198. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Why We All Lie & How Honest Can We Be?

Speaker 1 What if you could bleach and color without wrecking your hair? With K-18 Molecular Repair Hair Mask, you can. It's not another quick fix with false promises, it's hair science.

Speaker 1 The patented K18 Peptide repairs hair at the molecular level. That's really, really deep.
So you can keep coloring and still have hair that feels soft, strong, and bouncy.

Speaker 1 Because yes, we can do hard things, but your hair doesn't have to be one of them. Shop K18's mask at Sephora Sephora or get 10% off your first purchase with code hardthings at k18hair.com.

Speaker 1 That's code hardthings at k18hair.com.

Speaker 2 Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I can't even, I'm just going to jump right into this.
We have a treat and a half for you today because today joining us on the pod is Julia Louie Dreyfus.

Speaker 2 We all know her as one of Hollywood's most influential, iconic actors and producers. She starred in executive produced HBO's hit series Veep.

Speaker 2 She was Elaine Bennis in Seinfeld and Christine Campbell in the new adventures of old Christine. She has won 11 Emmys with 26 nominations, breaking records for the most Emmys ever won.

Speaker 2 She was recently honored with the White House's National Medal of Arts. That was so beautiful to see.
The highest award given to artists who advance the arts in the United States.

Speaker 2 Good job advancing the arts.

Speaker 3 Thank you. That was my intention.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's so hard to tell who's advancing it.
So it's good to know. So thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 She just released her new podcast, Wiser Than Me, a 10-part series of candid, witty conversations with women over 70.

Speaker 3 I cannot wait to attend That is so good.

Speaker 4 We got to listen to two secret episodes.

Speaker 2 Yes, we did. So good.
And her fantastic new film, You Hurt My Feelings, which I just, we're going to talk about that later because now I'm rethinking the ways that I parent. And

Speaker 2 it's just really done a number on me, to tell you the damn truth, is being released in May.

Speaker 4 Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 Thank you for having me and for that lovely introduction. Thank you so much.
What a treat to be on your groovy, fabulous, successful podcast.

Speaker 2 Okay, so our new t-shirts that we're going to wear around the house are going to say groovy and successful.

Speaker 3 That is a good thing for a t-shirt.

Speaker 3 Groovy and successful. Successful.

Speaker 4 Because you can be successful and decidedly not groovy.

Speaker 3 But you can be groovy or groovy. Decidedly not successful.

Speaker 3 It's a good cocktail. I just don't know if Glennon or Amanda are groovy.
We're not. We're scrooving our

Speaker 2 ungrooved. We don't have a groove to be found.

Speaker 4 Speaking of,

Speaker 3 I would love to talk to you about

Speaker 4 women and being funny.

Speaker 4 Because I'm funny.

Speaker 2 You are.

Speaker 4 I am not Julia Louis Dreyfus funny, but I am funny enough to have it be one of my favorite things about myself.

Speaker 4 And I didn't know

Speaker 4 that being funny was something powerful about me until I went to college when I was in like a total immersion program with these dozen other hilarious women.

Speaker 4 And before that, I had kind of thought my job was to be

Speaker 4 most attractive when I was.

Speaker 4 adaptable and kind of letting other people shine. And I've heard you say that going to an all-girls school was

Speaker 4 really wonderful for you because you could be outspoken and a joker. And

Speaker 4 I just wondered, what is it about the power of women being funny and about being with all women that allows folks to unlock that?

Speaker 4 Do you think that that's true?

Speaker 3 Well, it was true for me to a certain extent. I did go to an all-girl school from third to 12th grade.
And actually, full disclosure, it was a very conservative school.

Speaker 3 But there is something about the all-female experience, certainly in terms of being in junior, high, and high school and being with only women that affords a kind of assertiveness and

Speaker 3 directness.

Speaker 3 It helps engender that in a way that I think would, speaking for myself, would not have been the case if boys were there. I would have demured to boys in an effort to

Speaker 3 stupidly get the boys.

Speaker 3 And I was, when I was in high school and stuff, I was involved with student council and I was president of this class and I did all of these things.

Speaker 3 I'm pretty sure I would not have gone for that if it had been in a co-ed situation. By the way, this was the 70s too.

Speaker 3 different time. I also very much, I think, to a certain extent, push back against the system there.

Speaker 3 Certainly towards my junior and senior year, I was a tad rebellious, sort of against the conservative infrastructure of the school.

Speaker 3 And I, I don't know, I think that's all served me well moving forward and going to college.

Speaker 2 And do you think funniness is a way of asserting yourself? Why aren't we funny when we're young around boys?

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, I certainly hope that we are. And I certainly hope young women are if that's how they're built.

Speaker 3 You know, not everybody has to be hilarious or anything like that, but I do believe it's a powerful way to communicate.

Speaker 3 And I think there are certain boys that can be threatened by that, not necessarily the boys you might want to hang with, but I do think that there is a powerfulness to that that can be threatening.

