Mary-Louise Parker is a Tony-, Golden Globe-, and Emmy-award winning actress. Mary-Louise joins Sophia on the podcast today to talk about she found acting as a way to speak to the world, her humanitarian efforts through both the David Lynch Foundation and Hope North, how social media can be used for the better, her book Dear Mr. You, and so much more!
Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions
Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo
Editor: Josh Windisch
Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters
This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy
Hi everyone at Sophia, and welcome back to Work in Progress. Today's guest is Tony Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning actress Mary Louise Parker. Mary Louise is probably most recognizable for playing Nancy Botwin, the protagonist of Weeds, but she is also a powerhouse performer in live theater. She originated roles and shows like Proof, Heisenberg, Prelude to a Kiss, and so many more. She's a phenomenal writer who has written for The New York Times, OH Magazine, Esquire, and even put out a critically acclaimed book, Dear Mr. You. In her personal life, Mary Louise is an avid practitioner of transcendental meditation and mother of two. She often travels as part of her humanitarian efforts through both the David Lynch Foundation and Hope North, an organization dedicated to helping you Gonden orphans, child soldiers, and Civil war victims find safety, stability, and access to education. Mary Louise is one of those people who seems to be able to be both openly self aware and incredibly empathetically focused. And I am so excited for both you and me. I'm a huge man to get to know her a little bit better today. Enjoy. Well, just before we get started, I've always wondered, do you prefer to be called Mary Louise or just Mary? What's what's yours? Mary Louise? Thanks for us It is Mary Louise. Okay, great, I thought so. My parents always called me so got it. I've got a girlfriend who I did a show with years ago, Bethany Joy, and she goes by that professionally. Of all her friends just call her Joy. So I always feel like, because of her, I'm very conscious of double named ladies. Yeah. I did with like a lot of uh nicknames, and it kind of gives you. I feel like it gives you, like this, like the agency to constantly create new ones if you feel like it, look just randomly, which I guess you should have anyway, if you feel like using a new name, I don't know, there's something kind of nice about it. I'm really curious who was Mary Louise as a little girl? Were you this, you know, sensitive and inquisitive and intelligent and exploratory or were you really different? I was really different. I was really really fearful of other people, and I would actually go not not metaphorically. I would actually go under my bed with a flashlight and read with the curtain strawn. And I was that kid, you know, that wanted to get in the corner and in a way that just didn't didn't feel very nice. I don't I don't really know why, Like it's something I may never really understand. Maybe I was born like that. I'm not sure. But it was just so easy to hurt my feelings that a teacher could look at me the wrong way and I would cry. So it was really harrowing, I think from my parents. When I said I was going to go you know, I'm going to New York or well first I'm going to acting school and to be an actor. I think everyone I was like okay, because I did. I mean, I didn't talk very much and I stuttered and I was just very I still feel like that awkward in the room. But my parents were like genies in a way that I will never match. My mother could be a little transparent and I could stay she's like, she's going to New York. But my dad was always like, yeah, yeah, I think that's the right choice. That's yeah, you're gonna do that. Okay, You're quitting all your academics because you want to focus on your Okay, good, Yeah, I like that. And yeah, it's just like you're going to New York and you're gonna do great, Like everything is just like it's a given that what you're doing is right, that you will do well. Not in a way like you're gonna sort of the skies. It's just like, no, you're gonna do exactly what you want in your way. And once I started acting and I had that, I did and could not that I feel like I'm like the best actress or anything, or like I've done everything right or but but that, but I found a way to speak to the world, you know. And I also, for whatever reason, just kind of emerged fully I don't have confident is the right word. But no, I'm doing it my way. I want to do it this way, not fully fully across the board, but for the most part. And there was like an evolution of that. And there have been like moments said I fail for the most art, especially for a girl in the eighties and the nineties. Yeah, I did, and to the point where, um, a lot of people didn't like it. It's strikes me watching you speak about it, and you know, the folks listening can't see you, but you're when you're talking about that emergence, you're you're you're coming up almost like a like a tree. You're you're moving like you feel embodied. And it sounds to me like you got rooted in yourself when you could perform. And and this might be a leap, but having done my homework and read through everything I could about your life, it strikes me that you know, to be rooted, you have to be planted somewhere. And you mentioned this. You lived in Europe, you were born in South Carolina, and and you moved around a lot when you grew up. And and I think about for a kid, especially a fearful kid, because I had that moving around a lot little girl. It made me nervous. And and yet I also think as an adult that moving around and meeting different people and living in a huge city like l A and a five thousand person cattle ranch town in northern California, and all these places made me curious about the world. And I think it informed somehow in my being what I do now as an activist and an advocate. And you do a lot of them, and so I might be just projecting what feels similar about our experiences, but it strikes me as really interesting that that perhaps the bouncing around in a bit of a culture shock, which also I imagine made you so curious and able to fit in anywhere. It might have been at war. And then you you got back to North Carolina and you went to school, and you started doing your thing, and and you rooted. Maybe, Yeah, when when were you most comfortable as a child, And by child, I mean like from like seven to twelve, when were you the most Yeah, relaxed. I was the most relaxed. I started going to a summer camp up in the mountains in California, sixty miles northeast of Fresno, like up in the Sierras, just nothing around for miles. And I went there every summer for a couple of weeks, starting at nine, and I went there until I was eighteen. And that's where I was always the most comfortable. There. There was tumult um at home for a while from eight to twelve, like every family has their version of and and there was a lot of academic expansion and finding myself in theater in high school. But I also went to this all girls school, which gave me intellectual freedom, but there was a lot of strange, sort of mean girls dynamics, and and it was it was my summer camp. That was my place where I always felt like I got home and I felt really free, and I just that that's what comes to mind. First. Was it the people there or was it the surroundings or I think it was the people there was like a core group of friends I grew up with there, and you know, my high school sweetheart was my best friend from camp since I was nine. And and then it was also I think the structure that I didn't realize was teaching me