Kate Winslet Is Home for the Holidays

For over thirty years, Kate Winslet has been one of the most beloved performers on screen. We discuss her directorial debut in Goodbye June (5:00), the loss that inspired this personal screenplay (10:00), and how her experiences in Hollywood shaped her approach to directing (20:00). Then, Winslet reflects on her vivid upbringing in Reading, England (23:00), landing her breakout role in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (30:00), and the encouragement of her artistic father (33:00). On the back-half, we walk through how she crafted her performance in Sense and Sensibility (35:00), her Titanic audition (38:00), the scrutiny she endured in the film’s aftermath (40:00), and the body of work she ultimately made as a refutation of the industry that tried to define her: namely, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (48:00) and Mare of Easttown (52:00). Watch this conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEc3bPs5gxE on YouTube. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show.

• 0:32Sam Fragoso?

  Today, actor and director Kate Winslet. For over 30 years, Winslet has been one of the most beloved performers on screen. She broke through as a teenager in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures back in 1994, and has since become one of the best actors of her generation. Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Revolutionary Road, Avatar: The Reader, for which she won an Academy Award in 2009. And that's just the movies. On television, over at HBO, she's earned multiple Emmys for her work in Milja Pierce and, my personal favorite, Mayor of Easttown. When she's not learning how to hold her breath underwater for the latest installment

• 1:15Sam Fragoso?

  of James Cameron's Avatar, she's producing work of her own, including the new film Goodbye June, which also serves as her directorial debut. The film takes place just before Christmas, when the titular June, played by Dame Helen Mirren, has an unexpected turn in her health, forcing the four adult siblings and their exasperating father to prepare for the potential loss. Here's a clip from the trailer.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  It's a big family, June.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  My gorgeous daughters.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  So lovely they can all be here for you.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I'm here. I told you never wear yellow because it doesn't suit you, darling. Oh, no. No. Why don't we have goose for Christmas?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  I always like a cheap bird.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Dad, shut up. It's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. Mercury is in retrograde, though, you know that.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  How do you think they're doing?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Hard to say. I'm not sure about how the girls are doing in June.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  I've drawn up a rotor. I made it so you and I don't overlap. Maybe we should ask Mum what she wants.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Families are hard.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Shh, just please.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  That's why I make sure people get good goodbyes.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Thank goodness you're here. Be quite in your mascara. Make me look presentable. I've never died before. I want to look nice when it happens.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Being part of this family.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Do you all love your mother? Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Is my biggest adventure.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  You two need to sort your shit out. Your sisters.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  We do it all.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll come back as snow. And then I'll see you all at Christmas time.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I love you all so much.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  But I love you twice as much when you love each other.

• 3:23Sam Fragoso?

  That was from the new film Goodbye June, now in theaters. It arrives on Netflix Christmas Eve. The film is a real family affair with Winslet starring and directing from a script written by her son, Joe Anders. And while it's not autobiographical, it's a deeply personal project for them both. We talk about the events that inspire the film at the top of today's episode. We also discuss Kate's upbringing in the working class neighborhood of Reading, the aftermath of Titanic, and the work she made as a refutation of a Hollywood that tried to define her, namely Eternal Sunshine and Mayor of Easttown. If you'd like to watch this episode of Talk Easy, it is now available on YouTube.

• 4:08Sam Fragoso?

  We'll be taping more and more of these conversations on video in 2026. So be sure to subscribe to our new page. We've also included a link to the page in the description of this episode. I want to wish everyone listening a happy holidays to you and yours. We will be back next Sunday, the 28th, to close out the year with the person who has made me laugh the most in 2025, comedian Robbie Hoffman. Until then, here is my conversation with Oscar and Emmy winner, devout cold water swimmer and master of many impressive and difficult American accents, Kate Winslet.

• 5:04Sam Fragoso?

  Kate Winslet, thank you for being here.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 5:08Sam Fragoso?

  How's your coffee? Is it all right?

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Delicious. It has cream in, so I'm very happy.

• 5:12Sam Fragoso?

  OK, you're pro cream.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  So pro cream.

• 5:14Sam Fragoso?

  Me too. How are you doing?

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Good. Yeah, I'm very good.

• 5:18Sam Fragoso?

  You're putting this film out into the world. It's the first one you've directed. You shot it in February of this year.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  In 35 days.

• 5:27Sam Fragoso?

  In 35 days.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:28Sam Fragoso?

  It's December of this year.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:31Sam Fragoso?

  So let's start with the film. As I understand it, for the last decade, whether it was on Mayor of East Town, The Regime, Lee, where you played famed war photographer Lee Miller, people on set would ask you every now and then, so Kate, when are you gonna direct? Why was now the time?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  I've gotten kind of good at answering this question. And I realize that there are like, I've given lots of kind of like reasons as to why now and why not before. But actually, I think a big part of the why not before, honestly, Sam, I think I was probably scared. It's not an automatic given thing that when you've been in front of the camera for 33 years, that you're gonna know automatically how to run an entire film set and not just work with the actors and craft performances with them, but to visually tell a story.

• 6:26Sam Fragoso?

  Making movies is hard.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  It is really hard, and it's a completely different job. I think often people don't understand that taking a credit as a producer is not just taking a credit. I mean, it certainly isn't for me. It is a completely different job. And as in the case of Lee, and most certainly Goodbye June, You know, it starts with the producer, you know, that's the person who helps to develop the script alongside a writer and then you go out for financing and then you assemble an incredible crew and you put the whole thing together. It's like it's a proper, all chips into the middle, end to end experience. But being a director, it requires absolutely everything of oneself, completely emotionally, mentally, in every single way.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  And it also requires that you are a good leader and a kind leader and that you are able to include everybody, not just the actors, but to make every single crew member feel seen and heard and elevated and appreciated. And that's huge. And I think before now, I think I was scared of judgment and scrutiny because I think that there's often a lot of scrutiny placed on certainly actresses who become directors in a way that I think is different to our male counterparts.

• 7:43Sam Fragoso?

  Like when Bradley Cooper became a director?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Well, I just think there's a different set of words that are often used with us, like actually like different.

• 7:50Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, adjectives.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, different conversations will take place.

• 7:54Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, what are the, what are the adjectives?

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Very, very different. Well, let's take the word ambition, right?

• 7:58Sam Fragoso?