Speaker 3 It isn't always, but it can be anyway. In my experience, I have found that that a lot of men have been jealous.
I used to play soccer. So

Speaker 3 I am respected in a way that i think probably a lot of funny women are are in some ways respected by men and then hated by the men who also aren't funny right like because that's a standard in our culture that little boys and men that's like something that

Speaker 3 they want to be funny to them yeah they want to be funny oh interesting It's a way of taking control of a situation too, don't you think?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's like the opposite if the ideal little girl way is to be unassuming to be funny is assumes a lot you're like i am assuming that the eyes should come to me i'm assuming i have something to say i'm assuming it it might go well it's such a risk too it is it's always a risk yeah i mean it's always a risk to put yourself out there but it is definitely a a strong way of communicating

Speaker 4 Speaking of risks, when your mother was 60, she wrote you a letter and she was talking about some things that happened in your family. And she said, I wish that we could talk about what happened.

Speaker 4 And you called her and said, what's stopping us?

Speaker 4 And that's how you started therapy with your mom when she was 60.

Speaker 3 No, not when she was 60, when I was 60. When you were 60.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 Okay, so that's how you started therapy with your mom when you were 60.

Speaker 3 When I was 60 and she was 87. Get out of here.
That is awesome. I swear to God.
Yeah. She wrote me, it was around the time of my parents were divorced and

Speaker 3 I really had no memory of them together as parents. They were very separate and everybody was doing the best they could, but there was stuff there that had not been unpacked.

Speaker 3 And so it was around the time, I believe, of my dad's birthday.

Speaker 3 He's passed, by the way. And my mom wrote me something like, I know it's, this is your dad's birthday and he's on my mind.
And there's a lot that I wish we had been able to talk about certain things.

Speaker 3 And then I said, I said to her, well, what's keeping us from doing this? And so we did it. And it was really

Speaker 3 a wonderful experience, hard, hard, but also ultimately very gratifying. And I feel blessed to have been able to have done that with her.
Wow.

Speaker 4 Did you have confidence when you said that? Because I'm just astounded. There's all of these unwritten rules in families about what we talk about and what we don't talk about.

Speaker 4 And in this case, it was a written rule. Like, sorry, we can't talk about this.
Were you surprised when she was able to go there with you and agreed to go to therapy?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 I wasn't surprised. I think looking back on this, I was surprised this hadn't come up earlier.

Speaker 3 My mom is a very thoughtful person and is certainly doing what a lot of what Jane Fonda talks about, actually.

Speaker 3 I know you guys have spoken with her and she's talking about, you know, the three acts of life and doing a life review. And my mother is very much

Speaker 3 of that, of the same mind.

Speaker 3 So I was sort of surprised. It was like, oh my God, why haven't we done this before?

Speaker 2 You know, I'm 47 and I have so many friends who are now looking back on their childhood. I always talk about this New Yorker cartoon that I can't stop thinking about.

Speaker 2 It's like this guy who's probably like 70 and he's laying on the couch. He's in therapy and he says, I had a really hard childhood, especially lately.

Speaker 3 And it's like this idea that you wake up and you're like, wait a minute, that wasn't normal.

Speaker 2 But most people, when they start to bring it up to their parents, there is this

Speaker 2 no thank you, like a fragility of I can't look back on that because I did the best I could and we cannot judge it up. And because parents are desperate to believe that they were

Speaker 2 good parents and they think that their kids are saying, you weren't good parents. Was there some of that in therapy? Like, how did it go?

Speaker 3 She talked about the lens through which she looked at life back then when I was young, growing up. And I did the same, trying to fully understand

Speaker 3 our respective points of view. of our life together

Speaker 3 in a way that maybe really hadn't been discussed in great detail. And I know what you mean about, I mean,

Speaker 3 I'm a mother.

Speaker 3 I really,

Speaker 3 if I do anything in my life, I want to have mothered my children in a way that it was

Speaker 3 nurturing. However, having said that, nothing's perfect.
You are going to fuck up as a parent

Speaker 3 under all circumstances. That is, that's life, man.

Speaker 3 And coming to terms with that, and I just hope, and I don't, I'm not implying my mother up but i'm

Speaker 3 what i'm saying is as a mom

Speaker 2 you want to do the right thing you know you really do i just think it's beautiful to normalize the idea of the review of the actually being open to later with your adult children, saying, you tell me your perspective, I'll tell you my perspective.

Speaker 2 It's a really beautiful, we should see more of that couples therapy.

Speaker 3 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3 It's not just married people that should go into couples therapy. It's, you know, siblings.
It's a great resource if one has access to it. And I also think that as a working mother, because I was

Speaker 3 really working when I gave birth to both of my kids. And I mean, I was worked my whole life.
So I really had a career in addition to being a mom. And that was always a struggle for me.

Speaker 3 And I think that, like, if I were to talk to my kids about that, I think honestly, I would be in fear of them saying,

Speaker 3 you weren't there enough for me or something, you know, because it was this balancing act that was just completely impossible, to tell you the truth. There was no

Speaker 3 one thing I love about our listeners is how industrious all of you are. The stories we hear about you guys going off on your own and starting your own ventures like we did, it's truly inspiring.

Speaker 3 It's a big part of why NetSuite came to us as a sponsor. NetSuite offers real-time data and insights for so many business owners, and by that I mean over 42,000 businesses.

Speaker 3 NetSuite offers the number one AI-powered cloud ERP. Think of it as a central nervous system for your business.