but as a young girl to be you know, riding horses and going on hikes and learning to rock climb and and doing water sports and all of these things, you know, sleeping in a tent for three weeks. It just it gave me strengthen myself. So that that's what comes to mind. It's not so much a year and not having your parents there are yea, yeah, I think because there was an independence and yet you know, a structure of safety. Um, but I couldn't, you know, I couldn't like lean into my mom's leg. I had to go out and do things. And were you like, were you less inclined to do that when you were at home? Do you feel like you like more stayed at home. There was for me more more of a of the pressure to, you know, be a good girl daughter of an immigrant family. You know, you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a lawyer or a doctor and get straight a's and do the things and work for dad on the weekends, and and it I felt like I had to be so good, which is interesting for my parents to hear now, but you know, kids take in what they take in, and and at camp, I felt like I got to be free. Was was there a year for you? And I'm curious or or a place because you bounced around, Was there a place or or a season that in your childhood felt that way for you or you felt free or perhaps even more curious in my childhood those years, I would just say when I was reading, I'd say that's probably it, or writing, Yeah, there's not. It's not a not a whole lot of freedom. What did you love to read? I didn't need super you know, like hyper academic stuff, but I had read all the time, and I love to read, and I just remembered recently and I went and asked my mom. She's ninety seven, and of course she was like, oh, honey, I don't remember. But I was like, don't don't you remember? I was like, how old was I when you used to take me to the library and just lead me there? Because that was a totally safe thing to do. And also I was a kid that you couldn't leave any aware by myself. But at the library, I was okay and really happy, and yeah, you don't have to pull me out of there. Now, when I think about it, I wish i'd had an instrument. You know, it's said I had that same thing where um my brother quipped piano, So I quipped piano. You know, I think things like that are enormously like fortifying for kids in a major way, to the point where I would say it's okay to push your kids at the expense of their chores, because I think, God, I just don't even there's a list of reasons why. But you know, last night we got home really late, and lately I've been like, okay, I just need to be really really succinct and thorough about this. And I said to my daughter. I said, I know, it's really late. I asked you this morning, but you owe me seven minutes. Because I said, just seven minutes on the harp or the flute or whichever. You know. She thought I met seven minutes the next day. So I sat there waiting, and I was getting really bad. But they're old enough now where I can already see like, oh yeah, I messed that up. And I messed that up. But I believe it's okay at the expense of chores, at the expense of whatever, something like that, or if they write or anything, you know, swimming, anything that's like, um gets them moving in their body and their mind and there. And I think music is just enormously powerful, and I wish I had it as a I wish it was a vehicle for me, you know, other than just sitting and listening to it. Me too. I it's funny now I think about all the things that I rolled my eyes at as a kid, and now I'm going, God, I just wish they'd pushed me a little harder, because I just started taking piano lessons this year and oh my god, wait, how older you can I ask? I'm thirty eight, okay, So I'll just tell you that. And it's kind of embarrassing. But I started piano at forty four. I think I was doing a play, and for I did it when I was little, and then I quit and then I started again, and for whatever reason, because I was doing a play, I actually practiced until I got a nerve damage, Like I practiced my face off. I was doing Beethoven. Yeah, to the point where a guy that I ended up dating, who was a musician, came to the play. I thought I was pianist, and I loved it. I loved it. I ended up with that musician. I was too embarrassed to practice in front of him, and I didn't play again. So if you're thirty eight, please don't stop. Like thirty eight is to me, that's that's really young, Like you can do so many things, like I'm so excited for you that, oh my gosh, please don't stop, Please don't stop. Well do you do you want to start again? Do you need a piano accountability buddy? Oh my god, I kind of love this because and I'm staring right at my piano when I say that, I kind of do. And my daughter said to me, you know, she's like it's not too late, mom, It's not kind of is and that I can play like three scales. At this point, there's not a lot that I can do, but the the interesting thing and I'm having this mind blowing moment I mentioned to you. You know, I grew up in in the house I grew up in, and I always thought I was going to be a doctor, And now I wish I learned how to play the piano. And in the job I'm currently doing, I'm playing a doctor who plays the piano. And I just realized I've called all of this into my life. Yeah, And so when you talk about it for your play, I just I think about the research we get to do, you know, to prepare for the pilot of the show. I was shadowing heart surgeons. I was in on open heart surgeries. I was I feel in an open heart surgery. It's amazing. Is held the valve. Yes, Yeah, incredible. It is the most incredible rush in my experience. And I just think in moments like that, I think we're so lucky to be because we just get to go into these worlds like a little sponges. That's a massive privilege to be able to see that. I wasn't there because I was an actor, but maybe in some ancillary way it was because I was an actor, but what really wasn't But it's I felt like watching it was almost like seeing a ballet. And it was seeing these people moving with like such purpose, such like such direction, and all for one person who they didn't know, one human being lying on a table that they didn't know would probably never see again. What was so profound. It's mind blowing. And I remember at the moment when everything was done, standing over and the doctor you know, tells me to come and I literally look over and straight down at this man newly fixed heart and I and I looked down and he said, you know, you put your put your hand down, put your hand on his chest so you can feel. And I looked at them and I went, oh my god. And the whole room goes, oh my god, because they thought I was going to faint, you know, they get nervous about new people in the in the operating room. And I looked and I go, I'm so spied me just scare I'm not going to pass out. And I was crying, tears streaming on my face, and I just said, if beveryone could feel this war would be over, like it would just be over this this is so magical. I just I love it well interestingly enough. I don't know if this is kind of a similar moment. I was kind of leaning back against the wall and I was so overwhelmed I leaned back, not seeing where I was leaning, leaned on a light switch. Swear to Christ turned out the lights in the room during open heart surgery. