Evan Rachel Wood

Welcome to Armchair Expert. Today's guest is Evan Rachel Wood. Come on. Evan Rachel Wood, Evan Rachel Wood.

Grab your wood with Evan Rachel. Monica. Yes, hi. Hi, I'm your host, Bill Peterson.

Who are you today? Natty McTurner. Oh. Yeah.

I really thought you were gonna say maximum mouse. Oh. I think in days of where you're feeling extra powerful, you should be, you should have another persona, persona non grata, that's maximum mouse. Like a alter ego.

Where it's like, it's a day that you're gonna fucking take names. What does it kick ass and take names? Yeah. Maximum mouse.

Okay. Yeah. I think I'm maximum mouse most days. Yeah, you're pretty maximum as Majoris.

Well, that's not a kind of, I don't want some genitals. Well, listen, Evan Rachel Wood, she has been in so many darn things. So many. So many.

I wouldn't even know where to begin. But currently she's on Westworld on Home Box Office. Right. HBO.

What's their little thing, HBO? Not TV. Not TV. But what's their sound is like?

Yeah. And there's just that. Isn't there this? And then it fades out and then HBO's there.

Or something? Oh, maybe. Is there something melodic? Yeah, that sounds right, actually.

Check it out. Boys are better at making sounds. I do. Oh, you do?

Huh. Except for the exception of your wife. I think, generally speaking, I'm going to say that's a bad, bad thing for me to say, but I really believe. No, it's a bad, bad thing for me to say.

You can say whatever they want. I don't want to be part of this perpetuating the gender differences, but, and I know, but it's because it's cultural. I think boys are meant to play with trucks and things that are kinetic and like bang together and then they are making those sounds and girls aren't really given those toys and told to play with those things. Well, I do think you're right in that when girls play.

They talk. Yeah. They're toys face each other. You know, making plans or they're dealing with something.

Yeah. I was like, Oh, exactly. They're mainly in sound effects land and we could do a lot of fart noises for each other. Wow.

You know, there's all kinds of for each occasion. So many kinds. Yeah. Nate can do the best ones.

Oh, really? Yeah. He was terrible way to start this podcast. Listen, everybody.

Evan Rachel was here. She's brilliant. She's a damn fine actor and she's a lot of fun to talk to you. So please enjoy Evan Rachel would you are supported by Airbnb.

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Thank you for having me. You know, you're way younger than I thought. Do you get that a lot? No, I actually get the opposite.

Oh, you do. People think I'm younger. When they find out I have a five-year-old, I'm in my 30s, I think it freaks them out. Oh, because you're exactly two weeks younger than Monica.

Me? Yeah. Yeah. And Monica's generally the youngest person around.

Alive. I'm generally the youngest person. I call you a baby just indefinitely. Yeah.

It happens to me. You're a baby. Yes. Well, she is technically a personalized baby.

Yes. I guess probably just because I have seen you for 20 plus years, I thought for sure you were minimally my wife's age. Not that you look any certain way. Just in my mind.

I wouldn't carry the way. Well, remember when we started working on parenthood and I started working with May Whitman and I was like, why is she better than everyone? Like I really triggered some insecurities. I'm like, this 21-year-old is considerably better than most of us.

And then I looked at her and I'm like, oh, she's been acting for 20 years. She was a fucking baby. Literally. And I used to go to the same acting class.

Oh, you did? Yeah. We knew each other when we were kids. We kind of grew up in the same acting kid circle.

And she was always one of the best. Yeah. I adore May. She is.

And she's so incredibly talented. I'm dying to work with her, actually. Yeah. And then the most fun human being we've got.

Yes. Yeah. She's incredible. And I was wondering if you have this thing that she has, which is, she was 21 and I was, I guess, maybe 37 or something when we started working together.

And I would throw out references like Harold and Ma, not thinking for a second she's going to know what that is, but she knows every single reference that I knew being that much older than her. It's from growing up around adults. Yeah. I was wondering if you had that too.

Absolutely. I'm sure she's got me. You're such an old soul so many times. I think it comes from growing up in the industry a lot.

I always got along better with adults than kids growing up, which is sad in some ways, but also turning on a lot of really cool art. Yeah. Well, are you familiar with this concept of that either you have two selves, right? There's the experiential self and then the narrative self, the one that's writing the story of your life.

