in the world have days where they don't see everything going on her. You can't be everything all the time. And I think when you're in healthy relationship with people, you have experiences where they push you to grow, you push them to grow. Everybody learns, gets better, gets kinder, gets braver, And that's what this job feels like to me, and that kind of support that exists among all of us. By the way, on good days and intense days and long days, it's been really good. I think for everyone because you know, if if that's the worst interaction you've ever had on a set where you're working a hundred hours a week, but saying on this one, I'm saying on this one on a set, being our set, it's revolutionary compared to some of the shore we've all been through another set. You know, I don't know. I was just thinking that when I'm looking at you acting this and knowing your history of all the series, you'll be the long running series you've been, and how different than things I've done this, And I'm wondering if that is it a different instinct that drew us towards it. All that we want from acting, is it? You know, it's you want to be in a long running series you have been. You set this up at the center of it, and I will be if it is, and that'll be great, and if it isn't, there'll be something else and I'll do other things because I always imagined, you know, I like Chinese food because there's twelve dishes on the table. I don't like the same thing over again. I really like all the people working with another to take it day by day. But we have such different expectations in this. It's interesting, you know what it is? I think, I'm my duality is both of those things. I want to eat Chinese every night because I want to eat twelve things, and I always want to order food as a group so we can get as many things on the menu as possible. But I could eat the same food every night and get the whole menu. I love new experience, but I love familiarity. And I think because I'm a very communal animal my nature, I love the idea of building a community. Like my greatest fantasy is to live on a commune with all of my best friends. I would love nothing more. And so that's the other two. So i'm I think I might be presenting a series about beliefs soon or what things that are unbelievable. But the other one I wanted to do that I haven't really pitched is people are setting up alternative ways of living at the moment. I'm fascinated and I'm fascinated by it because maybe this is all falling apart. You know, the unicorns, the billionaires have got their retreats in New Zealand, but their five stories below the ground, like the bond villain lairs with generators and weapons and food and stuff. But for the rest of us, if society falls apart, I mean I'll be too old. I'll be the first against the wall probably, But you guys can come over. I have a garden, thanks very much. But how will we live? Because I'm about you, I thought when the pandemic started, I thought, I'm a bit of a catastrophist anyway, and I thought, okay, it's over. The way we've all been living is over that. You know what's going to emerge after the kind of mad max waste? Something better, or at least when every country is just printing money to give to people to stay at home. The old economies just can't possibly stand it. What's going to happen is someone going to step up? Are We're going to get another generation of revolutionaries to rip things up and start again in a way that's fairer and better. And I know I'll suffer because I've done all right, and I've got some savings. I own a house and stuff. But that'll be okay in the long run, because the world could do with massive shaking up and it didn't happen. And I was a little bit, you know, relieved for myself selfishly but disappointed. I feel like giant change will have to come one thing. You can be sure of his change. Yeah, I will. But I think that's part of why I love to lean into things that allow for constant discovery. You know, we get a new script every week. Every day is different, but we get to be together and I love that. And it's why, you know, even in some environments that were not what they should have been, I really leaned into the togetherness with the people I loved and tried to navigate around what was not good. And there was a lot of just perspective on that in the four years that I wasn't doing a regular series, that I was doing independent film after independent film and going and working on a Netflix show. Here in the Hulu show, they're doing the smaller, streamer stuff, and I loved it, but I did crave. I craved my daily dose. The family created a family every time you go somewhere. I think that might be so much for this is pop psycology. It might be just complete bullshit. But I think much as I, you know, love whatever that word is, the members of my family, Uh, I wanted a family. You know that you find a family every time you do play or every time we do a TV series, how lucky you got a new family. Most people only get one and we get bunches. Well, that's the other thing, you know. People come a visit a set if they're young, they often I want to be in an environment like that because the reason The Office was a successful TV show in England and America's everyone knows what it's like to be stuck at work, not enjoying yourself with people you don't like. And that's just not what film sets are like. TV sets are like, they're not the people are actually enjoying themselves. Do you ever wonder if it's us more? My wife said to me, Ama, to me, I said, why don't you come to set more? You never come to set when we were living in the States, And she went, you don't see it. It's like the Colter Louis fourte Everyone laughs your jokes, they bring you tea. You're having a great time that you pick up your clothes and I go, no, I see it. I like it. It's great. Do you wonder sometimes whether we're having a much better time than the other people. I think I have observed that to be true on some sets and I don't like it. I really dislike a hierarchy. The thing that makes me angrier than anything is when someone says the words above the line to me and for the people listening at home, above the line essentially means all the actors and producers and they quote unquote called below the line and the