'The Interview': Kristen Stewart Wants to Show Us a Different Kind of Sex

This podcast is supported by the International Rescue Committee. Co-founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years.

The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis.

Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild.

From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marchese.

When it comes to artists and celebrities, there are few things more exciting than change when the person we thought we knew shows us something different.

Kristen Stewart has shown us that a few times.

She shot to stardom in big-budget Hollywood hits like the Twilight series, but by her mid-20s, she stepped away from popcorn movies in favor of independent films, including 2021 Spencer.

She played Princess Diana, earning herself an Academy Award nomination.

Stewart has undergone a pretty profound transformation off-screen, too.

She used to be a frequent target of the tabloid press, both for her relationships, notably with her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson, and also for her often sullen-seeming public appearances.

Things seem different now.

As I found out when we spoke, Stewart, who publicly came out in 2017 and earlier this year married the screenwriter and producer Dylan Meyer, is writing some entirely new energy.

At 35, she's just directed her first full-length feature, The Chronology of Water. The film is an adaptation of Lydia Yaknevich's intense memoir.

She was a competitive swimmer who fought her way through various traumas in order to become the writer she needed to be.

Stewart has made a bold movie, one which raises questions about womanhood, sexuality, excess, and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

Questions that set the stage for a pretty fun and freewheeling conversation.

Here's my interview with Kristen Stewart.

Hi, Kristen. How are you? Great.
How are you? I'm good. I'm good.
Thank you for taking the time to come do this. I appreciate it.
I am 100% honored, truly. All right, we'll just get right into it.

Okay. So

you've been trying to make the chronology of water for, I think it's close to 10 years.

And, you know, it's a memoir that involves a lot of really heavy stuff. You know, there's addiction, child abuse, the loss of an infant.

I'm just wondering, when you first read the book, what was it about that material that made you feel like this was a story that you had to tell?

It was the way that she told it. It was the fact of the telling.

There is an invitation in that text to kind of excavate your own memories.

And also, it's about the things that you just mentioned, but for me, it's much less about the things that happened to Lydia and much more about how she reorients those things and writes them down.

The idea of selfhood, just the idea of

diaristic writing by women. feeling and being criticized for being like selfish and narcissistic.
It's like, oh, sorry, I was being selfish. I wanted a self.

It's like anytime you start talking about yourself, it becomes kind of this tired, pathetic, messy thing.

And I wanted to make something tired, pathetic, and messy that felt exuberant and achieved and, you know, encouraging.

You opened up a lot of doors with that answer. So

let's start going through some of them.

But I think you said that your interest in the material wasn't necessarily so much about the particulars of Lydia's experience as it was the way that the writing invited you to sort of examine the particulars of your own experience.

And I just wonder if you can kind of make that concrete a little bit. Like what was...
You know, as soon as you start making those things specific, you fully and completely dilute the point.

You know, in the beginning of the movie, we show a series of images of a woman bleeding at various times in her life.

There's a way that that blood sticks to the grout before it runs down the drain that indicates that that did not come from a laceration or a cut. It came from an orifice.

That is a very, very specific experience, but it is also general enough for everyone to kind of insert their lives into the movie if you are a woman or if you might have ever loved a woman or heard her speak about what it feels like to bleed from the place that hurts the most, but that creates life.

You know, the movie is called tough because when you reduce it to these specific plot points,

it provides an arena for men to feel a lot of shame.

And you don't have, it's honestly quite like, it's very self-revealing because sometimes I talk to people, I'm like, is the thing that you took away from this not that it's an exuberant, bloodletting, telling, secret, bearing, sort of like joyous celebration of a woman finding herself and her own volition and freedom, or is it that it was like kind of awkward?

Because for you to acknowledge that, you know,

those things don't happen to everyone, but they do happen to most women is awkward. And so it's like,

yeah, sure, like I specifically think of things that have happened in my life. But if the question is like, you know, what concrete things, did my, did I have an abusive relationship with my father?

No.

Do I resent him when he comments on my appearance? Yes. Don't consider, you know what I mean? It's like, it's all about how we're contextualized by the male gaze.

You know, I think an idea that I was thinking about as I was watching the film was the relationship between one's own experience and sort of the emotionally intense experiences of, in this case, the author.

But I think kind of what I hear you saying is that my question is maybe a little bit irrelevant.

I think that question

is super necessary and interesting.

And I do really appreciate it because what I want to say always is that if you get bogged down in the details and you pick this woman apart, you're not giving her a chance to be as genius as she is.

So I think it's definitely important to talk about the fact that this is not a movie about this one woman. It's a movie about women being allowed to speak for themselves and be people.

That was a very elegant and impassioned way of saying that. Nice question, dummy.
No, not at all. I literally don't mean, I don't mean to talk down to that question.

