Hi everyone, it's Sophia and welcome back to work in progress. I am delighted to have with us today prolific novelist and show creator Taylor Jenkins read. Taylor's historical fiction novel, Daisy Jones and the Six is a national and New York Times bestseller, the winner of the two thousand nineteen Good Read's Choice Awards for Historical Fiction, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. It is being turned into a mini series by Amazon Studios, produced by Reese Witherspoon. I devoured this book. Daisy Jones and the Six is written in such incredible detail that I kept going on Google to see if any of the characters in the story were actually based on real people. And I know now based on all the articles written about the book that I am not alone many of us were so so curious who Daisy was bay based on. Taylor has also penned incredibly well known novels, including The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, One True Loves, Maybe In Another Life After I Do, and Forever Interrupted. And she has a new novel coming out today, Malibu Rising. Her themes explore fame and motherhood, female strength and ambition, love, the struggles of overcoming loss and identity. Taylor and her husband, screenwriter and producer Alex Reid, have also worked together, co writing and creating Hulu comedy series Resident Advisors. On today's episode, Taylor and I got to discuss her process, how she writes these books, where she comes up with her twists and turns, and whether they inspire the entire story or reveal themselves to her in the process. We also talk about what it means to be ambitious women. Ambition is not a dirty word, and here we are so many of us, and I imagine many of you at home unpacking how we can be our biggest and brightest selves and also feel like we are achieving our goals, both in our careers and in our families. Taylor's vulnerability on this topic and what she's willing to share about how she and Alex have balance in their relationship is so incredibly poignant and I think relevant to so many of us. I'm so grateful to have had Taylor come and sit down with us today. She is an incredibly busy woman spinning all of the plates, and I know you all will be inspired and really enjoy what she has to say. Thanks for joining me today. It's really nice to see you. Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. This is I feel like we were supposed to have this year of like backyard wine and playing with your kid and my dog, and like we had a plan and then the world shut down, and I feel like we still deserve it. I know there are a lot of things that um that I mean, I have like a list of things that I'm like very eager to do once it's safe to do them. And I feel like and is just like a an abstract idea in my mind. Now I can't quite piece it together what we're going through, what has happened. Wait, that's actually so interesting that notion, because I was saying to you, I feel like time sort of folded in on itself. Like if you've ever watched one of those machines that make saltwater taffy and they go like this, You know that that is the image I get when I think about time this year, And and you saying that it feels like an abstract idea strikes me as so interesting because your work is taking abstractions and ideas and making them into incredibly detailed worlds. So are you Are you writing about this year to process it or is it still too close to home. No, I don't write about things that I'm going through. I think I mostly just unload those things on my husband every night, where I'm like, you know, I just complained and shake my uh fists to the world. But I think for me, writing is very much an escape, and I want my books to feel like an escape. And and it's interesting because there are a lot of artists that are really leaning into this period of time and uh finding ways of connection through the fact that we're we've been all very separate, and I think that's really stunning. I am like, no, no, no no, no, this is terrible. I'm gonna go back in my mind to some year that this wasn't happening, and I'm going to live there for a little while. And the work that I'm consuming is a lot of that too, Like I'm reading books that are taking me far away from here. And it's been my escape in such meaningful way this past year to just be in somebody else's story, whether it's a story that I'm writing about somebody else and somewhere else, or a story that somebody else has created that I can just lose myself in. Mm hmm, that's cool. I've been finding and and this is such a horrible and I'm almost ashamed to admit this to you, but I one of the things I've been finding that I've really been struggling with this year is I've started a lot of books and had a hard time finishing them. Yeah, Like there's something about and I don't know if it was you know, attempting to save America from the brink of authoritarianism, which each of us tried to, you know, do our best, or or if it's the fact that there's this pandemic and so many people are suffering and now you see these things happening, you know, all over the world, just devastation, you know, from here in America to columb be a Palestine, to Israel too. You know, the list just goes and goes and goes. Mean, mar I mean, what is happening? And and I'm kind of like, I don't know if it's okay to is it in my own house and read a book like I have this, I have this anxiety that I'm supposed to be doing something else or reading something else, or learning something else, and you know, if I don't give my brain a break, it will break. And so it's this weird I've just been having this really weird time. As such a lover of books, I have never had a year where I've started but not finished so many of them. And so now what I'm doing is I'm carrying the stack of all the books I've started around with me. I feel like a kid who's in school with you know, just like the heaviest backpack. And I don't know if it's some sort of weird subconscious like penance, or if I'm just really trying to motivate myself to finish them by staring at them all day. I will say, like, look, I think trying to focus right now is incredibly difficult, and I think trying to focus on things that are supposed to be for the purpose of joy is even more difficult, because the messages that were being sent all the time are you know, the world so terrible, the world so terrible, and you have an obligation to fix it. And I think that's great that for the for the first time that I can remember, there's a growing sentiment within our society that we all have an obligation to, you know, roll up our sleeves and do something about the things that are plaguing this country or this world. I think that's great, but it's also you know, we're all really tired, we're all fighting more is on multiple fronts, a lot of us, and so the idea that you're going to take time and you're gonna focus and you're gonna read and that's going to be a joyful experience can be tough. And I think I think there two elements of this that are really important. And the one is that I feel really really strongly, and I feel so strongly that I include my own books in this. If you're reading a book and you don't want to finish it, you should put it down. Like there are so many books out there, and there's so many books that I read at the wrong time in my life because well, I think there are lessons to be learned from so many stories, and you have to be at a place to receive those lessons if you're I mean, I say this with The Great Gatsby a lot. You know, we read that book. Most of us in the United States read that book is teenagers, And I think there's a lot to take from it as a teenager. There's so much more that I took from it as an adult of reading that book, and I took something different from it at twenty four than I took from reading it this past year. Um, books have to find you. Stories have to find you at the right time. And sometimes you may pick up a book and it's just the wrong time. So if it's not calling to you, put it down, and then that will give you the opportunity to pick it up when when whatever lessons that can be mine from it are more right for you. Um. There are a lot of books that that I am now going back and rereading because I realize at the time I forced my way through them. But if you force your way through a book, like your heart is not in it and you're not engaged with it, and it becomes a chore and reading, you know. I mean, Look, there's a lot of things that we should read to better ourselves, but I think reading should be a joyful thing, and it makes sense for a lot of people. Everything is about refilling your coffers and then and then using that energy to go do something right. So for for me, absorbing someone else's story most of the time fills me up. It's sort of like like I kind of feel like there's an introvert extrovert vibe to reading a little bit, because I'm I'm an introvert, so I really like being with other people. But that is that is a cost for me. That's an energy suck. And then I come home and I'm by myself and I only hear my thoughts and that's when I feel refilled, and then I can go out and talk again. And I feel like with reading sometimes it can be, you know, the opposite to me. Reading fills me up. Oh I'm reading someone else's story. I'm engaged by this. This feels effortless. This is giving me energy, and then I can go spend that energy on something else. For a lot of people, reading costs them energy, so they're gonna do it when they have extra energy. And no one has extra energy. I mean that's just been Um. I certainly don't. And so I hear I hear that a lot that like reading is difficult, um, And I just say, like, put those books down, stop carrying them. They'll find you at some other point in your life when you're ready to read them. You know, I really do think that, yeah, and I have. I have certainly found that there have been moments where a book hits me and I just can't put it down, and I'll read it in a day. And I'm also one of those people that, since I mean it started in high school but got really obsessive in college, every single book I have is you know, dog eared