crew. It makes me so fucking angry. I even thinking about it now, I'm I hear my voice getting lower because I'm mad. And for me, truer than true that none of what I do, or you do, or any of the people who go and sell the show, we don't do what we do without our crew. And it's why whenever a set is my set, it's crew first. I'm at safety meetings, I'm making sure people know they're heard. I'm making sure people know that they don't need to figure out who to talk to if they have a problem, they come talk to me about it. It's why I like to bring in surprises and Christmas glasses and you know, get people when we can and when we don't get shushed for it, you know, playing music in between things when we're walking into set, like I want people to feel joy. It's why I shoot the ship with the camera guys all day. I I love the people we work with, and I love going to work because I see how much fun they're all having. Yeah, well that's my first of it. My definition is I feel free to crack any crappy joke I want, any time you like. But I want to make sure that the prop sky feel well. You know, if they can't, if they thinking they're going to stand there and more segation show something's gone horribly wrong. Well, no, that's the nightmare. What a nightmare that would be. But I will say it is I think a pretty consistent nightmare for people who come to visit us at work, because when you're not a part of the circus and you see how the circus is made, it ruins the magic. It's like someone showing you how to do a magic trick. No one. I hate to bring it to the folks at home. Nobody has a good time when they come to set. You have a good time for like the first twenty five minutes, maybe the first hour, and then without fail, every single person I've ever seen come to visit a set goes wow. So you guys are just going to keep doing this? Oh, people will come to Harry Potter s they beg me, beg me, and I go shure, no problem because they were amazingly generous the producers. They lay on an extra production assystem to drive them around the golf cards, they visit all the sets. They've got to the menagerie, they've got to the visual effects workshop. They come to way with shooting, they meet Dan Rupert, Emma Tom Will. Everyone was saying they get to say cut an action. I mean, it was a really open, lovely set all the time. And then after a couple of hours they go, so what happens now, and they go, this happens. It's still doing this for the next two weeks. What this scene at the table? Yeah? Right again, their plan with them to come in to work with me, I go, I'm going in a five am and go all they come later, or to stay till I go home at night. And then suddenly remember they had a plumber's appointment or their kid. Every time it wears off real quick and people just go, wow, So it's just more of this, but we love it. That's true. But here's so let's get slightly more general and spiritual, maybe pretentious, that you love going to work. I love going to work when I'm done the right thing, because for me, I can wake up in the morning and feel very sorry for myself or annoyed at things. And if I don't take care, if it doesn't happen naturally, if I don't care to resteer things and reset things, I can feel like the world is conspiring against me, or the jus look at these things that I have to do, and what a pain in the asked. And if I can recalibrate by just doing a couple of exercises or even in meditation or whatever the hell it is, I can go. I'm so lucky. I can feel grateful, and I can I can be concerned with being of service to other people instead of telling other people my woes and hoping that they will feel sorry for me when actually, in the great scheme of things that's seen you know, um, but the difference between a really shitty day and a really great day is always between my ears. It's very rarely to do with anything that happens outside me. And I've been aware of that now for quite a long time, and so which is great because it doesn't mean I always do it, always do it right, but I know that it's in my power. And that's such a gift to know that because I see and I'm around other people who aren't aware that is their stuff that they could if they have the right tools, deal with and experience their life completely differently. It's such a it's a it's a real joy to know that, at least if I do it imperfectly. But I can do it sometimes and resteer things. And that's one of the joys that you asked me this is about three hours ago, or what's it like being sober? That's what it's like that I can I recognize what's my ship that I can deal with, and if I do it right, I can care more about other people. And that makes me feel great that it feels like a pretty good mantra and just take care of your ship and care more about other people. Yeah, I mean that's that, you know. I teach acting, sometimes irritating Lee. Yeah. Yeah. I teach acting, and I teach directing to directors, like how to talk to actors sometimes well, which is embarrassing because you'll see how badly I do in a few weeks and I direct an episode. But but that all of the things I teach really can you summed up in about two minutes. I stretched it out to a two hour workshop. But um, it stems from the best acting I've ever seen happens off camera. When you're off camera or when they turn the camera around they've done all your coverage is or someone else. All you're doing is being in the scene and concentrating the other person. And the best director I ever had would just stopped a scene in the middle of you go stop, stop, You're showing me how upset you are, And I go, well, I am, I'm really upsetain you go no, no, no, you're showing me how ps up you are. Change that guy, make him apologize, make him love you, make him stop you. And any time anyone stuck on acting or doing their bit where they're angry, I always if I get to direct them and get to talk to them about it, I go, what do you want from the other person? Not as a general wash, but specifically moment to moment, What do you want them to feel? What you wanted to say, or what what's the inner script you want to write for them? Forget what you're doing. Oh, I'm really really you know, I feel sad because my cat. No, no, you want that person to apologize they didn't lock the front door. So in some ways, I