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, And the profusionist was like, we've all done it. She was like, immediately there such a rock. The squirrel was such a badass, and she knew that. I just felt like such an idiot. But it didn't really affect anything. But yeah, I was just it knocked me out. I was just staring at everyone and envious in that way. That's a wonderful feeling where you don't want what they have, you just you love that they have it. There must be another word other than envious. Has such an I don't know, like a negative connotation, but it feels to me like being enamored almost satur You're like drunk on how good it is what you're witnessing. It's it's really surreal. Yeah, And it was a child wow to you, and I've gotten to know the mother a little bit. We there when they did the crack because they told me to not be there. And when they did, they cracked open the rib cage because they said some people can't. And I said, I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be okay, but I'm I wanted to be humble and say, I don't know, there's every chance that, Yeah, yeah it's wild. Maybe I can't. Maybe I'll be in there. I don't. I don't know what I'm going to feel. But so they said, let's just just crack the rib cage open and then you can enter. And then I got to stand, as you said, right there for much of it. And there were two surgeons like working together and uh to music in the room. Yes. You know what I love about it is that the surgeon stand on either side like this. They almost make a heart. Oh my god, yes they do. Interesting. I have somewhere you might want to go with me some day. Yeah it's yes, the place in Rwanda. Yeah, with um every year heart surgery. Okay, yeah, yes is and yeah, I want to talk to you about all of it. I mean, there's so much. We went from college to heart surgery and then your AI you see like the echo cardiogram, Like it's all so poetic that um that there are all these chambers right the doors to the heart and passageways. And when you know, the heart like has to work too hard, it becomes exhausted, and it's the blood can't be directed because it's it's the organised working too hard. And it's also like still when it gets snatic and everything like builds up too much and that it can't push through and it can't get to the rest of the body. The whole thing is one like giant poetic metaphor. It really is. And that's something I'm really curious about for you because do you've just been open about your you know, your emotional sensitivity. It requires incredible sensitivity and to be an actor, especially an actor of your caliber. You're talking about your love of you know, systems and science and learning things as as you Mary Louise, and I imagine because it also feeds your art. And one of the things I think so much about is that there's this strange duality for performers whereby you're meant to be accessible to people and also you have to protect your energy and especially because your body is your instrument, your body has to be in flow. You have to feel like things are moving and free in order to do what you do. How do you do that for yourself? And I guess when did you find it? Was that also part of finding your voice at school? You know when you when you went to university in North Carolina? Did it begin there or has it been a later into your career, um kind of quest. Well, when you say that, the first thing that occurs to me is the theater, which is that's the only time where I don't like, no one comes in my dressing room after a half hour unless there's something wrong with one of my kids. It's really entirely for me. And usually I get to the theater as early as I can. When I first had my son, I've had him kind of in a biorn and I would put my makeup on in the mirror and that was that was its own thing. But for the most part, that's the time that I really take to prepare and I don't need to answer to anybody, and nobody sees it, and nobody knows what I need in there, and nobody can give me anything. I'm the only one who can provide what I need. And I think that's understanding that I need to This phrase is like it's a bit trite, but I kind of need to take care of myself before I go on and I reasa even though I've been doing theater, you know for like thirty five years or whatever. Uh more actually not good with math, but probably more that I need to take care of myself after. And people love to come backstage after a play, and sometimes they do and it's fine, but I think I always thought it sounded pretentious to make it seem like, oh, I need to be alone after, but I kind of do. And I remember when I did how I learned to drive the first time off Broadway, um, and when I did proof there's back exit, and I just remember getting in the car and putting on my headphones and just feeling like I was high and it would not have happened were I with someone else. And that time after I come off stage, I'm not my most successful in communicating with other people, and I am a bit of a loose cannon and I might say the wrong thing or uh it's not even so much that sometimes I'm so worried that i' would just say the wrong thing that I kind of get all twisted up and it's unpleasant, and it's it's nice to come off stage and just like keep that for a while. So I'm trying to learn to at least take a moment. If people have to come in, they come in. But I don't really like to see anyone after at all. I really quite hate it. But I love knowing that people were there, and I love hearing that people were there, and I've had some sweet encounters after that. I wouldn't want to trade, but I kind of really like to be by myself then. And when I think of acting, I think of the theater. The rest of it doesn't. It just doesn't really come to my mind because it's not how I see myself off as an actor. Um, even though I've done the other stuff. That's so interesting to me because well, I mean, god, your theater resume is just like it's iconic, the shows that you have put up and and crafted and the impacts that they've made. I hope, I hope you can just love that for you know, us, for outsiders who have come to watch you work. It's it's so moving. But I feel that way about your your on screen performances too. I mean what you did with Weeds, I mean, come on, you were the Nancy Botwin was the original anti hero. She was this you playing her. You you were willing to put all of the human beings, you know, complication and emotion and mess and confusion and fear and beauty. You like, you threw it all out there. And you know, I believe had to have been part of of what is now in our lifetime, the successful push to legalize Really really nice of you to say that. I really think so. I was really lucky that I got that part and that I had that experience available to me. I was so so lucky. And ironically, I remember when I when I said that I wanted to do that. I wanted to do a TV show because I just had a baby, and I just was like, Okay, I need to figure out a way to make money steadily, you know that won't disrupt his life. And I wanted to do that character. And people made fun of me, not made fun of me. Some people questioned it, and some people were like people openly mocked me. Hello, Chris Rock, Like uh like that I was at showtime, you know, and I think I won the Golden Globe, I think, and he was like, nobody's watching Showtime except Snoop Dogg. Nobody's watching her show except Snoop Dogg. And it was kind of a joke that I was on Showtime and I just kind of thought, well, it didn't it really truly doesn't matter to me where I was doing it. And there were people who are like, well, you offered this, these other networks are really prestigious and you should do like this to that, and I was like, I just really liked that character, and I felt like that was one of the choices I made that I it was the right choice, and I'm glad. I'm glad I made it. And oddly enough, like I went back to Showtime later for something and I was kind of invisible. It was weird. It was almost like a satire where somebody goes back and nobody's really It's not like I expected anyone to be deferential, but really it was as though, you know, what's your name and who are you're