  Uh huh.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  So when you describe a male actor who becomes a director and a producer and a writer and all of those things, and there is no criticism at all, but you know, if you say, God, that's so ambitious, that's an, it's an exciting way that you would describe that actor and that's a, it's a kind of a explosive positive use of the word ambitious, right, or ambition, okay? When you use the exact same word and you apply it to an actress, oh, she's ambitious, oh.

• 8:28Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  It's a slightly negative kind of air around it.

• 8:31Sam Fragoso?

  The thing is, you're such a good actor that when you deliver that, I'm convinced that it sounds like something's wrong.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:37Sam Fragoso?

  But of course, there is nothing wrong with it.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  No, I remember reading a review, I, there's nothing wrong with ambition at all, because actually ambition just means that you're determined and that you believe that you can see something through. I remember reading a review of Maggie Gyllenhaal's wonderful movie, Lost Daughter, and the review actually began like this. If anyone thought for one second that Maggie Gyllenhaal might not be able to direct, think again. The review actually started like that.

• 9:04Sam Fragoso?

  Deck already stacked against.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Already stacked against, you know, scrutiny apportioned, judgment flying. And and it's just an example of how we are up against these these little battles all of the time. But I also have to say that, and this really, I do mean this too. I simply wouldn't have been able to create the space in my life to have been able to have directed before now. Because I've been raising a family since I was twenty five years old. My daughter is now twenty five, my son Joe is about to turn twenty two. And my little guy just turned twelve yesterday. So there's like a, you know, there's just a little bit more easement in terms of the physical presence of being a mother in their space.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  And it's always been a tremendous juggle anyway, and one that I've embraced, raising a family and going to work as an actress. So doing the directing part and producing and acting part. Because clearly one job isn't enough and I had to take on three like an idiot. But having a wonderful husband who is able to be really present has definitely made a huge difference.

• 10:08Sam Fragoso?

  You said in one interview that the longer you held off directing. The more and more you were disappointing women. Why is that?

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Well, because I think I've, you know, it it matters to me how I walk through the world. It really matters. It matters that when I'm trying to elevate other women into first time department heads. You know, I'm I'm trying to support people in doing their job to their fullest potential. But also making decisions to support people who perhaps doubted themselves. I've done that a lot as a producer on film sets and I really appreciate being in that position.

• 10:48Sam Fragoso?

  Is that because you yourself were someone that doubted themselves?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely, for sure. But also, I'm just a huge believer in everyone has to start somewhere. I mean, I'm like, I'm literally like the most unlikely version to have become successful in this industry. I mean, grew up in a teeny tiny terraced house in Reading, a very crowded town, about fifty miles from London. You know, my parents had absolutely no money. Like, every conceivable reason for me to not have gotten into this industry was something I just lived with every single day. And I know that it was sheer will and determination that has resulted in me being here right now and being given very early opportunities by extraordinary people. And from that, my confidence grew and I learned and changed and I grew some more.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  And so I try and live my life like that as a creative and as a, as a friend and a parent.

• 11:40Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I want to talk about your upbringing in a little bit, but speaking of family, the film is set around the holidays and is loosely and lightly inspired by the weeks leading up to your mother's passing in 2017 from a script written by your son, who is now twenty one, seemed to be twenty two, and who at the time was only thirteen when your mother passed away. And he said, quote, "I remember watching this happen, watching my mother and my aunts say goodbye and thinking how amazing it was that we got to do that as a family." Now, on the surface, this seems like a period or a subject that one would not want to run toward.

• 12:24Sam Fragoso?

  And yet, in your directorial debut with your son, it was something, it seems, the two of you had to do.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it did feel something like we had to do. So Joe, Joe was that COVID generation who in our country, they had a lot of their freedoms taken away, truly. And their first round of big, important exams at school that they typically sit when they're fifteen, sixteen, they did not even sit those exams. So just learning how to kind of apply themselves to a project or a piece of work was something that they kind of missed out on building those blocks. Of how to do that. So the fact that once he had left school, he had the confidence alone and the courage to just write a short film and apply to this heavily coveted screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  We were all so proud of him that he had just done that. But he did this screenwriting course and he wrote this screenplay and he didn't really tell me anything about it whilst he was writing it. And he handed it to me and he said, oh, look, could you read this? You know, this is what I wrote. And I said, well, of course, I said, do you, do you want me to be honest? And he was like, no, I don't. I want you to lie. I was like, okay, fine. Thinking, well, I'm obviously not gonna lie. Are you a good liar? Uh, I don't tend to lie. I don't tend to lie, but then acting is pretending. So I don't know. You decide. So I read his screenplay and it was clear to me that my son could write scripts.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  But he had done this thing and I said, okay, so we are, we're gonna, we're gonna make this into a film. And he was like, don't do that thing. Just don't do that thing of trying to big me up. It just, I just wanted to write it because it was the assignment we were set and I wanted to like, see if I could. And please, mum, don't like, just stop. And I said, no, we're gonna, we are gonna do it. Work on it some more and then we'll talk again. And because he had been present when my own mother passed away and just geographically, like, logistically, how impossible it was that our very big family was able to be there for her.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  It was quite remarkable. So he was inspired by that remarkable moment and how we were all there because we came from this one woman. And that in that moment, that was really all that mattered. And then quite quickly, as he grew up a little bit more, and yes, of course, he is still very young. But sharing stories about loss and the loss of a grandparent in his case. You know, you learn quite quickly that for most people, the experience of loss is very, very complicated and is typically not celebratory or good. And so from the experience.

• 15:11Sam Fragoso?

  I think it's almost never.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Almost never. Exactly right. And I mean, I know so many people who've had terrible traumatic ends and haven't been there in huge family fights and disputes and very, very painful situations.

• 15:22Sam Fragoso?

  I know people who haven't gone to the funeral.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Well, absolutely. I know people who haven't even had funerals because they didn't know what to do. And it's, it's, you know, distressing. But actually, Joe didn't want to write that version. He wanted to write about what had inspired him in how, because of how much this matriarch had loved her family throughout her life and that had been her life. He wanted to write something that somewhat emulated that experience, although made it a fictional story about a fictional family and set it at Christmas time, which I thought was genius, actually. Just genius, because of course you have that inbuilt, you know, that sense of a clock

• 16:06Speaker 04

  ticking as days go by and you know that you're ramping towards this much anticipated event in the year being Christmas Day. But simultaneously, of course, alongside that, you have this family who are desperately trying to get to Christmas so they can give their mother her last Christmas. And I really did think that was just genius.

• 16:25Sam Fragoso?