Like, what else are you going to ask?

It does seem like what the movie is about. Like, I do not like,

I'm a morning person. Yeah.

So I'm like, hey, yeah, sorry.

This is a total naive question, but why does it take eight years to make a movie like this?

It's not like a giant

special effects movie or, you know, a bunch of locations all over the world, or something. So, what it seems like an unusually long time.
Maybe it's not in your business, but

I was lucky to be allowed to make this movie at all.

I don't know that this movie would have gotten financed by anyone if I wasn't me.

I had to do a lot of kicking and screaming. I think it's a real, a multi-tiered answer that I hope I have the sort of wherewithal to organize at this moment.
You know,

I had never made a movie before. It does not have a three-act structure structure that is easy to classify.

And so most of the time, it's difficult to pay for something that doesn't have an equatable success story. You know what I mean?

Like something that you go, oh, well, this is going to be great because we've seen it before. Yeah, exactly.
It's like, this meets this is always how you try and like sell and market a movie.

It's like, I don't know what this meets, this meets anything.

But this had to be the first thing I said.

It just had to be because it's about saying things, but it took a long time because it is unsavory, unpalatable, because it is about violation and repossession.

And also, how fun it is to watch someone do that because she is just a force. She's like a tsunami.
And also, there's a sexuality in it that just feels like fucking delicious.

I think you were just talking about, in a way, the idea of Lydia's sense of abandon. You know, that could be sexual abandon, creative abandon, abandon when it comes to

drinking or drug use, abandon with relationships. You know,

I think abandon in one's life is important.

There's a sort of a concentric circle or an overlapping circle with transcendence in a certain way.

And

I think abandon does require

some degree of anonymity.

Or you don't want like a voice over here while you're trying to really lose yourself.

And I wonder if, given that you're a public figure in some way, if it's hard for you to feel abandoned or have moments of transcendence. Yeah.

I don't self-censor.

I don't fixate on kind of how things are going to land on other people because I'm not smart enough. It would just be so inauthentic.

I mean, I guess it's just- Do you think it's a matter of intelligence?

Some people are mastermind crazy control freak and like, I just don't have that. Like, ultimately, I think those people are probably going to like die young.
And like, like, you know, I don't know.

That's like, I think it would take years off your life to try and think in those terms. But

I've, um,

I've been lucky enough to sort of

find the moments that I fell on my face in public or, you know,

a nice healthy amount of humiliation is really humbling. You know what I mean? Like, and it also makes you realize too that like, you know, that first scratch, who cares?

Like after that first scratch, you just go like, okay, so crash the car. You know what I mean? Like we can fix it.
Like the way that I've been allowed to bounce off of people has felt

so fruitful

largely. Yeah.
Yeah. On the whole.
On the whole.

Sorry.

But the

way that people who don't know you have a relationship with you,

it's a very rare mode of human existence.

So what have you sort of taken away from being one of these few people who can actually like witness what it's like to become a character in a story not of their own making?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes you find yourself on something that doesn't really know what it's saying.

And so then the sort of

subsequent conversation is confused and sort of ambiguous and becomes like very selly like it feels like really like you're just like a capitalist cog

um which we all are i mean like that's like what it is i want everyone to go hey go go take buy a ticket to the chronology of water christmas day um so but like i

um

yeah like sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't you know it's it's definitely possible to be truthful within the system but then when you're trying to sell something it does sort of inherently get bizarre i was working with a director that was like talking about an actress who was thinking about whether or not they should do a film And they were like, well, I think the market right now is, and I was like, I don't think I've ever said the word market unless I was going to buy some oranges.

And that is just how I function. And even if that's naive, I am willfully like honestly tunnel vision.
And I know you did ask a slightly different question.

Like, if I'm telling someone else's story, what it feels like to do that on maybe such like a large scale and is part of a business. Maybe that, was that your question?

I think you should just let it rip. Just go

with where you were going. Yeah, you're like, not at all.

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just a, it's a, it's a funny thing to find yourself

kind of desperate to have people come see what you worked on, but then also have that wrapped in, wrapped up in whether or not, um, you know, it's worthwhile. Yeah.
And

I don't think I answered your question, but I, you know, maybe the next one I'll get closer to.

No, you know, sometimes people say, like, I don't think I answered your question, but every answer is revealing in its own way, even if it's not the answer to the question I expect.

So now I'm like so curious about what you're asking. Ben Secret, we can go on.
No, I was just asking, it's like, you know, you became, at some point, you became a character in the tabloids. Right.

And I was curious about what do you learn from like seeing this character, Kristen Stewart, out in the world, in that world specifically. Oh, interesting.

And you know, it's not you. It's this character, Kristen Stewart, that has been created.
That's sometimes it is. True, I said it like, I know you.
I don't know you. Maybe it was you.