seeing, and like everyone was and they were like, yeah, we can't just sit down over here. Sorry, they're gonna be late. And I don't know, this business is so humbling and I think people think that it's it's constant adulation and um much the opposite. Surprised when people get close to me when there have not been anywhere near this business and see how your perfect strangers can come up to you on the street and say things that are like, you know, quite not very nice, and you have to love it really a lot and want to do it to kind of withstand that, because that that can be a lot. It seems like there's an idea from the outside that it's fabulous and glamorous, and on the inside everyone's like no, I mean, we just work in these big warehouses that often don't have air conditioning, and like we're just here. It's like us and it's the transport guys, and it's the camera guys, and that's just what we're doing. It's actually very unglamorous. It's it's hard work and you have to love it. And and I think the piece that's missing is what people see is the produced episode or the movie or they see an a word show, and it's like we all feel like I feel like a clown every time I go to an words show. I'm like, I don't do this. We don't wear like these expensive clothes and borrowed jewelry. This is crazy and it and it makes me giggle in a way, but it also makes me realize that I think everyone assumes you're being put on a pedestal everywhere else, so they kind of want to be the one to not get make you feel regular. And you're like, look, I just get knocked in the head like sixty times a day. That's just had a friends say that to me full on once. Well I just figured you got the fanfare from everyone else, so I was no, I mean that that hurts. You don't get it from anywhere. I saw your movie. I didn't get it. I thought, you know, you didn't look so or my friend said. Her sister said to her, once, you know, they're going to have to get you more flattering bathing suits, and she was like, you're my sister. I don't need you, you know, And I don't mean you don't behave like a Twitter troll. Yeah, well, there's as his evidence, if not proven. Now, human beings have an inherent need for certain kind of attention. Most people, if they did, they wouldn't use social media, because no one uses social media expecting nothing in return. No one uses social media in a vacuum, expecting like no one to look at it. Right, So these people are like, oh, this is my shot at getting the world to look at me. And then it's like these these expressions like going viral or blah blah blah or And this is coming from a person who has no social media and thinks it's the devil. But I feel like people are so suspicious of actors, and there are some instances where I think they are right to be. But there are other people who came to this job because it was a way to communicate. And I wanted to be a regional theater actor. You know, I didn't want to be I wasn't trying to be America's sweetheart, you know. I wanted to be John Malkovich. So I guess there is no equivalent of that. Now it's young actors. Makes me sad. It's like they they put their stuff online or they I don't know, and they they're holding their phones up until someone calls cut or action. Yeah, it's interesting. I find such a conundrum with it because I look at it as a as a vehicle to talk about important things, to do some political advocacy, and to educate on social issues and to you know, boost platforms of community leaders. And I feel like, if everyone on online is selling something, I want to just have an intellectual space. And then on the flip side, I'm like, but then I'm online and I'm looking at when everyone is selling and it makes me feel crazy. Yeah, but then I'm a hypocrite too, because then there are times when I'm like, but you don't have social media, But how came you're reading that bullshit? And I don't even know how I got there. It's like I like searched something and it led me to this, which led me to that, which but it happens some kind of like our phones were designed by the same companies that designed slot machines. They're meant to be addictive and fluffy, and you know, I don't think it's true. I don't think it's This year, like, I've learned the power of what you spoke about, like how it can be used for good in different ways. And I wanted to talk to you about the company fashion Kind because I worked with this company in Ethiopia that helps get women off the streets. It's a leather company's first of all, it's the most beautiful products, and I'd like to send you something from there. But also it's of the employees are women, and so many of them come from the community and came from being trafficked or in Wisconsin, life of prostitution, and now have the craft. Even if they leave this company, they can go, yeah, somewhere else and and use it. And I I also feel really free about endorsing this company because I've been to the factory and I've also looked, you know, been to the red light district in Ethiopia and Otists which is harrowing and prostitution really one of the biggest open air markets in East Africa's and Addisa Baba, so a lot of girls and the bus stop is there, like girls get off the bus from their village and their virginity is being trafficked and minute. So I think it's so interesting when we think about earlier conversation about the sort of pressure as we were given as women, and I think about global violence against women and how physical violence against women is is in so many places used as a as a weapon of war, and how the creation of a craft an ability to make your own money and be in control of your own destiny everywhere is the future for women. It's it's the crux of the abortion debate that we have here. You know, should you be able to plan your family when you can? And and it's an issue when we talk about you know what, you're bringing up global trafficking and and I I just I get very excited about whether it's through the company you're referring to, our fashion kind, which you know I'm working with um, or even tech companies blossoming and in parts of the world. The idea that we can create new pathways to truly independent freedoms feel so exciting. And I think especially the artisanal nature of fashion and handcrafted things around the world is so often passed through generations of women. So the the opportunity for not only artistic preservation but economic empowerment thrills me. Um. I got to visit years ago a couple of companies doing similar things in Uganda, working with women who had been brought out of the l r A conflict, and I just I see these to your point about hearts, I see these doorways opening, and I'm so excited to figure out the ways at the best of us, this internet connectivity, right like the ways that we can use it to support each other all around the world. It's exciting to me. It is and and and it is offering. I mean, there are we can develop options for women beyond selling your body or being a domestic slave. And in a lot of countries there's no choice. There's no option, and that's really difficult for people to understand here. And I've also seen like a lot of people in this country, even when their heart is in the right place, wanting to fix certain things that they see, uh in other countries, like oh, i'm we're building a well and things like that that you know, once you've spent considerable amount of time in one of those countries, it's not necessarily always the best thing for a community for white people to come in build a well and then leave, you know, or to like donate a bunch of their used clothes, like through their church or whatever and have them show up, and a lot of countries won't accept them anymore, and they shouldn't, you