  You've worked with a lot of incredible filmmakers. Peter Jackson on Heavenly Creatures, James Cameron on Titanic and Avatar, Michelle Gondry on Eternal Sunshine, Steven Soderbergh, Danny Boyle, Jason Reitman. I realize now that's a lot of men. And your point earlier about the gender imbalance and women directors is well taken. But what kind of director were you on set? Like, were there any elements or lessons from those productions that you folded into Goodbye June?

• 16:55Speaker 04

  I mean, I think I was very supported by a great handful of these wonderful people who I've worked with, not just the men, but there are women as well. I've worked with Jessica Hobbs, a brilliant director. She's a New Zealander, actually, based in the UK. I worked with her on The Regime. Jocelyn Morehouse, I worked with on The Dressmaker. You know, I have had some experiences with women, but sadly, just not as many as men. And I have to say that what I have always been inspired by, working alongside great directors, is the sense of collaboration, including everybody, listening to everybody. And the best directors, honestly, are the ones who turn to the actors and say, tell me, show me, what do you think?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Show me. Or will turn to the crew and say, no, no, don't do anything with the cameras, they'll show us, let's just see. Stephen Frears is very like that. And I guess I, I mean, I certainly had my own way of doing things, but largely supported, encouraged by some of the things that I have found to be beneficial. But also, as an actress, you do learn quite quickly what is simply not useful from a director.

• 18:07Sam Fragoso?

  What's not useful?

• 18:08Speaker 04

  A director who doesn't know what they want.

• 18:10Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  And you know that a director doesn't know what they want when they go take after take after take after take, and the direction is very unspecific and meandering. Or sometimes they'll say, oh, just try something different, or just be you, just be. And you think, well, and suddenly you're all out to sea and totally detached from whatever your original instinct might have been. Strangely, that does happen.

• 18:31Sam Fragoso?

  Just be you is a really

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Annoying one.

• 18:34Sam Fragoso?

  uniquely bad piece of advice, because you're literally there.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  To be someone else. So it's not, it's not helpful at all.

• 18:42Sam Fragoso?

  So you didn't tell Dame Helen Mirren, just be more like

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yourself. Absolutely not. I mean, in terms of what kind of director am I, I can tell you that I was very positive all the time and I'm very aware of bringing a degree of joy into the workplace, especially with something like this, where certainly in the back third of the story, like, it gets really sad. And, and, and a lot of our actors shared very private, personal stories about their own experiences of loss. Johnny Flynn, for example, lost his father as a teenager. And there were things that, for him, were really hard. There were also other people on our acting team who had gone through loss and actually just really couldn't talk about what they had experienced, because some people can't find the words to describe how they feel. And also, they don't want to talk about it again, because then they

• 19:29Speaker 04

  have to revisit their own real stuff. And that's very, very hard to do, too. So I tried to be, I tried to be a compassionate space holder, quite honestly, for everybody. And, and gave everybody the opportunity to say what they thought, to offer up an opinion, to change their minds, to make mistakes, to completely reboot the entire structure of a scene, based on what suddenly happens in the moment. Because the thing is, when you have actors who are that brilliant and that prepared, oftentimes, they will come into the room to shoot a scene, and they will have had an overnight or sleepless night thought of, oh, my God, it isn't what we discussed in rehearsal at all. And being a director who's completely ready to go, great, what should, let's try something different,

• 20:14Speaker 04

  that mattered more than anything, especially when you've also got that many children on set.

• 20:19Sam Fragoso?

  Well, now that you've made the film, and it's about to come out, has the reason you decided to make it changed, having made it?

• 20:26Speaker 04

  No, not at all.

• 20:27Sam Fragoso?

  So tell me why, still, as I asked earlier, why you and Joe ran toward it? Why, why this?

• 20:34Speaker 04

  It felt really, it felt very available to us, I think. Of course, for myself having-

• 20:40Sam Fragoso?

  Emotionally available?

• 20:40Speaker 04

  Emotionally available. I think for myself, having lost my own mother, which, to this day, like, takes my breath away, that she still isn't here. I can't fathom how she isn't here.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  I think what it was more than anything was probably that because my son had crafted something that was so special and all of these characters had their own story, I mean, they had their own storyline, they literally had a beginning, middle and end journey that they each individually go on alongside their family members, but totally separately. And that somehow, even though it's the matriarch who's slipping away, actually it's the family who are emotionally flatlining and have been for such a long time. And so there was something about me certainly wanting to, you know, and I use the word protect my son because I didn't, he's not someone who needs protecting, he's pretty solid in who he is as a person. But he's still 21.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  He is still 21 and, and I do know this industry and I do know that it can be easy to lose one's grasp on what matters the most creatively. And so I certainly felt I wanted to preserve what he had created. And that meant that we were in, we were in lockstep pretty early on in terms of parts of the script that we knew we wanted to keep. And even Netflix, brilliant as they were, because they were very supportive of a first time writer and a first time director. You know, sometimes they would give notes where we would think, hmm, well, that kind of is going to have a knock on effect there if we actually take that note literally. So maybe we can, you know, take part of it and implement it where possible. And there were some things we felt, okay, no, let's just leave that

• 22:25Speaker 04

  idea to one side. You know, you have to get good at, at deciphering sort of what's, what stays, what goes and what notes you take and what notes you have to kind of just sidestep. But I think this story, I would have been heartbroken, actually, I think, if we'd ended up giving it to somebody else. Um, because it was, it just felt so, it just felt so special. It really felt very unique. You know, I never would have done this, Sam, if I hadn't have felt actually equipped in terms of how to do that job. I don't do things by half. And I just wouldn't have done it if I hadn't have felt, okay, no, no, I think I know what I'm talking about.

• 23:05Sam Fragoso?

  I, I would say everything from directing to acting to your obsession with cold water swimming. There's nothing done half-heartedly.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  No, there isn't.

• 23:15Sam Fragoso?

  And I want to talk about where that comes from, because as you mentioned, you grew up in Reading, in that two-up, two-down terraced house with windows that would rattle when the number seventeen bus idled outside. Having spent the past year making this film and talking about what you just mentioned, what was home like?

• 23:38Speaker 04

  It was pretty great, actually.

• 23:39Sam Fragoso?

  And what was Reading like back then?

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Reading was, Reading has always been a wonderfully multicultural town, and it still is. So we grew up in a very diverse, inclusive environment, largely because of the actual environment we grew up in, but also because of how my parents were, very nonjudgmental, robust socialists. So I grew up in a constant world that felt a little bit like a Mike Lee movie in many ways, in terms of just the sort of social realism rhythm of our life. And so it was a happy home. We really didn't have anything, but we were happy.