But you do know me now, and that belongs to you. And you can think anything about me that you want.
Do you know what I mean? Like, I have given you those details. I guess the part that

if I've ever been frustrated, it's because, you know, they get the wrong information or you sort of go like, that's not who I think I am.

But then you go, like, who you think you are has nothing to do with what other people think you are. And so like, no one's wrong, you know? Yeah.

And that's the relinquishing of control that I'm talking about. It's like, you really just, like, you must slide or else you'll,

it's not about not being smart enough to control it. It's that it's not possible.

Right. So it's, it would just be an exercise in futility if you tried.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, just

you said something a second ago about sort of

the connection between like the thing you're making and sort of what it means to you.

And this, I'm just going to go on a slight little tangent right now, uh, because that's where my, that's just something that popped up to my mind. If you're allowed to go on tangents, I'm allowed to.

I was going to say, well, now we're hanging out. So we're going to be like off in the ether.
And they're going to be like, we've been talking for an hour and a half. You're done.
Go.

I've always been fixated on Marlon Brando's performance as

himself. Well, throughout his life, yes.
Well, he answered yes. I have been.
But it's particularly his performance as Superman's dad in the first Superman film. Okay.

We're like, he has to say the word. Krypton, the planet where Superman is from.

I've never seen this. Does he like not say it? Is he like Krypton? That's exactly how he says it.
He says Krypton.

He can't commit to Krypton. He can't.

Literally, I can picture this. I've never seen the movie.
Krypton, though. And everyone else in the movie says Krypton.

And I'm sure at some point somebody's like, you know, Marlon, it's actually pronounced Krypton. Poor male actors.
God,

it must just be so painful. It must have been hard to be Marlon Brando.
But I brought this up in sort of a similar context with Sean Penn. Because he knew Marlon Brando.

And I was like, oh, it's just weird that Brando wouldn't do that. Like, what was going on?

And he suggested that actually not pronouncing Krypton correctly was Brando's way of sort of retaining some part of himself, even though he was doing this sellout movie.

It's like, oh, I can take your money, but I'm not giving you my soul. And I thought, oh, that's, that probably is what was going on.

Like, he had to hold on to some measure of artistic independence, even though he knew he was doing this thing that was kind of like, it was a paycheck job. Yeah.

Have you had similar experiences, or does that resonate with you at all? That has kick-started so many.

Oh, good. We're in it now, Kristen.
Yeah.

Okay, so performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. You know what I mean? Like, there's no bravado in

suggesting that you're a mouthpiece now for someone else's ideas and that to sort of lend yourself,

you know, it's just inherently submissive. Yeah.

Have you ever heard of a a female actor that was method?

And I'm not coming for like the method. I don't even know enough about the method.
I know you're the method.

I mean, the only name that comes to mind is a teacher, you know, Stella Adler, but I can't think of a performer who's associated with it. Right.

In the way that some men are associated with it. Right.

Men are aggrandized for retaining self. You know, that was like, he's been really like, he sounds like a hero, doesn't he? Yeah.

If a woman did that, it would be really, I, and I don't want to say this like black and white, like for sure, I know that there would be this difference, but I truly believe from a very insider's perspective that if you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up,

or if you refuse to sort of say a word a certain way, or if you can't sit down in an interview and not kind of like repossess and belittle every question, especially if asked by a woman to you, the movie star.

I mean, like, Brando, he's an, I mean, fuck, like, I'm not coming for him.

Incredible performer. There's a kind of like

really common act that happens before the acting happens sometimes on set. Not only does it waste time, it draws attention, it siphons.
And look, I get it.

Sort of makes if it makes everyone stand at attention and sort of

if it, if it, if you can protrude out of the vulnerability a little bit and you can sort of feel like, you know, a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it's a little less embarrassing to see.

And also it makes it seem like it's a magic trick. It makes it seem like it's so impossible to do what you're doing that nobody else could do it.
Also, maybe a form of control. Yeah.

And so I think maybe the Krypton thing

is,

you know,

it,

let me think of, let me think of a way to kind of sum this up so I don't like totally ruin this point.

It's so defensive. You know, it's like, I had a recent conversation that will, you know, speak to this and maybe finish the point.

I asked a fellow actor, have you ever met a female actor that was like method and needed to sort of scream and, you know, do a whole thing where

as soon as I said the word male actor, female actor, he got like so defended. And he's like one of my best friends.

The reaction was so kind of like, do not mention the elephant in the room. And he goes, oh, actresses are crazy.
And I was like, now I'm crazy. And I was like, wait, but really, answer that.

That was his his answer. That was his response.
Yeah, absolutely. And then I was like, hold on a second.
You just call me crazy. And I was like, cool.