know. It's it's also understanding what is the best way two figure out what people need, which isn't always what you feel you want to give. Well. Empowering community leaders, they're the ones who know their communities, and we've got to really, I think all of us need to get out of our own way a little bit where we think, oh no, I have an answer for this. I learned about this. It's like you have to be the expert here, and that's okay. It doesn't mean that you're not useful or that your help is unwelcome. It just means you need to you need to lift from behind, not try to lead in a place where you are a stranger. Wow, well said, very well said, when did you start going to Ethiopia? My daughter is born in Ethiopia and my best friend is Ugandan. He was had a school, has a school to transitioning out of being a school that he started for um ex child soldiers. He was a child soldier and I took my kids. We visited that school a bunch of times. And Rwanda I've visited a lot, and it's it's not something I talked about a hold up because I find people are as I was saying before, like suspicious of actors when they undertake causes like this, and and rightfully so, because I've I've been around people who were making photo ops, who did fly in for two days and shake someone's hand and sometimes actually they did bring attention to something in a good way. Sometimes that is useful, but a lot of times I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. So I understand people being a little suspicious of that. And it's not like a photographed there are like bring you know, cruise people with me, but um, it's just a place in the world that I love. That if you told me two years ago that's where you'll end up being your most comfortable, your happiest, and I would have would have been a very big surprise, Terry, big surprise. It has been a big surprise. It's like, so was it adopting your daughter and then the subsequent years of spending time there was that how you found Hope North? Yes, well, when I first went to Ethiopia, that was the first time I've been to Africa. Uh, and I met my friend. You know, that does go back to my daughter, because I remember the person who introduced me to my friend Okello. I thought, oh, well, Mary Louise has ties to Africa, so I think that is how I ended up meeting him. A lot a lot goes back to goes back to my daughter and it's interesting that we were talking about this time in history and how we're examining things that we do and that we've thought, and ways we've had of behaving that are not aren't as useful anymore. And so many of those I feel so grateful for and relieve about for my daughter's sake, because I don't want her to go through some of the things that I went through. And then there are other things ways in which I worry because I have a son, and there are preconceptions that people have handsome young white men. I don't know. It's an interesting time to have a lot of different conversations. But both my kids are so passionate, and they have traveled so much and they've been exposed to so many extremes. Okay, so this is something that interests me, you know. And and look, I think we all are on a journey to understand ourselves right and like know what our emotions have a tendency to do. And I'm so curious about how you figure out where you do want to open up. You know, you're you wrote this book, dear Mr You, and it's it's a direct address to men, you know, some from your real life. And then some who are these fictional archetypes who have impacted you. And it's so I felt so seen by it, and I imagine so many women who read it did and it it feels so open and honest, and I wonder, how do you, as Mary Louise, figure out where you really want to open up and you know, crack your crack your chest for the world to see, and in what ways you want to keep things on the inside. How do you make that determined love that you understand that metaphor having seen the same thing. I think it's instinctual, you know, I think, um in the same way that it's just more animals, right, and for whatever reason, Um, I'm show dog, you know. I think I know I know how to do that. Not so much on philm. I mean I feel like on a stage like that's that's kind of mine. Even the worst, even when I feel like I'm dying out there at the worst night ever whatever, Like it just still feels like something I understand. That's primal, that's like ancient, that's that's sacred, and I love it, uh. And I feel that way about writing as well, and writing sometimes I write things that are really can be quite bald, you know, And that's just how they fall out of me. There's a lot of there's some stuff in my book that's some stuff that's violent, there's some stuff that's quite, you know, and see seventeen. You know, it just comes out like that. And I love that process and I love that now. And this will be great for you in like seven years. Like once you're just like just past like three or something. People try you just a little bit different, you know. Like I remember, like when I first had my book and I was good. People were treating me in a different way that I really really enjoyed. And I always hated conversations about acting and you know, interviews, and I always felt I just could never find that. I never found that, to be honest, it just wasn't done. I just couldn't do that. But expressing myself through writing, and I love writing, and like poetry is my thing. I'm not a good poet, but like I like nobody loves polishy more than me. I'm like, I'm poetry freak. And I have poetry club tonight on the street a bunch of other freak nerds and um yeah, and I and I started it, yeah with what a geek, I am, but I like words for me are it's instinctual that I go there, and I know how to do that. But what was also interesting is when I was your age about I wrote for Esquare for years, like fifteen years, and nobody mentioned my pieces in Esquire to me, and when they did, they mentioned the photos that accompanied them. And that's totally my fault, because of course there I was and like underwear or like some freaking of course it thing, which is whole other conversation we could have some time. But people would say. In fact, a friend who I bet he wouldn't remember saying this, but he said it. Somebody had known a long time asked me who helped me write it, and somebody else asked me who wrote it for me? And it was so kind of crushing, and there's tiny bit of me that was flattered, But it was also crushing in a way that I did not mentioned that I wrote to almost anyone. I just did it, you know, for what I her publication than when I was writing my book, Like my close friends didn't know that I was writing a book, and halfway through writing it, I almost died, right I was in the hospital and I had this new assistant who was like coming to the hospital, like he met me in the hospital. Is a very good friend now, but we joke because he's he kept going up to my friends going she keeps talking about him book, and I was really really sick, right like I had accepsis like nearly dine and she's talking about a book. And they were like, oh no, no, she's not writing a book, like they thought I was hallucinating. They're like no, no, no, He's like, but she wants me to call her literary agent. Like two of my friends are like, no, no, there's there's no literary Oh my god, Like yeah, So I squashed that in the same way I squashed piano, you know, because I was kind of felt like I had to apologize for it. You know, but that's not going to happen to you because the world is like a little bit further along. You're much smarter than me. I can tell, like from the past forty minutes, like and it's just around that corner when you're you're going like, uh, I can't wear these kind of skirts