feel like that, you know, what acting is about is what you want from other people, And what life shall be about when I do it right, is what I can give to other people. Well, how much I can hear them or see them. And if when it starts turning into look at me, hear me, see me, feel for me, it's going a bit wrong, says the man who's just talked three hours on the microphone. But it's not consistent. But I like that. I really like that. The willingness to listen as an act of showing up is something that I can't possibly overestimate the importance of, you know, if nothing else. And when when I have those days and I know we all do, and I have those days where I look around and I go, it is today going to be the day everybody figures out I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. And I'm just really in that that happened on the first day. That's long ago. Jason, don't tell people. We all know that nobody knows what they're doing. That's the great secret. Actors know that other people don't know. And we're okay with I shadowed some incredibly powerful men with enormous responsibility, and after two minutes I've gone, oh, you're just an eight year old with the mustache. You know, you know a bit more, but you know, sometimes when it's the head of delta force, you have. But but mostly everybody's faking it all the time. And that's okay. So we're as act as we know that everyone's afraid. But I I think to get myself out of, you know, the sort of panic that can come with those waves of feelings, I'll just take a deep breath and focus on listening, like with with my inner ears, really focus on listening, and it changes everything for me every time. It's true listening and listening not being preparing what you're going to say, which was listening can be for me so often that gets hard for me. At times, not too I feel like I'm pairing what I want to say, where I struggle, perhaps because I'm not a writer. Is I know if I don't tell you the thing that what you've said has made me think of, if three more minutes go by, it'll be gone. It's gone. Sure, it's just it's gone. Yeah, And I think I think that's partially to blame because of what we do for a living. Because when you when your brain gets used to memorizing ten pages a day and then forgetting them so you can memorize ten pages the next day. I'm like, I don't know what you said five minutes ago. Remind me say the first four words again, and then I can repeat the whole sentence. But the recall is definitely a little damage. I give myself the excuse that I melted it away with decades of drug abuse. I don't know, but I do. I've found myself, uh, in more recent years fascinated by the power of words, the different words we're using, you know, and as someone in a long term a couple of we've had some couple of counseling a long time along the way, and you know, the manner in which you engage with people, the power of an LP, for instance, neural linguistic programming, and the For a while I was fascinated with hypnosis and wanted to write a script about it, so I went a lots of hypnotists and what sorts of hypnosis documentaries. It's extraordinary the difference interacting with people that your vocabulary can make you know, and we see it now because so much of our communication is is written, and people take massive offense at what they perceived tone they see in a text or email, and it might not be that way face to face because you can hear tone. But even when you're face to face, it's the wrong word in an argument or a creative discussion, or you know, falling out lands in all the wrong ways and sends off all the wrong signals inside someone else's head. So you're talking about, you know, listening and whether one's preparing one's answers or not. Um. There are exercises we were shown in couples counseling and other places of active listening or of uh I think what was it called amargo where you listen to someone and then you repeat back exactly what it is they've said to you, and in ariable you get it wrong because it's not exactly what they said to you, it's your own paraphrase filter through your own bias, conscious or unconscious, And it's a really interesting exercise in trying to make sure that you really do here someone and instead of persuading them why they're wrong, let them know that you've heard them, and that in itself elicits change. It doesn't entrench things. It's a kind of amazing and I don't do it. Remember is this a tangent? I don't remember being away the holiday once with Emma and somebody had left that book in my in the hotel bedroom. Men from Mars, Women from Venus, you know, much like a lot of the diet books. I think you know, it's got five pages of ideas, and then someone published it when we need two hundred, so they flush it out. But essentially it was saying women just need to be heard, stopped trying to tell them how to fix their problem. And men it's I think they called it the d I Y Committee. If you come to a man, it's because you're applying to the d I Y Committee and they need to come up with a solution for you. So if you want peace in your relationship. I mean it's a ludicrous generalizations, of course, gender lines. But nonetheless I tried it for a couple of days, just a little social experiment. Emma would tell me something that was bothering her and I go, oh gosh, that must be awful, A really darling how does that feel? And it worked in the most remarkable way to create harmony between us, and after the second day, I went, fuck this, it's time. I'm from Mars. I don't want to be that person, and I reverted, well, what's interesting, I'll share with you and for anyone in home, feel free to take it. You know, you talked about the whenever it is you guys have been to couples counseling and we have a coach that we both worked with because you know, we're both like nerdy lunatics, love data and who are obsessed with how to make things function better. So we were like, yeah, obviously coaching, let's do that. That'll be fun. And depending on at home, who's heard of a relationship coach me neither, Oh my god. It's like it's it's just it's you know, and I'm a big proponent of their be I think it's life saving, but this, I just I'm like, why does anyone do anything with this? And our coach gave us it's it's like a protocol she