Speaker 3 Instead of juggling separate tools for accounting here, HR there, inventory somewhere else, NetSuite pulls everything into one seamless platform.

Speaker 3 That means you finally have one source of truth, real visibility, real control, and the power to make smarter decisions faster.

Speaker 3 With real-time data and forecasting, you're not just reacting to what already happened, you're planning for what's next.

Speaker 3 And whether your company is bringing in a few million or hundreds of millions, NetSuite scales with you.

Speaker 3 It helps you tackle today's challenges and chase down tomorrow's opportunities without missing a beat.

Speaker 3 Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash hard things.

Speaker 3 The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash hard things. Netsuite.com slash hard things.

Speaker 2 You were the one to walk your dad home at the end of life, and you've talked movingly about how hard it was to lose him, and you've also been very open about how he was a narcissist and extremely hard on you.

Speaker 2 And I was reading about how, after your first appearance on SNL, he called you to read a bad review.

Speaker 3 He didn't read me a bad review, but he himself, he was not impressed with my performance. Oh, he gave you a bad review.
He gave you a bad review. He has given you a bad review.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And, you know, looking back on it, I'm sure he was right, but it wasn't delivered

Speaker 3 kindly or thoughtfully.

Speaker 3 And also, he was right.

Speaker 3 So there you go.

Speaker 2 First of all, do you have that? Is that a voice in your head?

Speaker 2 Like that voice telling you that you weren't good enough? Is that a voice that gets stuck in your head? And is that the voice you're speaking back to all the time?

Speaker 3 The voice in my head, there's a thing,

Speaker 3 a sort of a self-loathing thing that can overcome me. If I don't like something that I've done, I can't let it go.

Speaker 3 It takes me days to

Speaker 3 relax about it.

Speaker 3 And that's not a good feeling.

Speaker 2 Right, right. Can you talk to us a little bit about your dad and what it was like to be loved by him and get to the place where you were accepting him for who he was?

Speaker 3 Totally. He was a wonderful man in so many ways,

Speaker 3 very successful

Speaker 3 businessman, but really, he was a poet. He wrote a lot of poetry.

Speaker 3 He was published.

Speaker 3 And he was incredibly charismatic, very funny. He was a big liberal Democrat.
He was on Nixon's enemies list. He was very proud about that fact.

Speaker 3 In fact, the article in which he is listed as being on Nixon's enemies list was... framed and hanging in his office.
That's amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I am now the proud owner of that artifact from his life. It's beautiful.
It is beautiful. And And he was highly intelligent, a real intellectual guy, and also

Speaker 3 very,

Speaker 3 very much, yeah, a narcissist. Everything was very much about him.
But the thing is, is that he was super interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And his opinions were meaningful. They were informed.
And

Speaker 3 like I said, he was hyper intelligent. But he was also, you know, sort of not available in a lot of ways emotionally.
But I reconciled that, I think,

Speaker 3 at the end of his life just by being with him and understanding his limitations. He had a very, very, very unhappy childhood, really,

Speaker 3 I think, borderline abusive, and if not abusive.

Speaker 3 And so he had a lot of stuff in his life that was unresolved. And the more that I understood that about him and what his limitations were, the more I was able to

Speaker 3 is forgive the right word relax

Speaker 3 relax dang i'll take that that's right that's good just relax

Speaker 4 about it yeah i love that you just use that word because it's the same word that you used when you were talking about how it takes you a couple days of self-loathing to relax

Speaker 3 It's interesting. Guys, I sound crazy on this show.
No, you are you freaking welcome.

Speaker 4 We're all crazy on this show.

Speaker 3 we're gonna take a left turn i want to talk about your son charlie because he played basketball your alma mater northwestern which is very cool div that's no joke it's d1 that's like the real deal uh and i gotcha yeah i can imagine you have sat on a lot of sidelines watching him play throughout his life and you know parents on the sidelines should be a comedy sketch all on its own.

Speaker 3 Did you experience that? What were you like on the sidelines?

Speaker 3 Yes, I did experience that. And I would like to say that I was well-behaved.
Wow. You would like to say that or you can say that.
I can say that. Nice.
Good job.

Speaker 3 But that does mean I didn't scream a lot.

Speaker 3 It was

Speaker 3 so much fun to go to his games. Oh my God.
And he went to the tournament, his sophomore year. They went to the tournament.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And they didn't get past the second round, but they did get past the first round. And it was just totally thrilling.
I've never been so terrified. I was so nervous.

Speaker 3 I can't sit next to my husband

Speaker 3 watching a game. That's the only thing that I could not do.
Why?

Speaker 3 I don't know. Every, I can't describe it.
I needed space to have my own anxiety about the game that wasn't.

Speaker 3 connected to his anxiety about the game.

Speaker 3 But I really just loved every second of it. It was such a great experience.
How old are they now? How old are your kids?

Speaker 3 25 and 30. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Okay, so we're right behind you. We have 20, 17, and 15.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 What is it like to have a 25-year-old and a 30-year-old? What's happening now?

Speaker 3 Well, it's pretty interesting. Okay, so your 20-year-old is not at home anymore.
No, he's not.