Yeah. And then the experiential self is like looking at Instagram and you love doing that for two hours and then at night your narrative self's like, that was a terrible waste of my day, right? So they're at odds sometimes, but I'm wondering, you know, I'm sure the experiential Evan was enjoying the hell out of being around adults, not like going, Oh, I'm missing out on a traditional childhood, but I wonder if the narrative self, when you look back, do you feel like, Oh, maybe I It's interesting. I feel like a lot of people that were child actors and that are still acting as adults when they get asked, would you like, if they have children, they get asked, would you let your kids do it?

And they say, I wouldn't change anything about my life, but no, I will not let my child do it. Yeah. So I have, yeah, kind of that war of it, because there's a lot of scary things that come with it. And I do have reservations about trusting a child into it before they really have a sense of self and what they really want.

And you don't really know what you're getting into. So sometimes you don't really know what you're getting into as an adult. No, most often, none of them. Yeah.

And it's kind of the fun of being alive. Life doesn't give a, can you press on this? Okay. Life doesn't give a shit about your plan.

I've learned that. Yeah. Well, I also loved my experiences and the travel and the learning and I felt like I got a better education being an actor than I did in school. I am perplexed by actors who, now look, I don't want to push my children in acting and I don't even desire them to be child actors, but the notion of them being adults who go and act and like, it's the greatest job you can have if you can find employment.

I don't understand. Like almost every actor, I know the kids like, well, I don't want them to go and I'm like, why? It's the best job. Absolutely.

It's so important. I think it's an amazing tool. And I think, what makes me sad is, and I've even felt this way where, you know, no one really asks you questions about acting or the process or what it means to you and there's this assumption that you're just doing this to be famous and that's it and that there's no. I am, by the way.

Just so you know that. And also, that's fine. Sure, sure. It's even worse.

I just want money. I just want all the money. Yeah. It's also fine.

But there is this other side of it that I don't know for me, like I grew up in the theater. I grew up around it. That's why I know probably a lot of the synthesis may because it was just, I was bred to do it. And I loved it.

And it was always to me about storytelling. And I never looked at it as pretending. I looked at it as truth telling and feeling and trying to be as like truthful and vulnerable as possible to connect people. And it sounds really cheesy when you talk about it and no one really wants to believe you when you say that.

I guess my motivation for them to do it in adulthood would be I want them to have real life experiences before having primarily pretend life experiences. Right. You know, like I don't want them to just jump off a bridge into a river only in a movie when they're acting like I want them to have done that for real. And then when they're on the bridge in the movie, they remember how fun that was, you know.

So I guess that's the dicey part of it is like, but I think something may was great at and I wonder how you did is she was very engaged and active in every other aspect of her life as well. So she was like pursuing music on her own. She was in. She's a great singer.

She sure is. A little tiny angel. Yeah. And I wondered, were you so busy acting that you were precluded from having a bunch of hobbies or interests or did you juggle a lot of things?

Growing up or now? Growing up. Yeah. Growing up.

No, I started in musical theater. So I've also been singing as long as I've been acting in music and singing is another great, great love of mine. But no. Well, let's start with seeing your parents.

Your mom and dad are both actors and your dad's also a writer and a playwright and director. Yeah. And my mom has an acting studio now. It's just, it's everywhere.

Yeah. Right. So it certainly would make a ton of sense that that was everything. Yeah.

My whole family is artists. And so when there's production designers, there's, you know, directors and writers and singers and drummers and that we're just kind of a family of misfits. And why were you all in Raleigh? That's where my parents grew up and that's where my dad founded his theater and which he still runs there.

And that's where my parents met. And I grew up there in two plays. Yeah. And that was the first place I went on stage.

And that's just kind of where everything. I don't know. I think he always just felt a real connection with that community and wanting to get people that outlet there. And he has built this kind of really amazing community and people that I've known since I was a child are still there and still involved in.

Yeah. They've met their wives and there's, you know, they've had kids and other kids are in the theater. It's been this kind of multi-generational thing. It's really cool.

Yeah. That's neat. And so presumably you were always around this theater. Always.

Yeah. Yeah. And when did you first do a play? I can't even get her to like walk to her room.

Yeah. I have five girls. No, I can't imagine. I look at him and I'm like, that's how old I was when I screen tested for injury with a vampire.