gives to everybody, but she gave us um purge or problem solve and it's kind of like the white flag you can throw up right away. But it's it's not, you know, as archaic as that book was some sort of gendered thing. Everyone wants to be heard and sometimes we want to be helped. More often than not we want to be heard. But especially when you have two people like Grant and I who are very driven and who love to solve problems, you can immediately go into problem solve. And so she said, you just have to say, you know, like if it were you and I were Emma and I launched into something, you could just say, hold on is the superge or problem solve? And then you know, if it's a purge to say I'm so sorry, that must be awful for you. And if it's a problem solve, you get to be a Martian and say I know how to fix it. And you know, it's it's so much fun, and I've given I've given the tip to so many people. I've got friends using it with their parents, ends using it with their spouses. I'm like, I'm telling you, it's three words that'll change your life. Amazing how simple little exercises that seem ludicrous and are very easy to make fun of can change the way people work, both in the in the homes, also business relationships, just simple. Let's make sure this is our vocabulary, this is our key word, and we're all resistant to that stuff. Certainly when you get to my age, you're like, I'm sorry, in these new fangled ideas are ludicrous, kind of hippie nonsense, but you're trying them out, and they invariably work. Like gratitude lists. They work. They shouldn't work. It's ludicrous. I'm curious because now now we're entering into the zone where I feel like I want to ask you my favorite question to ask everyone. We're talking about ways to make progress as artists, as significant others, as friends, as humans. So when you think about all the things you've learned from the people you've played, the lives you've inhabited, the families you've had on screen, the family you have in life, the growth of your experience, your growth inside of sobriety, where you are in this moment in your life, looking at all of that stuff you've gleaned and learned from, what would you say right now feels like your current work in progress? Oh? Look at you polling themes together with the title of your podcast, UM, what is my work in progress? What am I still working on? Um? Well, I'm entering a different phase of life like both in as a parent. You know, it was the center of my life. My children, you know, they needed me us Emma and I and and also they provided the greatest gift, joy, pleasure, entertainment, whatever it is. They no longer need us in the same way. And you know I have aut university. She doesn't need us, really, she she wants it. And the other one will be gone soon. Um I'm no longer playing the action hero leads and things. I'm always playing the father, for instance. So that's an interesting thing to to not be at the center of stories. Um as I moved towards producing and directing and writing all the others, developing and all the other stuff. So my work of progress is too is to become okay, to become more okay with how light my footprints in the world. You know, I carried, I think, guilt for not doing more. My mother was mother was a very different one. She's dead now, but she was a remarkable woman in many ways, who should have run a country, but instead round a family and started lots of charities and did lots and lots and lots of things for charity and got herself arrested lots of times and protested, and she never forgot, maybe even to the extent of neglecting a family, that the point of life was service and to try and be obvious to heal her own discards that she never looked at. So it's a complicated picture. She wasn't mother Teresa. But but nonetheless I learned, you know, at her foot, from a very early age, that the most useful thing you can do in life is be obvious to other people and care and listen to other people. And I've done some of it, you know. And I do not every single charity thing I'm asked to do, because you know, I both know you asked to do millions. But I've picked some charities and I do some things for them. Um. But I've spent quite a lot of my life reading newspapers and engaging with the world thing and never forgetting that, for instance, today Afghanistan is a failed state, you know, and that literally tens of millions of people are on the point of starving, you know, maybe ten millions starving to death if we don't help them soon. That Yemen is a failed state, that there are again tens of millions of people displaced people in the world, and that and thinking that either and the climate change, all the other things that can fill one's head with gloom and doom. UM, And I've spent quite a lot of my life thinking I must not be present and enjoy what's going on now. It's a it's a it's a dereliction of my duty as a human being to um if I'm not working often more for other people, giving more of my money i've earned away and doing more to help, and that there's something obscene about living in the West and living this life where I just give a little bit of money away into a little bit of charity because I'm a celebrity, and not do more. And so you asked, what's my work in progress is to it's both to acclimatize myself to this next phase with my wife that we're no longer parents who are hovering over children, and my working life is changing, and to both do more and be comfortable with how little it is that I do um in the world because I can't change at all, and I can do more, and I think if I do more, are worry less because I think it's an indulgence. It's a it's an indulgence of a would be you know, do good or liberal to to not do enough, but to carry it heavily on my conscience as if that is activism. It's not activism, it's it's piousness. That's actually virtue in a virtue signaling that phrase that I hate. So one of the things I if by working progis me what do I want to work on in my life? The art? Yeah, I love telling stories. I think they're important. I think you can tell stories and touch people and help them feel less alone, help them make different choices. But in terms of the bigger picture of my life, I want to do more for other people and worry about how little I do less get ou