Speaker 3 Sophomore in college. Wow.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that transition when each boy went to college was ginormous for me. I was gutted by that.
And I think that's because

Speaker 3 raising them, I never thought about them leaving.

Speaker 3 You know, there was kind of a denial there. I was just like, oh, yeah, my boys, you know, they're here.
It never occurred to me that they were going to go.

Speaker 3 And then when they left to go to college, That was a monster transition, like monster transition.

Speaker 3 But the really nice thing is that once I got over the grief of that, and I was pretty grief-stricken, then all of a sudden a new thing emerges, which is they're young adult men.

Speaker 3 And there's a whole new way to be together now, which is incredibly exciting. And I'm just so pleased to see them operating as adults.
And I'm so interested in their point of view.

Speaker 3 Not that I wasn't before, but I'm learning from them. It's just, I love it.
Unfortunately for me, both of my boys live in California. And so we see them frequently, thank God.
But I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think being a mom of adult kids is

Speaker 3 more fun than I had ever considered it would be. Yeah.
So you're in for a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 You are, for real.

Speaker 2 It feels like when they go and come back, because I'm having a little bit of that with the 20-year-old. Yeah.
When you say their points of view, it's like you suddenly see them separate from yourself.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm like Geppetto. Like I was making him the whole time.
And then suddenly he came to life at 20.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, whoa,

Speaker 3 you're walking and doing things and talking. You're a real boy.

Speaker 3 That's it. Yes.
Right. Exactly.
Isn't that wild? It's so wild.

Speaker 2 It's so wild and wonderful. It really is.

Speaker 3 So another question I have, I think it's really hard to be young. And when we're growing up, we believe that we know everything, but in reality, we don't.
We know nothing. We know no things.

Speaker 3 We're just like

Speaker 3 trying, failing. And your new podcast, Wiser Than Me, invites us into conversations with women who are older than you.
And what are some things that you've learned from them?

Speaker 3 What are the joys that you can tell us about getting older?

Speaker 3 What inspired me to do, to even embark on this thing was um i i saw that hbo documentary jane fonda

Speaker 3 life

Speaker 3 it's so spectacular so good right and she's had such a remarkable and varied life right she's had like six of them

Speaker 3 i mean and so and i after i watched that and i was pretty sort of stunned by how remarkable

Speaker 3 she is and the life she's led has been, I thought, why are we not hearing from older women?

Speaker 3 What's happening? And the more I thought about it, I really do believe that older women are this demographic, as it were, sort of an untapped natural resource that we have as a culture.

Speaker 3 And certainly as a woman, I really do want to hear from these women about their life experience. What can you teach me? What can I glean from your life?

Speaker 3 What tips can you send back to us from the front lines of life, which is where they are? So, that was sort of the notion for it. I also spoke with Isabel Allende.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you guys ever had a chance to do that.

Speaker 2 We haven't. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 She is so extraordinary. And the way she was talking about 80

Speaker 3 and how pleased she was to be 80 and to be living the life she's currently living, it made me want to turn 80. I was like, oh my God, I cannot wait to turn 80.
She made it so appealing.

Speaker 3 And in fact,

Speaker 3 we didn't even start talking about her writing, you know, because she's this extraordinary writer.

Speaker 3 We didn't even get into her writing until like an hour into the conversation, which may speak to what a terrible podcast

Speaker 3 I am. And I'll own that if that's the case.
But she was like, she was a journalist and she didn't write her first book until she was 40 years old.

Speaker 3 These are the stories we need.

Speaker 2 These are the stories we need.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Exactly.
So, you know,

Speaker 3 the pressure to have figured it out in your 20s. The 20s are so fucking hard.

Speaker 3 The worst. I mean, the worst.

Speaker 2 They are the worst.

Speaker 3 Absolute worst. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Made worse by the fact that everyone's telling you they should be the best.

Speaker 3 The worst. The best years of your life.
Yeah. You're so young.
It's all vibrant. You're fabulous.
No.

Speaker 3 And same for 30s to a certain extent. Anyway, the fact that she really embarked on this in her 40s was just totally remarkable to me.

Speaker 3 Every single conversation was, and I guess this is probably your experience too during your podcast. But, you know, it got intimate.
It got

Speaker 3 personal. And I like the way that women talk to each other.
You know, I like that. I like the experience of speaking with experienced.
older women.

Speaker 3 You know, I could do that for the rest of my life.

Speaker 4 We hope that you do. It is missing from the world, and we don't have any

Speaker 4 first-person accounts

Speaker 4 from that. We only have these caricatures of what an old lady is like from right.

Speaker 3 And like the word old lady, it sort of sounds pejorative.

Speaker 3 Exactly. But an old man, a wise man, that trope is in place, not so much for the women.
And so we're trying to sort of stick a pin in that. And Diane von Furstenberg said,

Speaker 3 I asked her how old she was. And she said to me, you shouldn't ask people how old they are.
You should ask them how long they've lived, which I thought was a different lens

Speaker 3 through which to think about age

Speaker 3 and aging.

Speaker 3 So I hope people dig it. I had fun making it.
I'm still making it. It's a lot of work, but it's been fun.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you guys find it's a lot of work to do this podcast?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like the actual conversations.