So now we're just doing the typical thing where the girl's crazy and you didn't even listen to anything I said because I said the word male, female actor. Yeah.

And so yeah, I do think that there's like a large difference in terms of performance and generosity and giving. And we are made to give.
We are literally designed to give you what.

you want and we're really good at it and we really love it and men are designed to give like in a very different way and to take you know what i mean so i think um, yeah, that's a really, we could talk about that for like five hours.

Um, let me just scratch my next question. Why are actresses crazy? Don't

actress them. Oh, man.
Love you, bro.

But, um, you know, when I was going back through your films, there are two little periods that I'm just sort of, I was wondering if they were inflection points in some way.

And so the first was when you did the Snow White film, and I want to say that was the last, the same year that the last Twilight film came out. It was.
And both those movies did very well.

And then you didn't do another, I don't know what you'd want to call it, sort of like a big spectacular studio film for a few years until the Charlie's Angels reboot.

And then you haven't gone back to that particular well since.

And I just wondered if you had thought to yourself, all right, I'm kind of done with those types of films for a while.

And then did you make a decision like with Charlie's Angels, I'm going to try again, and that ended up not feeling right, and you haven't done it since. Yeah,

I wanted to help Liz Banks do her thing, the director of the Charlie's Angels, yeah, she directed Charlie's, and

um,

you know, I guess I was maybe feeling a little bit hopeful and optimistic,

but I really just don't, I don't believe, I don't, I spiritually and philosophically disagree with the

sort of committee process, you know, I think, I think a movie comes from someone's singularity and their perspective and their soul. And

I hate signing on to something and seeing something with potential life be destroyed.

And I've just,

you know, I'm not saying that Charlie's Angels was destroyed. It's more the day-to-day.

I like that movie.

I don't think it's impossible to make a film that speaks to people, that's valuable, that

feels good, and that's worth paying for under those circumstances. But I don't have to do it.
And so I don't want to. So yeah, like it's,

I think as an actor, I don't feel the need to feed the machine anymore. And when I was younger, I was kind of jealous, you know, I was kind of greedy.

I was like, maybe that, maybe I could make that work. Maybe that'll be fun.
But it just wasn't

like, I want to play. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't want to not get invited to the party, but then you go to the party and you're like, this party sucks.

Most of the people who encounter this conversation will not have experience of what it's like to be on a movie set. So when you refer to like the day-to-day of that sucks, like, what does that mean?

What happens that you're like, this is not what I want to be doing? Sure.

Test screenings,

literal on-paper numbered equations that tell you whether or not a joke is funny.

10 people who are over the age of 50 and male weighing in on what my queer character's hair should look like.

Completely sucking the

colloquialism, like anything that makes anything specific. You know what I mean?

And so it's like, yeah, day to day.

You watch something with kind of detail and color become really gray.

And

dispiriting. It's dispiriting.
Yeah. It's demoralizing.
And it's also entirely misogynistic and chauvinistic.

And it's like, just not the realm that really creates an environment for me to want to be vulnerable in. And that's like my whole job as an actor.
It's why

it's why guys get embarrassed about being embarrassed. You know what I mean? So my job is to be embarrassed, but to feel safe doing it.

And so in environments like that, with people like that, I don't feel safe, nor should I. Yeah.

And

where I was going originally with that question was maybe a

like an overly literal interpretation of your use of the word greedy. Oh, yeah.
But I energetically. I don't mean like.

Has there ever been an aspect of like, well, it's hard to say no when somebody's offering you millions of dollars to do something?

I mean, not to, well, I was just be like fully transparent. I was such a little guy when I made Twilight.
I made a lot of money. Like I'm so unbelievably lucky.

Yes. I've been so lucky to not have to function from a place of of like, you know, creating security for myself or my family.
Like I, Twilight blew up in our faces, you know, and

the positive repercussions of that, I'm so grateful for.

But I think if that never happened, I would be scraping the bottom of every barrel to never make another studio movie again and never, you know what I mean?

It's like I, this is, that's, it's just the, it's the setup that I think is the most cohesive to a beautiful life.

You sort of answered my next question a little bit, but I'll ask it regardless. And maybe there's more to say.

But I was really thinking about what it means for an artist to be so young, like you were when you made the first Twilight film, and for that to go gangbusters and then to not really have to worry about money anymore.

Because I could imagine that being completely freeing. I could also imagine that, you know, sometimes like having the wide open horizon is actually paralyzing, you know?

So how do you think that, or, or what did that change for you in terms of what you decided you wanted to do with the rest of your life?

And I'm trying to think about like when that actually, when I transitioned into being a real grown-up adult who was like, hold on a second, what's going on here?