and annotated with notes in the margins. I can never give books to anyone because they're like, what is what is this? Like? What is this beautiful mind thing that you've handed to me? Um, you know, just like Russell Crowe like pinning red and strings all over the wall. That's it's ridiculous. So it's it is interesting, I think too, to remember that you can be in relationship to books. They'll find you, they'll you know, they'll support you, and they'll wait for you. I really think they will. And I think also like stories take so many different forms. Now you know, It's like things get adapted into various mediums, and you know, you'll have a remake of something or now that here's a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet. You know, and you know, and and you'll find your way into those stories at some point if it does truly interest you, And I think, like, yeah, having an understanding of the classics and what you know, certainly as a writer, like what came before you. There there are some things you just have to decide you're gonna buckle down and read. But on a day to day basis, Like you know, I certainly write books with the hope that it brings people joy, and not every book is right for each person. And if it doesn't bring you joy, you know, set yourself free and put the book down. So I'm so curious about your story because you know, we know you as this bestselling author who's speaking of adaptations, you know, whose work is being adapted by you know, Racee Witherspoon and other sort of Hollywood icons. Um, there's there's so much that you've done, but I want to know where it began. Were you always in relationship to books? You know, who who was Taylor as a kid growing up in Massachusetts? Did you know you were introverted? Then? You know, paint me a picture of what was happening when you were I don't know, nine or ten. Yeah, Well, well no, I was not in relationship with books. I'm not one of those authors who has the very romantic story of you know, I would I would be under the covers with a flashlight reading a book after my parents told me to go to bed. That was not me. Um. So I was born in Maryland and lived there. My parents divorced when I was very very young, and we lived in Maryland until I was about twelve. We would go back and forth from Maryland to Massachusetts basically, and like my mom was mostly Massachusetts and my dad was Maryland. And and when I turned twelve, we left Maryland just set down finally in Massachusetts. And so that's where I feel I'm from. That's where my formative memories really take place, and that's where my lasting friendships are. I mean, I didn't get into reading in any real earnest way. Like there were a few books that meant something to me throughout my teenage years. I got really into you know, brittlet like Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby. And but I was watching TV. That's that's what I was doing. That was my my storytelling medium of choice. As I was watching I was watching the wb Um, That's what I was doing. Um. And so for me, it was movies and television that we're calling to me. And I went to film school and I distinctly remember like trying to figure out what my major would be and going through all of the classes and the things that would need to happen, and I was like, Oh, it looks like a lot of being a film major or a TV major is making a film or making you know, a TV show. And I'm I don't. I don't want to like direct it. Like, I don't. I don't want to be on set. I'm like, I want to I want to be in the development part. I want to be in pre production. I want to like decide what the idea is and decide what the story is and be a part of the casting process and sort of create the idea and then let somebody else go make it. So that is not what you do in film school. So I ended up with what was called a media studies major, which is the study of film and television and sort of the place that holds in society. It's more about theory. And I decided I want to be a casting director. I was like, okay, you know, casting director puts me in pre production. It's a part of the process of you know, you take this character on the page, you find the exact right actor for it, and you make that role become three dimensional. How does the person that you choose to play the role change the role? How does that role then change the star image of the person who's involved in I was very, very interested in that, and I read a bunch of books actually on different moments in Hollywood history in which an actor found their sort of career making role and how it was supposed to originally go to somebody else. I read like this one book about that that had like ten chapters in it of like ten movies, and and I was like, well, this is this is it. I want to I want to be a part of the person that knows that you put you know, Jack Nicholson in the shining, Like how do you know to do that? Like that's you know. So I moved out to Los Angeles. I think I got here like week after my twenty one birthday, and I got a job in casting and it was an absolute blast. It was so much fun. But I worked in casting for about three years, and during that period of time, I just started to get the feeling that there was something else long term that I wanted to do, and I had started writing small things here and there, just like for fun, just like to entertain my friends of like, oh, here's a funny story, or stending sending a funny email or whatever. And then I was like, well, what if I tried to write? What if I what if I tried to write? What if that's what I'm trying to do. Is like, it's still part of that early process, But what if I'm the person making up the characters. What if I'm the person who's deciding what the story is? And I fiddled around with like a screenplay, I like had written a TV episode or two, and I was like, this is now no not quite no um and then and then I finally decided, Okay, I'm going to write a short story. And that was it. That was when I figured it out. And I was about twenty and that short story ended up becoming a novel and I sent it to a few friends and they sent it to a few friends of theirs, and people were starting to read it and they seemed to like it, and I got a little bit more confident, you know, and then it made its way into the hands of this agent who was like, I'd like to represent you. Just try to sell this, and I was like, okay, wow, like this is happening, like you know it at all started coming together. And then and then that book didn't sell, but it was it was really encouraging. It was, you know, we don't want this, but if she has something else, we'd like to read it. And at that point I felt really I knew. I was like, I'm ready to double down on this. I have found it. This is the thing I want to do. So I quit my job. I wrote a book book in two months, and that book ended up being my debut novel, Forever Rupted. And since then this is just what I've been doing, which has been incredible. Do you think, you know, when you look back on childhood. I don't know why. There there's something so nostalgic and almost romantic to me about this idea of novel writing. And I think about, you know, you settling in Massachusetts at twelve, and and there's all these you know, notable writers and poets and authors that are from there, Emily Dickinson and Everson and you know, the list goes on. Did you have any you know, sort of romanticized notions about what they did as a kid, or was it so off your radar, and now you're you're looking back going like, I don't know, maybe something's in the water. I was like, I do not care that Luisa may Alcott lived down the street. We need to get home in time for friends. It starts at eight, you know, like I was the whole idea of like, you know, this is where the Transcendentalists lived, and I'm like, I don't care. I really don't care. I just wasn't engaged with it. And so that romanticism that you're talking about, which I think you can tap into when it becomes a nostalgia, but it becomes, oh, I what it must have been like to grow up in Massachusetts. I now feel that I feel that nostalgia for a childhood that I didn't, you know, have because now that I'm in California, I've written an entire book. It's called One True Loves, and it's about how much I love New England and just how completely mind blown and I am by what incredible history exists in the town that I'm from, both historical and from from a literature standpoint. Um, you know, I'm completely smitten with all of it. Luisa may Alcott is like I've now read and absorbed everything you possibly can about Little Women. I've seen every adaptation. You know, Um Dickinson, which is the show on Apple, which is so good. I love I love it so much. And I've said to multiple friends and be like, you gotta watch the show Dickinson and Um, and they'd be like, Okay, I'll check it out. And then what I realize is I'm coming from such a biased standpoint. Emily Dickinson, the character and this show is a young woman writer living in Massachusetts, struggling with you know, how much of herself she wants to put into her work and when you know, does she want to grow bigger as a writer or stay small? And it's like this, I might be your one. Niche is very niche audience for Dickinson. But I love all of it now because I didn't throw myself into it when I was there. And so I too, am romanticizing the notion of you know, Al Cotton and Emerson and Henry David Threau and and and I'll say to me, Walden Pond. My entire childhood was just like, come on, Mom, take us to Walden Ponds. We can go swimming. I was not engaged with, you know, the meaningfulness of the space, you know, as it pertains to the history of American literature. That was not did not care. I was just like, it's a great place to swim. I'd love to go with my friends. Can I please go? Mom? You know, it was kind of take it. It's sort of like what you were saying about some of the great classics that we grew up reading in school. They're almost wasted on us as kids, and then you go back and you realize how immense and sort of seismic those works are. I think about it. I'm obsessed with christa Tippets podcast