Speaker 4 If we could just do that, that would be the most fun.

Speaker 3 It's just the like getting ready for the conversation. Yeah, you want to get people and you want to be like, what makes them light up? And what's the

Speaker 3 thing about? I know.

Speaker 2 So it's a lot of work and also the best work.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Getting out of my own head and soaking myself in somebody else's world for a week. It's wonderful.

Speaker 3 Actually, it's wonderful.

Speaker 2 And I'm a writer, so I'm used to being alone all the time. And so to be able to do something with other people feels like I'm cheating or something.
It feels so much less lonely.

Speaker 3 And we're all family. Yeah.
The three of us.

Speaker 2 So it's a, it's a good gig.

Speaker 3 It's nice. It's a good gig.
That's nice.

Speaker 4 We Can Do Our Things is brought to you by Bumble, the app committed to bring people closer to love. I went through it in my first marriage.

Speaker 4 I was desperately in love and then in a whiplash of a moment it was gone. I felt abandoned, betrayed, crushed.

Speaker 4 A while out from the divorce, when a friend asked me whether I was ready to date again, I said, listen, I love men, but I also love hamburgers and I just had the juiciest burger and it gave me food poisoning and I don't even want to look at another burger for a very long time.

Speaker 4 When I was ready to look, I was terrified. How in the world do you put yourself out there after that?

Speaker 4 I don't think there are a lot of people more courageous and cool than those folks who have been through the depths of heartbreak and are brave enough to reveal their heart again.

Speaker 4 It starts with that first step, a shaky voice inside of you that says, I want this even more than I don't want that.

Speaker 4 I want to share life and this beautiful banged up heart with another beautiful banged up heart.

Speaker 4 These days, that first shaky step often happens online on a dating app. In celebration of you brave ones, we want to tell you about Bumble.

Speaker 4 What I love about what Bumble is doing is they are making that first step feel a tiny bit less scary, more possible, more human. They make you feel more safe.

Speaker 4 New Bumble users have to add multiple layers of verification, like mandatory photo, phone number, and ID verification, so you can feel more confident that the people you're seeing are who they say they are.

Speaker 4 Plus, profiles aren't just about photos. They highlight personality, interests, and passions so you can get a sense of whether you will actually connect with someone.

Speaker 4 You can be shaky and scared and show up anyway. You can start again.
Bumble helps people do exactly that. Start your love story today on Bumble.

Speaker 4 Speaking of wisdom gained throughout life, it was five years ago, right? Almost six, I guess.

Speaker 4 In 2017, the night after you won your first ME for VEEP,

Speaker 4 the next day you got a call with your breast cancer diagnosis. Do I have that timeline?

Speaker 3 Yes, it wasn't my first ME for VEEP, but I had won an Emmy. It was actually in retrospect, it was the last Emmy that I won.

Speaker 4 Oh, yes, it was the one that broke the record.

Speaker 3 Yes. And then the following morning, I got confirmation that I had breast cancer.
So talk about the yin and yang of it all, right?

Speaker 4 It's just amazing.

Speaker 4 I've heard you talk about your journey with breast cancer cancer and you liken it to this story of when you were snorkeling with your husband and he called you back to the boat, which I have thought about that story 1,000 times since I heard it.

Speaker 4 Would you be willing to tell us that?

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 3 My husband and I went on a trip back when we were in our 30s, actually, and we were on this boat and we were

Speaker 3 doing this really cool stuff on this sailboat and swimming with dolphins and doing research. It was a really neat trip.
Anyway, I was in the water.

Speaker 3 My husband was on the boat, and I was pretty far from the boat,

Speaker 3 just sort of swimming around, paddling around. And we're out in the open water.
And he comes to the bow and he says,

Speaker 3 yells out to me, Jules,

Speaker 3 I don't want you to panic, but there's a shark in the water, and you need to come back to the boat.

Speaker 4 That was not my reaction, Abby.

Speaker 2 Well, that's the nightmare of the world. That's the nightmare of the world.

Speaker 3 That's right. And so what I did was I didn't look in the water.
I didn't look down. I didn't look around me.
I just started to swim towards the boat. And I saw the ladder at the end of the boat.

Speaker 3 And I kept my eye on the ladder. And I just focused on the ladder.
It took so much personal,

Speaker 3 what's the word? Hutzpun. Grit, determination, grit.

Speaker 3 Just all of it. And I kept my mind on that ladder and I'm getting to the ladder.
And that is what I'm about. And that's the only thing I'm thinking about is that I'm getting to the ladder.

Speaker 3 And I got to the ladder. And I likened that to my journey with cancer because I just wanted to get to the ladder.
And it was a bit of a wicked swim to get there, but I got there.

Speaker 3 In fact, my son had a teacher when he was in fourth grade.

Speaker 3 And it was the year that they were sort of giving them sort sort of longer term assignments and

Speaker 3 papers that were, you know, a little bit extended. And she used to talk to the kids about doing their work in manageable parts.

Speaker 3 And it's sort of the same idea, just breaking it down bit by bit and tackling it one stroke in the water at a time or one chemotherapy session at a time and just ticking it off and keeping your eyes on the prize.