Wow. And it really dawned on me. And I looked at when I was like, oh, that's why people came up to you and said, excuse me. This girl is five.

And she's speaking like a Victorian adult, what is happening. So that's kind of where I got discovered. It is interesting because when I look at people like, um, um, what's her buns in ET? Drew Barrymore.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, she's a baby. Yeah. And she's phenomenal.

Yes. It should be that. It'd be Christian. Nice kids.

And yet they, I don't see that they have that capacity at all. I mean, maybe as they get older, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's a unique kind of like, uh, cause you just at that age, you get sick of doing something in like 30 seconds. Yeah. The attention span is really.

And they must have tricks to deal with that or maybe they actually, they don't. I've been, I've been in movies with little people and they just march forward like it's, uh, you know, Harrison Ford is in the scene, you know? It's true. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't really remember tricks or anything. I mean, but I know that Spielberg is like the child whisperer. All those amazing kids and his, didn't they dress up somebody in a bear costume to film close encounters?

Do you remember the kid in close encounters? Yeah. Really the little one in his performance was absolutely amazing. And the way he looked at the lights is because there was a guy in a bear costume.

Oh. So just I feel like I did something funny with it too. Yeah. I think so.

There's some kind of story about that. I'm sure. Yeah. But eating a top hat or some braero or shorts.

That's incredible. But then you also hear the horror stories too of like, well, how did they get that kid to cry like that? And then you hear, oh, we told him that his dog had died and then got the performance and then immediately told him that the dog was okay. I was like, that's cool.

And it was from someone who shot the movie. Oh, no, I'll leave out the director. But they knew that they needed a little kid to cry in like three weeks. And so the director had invited the kid into his trailer a couple of different times to hang out.

And he made a big deal about this watch. He had this pocket watch and it had been his great grandfathers and his father's and now it was his and it was his most prized possession. Like three days before that scene, the director comes out and yells at the whole crew. Someone stole my watch.

Where's my fucking watch? If I find out who did this, blah, blah, blah makes this huge thing. He plays angry for three days. But before action, they send the costume over to straighten the kids outfit out and the customer says, what's in your pocket?

Oh, this is hard. I know. And they keep pulls out the watch. I mean.

Holy shit. How is that? Child abuse. It is.

It is. Absolutely is. I also had to tip my hat to the sophistication of the plan. I mean, it's a pretty detailed plan.

Sociopathic. I would say. Yes. God, isn't that something?

And the kid, of course, was crying. I didn't do it. It wasn't me. I don't know.

Oh, they were like, oh, boy. That is awful. Can you remember ever being manipulated in that fashion? Anyone high to watch on your person?

No. No. Sometimes somebody would smash something to make me jump or I'm scared or you hear something really loud behind you. But it was never, you know, I think sometimes I would get my mom to like yell at me or something.

But I would ask her to do that. I'd be like, yeah, let me mom. Yeah. Such a little like serious actor kid.

Yeah. One time when Kristin and I worked together on something I directed, it was a specific scene where she had to feel very betrayed and blah, blah, blah. And she said, do you want me to like just go off, you know, the reservation? And she said, yeah, like give me something believable.

And so I made up this crazy story in the scene and it worked. And at the end of it, we had to like hug for about three minutes, but she was an adult and that's what she wanted. Yeah. Well, again, it's weird.

Our job is manipulating our emotions and tricking our bodies into thinking something is actually happening to us. And if you do that enough, it is easy to slip in and out of that, at least, I mean, I don't know for maybe not for some, but for me, if I sometimes when I'll just think about a scene and start crying, like I just get used to like tapping into like what that would actually feel like. Well, it's like muscle memory. You just muscle memory, absolutely.

But it's also why a lot of actors go insane, I think. Yeah. Because it's huge. Like on the one hand, on one hand, I'm unsympathetic to actors who have these very public meltdowns on set and happens to get recorded, you know, part of me is like, fuck you, these people are working much harder than you.

And you don't get the facts like that. On the other hand, I can also make the case that an actor is going to fail multiple times in front of everybody they know before you get it. And there is some kind of vulnerability in that I'm a little sympathetic to like, well, they're the only people here feeling at their job over and over again until they get it right. And we really only get about 15 minutes to do our job a day, you know, because it's all broken up.