• 24:19Sam Fragoso?

  By anything, you mean money?

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Money, you know, like actual clothes, everything was hand-me-downs. I remember endlessly going to jumble sales and buying, you know, new T-shirts for...

• 24:28Sam Fragoso?

  The cars were often second-hand?

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Always second-hand, always second-hand. Yeah, oh god, it's, yeah, it's quite amusing when I think about it. In fact, one of the cars we had had so many holes in the floor that we would drop pennies as we were going along. We would drop pennies through the hole and then quickly jump up onto our knees to look out the back window to see if we could see the penny drop and roll along the road. Yeah, so, um, so yeah, I mean, I'm really not making any of this stuff up. It's quite hard for people to kind of comprehend that any of this is real when I say it.

• 24:59Sam Fragoso?

  No, it's very easy for me to comprehend.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 25:02Sam Fragoso?

  I'm curious, like, what kind of kid were you? Like, would you create imaginary worlds for yourself?

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 25:09Sam Fragoso?

  With your co-stars Cory and Dork?

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yes, so Cory and Dork were my two imaginary friends, and they were really hilarious. I don't know why those were their names, I have no idea. They were very funny, and they lived in a caravan, and they wore overalls, and they had hair like kind of unruly and sort of, you know, desperately needed to be brushed, probably needed their heads shaved, actually.

• 25:32Sam Fragoso?

  You still remember what they looked like?

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, it was very vivid to me. But I also strangely remember when I didn't need them anymore. And I remember sending them off on holiday, I must have been about eleven. I must have been about eleven or twelve and thinking, oh, yeah, I kind of, we haven't been on any adventures recently. Or maybe it's time for you to go off on your own. And I remember sending them off and then waving goodbye. I remember in my mind, sending them off. Isn't that weird? I had an active imagination, but so, you know, so did my siblings. So we were constantly, you know, playing dress up, putting on shows, dancing, you know, we had a record player and we had, we had two records. One of them was um Matchstick Men and Matched Little Cats and Dogs.

• 26:12Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  And the other one was, I think, I think someone had given us, we'd bought it in a jumble sale. It was um, it was Milli Vanilli.

• 26:19Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  I mean, how hilarious is that? And those are the only two records that we had, but we would still put them on. We would dance and dance.

• 26:25Sam Fragoso?

  Did, maybe, did you send them off because you just, you were all right?

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was okay.

• 26:30Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  But I was, the funny thing is, is that I don't remember ever not being okay.

• 26:33Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  You know, typically, I think children have imaginary friends when they're like lonely. I was, you know, I have three great siblings. So I don't know, I just, but I did exist, I did exist in a sort of a really fun imaginary world. I didn't have a great time at school. It wasn't horrific.

• 26:50Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Uh, I was bullied, I was teased.

• 26:53Sam Fragoso?

  For, for what?

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Well, just like I was a little bit chubby, I guess. And, you know, I just was different. But somehow I was aware that I was a bit different. It's funny. I mean, you know, believe me, if I had some kind of like hidden traumatic experiences that had impacted on me enormously, I would have shared them by now in my life. But I really didn't have that, you know, but I did, I was different, definitely, and we all were. But my parents were great, you know, and when I think about my mum and dad as a couple and as a family unit that we were, they really were great. One thing they never did was criticize us.

• 27:33Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  And I think that's really significant, because I think parents forget that children will take criticism to heart, even if they're flippant, nonchalant comments.

• 27:44Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  They stick to the sides badly. And my parents were very, very good at not doing that.

• 27:49Sam Fragoso?

  Uh, your father was an aspiring actor.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 27:52Sam Fragoso?

  Who would make ends meet doing odd jobs like selling Christmas trees.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:56Sam Fragoso?

  Like he was a postman at one point.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. He was a postman for a long time.

• 27:59Sam Fragoso?

  He told The Guardian, I always had long periods between acting jobs. And these down times were particularly difficult periods in my life.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 28:09Sam Fragoso?

  What did those rough patches look like to you?

• 28:12Speaker 04

  I do remember my dad having sort of low moods. I do remember that, but he wasn't a depressive.

• 28:18Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  And actually now, like even describing my dad as having low moods seems so strange because he's larger than life. Every day he sings, every day he dances, every day, you know, he tells me he's getting ready to live. Get him ready to live, baby. He's eighty six.

• 28:32Sam Fragoso?

  Did seeing him as a kid perform intermittently, did that give you a template or a model for becoming an actor? Did that inspire you to do it?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Not really, because I actually, because my dad, my dad's worked with very few and far between. I think I actually only ever saw him on stage once.

• 28:52Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Strangely, but there were always costumes around and so I, the kind of the, the performing side of life and the kind of colorful side of what he loved to do felt very present, even though we actually didn't get to see him do it that often, you know?

• 29:10Sam Fragoso?

  It's amazing, like thinking about your upbringing, at seventeen, your father drove you to the train station so that you could go and audition for Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah.

• 29:22Sam Fragoso?

  Do you remember that car ride?

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Well, actually, he drove me all the way to London because it was on that occasion, and it was the only time he's ever driven me all the way to an audition. But on that occasion, I, I actually didn't have enough money for the train fare and it was going to work out cheaper to pay for the petrol for him to drive me than to have paid for the train. But I do remember that car ride. Yeah, I remember it really vividly.

• 29:44Sam Fragoso?

  What did he say?

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Well, I was holding a film script in my hand. You know, a film script is anything from, let's say, ninety eight pages to kind of a hundred and twenty four pages being on the kind of longer side, unless it's Titanic, in which case slightly longer, or anything written by Aaron Sorkin, in which case definitely longer, definitely longer. But I was holding a film script. I'd never held a film script before in my life and it felt really heavy and there were a lot of words to read. Actually, I was always quite a slow reader and I remember saying to my dad, my god, dad, imagine if I got this part, like just imagine like if I actually got it and I was in a film. And he turned to me and he just said, you'll get it.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  And I don't know why, but he just seemed very sure. Don't know why. And he just said, you'll get it.

• 30:38Sam Fragoso?

  Why do you think?

• 30:39Speaker 04

  I don't know. He, my dad did believe in me. And he always let me know that he believed in me.

• 30:46Sam Fragoso?

  Even despite the fact that he himself had these dreams that did not work out the way he wanted. He had like this, this absolute belief in you.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Yes, he did. He did. And we have always had a very close relationship. My father and I, and we still really, really, really do. I think we're kindred spirits in many ways.