Speaker 3 Everything else fell away for me during that period of time, except sort of

Speaker 3 getting better.

Speaker 3 It's an elite athlete's mindset. It's compartmentalizing and becoming really hyper-focused on what is important.

Speaker 3 And so when you had, yeah, when you have your life obviously at risk, it's really something to hear you talk about that because the amount of times though my life wasn't in danger, I can vividly remember complete focus, everything else falls away.

Speaker 2 It's funny, you're thinking that's an elite mind, and I was thinking that's an alcoholic thing.

Speaker 2 So I was thinking about sobriety, just like the next right thing, the next ladder is just like one more day of sobriety.

Speaker 3 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 3 And I also think that mindset, you know, can be applied to work. Not that work is scary, but for me, when things are, you know, all the engine is really running work-wise,

Speaker 3 um, all pistons firing is sort of the same thing. Everything falls away.
Like

Speaker 3 everything else shuts down and it's a laser focus. And for me, that actually from a work point of view is like, those are my most joyful moments,

Speaker 3 which is funny. It's a mindset.
It's a tool. It's a something that has been applied a lot in my life.

Speaker 4 Because it's not just what you're doing, it's what you're not doing. Because in that instance, it was a 10-foot bullshark that was in the water.

Speaker 4 yes it was if in the other instance it was a terrifying breast cancer i mean if you were to decide

Speaker 4 to look away from the ladder in either of those instances that's tempting right you want to know where the shark is you want to google the cancer stuff and like but

Speaker 4 to do that

Speaker 4 That's just feeding the thing you can't control, right? The only thing you can control is your movement and your focus.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And the only thing you can control is getting to the ladder.
That's what you can control. That's exactly right.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is there also, because you said what you're not doing, sister, it made me think, is there, is there something about those moments where we also just don't do bullshit things?

Speaker 2 Like what doesn't matter is gone. I have a dear friend who just went through losing her mother and it was a harrowing time.

Speaker 2 And she's finding the after more harrowing in a different way because at least during that time, she knew exactly who she was and she knew exactly what she was supposed to be doing.

Speaker 2 And every single morning she woke up and there wasn't anywhere else that she would be.

Speaker 3 That's right. Yeah, exactly.
And it's like giving birth in that sense, you know, everything else falls away. It's funny how life gives us these opportunities to exercise that kind of focus.

Speaker 3 Interesting.

Speaker 4 Speaking of what you've learned about that time, I don't want to do the kind of silver lining bullshit that people do, but I have a dear friend who is going through cancer right now and she's fighting really, really hard.

Speaker 4 And I swear to you that when I am in her presence, I have a distinct feeling of this woman knows something that the rest of us don't know, that she just has access to a different way of seeing the world because of what she's going through.

Speaker 4 But do you know something now that you didn't know before having walked through

Speaker 4 and fought through what you did?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I will answer that in this way. So

Speaker 3 normally

Speaker 3 I was in production at the time that I was diagnosed on Veep.

Speaker 3 So we had to shut down. And

Speaker 3 normally I would never,

Speaker 3 ever. have talked about this publicly.
This would have just been my thing and I would have done it and whatever. No one would have known in the public.

Speaker 3 But because I had

Speaker 3 250 people working on the show, et cetera, et cetera, I had to make it public.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the benefit of that was that,

Speaker 3 first of all, it gave me an opportunity to talk about healthcare and people's access to health care and to highlight how lucky I was to be a member of a union and to be provided with health care through my union and how unthinkable it was to me, and is to me that anybody who would be diagnosed in this situation would not be covered is

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 mind-blown, right?

Speaker 3 So, there was that. But the other thing that happened is that certain people started reaching out to me.

Speaker 3 First, I started reaching out to others at my

Speaker 3 couple of friends who

Speaker 3 had cancer and who spoke with me very honestly about their experience and, you know, talk about wiser than me, giving me a lot of encouragement and advice as to how to manage this and what to expect.

Speaker 3 And then I had the experience of being able to do that for others.

Speaker 3 So I met some people post my, or even during my cancer treatment or just after my cancer treatment, that I could help them get through their cancer treatment. And I have to say something.

Speaker 3 I mean, I know it sounds kind of Pollyanna-ish, but it was incredibly comforting for me to do that, to be able to provide help and encouragement and comfort to somebody who was going through what I had just gone through.

Speaker 3 I found that for myself to be very nurturing, and I still do. And I will say that, you know, having a brush with

Speaker 3 something

Speaker 3 as scary as a cancer diagnosis, you know,

Speaker 3 again, at the risk of sounding sort of

Speaker 3 like you've heard it before, but we're not here forever.

Speaker 3 And I don't take my

Speaker 3 mortality for granted, I'm aware of it

Speaker 3 in a way that's good, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I see so many products out there for hair care. It's hard to know where to start or what I even need.

Speaker 4 My hair texture has changed a lot over the years, depending on what phase of life I've been in or what my hormones are currently doing.

Speaker 4 And if you're someone who is also coloring your hair, it might mean you want a product that really supports the health of your hair.

Speaker 4 I have tried hair masks before with none that have really stood out to me or which might leave my hair soft for like a day, then back to dry and brittle the next day.