Yeah, it's still happening, truly. And I think maybe I have this kind of like willful,

not willful, like,

you know, if you've got a lot of money, you really got to give a lot of it away and you really got to share it and you really got to make sure that like,

I know for a fact I would be able to make myself happy artistically without it. And also the ever-changing climate, I don't even know the structures that are like the ones that we believe in now.

Who knows what the world is going to look like in like five, 10 years? You know what I mean? Like it truly is, we're like at a pivotal nexus.

Because I think we're ready for a full system break. Do you know what I mean?

Like, I just think we need to like, I mean, and, and I mean that across the board and also specific to like the world that I live in, which is like very exclusively the

entertainment industry.

And what would a system break look like in the world that you live in? I don't know. I think we need to start sort of stealing our movies.
I'm so appreciative of every union.

Trust me,

we would not survive without them.

But some of the terms and some of the rules and some of the structures we've set up have created unbelievable barriers for artists to express themselves. And I think that

without being unfaithful, ungrateful,

I think we need a little workaround. I think having it be so impossible for people to tell stories and having it be such an exclusive and rarefied novel position to be in to find yourself doing so

is capitalist hell.

And it hates women and it hates marginalized voices and it's racist. And I think that we need to figure out a way to make it easier to speak to each other through cinema in cinematic terms.

It's too hard to make movies right now that aren't blockbustery, whatever, proven equations.

And so what does that mean? I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure it out.
But

the next movie I want to make, I want to do it for nothing. I want to make not a dollar.
I want it to be a smash hit. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's just so difficult to make movies.

It just doesn't need to be.

So yeah, I'm just trying to think of some sort of weird, like Marxist communist like situation that other people can definitely think like, of course, this psycho is saying that, but I think it's possible, especially in these kind of narrow and exclusive environments.

I'm not talking about the world at large, but for us, we've just made it, the system has barred people and made it too, too difficult, to be honest.

I'm not sure if you were using this example sarcastically or not, but when you said you want to basically make a movie for nothing, that's a huge hit. Do you think you, Kristen Stewart,

could make a movie that's a huge hit that is the movie that you want to make?

Well, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by like huge hit. You know, if the target is like, you know, I know everyone says this,

Marvel is like the tentpole reference for like big movies, but like, you know, pick another one, because I'm not coming for that specifically.

But if that's the goal, no, no, I mean, no, not probably nothing like that. Because again, I do think that that requires a little bit of like homogeny.

But if you do something for nothing and you reach even just a small number of people,

that's enough for me. Do you know what I mean?

A huge hit in terms of it got a theatrical release, that we did a few interviews about it, that we had a couple of screenings, that some people watched it, that some person on Letterboxd said, oh, wow, that changed me.

Do you know what I mean? Like that, that truly is a hit. You know, it's sort of

underneath the conversation has been this idea of

sort of like

who you

could totally make a huge hit. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just realized that your question was like, do you think that left to your own devices, I wonder if you're about your sensibility.

Totally, my sensibility. Do you, do you, do I think it could land on like a large number of people?

I think that if people had the, you know, cojones to allow one person to lead the charge and they were actually financed and supported and believed in

that people would start going to the movies again

and not just to go see like you know marvel 10.

i wasn't i didn't mean to imply that i didn't have faith that you could i'm not saying it's you i just realized like what you asked me and i was like yes we could make a huge hit a smash hit yeah um but so barbie dude which one barbie barbie yeah did you like barbie i love that movie yeah

kind of i just want to say one thing about barbie which i like very much also my sure my this is a divisive subject, yeah.

Yes, my, um, also no one cares what I have to say about Barbie, but I want to express it anyway. Oh, that's not true.
Um,

my one problem with that movie, which I enjoyed very much, I took my two daughters to go see it.

They were at the time probably six and eight or something like that. They're just sort of enraptured watching it.

And I thought the takeaway of this movie, even though there are things that are subversive about it and things that are sort of

politically and societally and culturally critical about it. The takeaway of this movie is that Barbie dolls are cool.
Yeah, I hear you. Like maybe it

ironically part of the world.

A critique of the thing can also still be an advertisement for the thing. Right, right.

Yeah.

Just something to figure out. Yeah, no, I mean, look, no, like 100%.

I do hear you. I think

I think for... I think for a woman to be allowed to make a movie of that scale and how physical it was, like she built all the sets, she made a world to live in.

And then she totally took Barbie and broke her into a million.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, the villains were like the Mattel executives, all of it. It's like,

I'm surprised that Mattel let her make that movie.

I thought it was so critical of the entire notion of being sort of like put into our little packages and boxes and how, like, sort of like, but I hear you.

At the same time, you see a big poster for that Margot Robbie's on, and you're like, oh my God, that is the picture of beauty. Yeah, of course you go, that is perpetuating for sure.

Yeah, you know, it's complicated because I actually completely understand what you're saying.