• 31:07Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Well, just that we're quite similar, energetically quite similar, same attitude to life. You know, we can tease one another very freely. You know, he never, he, he could never do anything to offend me because I understand him so well. Do you know what I mean? He's a really eccentric guy, but and he can also like, like certainly when we were growing up, like he could be a bit. You'd, we would describe him as like, you know, a bit of a grumpy old sod. But then again, I think it's back to that kind of like slightly low mood. He had a really serious accident, my father, when, when I was 11 years old. And that really impacted on his self-esteem.

• 31:43Sam Fragoso?

  Foot, right?

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah, correct. Um, and that is one part of our film that is correct, that is correct. It's the only part that my son directly took from real life.

• 31:53Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, it's the, it's the opening shot of the movie.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. Yeah. So my father, when I was 11 years old. My brother was five, my younger sister was eight, and my older sister was 14. He suffered a terrible accident on a, on a, on a boat, on a canal boat, going very slowly through some French waterways. And he was helping a friend to move a very large boat, a great distance. And he stepped into the coil of the rope and, um, and the, and the rope pulled his foot off completely. And by a total miracle, it was, it was put back on. And that was one thing that my son did include in our film. And that is part of the backstory of what's happened to Bernie, the father, played by Timothy Spall.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, so I think that did impact for sure. Of all, of course, it impacted on my father in terms of his confidence carrying on as an actor because he just felt so vulnerable. And he had a limp for a very long time, got a pronounced one, which over years was corrected somewhat. But we're very lucky to have him. I mean, it's a miracle he's even alive.

• 33:04Sam Fragoso?

  And even in spite of that, he still had this absolute belief in you.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Absolute belief in me and great love for all of it. And he very freely tells me that he's proud, you know, which I'm endlessly grateful for.

• 33:24Sam Fragoso?

  Is that hard for British people?

• 33:25Speaker 04

  No, it's not hard for British people, but I will say that I think it's considerably easier for Americans.

• 33:32Sam Fragoso?

  It may be too easy for Americans.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  Well, I love that, though. I really do. I mean, I lived in New York for 10 years and I really was struck by how effervescent Americans are and open with expressions of pride. I've always been very inspired by that. It's a part of my life in New York that I've really tried to hang on to.

• 33:57Sam Fragoso?

  So when we come back, why don't we talk about some of the films that your father is probably very proud of? That's more after the break with Kate Winslet.

• 34:24Sam Fragoso?

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• 35:08Sam Fragoso?

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• 35:53Sam Fragoso?

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• 36:09Sam Fragoso?

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• 37:35Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Yes, here we are.

• 37:37Sam Fragoso?

  In your early performances, I read that you would quote, "rummage around my emotional toolbox and pull something out and pull something out. Fuck me." I read that you would quote, "Fuck." In your early performances.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  It's okay. You're neurodivergent, I can tell.

• 37:53Sam Fragoso?

  And you?

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 37:55Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  I'm like trying to figure it out.

• 37:57Sam Fragoso?

  How can you tell?

• 37:58Speaker 04

  I can tell because your desire to get things spot on is really heightened. But also you care about minute detail, which I am similar.

• 38:10Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  But I haven't been, I haven't actually done an assessment, but I think I have to soon.

• 38:14Sam Fragoso?

  Neither have I, and I've been thinking I should do one too.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  You're definitely ADHD, 1,000%. It's brilliant. It's a great strength.

• 38:21Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:22Sam Fragoso?

  So this, for the record, this is a compliment to me.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Oh, please. I mean, I mean it as a compliment. It's a great thing. My God, the most interesting people I know in the world are ADHD.

• 38:31Sam Fragoso?

  Ugh.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Okay, go again.

• 38:35Sam Fragoso?

  So how did you learn that you were neurodivergent? Oh, Kate Winslet told me.

• 38:42Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, let me try to do my job. In your early performances, I read that you would quote, "rummage around my emotional toolbox and pull out something that had actually happened to me." So in something like, I don't know, Sense and Sensibility, what would that process look like? Like, talk me through how you would create a character in your mind when you started out.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Well, when I think about, to answer your question specifically about Sense and Sensibility, I think about Marianne Dashwood. You know, I was quite a sort of romantic free thinker. And so I guess I relied on those sides of myself. And I must have just, I don't know, somehow used that in the playing of Marianne Dashwood, who was, to all intents and purposes, very, very different to me. But one thing that I have figured out for myself is that so much of it is about minimizing the fear factor. So anything to make me feel grounded and to get myself to the point where I believed,

• 39:49Speaker 04

  no, no, I was the only person who could play this part. And, and this is why they've asked me to do it. And I'm just gonna, you know, damn well, you know, smash it out the park and I'm gonna fucking do it. And I'm not gonna make them feel like they need to fire me. Because most actors, well, certainly for me, when I was younger, I would just think, well, I'm gonna get fired.

• 40:08Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so we do suffer from the same affliction.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Okay, fine. So, so, yeah, so, so, so, so anything to kind of make myself feel that I had total ownership over my character, and I would just do it. But then as I, as I've gotten older, I think, I think that's probably changed a little bit. Because I think as that emotional toolbox, as I clearly once must have described it, as that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you can't carry that shit around all the time. But at the same time, you know, the great journey of life makes certain lived experiences much more freely available.

• 40:47Sam Fragoso?

  But the, but the self-possession to know that I am the only person that can play this part.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  It's all a mindfuck, I tell you.

• 40:54Sam Fragoso?

  When, when you auditioned for Titanic?

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:57Sam Fragoso?

  It went very well.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:58Sam Fragoso?

  But James Cameron was still skeptical.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:01Sam Fragoso?

  That, that he should cast you. Did you write him a letter? Or a card.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  I don't quite remember. Someone tells me that I wrote him a letter which I signed from Rose or something like that.

• 41:12Sam Fragoso?

  With one single Rose.

• 41:13Speaker 04

  I actually honestly don't recall doing that, but it's possible I did.

• 41:17Sam Fragoso?

  And apparently there's a phone call to his car.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  A phone call to his car?

• 41:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is what, this is what it was reported.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. That I don't remember. Oh, my God. What did I say?

• 41:26Sam Fragoso?

  You said I'm the only one that can play Rose. I don't even know why you're seeing anyone else.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  I don't remember doing that. That definitely sounds like extremely pushy and quite desperate. And I don't think I would have done that. I, I, I, I honestly don't have a memory of that.