Speaker 4 But that is why I want to tell you about the K18 Molecular Repair Hair Mask. This isn't just another temporary fix.

Speaker 4 It's patented K18 peptide goes deep all the way to the molecular level to actually repair damage from coloring, bleaching, and heat. The result?

Speaker 4 Hair that's soft, strong, bouncy, and completely renewed without feeling weighed down. Using it is simple.
Just a few minutes once a week after coloring, and your hair starts to come back to life.

Speaker 4 It's like giving your hair a reset button, leaving it healthier, smoother, and more resilient than ever before. So, yes, we can do hard things, but your hair doesn't have to be one of them.

Speaker 4 With K-18, you can keep coloring, styling, and creating while your hair stays strong and beautiful every step of the way.

Speaker 4 Shop K-18's mask at Sephora or get 10% off your first purchase with code HARDTHINGS at k18hair.com. That's code hardthings at k18hair.com.

Speaker 2 So we watched your new movie last week. We settled into the bed and I thought, this is going to be a light romp.
This is going to be, we're going to giggle and laugh.

Speaker 4 I don't.

Speaker 2 I just need what you need to know about me.

Speaker 3 We giggled and laughed a few times. But

Speaker 2 so I am a mother memoirist.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 I am inseparable from my sister. I am obsessed a little bit unhealthily with my 20-year-old writer son who sends me his stuff.

Speaker 2 Pod Squad, what I'm explaining to you right now is the fucking plot of this movie.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 This person in this movie also has a voice inside of her head that maybe tells her that she's not good enough.

Speaker 2 So she's constantly do-gooding and trying to write better and better things so that the world will tell her she's and then she's trying to undo the voice in her head from her father with her partner getting her partner's approval and then she at some points figures out that while she's desperate for her husband to tell her the truth we don't want to give this whole thing away she maybe is not no it's all right okay okay i just want to make sure that maybe she hasn't been telling the truth i'm just talking about me

Speaker 2 yeah that maybe she hasn't is it glenned's plot is it your plot one can't know She's been totally telling the truth to her son.

Speaker 2 I actually didn't know which part of this to ask you about, but one time my friend Jen said to me, Glennon, my whole life, my parents have been telling me that I am excellent.

Speaker 2 And it took me my 20s, 30s, and 40s to finally understand that I am medium.

Speaker 2 Can we just talk about one string of the movie, which seems to be that we keep telling our kids that they're amazing and excellent and the best at things

Speaker 2 because we think that's love.

Speaker 2 And then they spend the rest of their lives

Speaker 3 talking about feeling like

Speaker 3 bad mothering, right? Yeah. Feeling like failures when they don't quite live up to those.

Speaker 3 accolades, as it were, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, to give the pod squad an an idea, because you don't understand, you everything that you do, this movie, your demographic is here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, those are the people that are listening to the entire podcast talk. We just need to keep talking for the next like 85,000 hours.

Speaker 3 And we just keep them on board, and we'll just all be one big happy family.

Speaker 3 But the story of the movie, You Hurt My Feelings, is

Speaker 3 it's a very small story about some very big

Speaker 3 human emotions and human relationships. And the Nicole Hall of Center wrote and directed the film.
We've worked together before.

Speaker 3 She's extraordinary, not only as a writer, but as a director and as a human being. She's a good friend.
I love her desperately. And I'm really proud of this movie that we we made together.

Speaker 3 And I'm so happy to be in it, but the notion that her husband husband has not been telling her, my character of Beth, and her husband, whose name is Dawn, played by Tobias Menzies, my character realizes that her husband has not been telling her the truth about her writing and has been, in fact, lying to her about his impression of her writing.

Speaker 3 And it's like

Speaker 3 It's like worse than having an affair. That's how gutting it is to her.

Speaker 3 And I totally get that.

Speaker 3 And we made a movie about it.

Speaker 2 You sure did.

Speaker 3 You asked me right away, you go, do you like the way that I write?

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm so paranoid now.

Speaker 3 I'm so excited on my mom.

Speaker 2 I need everyone to tell me the truth. But then I'm like, do I need everyone to tell me the truth? Because actually,

Speaker 2 it's not that he didn't tell you the truth. It's that he didn't tell you his opinion.

Speaker 2 Because what if his opinion

Speaker 2 is not the truth? And that discourage you. It's just an incredible exploration about truth and love.
And like, is unfiltered truth what we need? Or is love the filter that we put on the truth?

Speaker 3 Correct. And there's lots of little lies and things throughout the movie.
Yes. I think relatable, little relationship lies, small, tiny little things that I think we probably all participate in.

Speaker 4 Probably.

Speaker 3 I'm guessing. I mean, what? What am I talking about? We do.
yeah we do of course you guys are liars some of y'all do it what's the last lie you told

Speaker 2 um i lie all the time i think i mean

Speaker 2 i don't even know oh my gosh it's really beautiful i mean there's really great great there's a scene i'm glad thank you where you just are trying to protect your son from something and you actually climb on top of him to cover him and i was like that's it that's my parenting strategy That's what I've yeah, that's mine too.

Speaker 3 That's mine too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, God, it was so good.

Speaker 4 It was so good. I really loved it.