anymore. You're like, yeah, but I get to have these kind of conversations and people fucking will listen to me. I will say though I've had that experience. I've had the experience of having ideas and squashing things. I mean, God, there's binders full of you know, like little moleskin notebooks everywhere of like I want to start this and this could be a cool company, and what if we made a product? Like I don't know. I think there's something about you get there. When you get there. You can't rush it, you can't rush your development. But I think what you can do is lean into your creativity. And I feel like I'm I'm learning so much this year about this and I realized, now in hindsight, you know, a year and a half into doing this podcast, I think I created this so I could have the kinds of conversations I wanted to have, because I was so sick of doing an interview and being asked basic questions and then getting to the really interesting stuff and then seeing three poll quotes that were so random and sometimes cheesy, and I thought, you know, I want to have the sorts of conversations with people that I have around my dinner table and that I I grew up dreaming about having with other creative people in my adult life, like that fantasy of having a house full of writers and musicians and creators and activists and good food and great wine. Like I would think about that as a young kid. I think because I I felt weird in the room a lot, and and this these spaces, these kinds of conversations will juicy like that to me. Yeah, it's like this the salon right, Like I have that fantasy too. I've always had that. Nicole Brigette and I talked about at one point, like when we're six to five, we should move to Norway and just have salons where we like invite people in. But you know, we could do that here all here, like I invite the people in and like have the cheese plate and the conversations that we want to have, and it's like that old fashioned It's like, yeah, it's like George sand and like it's like that that period of time, like we're all sitting around talking about things and arguing about things that I love it when people are in the room and they're like arguing and people are coming from totally different places and then at the end of the night thing us it's like that you're not just not allowed to have that anymore. And I was like, that's I want to have that. I'm not going to learn anything having conversations with myself, right, I agree? I agree? My god. I just spent time um on this ecological reserve and I had this moment where I thought, Oh, this is what we're missing standing and I'm looking at this girl on this side, who is you know working there? Who's this girl who grew up vegan in New Hampshire, like campaigned for Bernie super interesting environmental science, you know student. And then on this side these two guys in their fifties from Texas who've been coming to this place to hunt elk forever and they're you know, one of them is asking me about the book I've been reading, and it's a book about the history of breath. And I'm talking to him about, you know, what they're finding in the evolution of human skulls. And he was like, I don't really do evolution, you know, I'm a faith guy, and I and I challenged him to this idea that a friend of mine who grew up in a certain evangelical tradition said, well, what if you know, what if every one of God's seven days was millennia long. And he was like, well, that's really interesting. I guess that that makes for room for science and God. And and she's talking about you know, and we're talking about the restoration of this land and how you have to keep the elk herd at a certain size um, and that's how they're bringing back the endangered trout and bald eagles are coming back and soon wolves are coming at all And I was like, look at all of us having these fascinating discussions together. The echo chamber is just a creation of someone who makes money on people fighting, and and we can be in spaces together and learn from each other. And it made me feel so it just excited, and it reminded me of the potential for exactly that discourse, debate and then really seeing each other. Yeah, how amazing would it be if we could get like that little microcosm of that experience that you had and like like multiply it, you know, like go around the world and create these little salons and like bring people and bring people completely opposite together to have conversations, knowing that at the end, like we're gonna shake hands and that, you know, and and setting the one ground rule as in this space, you have to of everyone the very best benefit of the doubt. Assume that everyone here, whether you believe the same or you don't, really really cares about someone. I think in that moment, you can humanize each other so quickly. It's it's the way that I felt that day an open heart surgery that I was telling you about my first my first day. The the next morning, my my head surgeon sent me a photo of our patient awake in the I see you giving me a thumbs up, and I burst into tears. I think about this man all of the time. I have no idea what he believes. I have no idea what his politics are. I don't know about the health of his family, though they seemed like they really loved each other. They were all there. I got to meet them all after surgery. But I love him. I've touched his heart, and I love him. I know h And I just think I think we could do percent what you're saying. I know what you're saying, like, and I remember seeing my son when this kid the same name as my son, his name was William uh came out of heart surgery and he was really tricky case. And there's could not be wrobes. And there are things that I think if he knew about my son's life and they're just so so different, but that he just wanted he really took to my son. He just wanted Will to just hold his hand, you know, and just seeing like that's the most This woman, Kathy Lemays, philanthropists brilliant. And I was talking to her about the school I was trying to keep open for the longest time, you know, because I had my whole ideas about how I could help, but she was saying, no, No, the best thing that you can do. And what I've discovered is when you go to these wartron countries, you go to these like areas where there's just overwhelming need is to just sit with people, and it's a hundred percent just sit hold somebody's hand. And I've done that more times than I can count, with people who we shared maybe five words. And seeing my kids able to do that too makes me really proud. So when you think about those causes, you lean into um and if you wouldn't mind, you know, telling folks a little bit about what Hope North is because I realized I forgot to circle back. And and also the David Lynch Foundation. I mean, you work with these two great organizations. And I first learned TM when I was twenty three, which for anyone listening at home who doesn't know, TM stands for transcendental Meditation. I studied with a UM, a phenomenal teacher here in l A And I would just love for you to tell people a little bit about them, because I would imagine that the leather company in Ethiopia is Parker Clay and it's Parker Clay all spelled out dot com one word and it's not my partners. They named the company after their two sons when when they only had they were watching this a couple of their friends of mine watching Hotel Rwanda, and they were completely devastated. What can we do? They picked up their families were like, what are you doing? They moved to Africa, started this company, adopted children. Like seeing what they've done with their energies really really moving, and their products are beautiful and something that you can feel good about buying. That's fine. Hope