• 41:41Sam Fragoso?

  It sounds ambitious.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  It's, yeah.

• 41:43Sam Fragoso?

  In a good way.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Well, good for me if I did do that, but I don't think, I really don't think I did that.

• 41:48Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  I don't remember it.

• 41:49Sam Fragoso?

  But you believed it was.

• 41:50Speaker 04

  I have a pretty good memory. In fact, I have an exceptional memory. I don't recall that.

• 41:56Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I've heard your long memory is great. Your recent memory.

• 41:59Speaker 04

  My recent memory is definitely, well, so my recent memory is, is annoying because it's stupid things like I will put something somewhere to keep it safe in a very safe space that only I will remember where it is. And then I forget.

• 42:13Sam Fragoso?

  Wow.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  I know.

• 42:14Sam Fragoso?

  This is really upsetting.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  I know.

• 42:16Sam Fragoso?

  I really don't like being seen in this way.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Sorry. I'm nailing you, aren't I?

• 42:22Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  But this is the other thing about being a director. This is the other thing about being a director. You actually do have to be able to intuit what a person is like.

• 42:34Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Quite quickly because it absolutely supports a way of communicating with that actor in a meaningful way and in an economic way. Because on a set like Goodbye Jim, when you've got thirty five days, I had Helen Mirren for sixteen days playing the title role, okay? And I've got all these children, seven children, you know, and all of these wonderful actors. I had to absolutely make every single actor feel as though I knew them and understood them. And in order to do that, you actually have to do it. You can't just make them feel that way. It has to be a real thing. I have been able to get quite good over time at being really intuitive about people, being able to read people quite quickly. And it's also a self-protection thing, too.

• 43:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yes. Well, again, if I'm intuiting correctly, from the jump, you really wanted this. You wanted this career.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:29Sam Fragoso?

  You fought for these parts.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:31Sam Fragoso?

  James Cameron said, even that.

• 43:34Sam Fragoso?

  As a young woman, he saw you as, quote, "a force of nature." And when someone projects that kind of energy and that kind of power to the people around her, it's difficult to see when they're in trouble emotionally.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah.

• 43:49Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about that. Did you feel like a force of nature after the world saw Titanic?

• 43:53Speaker 04

  No. After the world saw Titanic, no, I did not feel like a force of nature. I have been described thus by other people, this force of nature thing, which I take as a real compliment because I am like that. I'm very much, let's go and meet the world and look at this day. And I'm just somebody who gets up and out and gets on with things. But after Titanic came out, it was quite a strange time because I couldn't function like a normal person anymore. And being a normal person, being somebody in the world, matters to me enormously. I couldn't live without that. I have actively taken steps to make sure that I can maintain that way of living, that way of being a parent, that way of proceeding through life.

• 44:36Sam Fragoso?

  What happened in that period that you wanted to move away from?

• 44:39Speaker 04

  I became really very famous very quickly and I found it quite distressing.

• 44:44Sam Fragoso?

  Which parts?

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Well, I just couldn't walk to the grocery store without being followed. I couldn't buy things without the press going into the shop and bribing the shopkeeper to tell them what I had bought so they could try and invent some kind of diet that I was allegedly on.

• 45:00Sam Fragoso?

  There was a lot, lot of, a big obsession about dieting.

• 45:03Speaker 04

  I was, I was, and I will happily say this, I was actively bullied by mainstream media in the UK. Some would say possibly even in the US as well, but I was less aware of that because we didn't have the internet in those days. But I was, I was treated very unkindly in a way that I just feel so grateful that other young women aren't treated that way now.

• 45:26Sam Fragoso?

  Reading about this, this tabloid obsession with, with body image, the constant dialogue about how a woman should present herself, it's not like that's gone away.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  No, it hasn't. It hasn't gone away.

• 45:37Sam Fragoso?

  But the vitriol of that era is not something I really lived through or ingested. And I certainly didn't experience it in the way that you intimately did. How did you grapple with that?

• 45:52Speaker 04

  I mean, it definitely took its toll. It definitely made me really self critical. But hey, I very lucky I had a really great family, good friends, normal people, who some just got me, got me through it, you know, just by being present and being real in my life.

• 46:16Sam Fragoso?

  You know, earlier when we talked about your need to direct in order to change the culture of the industry.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 46:24Sam Fragoso?

  Like so that women would have people in their corner.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 46:28Sam Fragoso?

  So that they don't fear reprisal.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 46:31Sam Fragoso?

  In making Titanic, but really any of those films of that era, what do you wish you could have asked for?

• 46:39Speaker 04

  What do I wish I could have asked for? Um, equal pay?

• 46:45Speaker 04

  It's a pretty obvious one that and I don't, I still feel uncomfortable talking about it because it's a massive conversation that one day we will for sure have. I don't know, maybe I'm still waiting for somebody else to blow the lid off at first. And it has been somewhat, but it still exists.

• 47:01Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  It's quite bad.

• 47:02Sam Fragoso?

  It's very bad.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  It's very, very, very fucking bad. And actually, the number of times I've had to advocate for myself um, in that regard would you people wouldn't even believe me. So there's no point talking about it.

• 47:15Sam Fragoso?

  Uh, can I stop here?

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 47:17Sam Fragoso?

  This is the second time you said people won't believe you.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  I know you would believe me, but it's very, it's you can't change perceptions of um, of other people around what it must be like to be a charmed, successful actress. I am also, I am so blessed and I have no complaints, actually.

• 47:37Sam Fragoso?

  No one's questioning that.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  No, but the reality is there are, there are things about this industry that are still profoundly imbalanced. So to answer your question, that's one thing I would go back and change. It's one thing I would still change. I do wish there had been more protection of young women on set when it came to nudity. That's something that I feel I learnt how to take care of myself in those situations in a way that I never should have had to learn how to take care of myself to such an extent. And I don't know that I was even very good at protecting myself, not really.

• 48:13Sam Fragoso?

  Why do you say that?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Well, because I just think I I just think that I felt like I had to. You can't be difficult, you know, when you're a young actress, you know, don't be difficult. Learn your lines, don't be late, don't be difficult. And so in one's effort to always be the people pleaser. And I think maybe there's a part of me that is still that way. But now I actually want to please people because I want people to feel happy and comfortable in a working environment that largely I'm in charge of dictating that energy and the atmosphere. So it's different now. But then it was about pleasing people because, God forbid, one should get a bad reputation because then you're struck off the list straight away.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  I mean, cancel culture has existed for a lot longer than I think people really think.