You do a little bit and then you wait for me. I can do it, wait, wait for a long time. And when you add it all together, it's really not that long for your job. Yeah.

That's what I like about TV. Okay. Initially was hesitant to go into TV. And once I got there was like, oh, this is awesome.

If I'm here for 10 hours, I'm actually acting for six of the hours. That's awesome. That's what I like. Yes.

I also watched every single episode of Farron. Oh, you did. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm a huge sucker for family drama. But it's also because I was on one when I was a kid for like three years and it was such a experience just shaped me in such a way and it was so special. It really is a family. It really is.

You're spending so much time with them. There's no way you can be doing that kind of material connecting and putting yourself in those places without bringing in your own shit. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like it just comes out. Yeah. When you don't expect it. And you have these moments with actors where you see something in their eyes and they see something in yours and you know it's real and you don't know where it's coming from.

Right. But you like hold hands when you're done. It's like you just showed me a piece of your soul. And I just want to acknowledge that.

Yeah. Yeah. I just saw some trauma. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Have they been prosecuted? And I have a little sister and a little brother who was only a year older than my son because my dad and dad and dad and mom had a baby later on.

Yeah. I could have guessed what parent had a child four years ago. Yeah. That would be my dad.

So you had two older brothers in the day get into it at all? Yes. My brother is an actor and also is helping to run my father's theater now. He's like basically like going to take it over.

And he's brilliant. Honestly, my brother, Ira is one of my acting heroes. And you know, he was three years old at me. So we were like frickin' frag growing up and we're always making movies, doing skits.

Like he taught me everything I've ever learned about comedy and he still inspires me to say. He's amazing. And then my oldest brother is a musician. He's an amazing drummer.

And then I was bracing myself for you to say he's in prison. Oh, wow. I'll tell you why. There was a small semantic thing where he said, my older brother, you just used singular and I was like, oh, something happened to the other old brother where we're now not talking about him in the present tense.

Anyhow, I really got buckled up and I was like, oh my goodness, manslaughter or something. No, no, no, no. He's fine. We're kids and it's going really well.

Your mom and dad, obviously, they had no room to say like go to law school. No, but weirdly enough, I've been studying law this year. You have? Yeah.

Why? I do a lot of domestic violence advocacy work and part of that is learning everything you can about the laws to see what's working and what's not. Yeah. It's actually been a thing.

Now are you in pursuit of an actual degree? I have toyed with the idea of passing the bar to have the knowledge and because kind of what we're talking about growing up, my main job was acting and I obviously did school and you do school mainly in a trailer and you're just doing it so that you can work. You're just kind of rushing through. You're not really retaining me.

At least for me. I get a lot more one-on-one than I did in public school. But yeah, it just, my career took off at a really young age and so I didn't, I never studied anything like that. Well, it's a ton of fun as maybe you're discovering.

I'm a nerd though, so I love it. I mean, serious. My favorite moment was UCLA. I fucking love going to classes and learning.

It's so fun. I'm not going to have a pact in our retirement. We're going to return to college. Yeah, we're just going to sit in on lectures.

And accumulate in weird degrees. Yeah. Next time you meet me, I might be an architect. We don't know yet.

Slash, slash, slash. But that's everyone not just actors. Like, every kid, no one's taking in what they should be in because they don't know yet. The value.

Exactly. Yeah. I really love learning now, especially things that I feel really coming into you right now. Like, whoa.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. What is the attraction to working with domestic abuse? I'm a survivor myself.

And it wasn't until very recently that I really came to terms with everything and was even able to identify what had happened. Because when it happens, it's very complicated. And you lie to yourself. You're being lied to.

You're being gaslit. You're in a dangerous situation. You lose a sense of self. Right.

And a sense of reality. Because you're stuck in this nightmare for a while. Yeah. People jump right to, oh, you were physically abused.

How could that have happened, right? Yes. But they don't realize there's generally like eight really strong steps in route to there. Yeah.

Does that happen to you? Precursors. Are you watching the R. Kelly thing?

I did watch it. And I related a lot to it. And I was really glad that we were having a lot of those conversations. Because there's a lot of ways that you can be abused that aren't physical.

Right. And there's a lot of really complicated ways that somebody can control you and prevent you from leaving a situation without ever having to restrain you. And we don't really talk about it. And what they don't talk about is the person that hits you.