But when I watched the movie, I was just sitting there like, my, I was just sort of like, sort of like stream crying, like just the, the fact that she was allowed to do it, the fact that she was allowed to make obscure jokes about Proust in a movie about Barbie.

And then like weird Barbie, there was just, I don't know, I, I, I, I, I love the fact of it. Yeah.

You know, I, I, I sort of twice was trying to lead up to like a bigger, uh, kind of like final encapsulation question about how, you know, the idea that we've, you know, kind of we're talking about the story of you in various ways.

But I think I might save that because we're talking again. And I know you have to, you have to split very shortly.
These are always the questions at the end.

Honestly, I can always feel the approach of the end of an interview where I go, and you're not doing it. This is, this is just inherent.
This is, this happens to us all. I always go, okay,

here we go. Time for the summary.

Or like, time to imbue the whole conversation conversation with like you know yeah my imparting thoughts yeah we only have so many tricks it's hard it's another card we're gonna play every time but i'm gonna end uh uh in a different way okay um i was just reading a book uh last night by this um

really uh brilliant psychoanalyst and writer named adam phillips and there's one offhand thing that he had in there that i thought that would be a good question to ask someone so in the book wait what's the book called again the book is called i think it's called on becoming

something like that. On becoming, yeah.
And he quotes someone else who said, the only modern question is,

what is it you don't want to know about yourself?

What's your answer to that question?

I guess,

I guess I would be really ashamed if

all of this to-do,

working on movies, talking talking about them, taking pictures, putting on clothes,

like it's inherently self-serving, of course, but that selfishness,

it's just so mutual. Like, we all want for ourselves.
But I think, like, okay, philosophical question: if there's one, if there's something that you don't want to know about yourself, what is it?

I don't know, man. I really hate like mean people, and I really don't think I am one.

But maybe.

Sometimes if I'm like feeling threatened I can be me but like

God I wish I had a bet do you have anything were you wait were you tiptoeing at the beginning of your answer to something about acknowledging a selfishness in yourself yeah of course yeah I mean I'm totally not tiptoeing like definitely like I hope I'm not just like an egomaniac monster like do you know what I mean like

Because I think that everyone should listen to me, you know? I think like I should be heard. Everyone, I think everyone should be, but like, there's not that much room.
Like, it's like,

but I guess on a base level, if I would need more time to think about the, let's come back to this one too, actually. Sure.
But I think like,

I don't know, the knowledge about myself. Maybe, like, do I even really like care about people, or is it just that I'm desperate not to be alone? Do you know what I mean? Like, do I actually care?

No, I do, though. Well, it's, it's something for you to think about on your plane ride to Poland, which I know you got a split for.
So thank you. Gotta go to Poland, dude.

Thank you very much for taking all the time. Likewise, yeah, this was fun.

After the break, Kristen and I speak again about the type of sex she's sick of seeing in movies.

Yeah, I think like I've seen a lot of sex scenes that are titillating and a lot of sex scenes that are, you know, um, exterior.

I don't, I never want to, I never really again want to stand in a room and watch two people fucking.

This podcast is supported by the International Rescue Committee. Co-founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years.

The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis.

Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. A biotech firm scaled AI responsibly.
A retailer reclaimed hours lost to manual work. An automaker now spots safety issues faster.

While these organizations are vastly different, what they have in common sets them apart. They all worked with Deloitte to help them integrate AI and drive impact for their businesses.

Because Deloitte focuses on building what works, not just implementing what's new. The right teams, the right services and solutions.
That is how Deloitte's clients stand out.

Deloitte together makes progress. Get personal with Alexa Plus and see how well it gets to know you.
The new Alexa learns your preferences and remembers them to serve you better. Planning a vacation?

Ask Alexa to recommend a once-in-a-lifetime trip to check off your bucket list. Use it to find the name of that song you love.
Discover new favorite shows or recipes. And do so much more.

Ask the all-new Alexa Plus anything. Get started at amazon.com slash new alexa.

Are you ready to go? Yeah.

So you were in Poland yesterday, but now you're in London, is that right? Yes. And how did it go showing the film in Poland? Incredible audience.

You palpably understand the response that an audience has to your film when you enter the room for a Q ⁇ A.

And it was a bunch of students kind of like leaning toward me and not kind of slouched in their chairs with their head in their hands. They were like, they looked alive.
They looked kind of on fire.

So I was like, okay, I think this may have gone quite well. It was a fun conversation.
Good.

You know, we had ended our last conversation with

kind of like a big question I'd asked that I took from this book. I actually had gotten the title wrong before, but the book is called The Life You Want by Adam Phillips.

And that question was, what is it you don't want to know about yourself? Have you given any more thought to that question? Yes. And I've asked a lot of other people what their answers would be.