North is in Uganda, It's near Gulu, It's in the north and it's a beautiful area the world that I love so so much. And we were not able to sustain it. UM we were not able to make a self sustaining place as a charity, and it's being transitioned now out of being a school and and saw the kids are gone trying to find some use of that land of which I don't know yet. I was trying to trying to figure that one out. And I well, the organization that I mentioned to you that I worked with UM in Uganda, one is based in Gulu. So I'll make a couple of phone calls and they're up to because I know they're expanding, they're hiring so many more women, and really maybe it's a kids met moment where they need another facility. Well, the surrounding areas of that place of Hope North just so poverty stricken and just a tiny bit of education would go so far. They're like every time I'm there with Okala, we would walk around and he'd say, look at everything that grows here, This like avocado, mango. They're never going to eat it. They think that is to be sold in the market. And they're just boiling cassava down with boiling all the nutrients out of it, and their babies are dying. So I think in that area of world the world, like a little bit of education would go so far, like female hygiene, just a little bit of help. Yeah, we take for granted here the amount of information we have an access to public health information and education. I mean we to your point about how it's hard for people to understand how there are regions of the world where women literally have no choice in their own future. There are there are just spaces that have been so disempowered where there's no access and I and I know that gets us into a larger you know, geopolitical conversation and often um, you know, historical influence that's been inappropriate on on behalf of our country and any others like us. But I think that again, my hope is that the best of the digital age can bring us to a place where we can, um, we can offer our neighbors around the world the same things we can offer to our literal next door neighbors. And that's a fantasy for me, and especially with this particular piece of land. And now I have this fantasy after talking to you of this like moving salon movable. I'm in we can be we I'm so into this. A piano accountability and a traveling circus of a salon. I'm obsessed piano accountability is like genius. Just as afraid. I'm just gonna start texting you photos of my keyboard. It's going to be great. Please please um um no, I'm gonna I'm gonna wait for it. And also as far as the David Lynch Foundation, uh yeah, my kids presented me with an award, which I felt weird about getting because I don't really talk about the charity work that I do, but I've out like because I feel like it feels a bit cheesy. But at the same time, I felt like these gallows, it's not like they were Yes, they were honoring me so lovely, but it's like a reason to have a gallows so they can raise more money for David Lynch Foundation, which is giving so much peace and healing to so many people, you know, abused women veterans alone. Is that's so close to my heart. My dad was a soldier. Both my brothers or soldiers, and they've done so much work there. And I had a father who came back from he was in three wars. He came back from World War Two and Korea's no nothing for him. Nobody gave him anything, no help, and that's a lot of PTSD. And I grew up with the dad who had that. I mean, he was a wizard and a hero, but he was shaken and traumatized. And David Lynch, you know, in the most practical, simplest terms, and you know, if you meditate like gives that gift to so many veterans and has saved so many lives. And one of the things I think is so cool about being alive in this moment when we have again access to all this information, is to see not just the affects people tell you about about when they start meditating, in the reduction in their stress and and all of all of the kind of benefit they feel, but seeing the brain scans where people's gray matters starts expanding in their brain. And have you seen because I haven't seen anything like that. There are studies that are saying that meditation actually is able to basically expand the best parts of your brain. And one thing that I read is saying that they're planning over the next couple of years, they think they'll be able to study whether or not the benefit to the brain could actually be a way to for the young our generations to get ahead of the risk of Alzheimer's disease. That's just a theory right now, it's not it's not a fact, but even the idea that these are the things we're beginning to see in the oldest traditions. You know that the science is proving um, what some of our oldest traditions have taught. I just think is so cool. It feels like a really exceptional moment for all of the you know, pain and confusion and uncovering. I also feel like we're in this amazing moment. It almost feels like a surgery in a way, like we got to crack it open and clean out the junk, but then we could stitch it up and be healthier. Yes, when you think about that kind of expansion, I also think about the curiosity that it can create space for. And then I think about how that makes me feel excited to investigate characters and and and how we're I don't really know why this is hitting me this way right now, but I'm going to try to do my train up that clearly all of this, all these themes we're talking about feel like deepening and and uncovering and at times of revisiting and an exploration. And and I know you're also in this moment in your career where you're, uh, you're reprising your role in How I Learned to Drive. You're talking about bringing Weeds back. Do you think that this sort of moment of expansion has made you want to go back into certain things and expand in them as well, in terms of those characters and those jobs, you know, those those humans that you made. That's really interesting. Weeds honestly is pure nostalgia and money because it would be so good and it's just like I could support all my charities then. But and I don't know if it will happen. I mean, there's been talks of it. I hope that it will happen um and with me, I mean, I don't know that it will, but I hope that it will. But How I Learned to Drive, I think is an amazing exercise to play a part, because I've played a lot of parts multiple times. Each time I've been afraid that I wouldn't that I would lose what I had before, and each time I gained by discovering less in certain areas, which is interesting. And this one I'm doing twenty five, six, seven years later, and it's a part that the character is eleven, she's thirty, she supported. It's all these different ages and it hits something so deep. I don't even have any words for it. I turned it down a couple of times when they sent it to me when I was in my late twenties, because I just thought, I don't think I'm the right person for this. But I really wanted to work with Paula and I wanted to work with this director, So I said, could I just read it out loud? And I fell out of my mouth. It was just like talk about cracking your chest out. And again it just was like that one, and I just wasn't really prepared for it. You know. Sometimes like you get a script and sometimes you think, oh, these words are right there in my mouth and you go to Sam and it's like it just doesn't come out. You don't have it. But this was the opposite. This was like it was like right there. And so going back to see what it's like now, we were rehearsing already, and it was if that's the last time I ever get to act, I'm okay with it, because that in the rehearsal even just going back and doing it was so fulfilling, is the only word. If I had walked out of that studio and