on being and she interviewed Mary Oliver about a year or two before Mary Oliver passed away, and she's, you know, hands down one of my favorite writers of all time. And Marry Oliver talks to her about her morning routine and what her experiences in nature and this life that she's lived, going for these walks and paying attention to the smells and the sounds and the animals and you know, picking up rocks and feeling them between her fingers. And I remember listening to this interview and thinking, I will really have it figured out when I'm ninety one, like Mary Oliver, like, that's when you really get it. When the older you get, the more brilliant you are. And honestly, I think the cooler you are. And I remember the you know, the day that she passed away, and I read the news, going back and listening to that interview again and just thinking, I'm so glad this exists. I'm so glad I can listen to her speak, you know, and not just read her words on the page. But you know, if if I had been eighteen when that interview came out and when she passed away, I would have been like, oh, yeah, that lady wrote some cool books by, I would be out about a clue how to feel about it. We I think we go through different periods of time in which we learned to appreciate different parts of life. And there are so many things that my perspective has changed over the years every single time that I engage with them, and I think it's really really interesting. You know, I had mentioned The Great Gatsby. Every time I read it, I get something different from it. And I don't think that's just because it's a layered book, although it is. I think it's because I'm changing, and I can see how I'm changing when I re engage with this work. And I feel that way about about Mad Men too. It's I don't I've probably rewatched that show more than any show, um, other than like a comedy, Like I mean, I've I've rewatched Friends more than any other show on the planet or the Office. But but when we're talking about drama and like really engaging with the work, and every single time I watched Mad Men, I have a different opinion of Don Draper, and it's a nuanced different opinion because in general I'm like, he's a bad dude, but you know, my understanding of him as a complete person, my understanding of Joan, of Peggy. It's always changing because I'm changing, because my opinions on the way that men should treat women are always changing. They're becoming more and more nuanced. I'm understanding the world more and stories I think help me to see that change. I mean, there are you know, Mary Oliver is a great example poetry in general. I just was not as a teenager, even in my early twenties, I just was not ready to do the work of engaging with text that had you know, as good poetry often does so much complexity to it. It really had to be a spectacular poem to grab me. And now I'm much older, I'm much more curious about the world. I'm like, I'll sit and really engage with something in a way that I'm going to get more from it and get a different thing from it now than I would have. Then I love that. And I like what you just said about this revisitation, which sounds like it requires some consistency to analyze roles and treatment and perspectives, by the way, because it's very easy to you know, look at a Don Draper and just say he's a bad guy, and you're not wrong. But in my mind, there's this both and where you can say, yes he is. And what has this you know, historical white heteronormative patriarchy done for men, because it's not good for them either, you know, as much as women can say the patriarchy is bad for us, it's actually really bad for men. That I say this, I can't tell you how. I mean, multiple times a day I say, in my house, patriarchy hurts everybody, and and half the time at this point with my husband and I has become a joke that I'm always saying it. But but the thing is that it's like one person true, It's true. The gender expectations hurt every single person every single time you don't exactly match up to some imaginary idea that the patriarchy has put forth. And so it doesn't just hurt me as a woman who's expected to have less ambition or you know whatever. Thousand ways I get engaged with that, you know issue, it's also like, you know, straight men, gay man, queer chake it from its most like extreme example of just how is it hurting straight men? Like how much time do you have? The expectation on what straight men are supposed to do, what they're supposed to enjoy, what they're supposed to be good at, is all fake, it's all it's all completely made up. You know, every stay at home dad can tell you that. Yeah. Well, and it's so interesting to me too, because we societally there is this you know, boys don't cry ship right, you know this tough en up, be a man, grow a pair or whatever whatever, And and then I look at men who don't know how to feel or express their feelings. The only you know, quote correct avenue they've ever been given for their feelings is anger. And then it's like, well, no wonder they're punching the ship out of each other all the time. And also no wonder when and four women has been sexually assaulted by the time she's twenty two years old, Like, yeah, this is bad for all of us. Yes, we put absolutely no emphasis until now, and I do think these things are changing with younger boys. But until now, we put absolutely no emphasis on teaching men how to deal with their emotions. And and men are just as emotional as women. It's you know, we we are human beings. Things are happening to us every second of the day. To think that we don't feel immensely all day long about every aspect of what's happening to us is is ridiculous. Reduces are not only our capacity for feelings, which, for whatever reason, when we talk about feelings and emotions, everyone always thinks you mean sensitivity, crying, sadness, whatever. But if you don't have room for things on the sad end of the feeling spectrum, you don't have as much room for joy and happiness either. And so exploring these exploring the potential for permission to be whole feeling human beings is the thing I'm most interested in, and honestly, that's what always brings me back to story and character, because whether it's a television show or a film or a novel, sometimes the modeling of feeling and experience that can be shown by a character, an imperfect character or a great character, you know, whether we're talking about the evils of Don Draper or like you know, the adorable ridiculousness of Ross on Friends. It's important for people to say, oh, maybe I could do that, or maybe I shouldn't do that, whatever it might and I and I get excited about what the sort of loftiest possibility of character representation is or can be. I mean, that is what I spend all day every day thinking about. I I really, you know, character is hugely important to me. I put it at the center of everything that I write, as a lot of writers do. And I'm always thinking about when I'm creating a character, what am I putting forward? Who am I signaling into the world, Oh I see you, you know? Or how can this character in some way challenge the status quo? And I think my job is to be really lofty about it. My job is to take it really seriously and to get really in the weeds with it, and to imagine that it has incredible importance within my work, and then and to be able to understand that my work in particular probably doesn't have huge importance globally. And so it's like for me, I'm making it, you know, my driving force and everything that I'm doing, and then allowing the books to go out there and take different forms and some people engage with that part and some people won't. And to have it be important to me but not expect that my work be that important to other people is sort of where I'm at with it. But the characters that I have seen in books, in television and movies that have made me feel less alone or given me another way to be has had a massive, massive impact. And I think it's it weighs both big and small, because it could be huge things where you know, you have like a certain storyline that hits home for me and then I'm feeling like, oh, I'm not alone, somebody else has this problem or you know whatever. But it can also be something as simple as we're seeing a lot of women on television now who just dressed in like jeans and a T shirt. And it just didn't used to be that way. Like when I was in high school, like everybody at least looked cute. You had to if you were a girl, you had to at least try to look cute. You're wearing makeup, you're you know. And now it's like there are women on TV that are like half slobs, and I'm just loving it. I'm like, I finally see myself. Like my my husband and I have been joking because we're watching Mayor of Eastown and Kate. It's yeah, and Kate Winslet. You know, she's dressed just sort of like not focused on what she looks like, just trying to get her job done, the sort of like hardened detective. She literally is wearing outfits that I own. Like my husband paused to TV and was like, you own that shirt, and I was like, I know. And the point of this show is that she's like not glamorous beautiful Kate Winslet. So I'm a little bit insulted that you noticed that, but like, yes, like I now I feel seen. Now, I feel a little bit less crazy. I too dressed like a slob. Kate Winslett. You know, like it's like, that's um powerful to me, and I think that's happening on all levels with character all the time, and that's the stuff that I'm consumed with during every single phase of what I'm writing. And something I find really interesting. And you've mentioned him. And I'm always very remiss to talk to women about their husbands because I feel like we we get asked the bullshit questions of like, oh, you're in a relationship, how do you balance having a career with a person who loves you? And it's like, how does he do it? I don't know, but I what I love about the way that you've spoken about Alex is the reality that you've highlighted and you said something earlier. You know, you wrote this first novel and it didn't sell, but everyone said we want to read the next