Speaker 2 And I've never seen a piece of art exploring that. Like, how much do we tell each other the truth? And

Speaker 2 you did it. It's beautiful.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Glenn. And I appreciate it.
Did Nicole, did she know you very well?

Speaker 2 And did she write it like about you?

Speaker 3 Because like the stuff with the dad and then no, no, I mean, Nicole, Nicole and I, yes, we worked together many years ago. We did a film with James Gandalfini called Enough Said

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 we've been friends ever since. So, yes, she knows me very well.
I know her very well, but this was completely out of her brain. And

Speaker 3 she's a writer and she could relate. And she told me this premise a couple of years back now.
And she said, what do you think of this premise? And I was like, oh, I love it.

Speaker 3 The premise being finding out you're the most significant person in your life doesn't like what you do.

Speaker 3 It's just, that is a gutting premise. And I was like, oh, yeah, let's do it.
So I think she did write it with me in mind, but this was maybe more about her personal experience than mine, I think.

Speaker 2 And your adult sons, if they wrote something, how would you approach that? Like if they gave you,

Speaker 3 they go to you. Oh, that's right.
feedback.

Speaker 2 So, how do you give them feedback? Like, how do you approach love

Speaker 2 and truth with your family?

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 geez, how do I answer that question?

Speaker 2 I'd probably lie about it if I were you.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's a

Speaker 3 cinch, Glennon. It's so easy.

Speaker 3 You just climb on top of them.

Speaker 3 I love everything

Speaker 3 everybody does all the time. It's perfect.

Speaker 3 Great.

Speaker 2 And then they go out into the world and just get eaten alive.

Speaker 3 Eaten alive.

Speaker 3 But the other thing, too, is that when you have, when there are people that you love and you want to love what they've done,

Speaker 3 that can be the kind of fuel

Speaker 3 for

Speaker 3 for understanding their work. And in a way, that can sometimes be bad because you have expectations going in.
You want it to be great.

Speaker 3 If it's not quite what you thought it was, then how disappointed are you? Because you were expecting, you know, it's so complicated. So complicated.
Relationships are complicated. We're all a mess.

Speaker 3 Can I just say it?

Speaker 3 Thank God. You guys are a mess.
We're not in the power to get to that. Thank God.
That's really good.

Speaker 3 Don't give up, but we are all incredibly fucked.

Speaker 2 Actually, that's the t-shirt. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Fuck the groovy thing.

Speaker 3 Don't give up, but we are.

Speaker 3 incredibly fun yes that's the t-shirt yeah

Speaker 4 you're talking about people who love your work and partnerships and you and your husband i'm i'm obsessed with y'all i mean 36 years married it's amazing you are each other's champions we just had the honor of interviewing michelle obama and she was talking about how despite about 10 years there where she couldn't stand her husband she's really grateful to have made it through to a long marriage.

Speaker 4 What is the unique gift of a long ride with somebody?

Speaker 4 What do you find at 36 years that you couldn't have found otherwise?

Speaker 3 Oh man, we've been through it. I mean, what can I tell you? We have been through so much life arm in arm.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that is just

Speaker 3 magnificent. I mean, warts and all, by the way, you know, really difficult stuff, really joyful stuff.

Speaker 3 But we've been

Speaker 3 partners,

Speaker 3 and there's something about now having that history together. I mean, I'm almost embarrassed we've been married that long.

Speaker 3 I want to say, like, oh, we've been married, you know, we've been married 15 years, and that feels, you know, but 36 years, like, oh my God.

Speaker 2 So, how about, how long has your marriage lived?

Speaker 3 Yes, how long has you?

Speaker 3 My marriage has lived for 36 years

Speaker 3 and, and or soon to be 36 years. And, you know, I found the right guy.
I could have fucked up because we got married. I was young.
He was young.

Speaker 3 And I could have picked the wrong guy, but I didn't. So that's good.
I had a good instinct there.

Speaker 3 I have pretty good instincts.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you do.

Speaker 4 I'd say it's worked out all right for you.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We'll see.

Speaker 3 I don't know. You got potential.
You got potential. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2 Just thanks for you.

Speaker 3 Thank you, guys. It was really, really nice to talk to you.
And

Speaker 3 it was a delight to have this conversation. I feel like there's so much more we could be unpacking, but I don't know what it is at this point.

Speaker 4 Well, you let us know. I mean, we'll unpack for you all day.

Speaker 3 And I just want to say, because I was a big Seinfeld watcher and to see a woman

Speaker 3 in so many of those male-dominated spaces on that show was a big deal. And for you to carry scenes like that was big for me to be watching when I was a kid.

Speaker 3 And I just want to say, I know that you have had to go through so much

Speaker 3 bullshit being a successful woman I just wanted to say thank you you walked a path for us and it just means the world to us thanks that's so nice of you to say Abby I really appreciate it and I was lucky to play that role and I was

Speaker 3 and it was unusual for its time there's no doubt about it yeah yeah it's really but i appreciate that so much thank you very very much thank you julia Louis Dreyfus, unusual for her time.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Pod Squad. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us.

Speaker 2 If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things, first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

Speaker 2 Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow.

Speaker 2 This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful.

Speaker 2 We appreciate you very much.

Speaker 2 We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.