never acted again, I would have been like, God, I was million times luckier than I ever deserved, so so great. So I like the idea about circling back. I think it's just I was lucky to have these opportunities. And also I didn't reject them because they've never been somebody who's been like goal oriented as an actor, you know, like certain actors, one actress in particular, saying you need to just take more parts at a time when I was like, there's just not what I want to play, or like you should do this part because then you'll get this kind of part. And I never was able to operate like that neither. I never was like goal oriented or I wanted to like hit this or be this kind of actor. I don't know. I felt like I already got what I wanted and I don't need I'm just like lucky that I have it and have had it. I don't need more. When art is working, it feels free, and being strategic feels like the opposite to me a little bit. It feels the opposite. It is it is. Internally, it's just a whole different. It's like the second ago when you were said, like when you said, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but I'm going to keep with it, and I'm going As soon as you said that, I went like this, like even if I didn't do it with my body, I did it internally because you were like right in yourself figuring something out, and you were taking a risk because you were opening your mouth not knowing what you're going to say, other than like, I know there's something in there I want to say that I want to get to And there's nothing more exciting than that than somebody who's willing to be like, Okay, I don't know where I'm going, like I'm gonna try. It's like that, it's nothing more interesting to me. I immediately I'm going to sit forward when somebody like goes there, especially because and this also like I hate this in myself when I feel like my mouth opens and I know what I'm gonna say, or it's like I have this thing that comes out like a like a but I'm like like like a verse or something, you know. And I said to my kids the other day walking down the street, I said I was quoting, and now I can't remember who I was quoting smarter than me And you probably know it's like, um, those who speak hear what they already know. Those who listen learn and hear what they don't. And there's something about speaking when you don't know what you're going to say, but you know, there's something like bubbling up in there that's like m hm to be expressed. That's really really exciting to me because it's honest, right, it's honest. Well, it's like I don't know what I'm gonna say, but here I am. It's like it's the opposite of some like let me talk to you about these projects, and this is like charity, like this person that I'm like, we'll never have to say thank you though, because you you've met you've met me here. So we've had a really juicy, curious where is this going hang and like an actual conversation. And I couldn't. I wouldn't have done that or been doing this if I felt like you had set a stage where I was supposed to, you know, pitch you a thing and ask you a series of questions in a linear order, and then we were going to be like when we've come up on our time, like, it just wouldn't have been the same. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And in fact, yesterday I was walking into my living room and I heard, you know, my sister was on the phone there like is there anything she doesn't want to talk about? And I just instinctually said, no, I'm good whatever. I was like, I just want to talk to her, and like I was, what's good of it? I'm gonna ask you, this is my favorite question that I do ask everyone who comes on the podcast, because the show's called work in progress, and and kind of to the point that we were talking about earlier, we're on the outside of this business. One like looks in and goes like, well you just have it all figured out? Uh. I love to be like, no, not at all, um, We're all trying to figure it out. So I wonder for you, you know, in this moment, but the culmination of this wild last year and a half and and and the things you're revisiting and the things you're looking to create and and all of it, what what feels like your work in progress right now? I'm gonna say everything, And if you have two seconds. Do you have two seconds? Okay, this is a just a little section of this Dennis Johnson poem called The Monks Insomnia I did at one point. Now most of it my heart, but I don't know. But this part is the part that just kills me. Um. This is like three quarters of the way through the poem. So uh, if you can read the entire poem, I highly encourage it. But there's a piece in it. At night, we hear the trainers from the base down there and see them blotting out this ours and I stand on the hill and listen, bone white with desire. It was love that set me on the journey, love that called me home. But it's the terror of being just one person, one chance, one set of days that keeps me absolutely still tonight. It makes me listen intently to those young men above us flying in their airplanes in the dark. Part of that that kills me. It's the terror of being just one person, one chance, one set of days that just kind of devastates me because I don't have any fully formed idea about what happens when we die, not that it would be correct if I had an idea or not, but the idea I do associate the word terror with the idea of if this is it like and we have one set of chances? Like it's such a sobering idea, and it makes every single breath like part of a work in progress. It makes everything a living thing because ultimately everything is alive because we're all part of this one giant thing which is living. Right. So to me, there's nothing set, and there's nothing more terrifying or tragic to me than the idea of myself being set. And all I need, like all I need on earth is to know my children are okay, and then I have another chance. Ah. I think that's so beautiful. Can I offer you a section of one of my favorite poems in return? Because that felt like such a gift. There's a poet I love named Jack Gilbert. Oh my god, Jackobert is like incredible. There's there's this middle. He wrote this poem called a Brief for the Defense, and in the middle of it, I'm same. I'll just read you a section because otherwise it will be very long. But he says, we must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight, not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness, to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world, to make injustice. The only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. No, I'm crying, it just kills me. I'm kind, I'm ready. I want you to come to my poetry club. But um, yeah, Jack Gilbert, I've read one Jack Gilbert poem like three times between him. Did you ever listen to Christo Tippett interview Mary Oliver the year before she passed away on Okay, I'm gonna se dealing to It's one of my favorite podcasts. Also, you should look at Carl Phillips like, this is what a geek I am. Literally have watched the Library of Congress interview with Carl phillipy I'm writing this down freaking phenomenal and James Galvin. Also also Tony Hoagland, who just passed away. I have so many um post it notes out from this interview Tony Hoagland. You need to check out Tony Hoagland and my friend Matthew zapp Bruder, who is a badass, like, oh my god, elegy for Bob. This is a great jack Albert Pole. Look, Mark, thank you. I'm coming to Poetry Club next time I'm in New York. It's literally my favorite thing. Oh, Mary Louise has been so fun. Your dream, Oh my god. Likewise, like I want to travel the world with you and have our create our salont I can see the whole thing. I know what we're wearing. Okay, perfect. I love it.