And it is confounding. Nobody has one.
Ah. Because I think there's, there are so many ways to interpret what that means.
Like, is there something that you don't want to find out?

Like, there's, is there something within yourself that you're avoiding that you kind of don't want to look at? Or is it something that you really do know?

in the depths of yourself, but you're avoiding. I interpreted the question.
I think it was the

first way that you mentioned. That's like, what's the thing that you maybe don't really want to know about yourself or don't want to have to confront? Right.

Something that you do know that you wish you didn't. Kind of, kinda.

Yeah. Do you have an answer to this? Do people turn this around on you?

I did come up with answers because

I was thinking about it also.

And do I feel comfortable

getting into those answers?

I mean, you can kind of

give me a quickie. Okay.
Just for conversation's sake. I'm curious.
Like, it seems like you thought about it. It was probably not hard to say, but you don't have to, definitely.

I mean, this is about me.

Yeah, they're both embarrassing. So I'm just going to say them, I'll say them quickly.
But the first one is embarrassing because it really is a such a cliche. But the first one is,

why did I not have the guts to try and be like an actual artist earlier in my life?

And then the second one

is

there's sometimes almost like a feeling of disdain that I can have for my body or my physical appearance. And I'm like, I don't know what that's really about.
So those would be my two answers.

There you go. Right.
Like you wish you didn't like. judge yourself

from other because honestly that's like you were not born with that that's like a weird, insane thing that you caught out there, like a disease, you know?

And trust me, that's like, we're all with you. I'm with you.
Like, yeah, like there are times where I'm like, God, can't you like,

can't you have an easier energy? Like, I wish there were things, but then it's like, is this question about changing yourself? Or is it like something you really don't want to know? Because like,

if I didn't know that sometimes I made people feel awkward, maybe I just wouldn't feel awkward about making people feel awkward. You know what I mean? It's like totally.

And I can tell you, you're a cutie pie, so that's a crock of shit.

Someone clip that and put it on social immediately.

All right, let's

let's move on to my next idea from for

this for this part of the interview. But

I was watching another interview

you did recently about the film. And at the end, the interviewer asked you for a kind of like a cultural recommendation that you would give for Hollywood.

And you mentioned a film by Barbara Hammer called Multiple Orgasm,

which then I went and watched.

You know, it was,

let's just say, it sparked a lot.

But can you, just quickly, for people who aren't familiar with that work, can you explain what it is?

Yeah, it's like a,

it's an impressionistic, experimental short film by a woman who's like just astoundingly prolific. But I saw that movie and was so shocked because there's a sequence in my film that is very similar.

And I was like, oh my God, we saw the same thing. And we said it kind of similarly.

And it just felt really great. And so I thought maybe people should see that movie.
And it's very confronting because it's like pretty graphic in terms of. Yeah, I need to say, I think you

sort of buried the lead a little bit. I mean, the film is, it's

interspersing of close-up images of a woman masturbating,

interspersed with images of sort of natural scenery.

It's relating the female body to like organic material that feels,

you know, it's very George O'Keefe. It's like a little experimental movie that maybe not everyone has seen.
And so I thought maybe it was an important thing to pass on.

The unabashed nature of it connects to something else that I was curious about. And I want to preface this by saying this is going to end up being a question question about sex.

And if there's any part where you're like, yeah, I really would rather not talk about that. You just give me this sign and I'll move on.
But

the fact that you recommended that Barbara Hammer film or it had been kind of in your mind, combined with the sexual forthrightness of your movie, and then also, this is part of what I was thinking about, also

the fact that you made last year the film Love Lies Bleeding, which I kind of thought in some ways as like a statement film. And that

has so much to do with sort of queer eroticism.

All of these things in conjunction made me wonder if there are things that sort of like you've realized about sex or learned about sex or are curious about sex that you've then wanted to explore in your work more recently?

If there's anything that I've learned, I don't, I think

I really, I love watching things that

don't feel performative, that do feel inhabited and kind of

instinctive instead of like, oh, I'm really thinking about this like from the outside, like, how does this look? And that's often how women have sex.

You really want to perform and display that you're into it and good at it, and that whoever you're with is good at it. And maybe if you can perform that, then it can be true.
And

there's like a slower, more undulating experience that can happen as you get older that I would like to start seeing in art.

And I will say that I think that my movie emulates, even in its entire form, the kind of more

pleasantly frustrating, longer

experience of a success story, which is potentially also related to climax. And you plateau into a sort of contentment after a lot of false victories and false starts.

And then you, you know, achieve something that feels like self-earned,

even if accompanied. And

yeah, I think like I've seen a lot of sex scenes that are titillating and a lot of sex scenes that are, you know,

exterior.