one, and you mentioned that. Then you quit your job and you sat down and you very quickly turned out your next book, and that is a feat in and of itself, and I really want to talk to you about your process. But what I find so interesting is that in articles where you've detailed your history, you've said it meant so much to me, and I'm paraphrasing here, but you essentially said that it meant so much to you is in yourself that your husband said, I really believe in you, and all I'll take the reins and all sort of suck it up and run our household while you do nothing but righte this next book. And and you said something that I love that Alex is your muse. And you you write about how we don't often use the word muse when we talk about men. It's it's a narrative that's ascribed to women who are inspiring, who who are sidelined to give men glory. And here was your husband being like, yeah, I'll just pick up all this ship so you can, you know, live your dream. And you really flipped a narrative. You know, historically all of these male writers, you know, famous writers have relied on their spouses at times. Fitzgerald stolen pages of their spouses journals for their own books. And and and here you were being like, yeah, you do it like you be, Mr Mom, I'm going to write this book. So how I don't know, how how do you how do you find that in a relationship? And I don't even know if I actually have a question. I guess what I'm really saying is thank you for being honest about that, and also for modeling that it's possible, because I feel like so many people don't talk about how they actually in a real, you know, working family, do share labor and and it's a lovely thing as a woman to hear you say, yeah, my husband like took over all of this labor so I could go and do this work. And I was like, yeah it did I have those two Yeah, I mean he did, and he continues to. And here's the thing. When I talk about Alex in terms of my career, I feel conflict it for a different reason than you feel conflicted in asking the question, even though your your conflict and asking the question, I get to But I think there are a lot of women who are married to men who do support their careers and do pick up the slack. I think there's a lot of women who are married to men who don't. And I want to talk about how my marriage works because for the same reason that we were just talking about before. You know, when you see something modeled, when you see somebody say this is how my marriage works, it makes it hopefully easier for another woman to say this is how I would like my marriage to work. I distinctly remember being a teenager and there was a sitcom on that you know, it's like shlubby guy married to supermodel whatever and yeah, and the premise of the episode was something about like, oh, this beautiful woman like has a dumb hairstyle and he doesn't like it, and all of his friends are like, dude, you gotta tell her, you know, she looks terrible. Like I couldn't deal with that. And I was just watching the show and I'm like, I'm never getting married, that was my thought. I was like, I'm never doing this. I'm never engaging with this, Like I don't want to be treated like that. If those are my options, if that's how men are, like, I just I don't. I don't want it. And and that is how marriage is so often portrayed, or had been portrayed up until a certain point in my life, was like men are in charge and women are supposed to be beautiful, and you can just speak that disrespectfully about the person that you're supposed to love, you know. And I just was like yeah, and I was just like I'm not doing it. And so it was really powerful to me to see that there's a massive difference between how marriages are portrayed on television and if they're really like and I think there are a lot of men who do step up. The reason I feel conflicted, coming background to this long way of explaining it, is that there are a lot of women who don't have what I have and it's not their fault, and it's not because they chose poor la or it's not because it's just because the system is messed up. And so look, I want other women to know that my husband paid the bills for two months so that I could write my first book. He then worked on ideas with me. He reads every single one of my books. He gives me notes on them. And when we had a kid, for the majority of our relationship, Alex made more money than I did. And then we had a kid and it threw everything. Alex as a screenwriter, and so we both have demanding jobs and now there's a kid involved, and the question of who's going to do what came up very quickly, and basically, by the time my kid was a year old, I started being the breadwinner and making more money, and Alex was immediately on board and said your career is the one that we should be focused on. And he would take on more than of the childcare in order to give me the time to do my work. So when I'm out on a book tour and I'm gone for three weeks, he's taking care of everything, and he's and he it's not being treated like he's babysitting or he's pitching in. It's like he's her father and my husband is the one who makes sure that things don't fall through the cracks. And look, it's a really complicated thing when we talk about the patriarchy. The patriarchy hurts everyone. This is an example of I'm often going, am I not doing enough? You know, Like, shouldn't I be doing more? I'm the mom. Doesn't that mean I need to be doing most of the child care? You know? And my husband's like, I enjoy it. I like being with her kid, I love taking her to the park, I love hanging out with her. And so I'm beating myself up for not doing more, you know. And there's a world where Alex could beat himself up because I'm bringing in more money, and it's like whatever, this idea of how marriage is supposed to work our doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. And if I if I wanted to compare myself to that standard, we would be failing. But we're thriving. So you know, it's like, yeah, like that's so interesting because when you say, well, you know, I could beat myself up about time and he could beat himself about resources. And I'm like, but isn't it crazy that we've been all of us have been essentially trained or cultured to beat ourselves up for what's going great. Guys are nailing it. You're nailing it. And that's that's exactly it. And the thing that I have decided in my head, which I think is sort of funny, but when I get in my space of like, oh am I working too much? Or is am I asking Alex to do too much? Or whatever, I just change the words in my head for a moment and I'm like, Okay, I'm the dad and Alex is the mom. Are we meeting those expectations? And it's like, oh my god, if if what I am as a dad, I'm the world's best dad, Like I'm such a good debt. If I'm comparing myself to like an eighties dad, like I'm such a good dad, you know. It's like you know, and so it gives me a moment of like, Okay, so these are just made up words. Like the point is like is my child taking care of is? Does she feel loved? Does she have time with both her parents? Like? And yes, you know? And like can we pay our bills? Are we both fulfilled? Yes? And the times in which I feel insecure about it are the times in which the idea of should gets into my head. A woman should inherently be these things. It's still a voice in my head and when I have to battle, and it's not something that comes out passively, it has to be excised. And so that is like I having a kid made it much worse for me because I think as a woman, I had so many messages about motherhood just just in me that had been there, you know, that that society had been putting there since day one. And it's been a process of removing those. But talking to other women helps because you realize, like, oh, you also your your marriage also a function like that. Oh, there's actually a lot of marriages that functioned like that. It's not that different, but we just never talked about that. I I want to ask a question that I imagine many of our listeners at home are wondering, which is, you know, your first novel didn't sell. I imagine that was really hard. How did you get over that? How did you motivate yourself to start over? And how did you not take that criticism and internalize it? Or maybe it wasn't even criticism, by the way, but generally it feels like it is when someone says no, So how do you metabolize that event and then become, you know, a New York Times bestseller and and be nailing it? How does it work? You know? I'm actually really glad you've asked this question because it I really have a very concrete and specific answer for this. And I realized, this is a story that I've never really told anybody. So my first book didn't sell. I was disappointed. And look, every time you get a forwarded email that's like thanks so much for sending us this. You know, ultimately, this story just felt a little trite or you know whatever, it's like, oh, okay, you know, but when it ends with you know, we'd like to see something else, It's like, okay, you know what, like get up, move on, you know, and so I wrote this book, which became Forever Interrupted, and I had this agent who was the agent who had read my first book and offered me representation. I had never searched for anybody. It was like, this woman just appeared in my life, and I was I couldn't believe I was that lucky. So I write this book, Forever Interrupted. And the premise of Forever Interrupted was a lot different than than the first book that I've written. The first book that I've written was basically it was written from the point of view of this young man and he's in love with his best friend and how's he going to tell her? And then you know, chaos and sues. And then I was like, well, the next thing that I want to write is about a young woman who elopes with her husband. My husband and I hit eloped, and so I really wanted to write about that rush of like meeting to someone and knowing, you know, I wanted to write that, but I wanted to write a tragedy. And so I was like, so totally different than my life, but also a little bit. I went through a period of time long story