• 49:00Sam Fragoso?

  It's interesting that we only heard about cancel culture once men started getting cancelled.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  And I think now, you know, now I I feel much more confident that if I see bad behaviour, I would call it out. Whereas in those days, I would witness bad behaviour and just think, oh, my God, is this really what it's like? You know, it's it's and I feel annoyed at myself for that, that I didn't have more of a voice from a younger age. It's taken a long time to earn it, to earn that voice, you know.

• 49:34Sam Fragoso?

  That bothers you?

• 49:36Speaker 04

  It bothers me because I feel like I could have buddied up with other young actresses and been singing from the same song sheet in a way that probably would have helped us all out a little bit. But now I feel very grateful to have the voice that I do because I absolutely always use it to advocate for others, especially young women coming into the film industry, being able to say to them, listen, if you don't like that, you just say, no, that's not appropriate, please give me a minute. And then you basically phone me up and I tell you what to do, you know, and that's what I do.

• 50:10Sam Fragoso?

  After the whirlwind of that period, you told the New York Times, "It sounds a little mystical, but I had to look after my soul." How did you go about doing that?

• 50:21Speaker 04

  I took jobs that were tiny. I literally, I remember, I remember thinking, hang on a second. I don't know how to be famous, but also I still don't know how to act. Like, just because I had done a handful of films, it didn't necessarily mean that I was going to be asked back to the party time and time again. You know, I was still working on being a person who would get to consistently do this job because I love it. I really do love it. I love acting. Turns out I absolutely love directing too, more than I ever would have imagined. But I think, I think what I did was just reminded myself that I still had a lot to learn and that I could only do that if I was alongside people

• 51:07Speaker 04

  who would enrich my life as an actress in a collaborative way, telling stories that mattered to me, that I cared about, and playing characters that I really wanted to play. Somehow I was able to really dig into that. And yeah, and, and nourish my soul in that regard. So I suppose that's probably what I meant by, by saying, you know, I had to take care of my, my soul. You know, it was quite an unusual thing for an actress who was suddenly, seemingly being offered the world on a plate because I had been in Titanic. But I've never liked doing things that people expect me to do.

• 51:44Sam Fragoso?

  Well, when we come back, we'll take one last break and we'll talk about all the things that people didn't expect from you. That's coming up next with Kate Winslet.

• 52:14Sam Fragoso?

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• 52:58Sam Fragoso?

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• 53:32Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back, one of my favorites of yours, talk about unexpected choices, is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotted Mind, written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Michelle Gondry. Was that a professional and personal turning point for you?

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it really was. Yeah, both, both of those things. I think on a personal level, I just, I don't know, I felt, I think I felt some sense of validation that I could do other things because there was no reason at all for Michelle Gondry to have asked me to play that part and to have seen sides of me that might lend themselves to playing Clementine.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  Krasinski.

• 54:15Sam Fragoso?

  I guess it's hard to tell, watching Sense and Sensibility.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Well, yes, and Titanic. Like, why would anyone think that I could suddenly go and play some wild American woman?

• 54:23Sam Fragoso?

  Long Island accent?

• 54:24Speaker 04

  Long Island accent, woof, and all those different hair colors. So I just, I felt so uplifted and invigorated by that opportunity. I can't tell you, like, it was just fantastic. It was just fantastic. And as an experience, playing that character and making that film was so interesting.

• 54:44Sam Fragoso?

  How so?

• 54:45Speaker 04

  Just Michelle's a brilliant filmmaker. Charlie's an extraordinary writer. Like, just everything about the words that fell out of my mouth and being supported to play that role in a very eccentric, wild way. I just felt it was really invigorating and I learned, I learned a lot.

• 55:06Sam Fragoso?

  How did you get the accent down?

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Fuck me. It was my, a brilliant dialect coach. So.

• 55:14Sam Fragoso?

  I was waiting for you to curse on this podcast.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  When I, when I did Titanic, I was very fortunate that a dialect coach was employed to work with me. And her name is Susan Hegarty, and she's absolutely wonderful. And I still work with her to this day. Um, I also have worked with her on films where I've been required to do non-American accents, such as The Reader and Steve Jobs, for example. I've still worked with Susan because we just have such an understanding. But she has a phenomenal ear and the way in which she teaches just really works for me. So, I mean, the Long Island nature of it.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  It was, that was a very hard accent to do, actually. Not as hard as the accent I had to do in Steve Jobs, which was the only time I've done an accent that actually made me throw things across a room. Cause I found it so hard.

• 56:06Sam Fragoso?

  How are you, how, can you show me, like, how do you do it?

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Oh my god, I wish the audience, the listeners could see what you just did with your face. That was quite funny.

• 56:17Sam Fragoso?

  They're going to be able to see it.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 56:19Sam Fragoso?

  Um, was it a, was it a dumb look?

• 56:21Speaker 04

  No, it was just like a, really tell me.

• 56:24Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, well, you know, like, I have, I have a lot of, you know, I've tried to ask some smart questions today.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  You've asked great questions.

• 56:31Sam Fragoso?

  How do you do it? I don't understand.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  What, an accent?

• 56:33Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, you show me, show me one of, like, Eternal Sunshine, or Hell, Revolutionary Road, Mildred Pierce, Contagion, Labor Day, a lot of different American accents.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 56:43Sam Fragoso?

  What was the one that was the hardest and how the hell did you do it?

• 56:45Speaker 04

  That one that was the hardest, well, the hardest accent of all was the one that I had to do in Steve Jobs because the real Joanna Hoffman, who I play in that movie, she was a Polish Armenian.

• 56:56Sam Fragoso?

  It was an amalgamation.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  Yes, and she, but the American that she learnt, for the first time, she learnt in Buffalo. And so it was a very complex accent that she had, that was the hardest. And, and in actual fact, her real voice was, was relatively high pitched. And I had to find a way of avoiding that because I felt that it would have been unsustainable for the length of film that was, to play a character who really kind of spoke up in her nose like that. Anyway, so I didn't want to do that. So I had to find something else that worked for her. But the hardest accent of all was definitely, hardest American accent of all was definitely Maryvee's Town. And it was the hardest because, and I would say this to Brad Ingallsby, I would say, do you understand that I have to do this like so well?

• 57:41Speaker 04

  I have to do it way better than all of the other actors because the audience is going to be listening out for me to fuck it up. So I have to do it so perfectly that it disappears.

• 57:53Sam Fragoso?