Somebody that you love very much. Sure. And for a long time it's been very nice and very charismatic and very sweet. And you've seen this amazing side to them.

And you don't want to believe that's who they are. And it progressively gets worse. You know, it's not something that just sort of. Yeah.

You want to think it's an anomaly. And they're certainly then apologizing like crazy. Of course. It's the best version of themselves.

And then you're walking on eggshells to prevent another incident. And then there's tension building. And then there's another explosion. And then you start to cycle over again.

What did you think of? What was the show? Sharp? No, no.

What's on HBO right now with all the ladies? That was a really great portrayal of what it is like in the complexities behind it. Yeah, I found that. I mean, obviously having never been on either side of that relationship.

I just remember watching that going, whoever wrote this has lived this. Like this is so specific. I have to believe this is accurate. It's very accurate.

Yeah. And the whole like the fact that their sex life became predicated on that. And that was really the only way they had sex. And I was like, Oh, this is, this is a much deeper thing than I give it credit for.

Well, my mom was in here and one of my step dads was physically abusive. And it never even occurred to me. Thank you. Never even occurred to me as she's the most honest human being the world.

Nothing was ever hidden from us, but it didn't occur to me until I was interviewing her. Wait a minute. You're like a crazy strong woman. How did you end up in that?

And she, her answer was her shame over having had a failed marriage once before was keeping her. She just couldn't handle the shame of having failed the second time. I was like, Oh my God. Well, I totally know shame.

That is like the most powerful weapon out there against us. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of shame and because of all these misconceptions about what domestic violence is and what it looks like. And there's so much victim blaming.

Yeah. It's scary to come forward with that. So in the, yeah, in our Kelly example, his pattern was starts by Call Me Daddy when we're having sex. People are like, Oh, yeah.

I'll call you. I'll call my mother if she wants. If that helps her, great. I'll call her chicken a little, whatever.

They're like, Okay, I'll call you Daddy. And so that starts. And then you're getting familiar with that. Wave to is Call Me Daddy all the time, not when we're having sex, but now I'm always daddy.

And then it was, I want you to wear these certain outfits. And you're kind of like, Oh, I want my partner to be attracted to me. And all of a sudden you're calling him daddy all the time. You're wearing all these outfits.

And then you're like, Oh, this is far more complicated than he likes young women. There's like a lot of different gears in that transmission. Yeah. He sounds like he might be an actual psychopath.

And definitely has a God complex and is definitely narcissistic. But that is, that is how it starts and how it can get so complicated. And were you able to find sympathy for him at all while watching that? No.

I understand that he may have had a very rough childhood as part of the tragedy. But a lot of people get abused and don't abuse other people. It definitely raises a lot of questions. But I think as a survivor and the responsibility that we have, I think that he should definitely be prosecuted.

Yeah. So let me start with it. I think he's a monster. I think he's totally a monster.

I think he's ruined a bunch of people's lives. If all that stuff is true, I actually don't know that. I don't want to get sued by anyone. But assuming that documentary was an accurate portrayal, this guy's a fucking monster.

But there was a little part of my brain going, it's kind of like an STD. You're like mad at the person that gives you an STD, but someone gave that person an STD. Like everyone's a victim. Well, it's a virus that spread from person to person.

And that is why it is so sad. You know, a lot of abusers that beat their wives or intimate partners grew up in domestic violence households and either saw family member being beaten or beaten themselves. And this is why it's a cycle. Yeah.

And this is why we have to put things into place, especially prevention and education so that people know how to prevent it. There were a lot of things that happened to me that I just had no idea about. I was so young, I didn't know the things to look for. I didn't know that I was being abused.

I thought I was with a very complicated person. Right. That I was being strong. And I think that's the thing.

Was it fulfilling any romantic fantasy of yours about being in a Sid and Nancy relationship? Oh, 100%. Yeah. That was in the beginning.

Yeah. No one understands us. No one understands us. No one understands us.

You feel like you are a part of something really special. Yeah. And they make you feel really special. They make you feel like they need you.

And much like what they spoke about in the documentary, they usually share something very personal with you that makes them vulnerable and you go, oh, okay, I see where this comes from and it's not your fault. And so I'm going to excuse this behavior. Right. And then, you know, from there it gets worse and worse.