short, where I was so happy with my husband that I was convinced something terrible was about to happen, because how could I possibly be this happy? That really cuts that speaks to me. I'm like, oh yeah, deep anxiety, yep, I know what that is. Yeah. So I so I exercised that by writing this book, where basically it's called Forever Interrupted. She meets this guy they elope, love of her life, but then he dies in an accident about nine days after they elope, and so she has to deal with a number of things, but one of them being her mother in law that she's never met before. And so I wrote that book. I sent it to my agent. She didn't like it, and she gave me a round of notes. I took those notes to the best that I could. She gave me another round of notes, and and basically her feeling was I think it was more like I'm not saying it's a page one rewrite, but was kind of, you know, the vibe. And she didn't like what I was doing. She she wasn't into it. I was. I was just devastated. She wasn't going to take it out on submission unless it was something she was passionate about what she should absolutely do, Like that's no question she should not do something. She didn't believe it, and I did believe in it. And then I had this this other person who was kind of like a manager in my career, and I was like, well, did you like it? And she was like, I didn't finish it, and I was like, oh God, and I just kept going like I think this book is good, but nobody likes it. And I distinctly remember I got in the shower, I was bawling my eyes out. I wrapped myself in a towel, put my hair in his towel. I lay down on my bed and I was like, do I just give up? Because the only agent that I have is not going to go out with this book. And I'm getting messages that maybe what I think is good is not good. I've already failed once, and I just so when I was a kid, I was really really obsessed with um Lucille Ball. I watched I Love Lucy all the time, and I got just really like I read every single biography and autobiography. There was like, you know, other kids were like playing in the pool and I was like reading Lucille Ball's autobiography. It was just obsessed with her, and as not a book reader that was huge that like that, but like I was that dedicated to that. And when Lucy, I don't know how old she was, but it was before she broke into Hollywood. She was in an acting school and I believe one of her classmates was Betty Davis. And the teacher at the acting school writes home to her mom, I think and says, I cannot keep taking your money. Lucille has no talent and is never going to get anywhere. And Lucy had to decide, you know, what to do, and she, if my memory is correct, she thought about giving up, and then she decided that person didn't know what they were talking about, and she found, you know, another acting school to go to and eventually signed with r KO and and you know, after that, you know, in her in her forties, late thirties and early forties, became who we know as you know as Lucy Ricardo basically. And I'm laying in my bed that day, and I'm in a towel and I'm sobbing, and I'm just going, you know, what would Lucy do? And Lucy, I knew Lucy would have would have found another agent, and so I thought, well, can I do that or am I ready to just let this dream go? And I just said, well, I gotta I still have it in me right now to do to do what See would have done. And so I parted ways with that agent, I parted ways with the manager. I went on blind submission to like thirty different agents and found one who understood what I was trying to do, and within a year sold Forever Interrupted to Simon and Schuster. And I think back on that moment all the time, because it was a huge turning point for me, and I could have made either decision. It really felt like I was on a fence and it was like I was being tipped one way or the other, and I just happened. I just luckily tipped myself, you know, in what hindsight feels like the right the right direction. But I have found immense I guess fortune in betting on myself. And I think failing doesn't mean that you can't just double down. I think I have a good sense of my gut of when something is good or if it's not, and believing in yourself and having that gut sense means you can weather. You can get knocked down a few times, and it's a little bit easier to get up. If you're not sure if you're good, then yeah, you might stay on the ground. And I think I think that's the thing that's gotten me through is a confidence of like, no, this is good. I do things and they're bad sometimes and I can read them be like, oh that was bad. But you know, it's having that confidence of like this one's good, I could do this. But I think that's important too, is when you're honest with yourself and you know when you're like, I could have done that better well, And you have to have confidence in order to be okay, to admit to yourself that somebody's bad, right, Like it's it's really if you're desperately struggling to prove to yourself that you belong, that you're good, that you're worthy, then you don't have any room to be bad. The more successful I get, the easier it is for me to talk about the times I failed, the things I've done that we're bad. I can see my work with greater with greater clarity because I don't feel desperate to know that I'm good. I feel the confidence. It's a quiet, passive calm. But in so there's some there's some worth in what I'm doing to somebody. So the trick and if I could go back in time, I feel like it's what I would hope to teach myself, and it's what I'm trying to teach my daughter is to have that confidence before you've had the validation. And and that's the thing that I didn't have, and it would be disingenuous for me to say that I did. But it is with my daughter where I'm really trying to instill with her the sense of confidence, not just because I'm saying good job on this, you know, handwriting, you know which it's it's it's it's a hard thing to instill in somebody, but I think I think for her will pay dividends if I could, if I can figure it out. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think a permission to fail is required to succeed. And you know, that's something I've really been trying to give myself because I wasn't. I wasn't raised with that. No, I mean I don't think any of us were, right. I mean it's like now, I think it's a much newer moment, you know, in our in our generation, and we go, okay, we got to break the cycle of perfectionism because it doesn't exist. So really, the the net result of quote perfectionism is just more and more self loathing. Yeah, we don't want to give that to our kids, so what are we gonna do? Well? The the movement now, which is has just been life changing for me, and in a way, you know, as a parent, it feels a little bit like, well, it's too late for me, but you can save yourself. Kid. Is like, you know, you praise the effort, not the result, you know, to me, if somebody says, hey, Taylor, I know you tried really really hard on this, but it's not that good dagger to my heart, right right into my soul. If somebody was like, Taylor, I don't think you worked on this for one second and it's brilliant, I would be like, oh, I'm a genius, you know, Like and how terrible. Like we we have been taught that to be perfect, it has to come naturally to us. It has to be effortless, it has to be you know, when it is absurd, it's totally absurd. And also it's like there are moment like I'm such a tryer like that, even the Taylor Swift song of like this is me trying. Like I'm just trying all the time. I'm just trying. I'm trying to be a good mom, and I'm trying to be a better writer, I'm trying to be a good friend. It's just like so much effort that I'm putting into all of it. I'm trying, and like the fact that things are supposed to look effortless is like, oh, God's on top of all this trying, I also have to try and make it look like I didn't try. It's like no, and so what what freedom to just be able to say I'm trying and what I'm proud of is that I'm trying. And if I fail, or if it's not good or it's not good enough for me, or I want to do better, that's just another opportunity to try to enjoy the journey of the effort and not just you know the pad on the head. Yeah, to enjoy the journey of the effort feels really important. That feels like an unlocking of something. If we could all accept that and give ourselves that permission. And I will say, you know, being an author one of the things that is a luxury, I guess I would say, is that all of my or most of my trying happens. It's just me and nobody can see it, you know. So nobody can see you know, nobody reads my first draft. They don't know how bad it is. Yeah, yeah, and so you know, there is some peace in that trying. I don't feel pressure in that, and so my relationship with my books is finding. I'm just having fun. I'm enjoying. It's really hard work, but it's work that I love doing, and it's something I look forward to because I don't feel the need to. There's no performance aspect of it. No one can see it. So it can be an absolutely terrible first draft where my publisher would, if they ever saw it, would come in and take away my book deal. They based so horrified. You know, it's like it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Nobody's gonna know. I can't tell you, like I'll go through and just be like like I'll write a first draft and it's very like I'm just letting the words flow, and is this a bad analogy? I don't just put it in there. We'll figure out something later, you know, like this metaphor is probably stupid, but just put it in so I don't forget it, you know, and then I'll go back and read it and they'll be like, my god, this is complete garbage. I mean, it's like it's it's it's mundane, it's cliche, it's you know, I'm writing a book now. On the first draft was like make here for dating a movie star who's like very clearly bred pitt And I was like, this is so stupid, Like why did I do that? This is embarrassing, But like but like it was fun to write at the time, you know, and you're like, all right, I got that out. Now I gotta scrap it and then go write something