I never want to, I never really again want to stand in a room and watch two people fucking. I've just like my whole life, you know, that's just our whole lives.

And it's, it's nice to get an odd angle of it. You know, just

hearing you talk,

it's clear that your mind moves very quickly.

I know you're like, what are you saying? You're so disjointed.

I'm talking too much lately. I don't mean it critically at all, but

I assume there must be times in your professional life and your personal life when you sort of need to slow down. Are there ways you consciously do that? I mean, like, I do normal stuff.

Like, I cook soup and hang out with my family. You know, I go home.
i there's a line in the movie and in the book that's like in

in water like in books you can leave your life i read a lot i thought you were going to say smoke weed i smoke a lot of weed but i shouldn't because i don't i probably fox with my sarcade circadian rhythm and i don't sleep

um you know at the in the edition uh that i have of the chronology of water there's an interview with lydia yuknevich at the end of the book and uh she just brings up the point it's the the interviewer or somehow they they get on the subject of drugs and she brings up the point that um you know we might find it culturally uncomfortable to admit but like the truth is that a lot of art has basically come out of drugs and alcohol have you ever been sort of inspired by drug use or drinking or

man i have like had a

i mean i definitely have had to self-soothe in different ways as i've gotten older because i'm like kind of a you know i've had

social insecurities that within like my particular profession have just not been fun to navigate. And so, yeah.

But in terms of art making, like in terms of thinking, I work best in the morning. I work best at

six o'clock in the morning, like

completely clear-headed. I don't, I romanticize so much, like Bukowski sitting there with a big old bottle of wine and like writing his best poems.
I do not have that. I text people.
I shouldn't text.

You were talking about abandoned the last time we were talking with you, like how it's, it's fun to watch her kind of fall down these holes in order to find something new, in order to kind of break through, to kind of like, just like crack a certain encapsulating crust.

And sometimes you do need to like pour a bunch of vodka on it, or maybe you do need to like sort of kick your own teeth down your throat. But I'm like way too old for that.
I did that.

And I did that for a while. And I think

for me, it's like

just so much more social than it is. And I don't feel inspired when I get fucked up.
Yeah. I want my brain back.
I, you know what I mean? Like, I,

yeah, I, I, I definitely think like

all of the things that I don't want to know about myself, don't drink anymore. Make art about the things you don't want to know about yourself.
You, you know what I mean?

Like, that's, that's, that's how you meet. That's how you meet your actual person inside.
You know what I mean? Like, um, is I, I, no, I find them distracting, I guess, just to be concise.

When we spoke earlier, I, I was doing the thing that you

predicted it. I was leading up to like the encapsulating final question.

Here we go. No, no, but then I was like, no, no, I don't.
Don't do it. I'm not going to do the cliche.
But like, what do you think we should end on? Where do you want to leave people?

I love how you've literally spent now like two hours talking to me and you think I'm going to be the person.

You have gotten me all wrong, sir. I won't be able to do it.
We'll just be here forever.

What do we want to end on? What do we want to end on?

I did make an entire movie about what I wanted to say and like teaching a lesson on that movie or trying to like sort of reveal like this new thing about myself. This is going to be funny.

It's definitely not about like selling or plugging my film. But if you want to know anything about me, like if you want to have a continued conversation, you have to watch my movie first.

Like, and I really, this isn't about selling my film. It's tiny.
It's not, in no way is it a blockbuster.

It is definitely something that requires like some like real engagement and like personal, it would be like a gift for anyone to actually spend two hours watching my film because it would be, it would be like that you wanted to hang out with me.

And so like,

I don't have anything else to say unless you want to know my favorite color or some shit, but that's also in my movie.

Of course, I felt like I was out on the wire with you a little bit in this conversation, but I was glad to be out on that wire with you. So thank you.
Do you mean like tightrope walking? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.
In like a sort of a positive,

there was a positive element of risk, I thought, a couple of times. And I.

Do you know what's funny? I did not feel at risk, which is great because like I felt like I could really talk to you and that you weren't going to be like, I got her. It's fucking wonderful.

It's very rare. Good.
I'm glad to hear it. And good luck with the movie.
Thank you. I really appreciate that.

That's Kristen Stewart. Her movie, The Chronology of Water, is open in select theaters now.
It'll open nationwide on January 9th.

To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/slash ad symbol the interview podcast. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme.

It was edited by Annabelle Bacon. Mixing by Afim Shapiro.
Original music by Dan Powell, Leah Shaw Damron, and Marion Lozano. Photography by Devin Yalkin.

The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Seth Kelly, Paola Newdorf, Eddie Costas, and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict.

I'm David Marchese, and this is the interview from the New York Times.

We all have moments when we could have done better. Like cutting your own hair.
Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato.
Ouch.

Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest.
Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.
Learn more at schwab.com.