And the other thing I touched upon is, you know, these were girls that had a dream, you know, they really thought they were getting an opportunity to do something great with their lives. That's the part that I think makes him a little more sick about it because he knows he can, it's malicious. It's a pattern of behavior that, you know, it's repeated. It was calculated, premeditated.

Yeah. It was, you know, the people that you can pray upon, yeah, stay tuned for our mother expert if you dare. So here's a really interesting dynamic about all of this. We just talked about it for the first time a few weeks ago.

So I was molested. I'm sorry. That's all right. So I was driving on the road and I was listening to the Bikram Yoga podcast.

Yes. Yes. Yes. A component of all this that is really hard to talk about.

And so I only speak on my own behalf about it. But I recognized it in these women who were victimized by Bikram. I wanted something from the guy who wasn't me. And so there were moments where I was in a situation I did not want to be in and I knew I didn't want to be in it.

But I stayed because I wanted something. The person had leverage over me as Bikram had leverage over all these women. And I think I just, for myself, I was like, you know what the real shame of that experience was? I can accept that I was seven and did no better and all that.

He, of course, is the monster and the perpetrator and all that. But deep in my soul, I know I stayed in a situation that I shouldn't have been in. And that's where the real healing for me is going, A, I admit that. A, I admit I didn't listen to my inner voice.

I wanted something and I put myself in a situation I shouldn't have been in. And I forgive myself for that. Absolutely. Because I was seven.

And I don't hear when I hear all this talk. I don't really hear the personal voyage of people who have been in this. And I have to imagine it's a really important piece of the puzzle. So forgiving yourself.

Yeah. Like just owning your own mistake and then forgiving yourself from it. Absolutely. There's so many things that I look back on and I know I'm not proud of and a lot of behaviors that came out as a result of me not knowing how to process what had happened to me.

And I was acting out and I was really impulsive and defensive. And you know, on the surface, it would have seemed like I was just an asshole. You know, I was really suffering. And you know, so that is definitely something to keep in mind.

And have you had therapy for it? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. But it took me seven years to even be able to cry about it.

Because I really walked away going, you know, if I'm in pain because of this, then they went. And so I'm just not going to let it hurt me. I just wanted to forget it had ever happened and just press on and keep moving. And, you know, I was a shell of a person.

I had to sacrifice so much of myself to keep somebody happy that by the end I didn't know who I was anymore. And I was ashamed of so many things that I had done and been a part of because I felt like I had no other choice. And you also, I imagine you have an identity of for yourself. That is you are strong and outspoken and brave in these things, right?

Yeah. So it's threatening to your identity to have been in that situation, which is the most threatening thing you can experience. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think it is absolutely important to lift the shame about it. And once you do process things, you're able to look at it more objectively and, you know, because a lot of people walk away and they, you lied to yourself to make sense of what's happened to you and say that this is my fault. I put myself here. I should have loved it.

I should have known what I was getting into. I should have, you know, should have, should have, and, you know, it's, it's obviously not that easy. Right. Okay.

So I think it must be an interesting voyage to end up there to begin with. So you're first dissecting in, in, on stage with your family, right? And then you start doing it professionally pretty young, like at 10 maybe. Does that mean you do your first movie?

My first feature film was when I was nine. The first time I was number one on the call sheet. That's pretty young to be number one on the call sheet. Yeah.

I'm racking my brain if I've even been number one on the call sheet at 44. Were your parents apprehensive? Or were they like, I could, because certainly in their little community theater in Raleigh, you're like, absolutely. This is play time.

Do this. But then when you, I assume you started expressing interest in like doing it professionally. It really just kind of happened. Okay.

I would audition in Wilmington. There was a lot more filming going on there. And we knew some casting directors out there. They initially called my parents because they were casting something they knew that they had a daughter my age.

I remember Claire's day. My mom got the phone call. And then I turned to me and said, Evan, would you want to be in a movie? And I kind of shrugged and went, okay.

Like, whatever. Yeah. When is the start? That's literally how my career started.

It's ridiculous. And I just sort of kept doing it. And every now and then I get a little part in something. And it was just kind of a fun thing to do.

And then, yeah, that was the first time it wasn't, it was really the whole production was on my shoulders. And so I got a taste of what that felt like. And it was extremely hard. Were you in another state for that?