of quality. Um interesting, because you can just race it. I'm fine with me being bad myself. It's just when other people see it that I start it starts to feel a little bit crippling. Um well, and that is a thing to your point about you know, we're both storytellers, but an actor has to care about material enough to fail in front of other people to eventually find the success. You know, I will never forget I worked on this project that Charlie's Thearren produced, and so imagine trying to keep your cool around that she's perfect. I'm like, there's no such thing as perfection except maybe Charlie. And we were sitting around talking one night and she told me a story about working with this incredibly famous actor, like probably one of the top five greatest actors of all time. And I'm not going to say who it is because it's her story and I don't know if I'm supposed to repeated or not, but I'm going to tell you the point, which is she was talking about being on this movie with him, and you know, sort of in the same way that I was feeling around her, just like shaky knees being in front of an icon, and she said, you know, when we start this major scene and she's like and he's bad, like not not good, like terrible bad, bad bad, and she couldn't believe it. And she was like, oh my god, you know, maybe he's just lost it. Maybe he's been doing it for so long he's lost it. And then they do another take and it's also really bad, but really different, and she's going, what is happening here? Like what am I watching? She says, and then they queue up the third take and he is fucking brilliant, and she's like what just happened, and then make you up a fourth take and she says it's unbelievable, but so different from the one before. And then they're like, oh, we think we got it. And she's kind of looking at him and he's, you know, a legend, so he knows and he looks at her and he just says, you gotta put it all out there, even if it's terrible, because if you don't do the terrible thing, you won't do the amazing thing. And she said it completely changed her philosophy on acting, and I thought, what a terrifying thing to go so, you know, for lack of a better term, like balls out just in trying something so you can be like, oh, no, that was horrible. I'm actually gonna do the opposite of that, and it's going to be incredible. What I mean, the confidence that that requires just truly knocks me down. It It reminds me of what we can strive for. And and hearing you essentially talk about your process of that as a writer, I'm like, well, of course you've written all these books I'm obsessed with and and I do want to just say I hate to ever look at time, but you you do have a lot going on, and you are launching a book, and you do have a child in a you know life, and so I know we're running out of times, So I'm gonna blast through a little bit of what I was meaning to talk about for so much longer. But you know, you became a household name speaking of books that you've written that you've left it all on the table for with Daisy Jones and the six I mean New York Times bestseller, everyone lost their minds. It's you know, described from the website as quote. I love to read a quote and makes you feel like I'm bragging about the people who come on my show. Um. It's a gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic nine seventies rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup. And people went ballistic over this book. Everyone was like, oh, this is a biography. Who's it about? Everyone thought it was about Fleetwood Mac. Then people realized it was fiction, and then people were like, maybe it was inspired by Fleetwood Mac or or who who knows? But and this is the book that, as we mentioned earlier, we Witherspoon is adapting you're making it into a mini series for Amazon. I mean, so cool. I wonder about that experience for you as a writer. You know, you you're you're selling work, and this book just hits the zeitgeist and everybody's talking about it and everybody's trying to solve it, which I kind of also feel like it must be so fun because they're like, I didn't mean to make it a mystery, but it is um And and then you know, you get a call from Reese, another icon, and I feel like, as an observer and a fan of yours, that there must be something in the magic of it, because the themes feel true for everyone in its specificity, it is also interestingly universal. And you're talking about female strength and contemporary obsession with celebrity and and there was a quote in the Irish Times and I love how much they write about you. They like, they really their articles are so great, and they said that it isn't just an exercise in nine seventies nostalgia. It has plenty to say that's relevant today about women's lives, strength and ambitions, art, addiction, love, infidelity, and the choices we make around motherhood and relationships. And yes, as a reader or I'm like, that's exactly it, That's exactly it. This concept of time and identity is just so fascinating. And obviously we talked about time this year kind of being Taffy. I wonder what inspired you to jump into that time? What what made you want to examine that? And then of course I want to ask about time with your new book too. Yeah, I mean for me, for any book that I'm writing lately, it's really about where do I want to go? Where don I want to go in my mind? Because my my logic is if I want to go there, then I think other people might want to go there too, And and so it's a too, It's sort of a two pronged approach. It's like, well, where do I want to go? Where do I want to spend time? Where don want to escape to? Where do I want to engage with the nostalgia and romanticism of because it's not real? But where do I want to go? And then it becomes what story do I want to tell when I'm there? And with Daisy Jones, you know, look we can go back to the set and D's and have fun and be in this world of of like you know, Stevie Nick's adjacent and and the cool clothes and and the good music, and you know, but while we're here, what are we talking about? And for me, never say never. There are a number of things I can't predict. But I don't see myself anytime soon not writing about what it means to be a woman in the space whatever space it is that I'm choosing to write about. So what So what does it mean to be a woman in rock? What does it mean to be a woman in this male dominated space? That's very gate kept. I don't know if you can put gate keeping in the past tense, but we'll say gate kept. Who were the women that thrive? How do they navigate that world? And then I'm writing this book, you know it was I guess twenty twenty seventeen when I wrote it. It's a totally irround elevant ride to go on unless it is also about what it means to be a woman today. And and look, there is the world a lot different than it was in the seventies. Yeah, but the world is also a lot the same. And I think a lot of things that used to be overt are sort of now subtextual. Things get pressed down, and we've we've said as a society, oh, we don't do that anymore, we don't do that anymore. But really we've just pushed them down and made them insidious and made it so we can't see them. But they're still happening. And so it's like when Daisy is talking about, like, you know, what she's wearing and how much skin she's showing in the way that she's being treated as a result of that, It's like, Yeah, it was different in the seventies. Fashion was different in the seventies. Are women still treat still treated like that today? Yeah? And it just takes a different form, you know. I mean the patritarchy in general, it's a hydra. It has many heads, and we think we're cutting off heads, but I but they just take a different form. We're still trying to control the way that people behave, the things that they're allowed to love, the things that they're about to feel about themselves. And we're doing it at every angle, not just two women. We're doing it to man, We're doing it to queer people, were doing it to people of color, and then intersections of those groups. It's happening to everybody, and so that's Daisy Jones. To me, was an opportunity to talk about what it maybe what it meant to be a woman in rock in the seventies. But if that doesn't have after effects, that doesn't feel like it's still vibrates today, then then then why are you reading the book that Then it's just you know, kind of a still it's a fun ride to go on, but but it's not saying anything. And I think, you know, with Evelyn Hugo, the book that came before that, it's the same thing. And now with Malibu Rising, I wanted to go to eighties Malibu. Let's go to the beach, Let's have a beach party, you know, like let's hang out with a bunch of super cool surfers, you know, and like Nina Reeva is a supermodel, and like, I want to talk about objectification. I want to I want to talk about how it must feel to have your body feel to other people like they're allowed to touch it, that they're allowed, that they have some ownership over it. Because yeah, in the eighties it was really overt and really intense. But you know that is still happening all the time right now, all the time, and especially to women, you know, to the point of your character women in the public eye. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times, and I know people don't. I mean, I guess I shouldn't generalize. Sometimes they do, but more often than not, people don't mean to be intrusive or abusive. But the number of times I have met someone who would describe themselves as you know, a quote fan who has touched me without asking. I had someone literally reach out, grabbed my face and run their fingers through my hair the way your spouse is supposed to. And this was a person who had never seen up until three seconds before this happened. I mean, and I and I know that that is proximal to what a character like this one. You know, someone who's defined as a model, who's essentially defined as a live mannequin who we project all of our ideas and fantasies onto. As an actor, people see you move and speak and in relationship. Granted they're made up, but they still know you're a person in some way. And so I'm so fascinated by this idea of how we com modify people and how we then tell them they should like it. Oh yeah, well it's really interesting to me. So you're your themes about women and how in a way there admonished for their success, you know, whether it's Daisy Jones talking about her identity and people essentially saying like you're a rock star, get over it. And there's always some version of that. So there's there's the identity vertical that I love about your work. There is this bucket about time and and you know you mentioned the Seven Husbands of Evil and Hugo. That novel goes back and forth between decades and past and current time and then and then in this new book, Malibi Rising, which we're beginning to talk about, which, by the way, came out today, so if you all have not pre ordered it, you absolutely should be ordering it today because I was very lucky my friend Taylor sent me an advanced copy which I got to devour um. But this book literally goes hour by hour, and there's something about that structure of time that makes me feel so stressed but excited. Glenn and Doyle uses that term skuided where she's like, I'm scared and excited all at once. And that's how I felt, uh going through this, and I I'm really really curious about some things. Again, Um, not to sound like I have just been keeping lists, but I sort of have. On your work, there are these mentions that feel like easter eggs for fans of your previous books, references back to Evelyn Hugo. You know, you mentioned Celia St. James and and Mick Reeva, and there are all these rumors that your books are based on real people. And I know we're not going to talk about that with previous books. What do we get to talk about it with this book at all? You know, you know, it's funny. This book is sort of like, because I'm a few into this pattern, now I understood where the interest would be and so it's actually about no one in particular, but was way more fun to play with in terms of where it exists. So, so, for instance, like the book is about the Reeva family. It's four siblings, they're all surfers, are living in Malibu, they're abandoned by their famous father, Mick Reeva. And Mick Reva is Evelyn Hugo's third husband. So Mick Reeva exists in Evelyn Hugo. He's mentioned in a scene in Daisy Jones. And now we're getting the story of his family and the Reva kids were now all adults. They're throwing their annual Reva party. It's like the Hollywood Party to end all parties, the party everybody you know wants to be seen at. And there's a lot of celebrities that are gonna come. And so so I was like, well, the first thing is that I've created a world of all these fake celebrities. And I'm not gonna do double work. If I already have all these other fake celebrities that I can put at this party, let me use some of them. It's kind of you know, and so and so you'll see, you know, people that that have read Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones with a with a keen, I will pick up on certain characters that are mentioned that are you know, I wouldn't. Some of them aren't even like tertiary characters. And Evelyn Hugo, it's like we're talking like really far down the list, but you can piece it together the connections that are here. But the other thing that I did with this book that I've never done before, or I approached it differently, even if the result is the same, is that you know, like you're saying the story goes our or by hour. So we started seven am, and we see the day leading up to the Reva party, and then the Reva party starts, and we see the twelve hours after, and then you know, we come the story ends at the next day at the same time, and once you get to the party. I started to write these little character profiles where it's like, well, who's showing up at this party? Who are the Hollywood people that are gonna come, And so you have characters that I made up that are if you go through it. I think it is a fun little game of being able to see if like, okay, you know, think this is one character, Tuesday Hendrix, and and she's a young sort of ingenue. She's already won an oscar, she's had a runaway bride situation, she's got a drug problem. And so it's like you can you can go through the list of like early eighties actresses that were like just becoming famous at that time, and I think piece together, like oh, this might be a little bit of this one and a little bit of that one and a little bit of that one. More like there's there's some other people, like there's a screenwriter and you can start to piece that together or um, these two actors that show up, and I think they all have different fields, but I think it can be a fun game to pull back and and be like, oh, who could this be? And not there's not a single one that is one particular person. They're all kind of an amalgamation the same way like Daisy Jones is like is a Fleetwood Mac? Yes and no. It's also like like Heart and Abba and the Eagles and whatever. You can get into some fun like Bratt Packers with this one. I love that. I really love that. Something I'm really curious about as well. Speaking of Easter eggs um, because we went down a deep hole over here when we got our advanced copy. The address of the house is a real address, so and we Google earthed it and it's between two homes and it's just this land and we can't find any information about it. So how did you land on it? And is there a story behind it that you know that now? I wanted that there's there is a story behind it all. It's not that interesting. What it is is that I went to Point Doom and I drove around Point Doom and I figured out, okay, this is where Nina's house would be if I wanted to be on the edge of the cliff. I wanted to have, you know, some access to these surf spots, you know. So it's like, she's gonna live on cliff Side Drive that I know. And then it's it's like, okay, so now that I know what street she lives on, where on the street would she live? What do the address is there look like? So it's like, oh, they're all in the like twenty two thousands, like their long addresses. So I think I pulled one there was a real home and just put it in there. And then during the copy edits, the editor was like, you cannot take some home addressed, and it was like, that makes sense, that makes sense. I can't do that, And so I came up with an address it's not technically anybody's house, and and so what what the result is? It is a fictional place, but it is on a real street and could happen. And look, all of the houses on the cliff Side Drive have gates and you can't see the cliff from the street, so it's not going to be a super fun drive if someone's curious. It was fun for me is like the person writing it to figure it out. But yeah, it's like it's like having a you know, when somebody's phone numbers is like three one oh five, five five, you know, one to one two, it's like it's it's not real, but it looks real. That's very kind of you. I I think, you know, there's some families still in Wilmington's who like come out of their houses in the morning and there's fans of my first show is taking photos and they're just like, why did we ever rent our houses to the A TV show? You know, they're so mad about it. I feel like we just all feel so guilty. We're like we didn't know either. We're so sorry we should have just built um. So it's nice of you to not send people to startle, you know, young families on their front line. I do feel like people in Wilbington probably are inundated with that on such a regular basis still today that it might be like a drop in the bucket. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's like, on the one hand, I so cherish that people love our show and the world we built like that. It means so much. And on the other hand, just I'm so sorry to the people who actually live in those houses. I'm like, we had no idea, we didn't know. We can't make it stop. We're we apologize. Um. And it's funny because I think that's part of it too, you know, being an actor. When I watch uh TV or films, my other friends who are actors make fun of me. My my girlfriend s, guy p Marshall, who's phenomenal who I just did this pilot with, UM. Well, when we watch TV together, she's like, my god, you really feel everything, you really think it's real. And I'm like, I know, I don't know why I'm supposed to know better, and I'm jumpy and I'm like screaming if it's a scary thing, I really get lost in it. But the thing that I always noticed that most people don't is when there's like really bad background work happening, Like when someone and I it's it's and I don't mean to be critical. It's like probably someone's first day and they've been told like react and laugh, but don't make any sound. So I'll see someone in the back of a show just doing something ridiculous and that that nobody caught and said, like tone it down a little, you gotta make it more natural. And I'm always like, that's hilarious to me, Like that's a funny strigg for me as a you know, an actor and a director. I wonder, do you pick upart books when you read them because you know how to write them, because you you know what it means to layer in structure in detail? Do you do you see twists coming ahead of time? Or can you get lost in it? I can get I can definitely get lost in it, and definitely things that are other genres, like I love to read thrillers and stuff like that because it's so it's just not what I do, and so it feels much more like a vacation. I will say something that has started to happen that is a bummer, and I wish I could turn off of my brain is on a sentence level, I'll read things and and I will be like, why would you execute that like that? And then and then and then once I'm asking the question, I'm like, either this is a bad sentence or you've written it this way for a reason. And if it's for a reason, then in a couple of pages, this is about to happen. And and so it's it's kind of like it's it's more it's on a smaller level than like, oh well, I bet it's actually you know, I think it's going to be the husband, but it turns out it's the grandma. You know. It's like, I'm not