I was in North Carolina still. Oh, you are. Yeah. Yeah.

But that's when I started thinking I think I want to do this for real. Yeah. And what aspects appealed you? Let me back up.

What kind of kid were you? Like up to that point? Were you like to go to a ton of friends? You were hyper?

I was a hyper kid. And I don't know. People used to call me old soul. I hung out with adults most of the time.

I was a real tomboy. Really rough and tumble. But I just loved movies and I loved music. And to me, I grew up in a house where that was everything.

That was my religion. It was just and my life was people and emotions and expression and connecting. And then I came to LA when I was 10 and took acting class Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. And I helped teach on Saturdays.

And I was one of the only kids that they let come into the adult classes. And, you know, I didn't always get to do a scene but I actually got to like sit and watch. And I was just constantly thinking. And did mom come with you for that?

Yeah, she taught there at the time as well. And at what point are you like you're making a living? Probably when I got onto my family drama once and again when I was 12. I did that for three years and then that show got me 13 and that was it.

Okay. So from 12 to 15, you're on that show. And what is it like being 12 to 15 in Hollywood, like acting on a show? Were you on to any of the nightlife aspect?

Did you? I was kind of kept under lock and key because there were so many failed child star stories. Actually a huge Google child star. It's the most depressing thing you'll ever see because the only thing that comes up is death and drugs and all the fucking horrible aspects.

They don't show around Howard. No, and they're just ripping apart. It's terrible. It's, you know, it's so just fodder.

So because of that, they were very, very protected by my family and, you know, the people, my agents and people of that nature. But because of that, I think I felt really suffocated at times and really claustrophobic because I felt like I wasn't allowed to do anything wrong. And so I didn't, you know, I was maybe too well behaved, which is maybe why I like went and ate shit. I was just going to say, I've had like an armchair at a distance theory about you for years now.

And I've been dying to know like, yeah, if I'm at all close to what it was. But to me, I was like, that person really wants to rebel. And why would you really want to rebel? And I'm imagining because you were perfect and that's daunting and oppressive.

And you kind of want to just go fuck all this. Yeah. And I, you know, there was a lot of things I was dealing with that I didn't know I was dealing with. I was also in the closet.

And I also, I had a lot of ideas about who I was and what I wanted to be. And I didn't feel like I was able to express any of them, you know, things like the color of my hair and the way I dressed and everything seemed to be controlled. And my life was mapped out for me very early. And I knew that I could do that if I wanted to.

I could see it and I knew how to do it, but it didn't feel authentic. And I also felt like, hey, I need to fall apart for a second. I need to go live my life. Be a kid, basically.

Be a kid. Yeah. And be and find out who I am. And if I do that and I still want to do this and I want to come back, then, you know, that's my answer.

And I think as a woman too, and especially as a child star, and I think, I don't know, I, this is just a theory, but because you are so preserved and kept in, you know, under lock and key and, you know, like a porcelain doll in a shelf, there's also a problem there about how we never really allow women to explore their sexuality or to own it or to look at their bodies like something that belongs to them or that is there for their pleasure or that they can enjoy and that they can own. And I think being a child star reinforced that idea about my body, that it belonged to other people and that I was there to please other people and that I was, I would do whatever you say. What do you want me to wear? Who do you want me to be?

What do I got to do? What do I got to smile at? You know, that shaped me in a way, set me up for sort of the path of my adulthood. That wasn't always a good one, but taught me a lot.

Did you at all fall into the kind of pattern you see in some Disney stars where it's like, they're so G-rated for so long. By the way, I grew up with a lot of those Disney stars, the Disney channel coos are the worst. No, I know. I know some of them.

That's what parties were at. I know some of them in sobriety and I can tell you, yeah, a lot of them. I don't mean the worst thing about people. I just mean like, yeah, they were having fun.

They were being kids. They were getting into trouble. Some of those kids were smung crack. That is not, that is, that is, that is not around and that's, that's very sad.

But there is this kind of pattern, I can think of several people where they were in the Disney world and they wanted to own their sexuality to distance themselves from this thing where they were highly controlled. And sexuality seems like the easiest, most accessible way to do that loudly. And I wondered if you at all felt like that was a way you would define yourself as an adult as opposed to this kid. Definitely.