engaging that way, but on a sentence level, I do feel voice and and decisions of you know, where you're drawing my eye and why you're describing something the way that you are. I mean, those are things that you you do start to sense. But that's really interesting. The converse is also true, which is like maybe I'm reading a book and I start to see something like that and I'm like, well why, and then it and then it sort of undermines it. But because I know how hard it is to do certain things, because I know how hard it is to execute certain relationships or intensity or whatever, when I come across a writer who is just phenomenal, the admiration I have becomes so much more intense and heartfelt. I you know, it's like you read somebody like Sally Rooney, and I know how hard it is to do what she does and to make it look so sparse and held back. I know as someone who is not a writer who is restrained. I don't think. I don't think like it's it's just not my style. It's like my style is like throw it all in there and tell you everything you know, and it's like, okay, So I'm really curious about this because that that leads me to my next question, because I don't see what you see when I read a book, but I think so much about as a storyteller, how did they come up with us? How did this person write this? And where did this idea come from? And when you say you like to throw it all out there, I'm like, okay. So every one of your book has a major twist in it or twists to them. What is the writing process for that? Do you do you start with an ending or like a gotcha moment or a big twist, and then do you work backwards to kind of reverse engineer or do things reveal themselves to you as you're writing or is it a mixture of both. It's what it is is that I know the story that I want to tell, like I know the premise, I know where I want to put my characters, and I know how it ends. I have to know how it ends. If I don't know how it ends personally, I don't know what I'm writing toward. I don't know what what's the payoff of all of this. And so with specifically with Evelyn Hugo, I was like, you know, I'm going to write a story and she's chosen, you know, she chooses Evelyn Hugo, chooses this rookie reporter and gives her her life story and why because she's got a secret reason for doing it, And there was no way I could write that without knowing what the secret reason was. Like I was like, I can't leave that for later to try to figure out. I have to do that now. So, um, you know, with Daisy Jones it was the same thing, and with Malibu, I don't know that there's a twist, but there is a very surprising thing that happens, and for me, that was built into the premise of it. And I think, you know what what the difference is between my style and somebody like Sally Rudey, and why I admire her so much is because for me, I know how it starts and I know how it ends, and I'm you know, going on that journey sort of the first time around. But I have this in terms of my narrative voice. Something that I'm always feeling which thriller writers often um have to get out of themselves if they have it, is I feel like with my relationship with the reader, I need to give you as much information as I have. So I was like withholding information from the reader is not something that I it comes naturally to me. And and controlling when you get a piece of information or dangling or teasing that there's something you don't know is like no, no, no, I wanna. I want to tell you everything. I've got it all planned out here. We go a lot, a lot of the work I have to do in later edits is like, you know all in chapter two, be like this wouldn't end well, but blah blah blah, and then it's like take that out so I don't let the reader go on the journey. But I feel very much like I know what it is, so you need to know. And and so that's why uh, Sally Rooney is in full control on a sentence level of everything that you know she has. She manages a sparseness, a restrainedness, like uh, a detached nous that ends up only heightening the intimacy of the work. It's so impressive to me. And I feel this way about celesting two for for different reasons, or and patch it where it's like I just I read their work and it's like I can learn so much from this because it's so different than how I would tell this story, and I admire it so much. I love that. I would love to know, actually, of the of you know, the three women you just mentioned, I'd love to know what your favorite piece of their writing is so we can include. Yeah, well the notes for the show. Well, I um, I mean Sally Rooney, I really loved Normal People. I I it's funny because I feel like, you know, she said tow out her thirds coming out this year, I think in the Fault, which I'm really excited about, but Normal People just swept me up. And I was fortunate enough that the timing of when I read it was like I think then it was like a month or two later that the show came out, and the show was like just as good as the book, and it was like, oh, I just it was just delicious. The whole thing's just delicious. You just got to be in the world. Yeah, and being lost in a world is like we were talking about at the top. It's like, it's how I refilled myself. It's such a gift to be able to lose myself in that celesting. I mean again to great books out. I loved her first one, which you know, Little Fires Everywhere obviously blew up and it was so big. Her first one was also really good. It's called Everything. I never told you a lot of people read that one too. But but if there are people that like Little Fires going back and reading that one, it's so good. And Patchett, I'll read anything that she writes. And and I mean just you know, the first book of hers I read was Patron Patron Saint of Liars, and I just loved it. But I will say her latest one, in the Dutch House, I couldn't put it down. I couldn't put it down. It has more like fairy tale vibes. It's very it's sort of like heightened and but I just I just loved it. And I think she's so I mean talk about like on a sentence level, what she's able to do, uh and convey is just she's just a mega, mega talent. Yeah, she's incredible. So when you think about the writers you love to read, and then you you think about all the people who love reading your writing. Is there something that you hope your reader's, your audience takes from your work. Yeah. I mean I'm always trying to operate on on two levels, and the one that is the most important to me at this given more one is I think the world is just a really tough place. I think that the stresses of the world are immense. I feel like the past year, I don't know, I can't speak for everyone, but I do feel like I've grown like a crust of of just like like tiredness, and I would love for my work to um to give someone enough joy that it might be part of the breaking of that crust. I just want to I just want people to have a good time. I want them to be able to lose themselves in something to you know, if if if you're stuck somewhere and you can't get to the beach and you can't travel, it's like, open up this book and like, I hope that it feels like you're in the water. I hope it feels that you're in Malibu, which is my favorite place to be. Like, I just want to take you there, and that's a level of always functioning at. But I think just because of the way the world is, that's the most important to me right now. And and you know, the other thing is is this is a book about a lot of specific stuff, and it has a lot of things to say and things that I've wanted to say for a long time. And I hope that there are certain readers. I don't want to give anything away or too much of the themes of what it's about, but it's but it is very much about parents and children and what our parents, what parents owe to their children, both from the level of you know, for me, what did my parents give to me and what do I want to give to my child? And there's a passage towards the end of the book that that sort of directly talks about that question of what we bring forward and what we leave behind from the generations that have come before us. And I think I was writing this book with very specific people in mind, and those people are people who are asking themselves that question and it being okay to leave a lot of what has come before you behind in order to form something new. And so I hope that people engage with an on that level too. I hope that it finds a way to the people that I wrote it for. Um. But I just want people to have fun mm hm. We deserve that we do we do, especially after such an unfun period of time. Yeah, people, people need some joy. Well, my friend, I'm gonna ask you my favorite question to ask everyone who comes on the show, what do you feel like? And it could be you know, personal, professional, anything. What do you feel like in your life is still a work in progress. Balance and I knew that, but Covid really showed it to me. And so because of that, I think after I finished the book that I'm currently working on, I'm going to take some time off. And I think I think that's and I've told a few of my friends that and they've all laughed at me and they've been like, I've heard that before and then you never do it. But I think that just shows me even more that it is something that I have been rying to work on for years and not done. And so my grandmother always used to say whenever I would call her, and I would say what I was called her, Grammy, but but I would be like, Grammy, I just did this thing. I got you know, published here, or I got this new job or some something that I wanted her to be proud of, and she would say, you know, very very proud of you. I'm always proud of you. But are you stopping to smell the roses? That was the thing that she would always say to me, And the answer was always no, you know, And so I'm going to change that. That's the thing that I think, that's the work in progress for me. And that's when I'm very very serious about changing. Mm hmm. I like that. It feels like very good advice. Thank you. Yeah, well, we can all stop to smell the roses more. So I'm gonna that's what I'm gonna try to do. Man. Awesome