  The floor is yours.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  You forgot the oregano. Uh, it was a very difficult accent to do. And also it had to sort of occupy, this is gonna sound so crazy, but it had to occupy the voice itself. I had to occupy a place in my own body. Emotionally, she was not in a good place. And and that's not me, you know, I'm a so I had to. I had to find that sadness in me and. You know, the the the stuff that she emotionally buried just to be able to function in daily life. I've never experienced something as tragic as what she had gone through. So that was part of it as well. And and and with learning an accent, you know.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  It's not just a voice that you put on. It's it's much more than that. It's because you completely change the muscular structure of your your mouth and your face. So there are some brilliant actors who are great at doing American accents, but sometimes you can see them doing it because their muscular structure. Isn't quite where it should be, and you can see that they're British in spite of the fact that they sound really. Great. You can see them doing that. You can see them doing the voice, therefore you can hear them doing it. And actually, the trick is not getting caught out and having anyone hear you do it. So you forgot the oregano. You know, it's a that O sound is very hard to do. And if it's if you do it too much, it sounds southern.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  I spent a lot of time with a female police officer, actually, who was from, in fact, she was from Chester County. And and and working alongside her, I found to be enormously helpful, just because she sounded quite a lot like. How I wanted mayor to sound. And again, this work with the dialects coach relentless work that drove me fucking crazy.

• 59:49Sam Fragoso?

  Speaking of mayor. You know, we talked earlier about that emotional toolbox. And how you would mine something that actually happened to you to play these characters.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  What did I do on there?

• 1:00:03Sam Fragoso?

  Well, it stopped working at a certain point.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it doesn't. The thing is, it doesn't always work because I don't always have the stuff that a character might have gone through.

• 1:00:12Sam Fragoso?

  So where do you go, I suppose, like in yourself to create these characters whole cloth?

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  You know, the most immediate action is, I don't fucking know. Like, I just want to respond by saying to you, you know, I actually, there's a part of me that feels like, I don't know. I don't know how I do all of that. I don't, you know, I don't know that any actor really knows how they do it, you know.

• 1:00:31Sam Fragoso?

  And that's a totally fair response.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  Well, I just don't know what else to kind of say. But with Mare, what I did was I really had to, I mean, I had to properly build that trauma, that loss, losing her son to suicide.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I just, I invented it. I invented it. I thought about it a lot. I visualized the experience a lot. I spent time with that young actor who actually played Kevin, her son. I spent time with him and he was actually a very, a very deep-thinking, emotional young man. And he had a very beautiful face. And actually, I just, I don't know, I just, you, you, you set up these triggers for yourself. You create trauma. You invent it. Like, we're willful. We sort of do, you do things to change the way your brain works so that, once you've laid your triggers down and the scene is happening, you know, you just hope to God that you've set yourself up properly

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  so that you can respond to what's in front of you. And actually, I got to a point with that young, I couldn't even look at that young actor. I couldn't even look at him. I would just fall apart. I couldn't do it. And it's only in recent years, actually, that I can now talk about Mare without getting very upset because it got stuck in me. It was very scary.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  Quite weird to be an actor and have these things get stuck to the sides, especially when you really don't want them to get stuck to the sides. You'd quite like to just go back to your life.

• 1:02:07Sam Fragoso?

  Doesn't work like that.

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  No, it doesn't. Clearly not.

• 1:02:10Sam Fragoso?

  I haven't stopped thinking about the show since I first saw it. It's it's stuck to the sides of a viewer.

• 1:02:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, of many people.

• 1:02:19Sam Fragoso?

  Are you able to watch a scene from it?

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  Um, I can sometimes, yeah, but it depends what scene because then I I might get like all fucked up again. But sometimes, yeah.

• 1:02:29Sam Fragoso?

  I have one.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  I know you do. I know you're gonna show me the scene, aren't you, in the pediatrician's office in episode two? Or when she's sitting with the grief counselor in episode five? I'm very happy to watch it, but you will see I will have an immediate reaction. It's torture being on this show.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Walk me through the day that Kevin died.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Well, um, it was a Sunday and

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  neighbor called and said that she'd seen Kevin go into the back of the house.

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  He was, uh, he'd been living with us off and on for a while at this point, so you know, the neighbors kind of knew to call if they saw him because, um, he'd stolen a bunch of things from us before and, uh, you know, we had to put the word out that if anyone noticed him around. I just thought he was there for drug money, like he always was. Um,

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Frank wasn't home that day. He'd taken Drew to swim lessons and I knew that Siobhan was right around the corner at her friend's house. So instead of going home myself,

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  I asked her to go check on him for me.

• 1:03:56Speaker 05

  Was out running some errands and then, uh,

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  Shabon called me.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  I was hysterical. She, uh... She couldn't even speak. She...

• 1:04:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Speaker 05

  I don't even remember driving home.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  I still have to stop myself getting upset when I watch that scene. I mean, I don't watch it, actually. Only in moments like that, when people often ask me to.

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  But yeah, but I remember shooting that scene, that actress who played the grief counselor. God, she was so wonderful. One thing that I am aware that I am able to do, I can multitask, like actually multitask, meaning do several things at once. But as an actress, I can multitask with multiple thoughts. And actually, when we were shooting that scene, I had a friend back in England who was going through something quite upsetting. And, you know, you would think that I would have said to her, "Look, I'm doing this difficult scene today. Let me call you tomorrow, or let's check in at the weekend." No, somehow, between takes, I was checking in on this friend.

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  Because there must have been something about her needing me and me engaging in this very difficult emotional thing that she was dealing with, which was nothing to do with Mare and had no similarity even. But my own, perhaps subconscious desire to almost emotionally jack myself up, charge myself up, that's something that in recent years I've realized that I have a tendency to do. But I think it's something about existing in a space that feels frightening. So that emotions become very real, really available and quite loud and present. And I was very, very fortunate because the actress who played the grief counselor,

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  whose name is escaping me right now, but she was wonderful. She was incredibly, incredibly supportive and brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

• 1:06:23Sam Fragoso?

  What do you make of that tendency?

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  I think I'd be sad and I would get bored if there wasn't a part of myself that kept sort of organically evolving as a, as a creative person in the world, you know? It's interesting. I don't know. I don't, I don't entirely understand myself all the time, you know? And that's okay.

• 1:06:44Sam Fragoso?

  You knew that I was gonna play that scene?

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Hmm. Yeah. Because you could see that it's very hard to act, very hard to act that scene.

• 1:06:52Sam Fragoso?

  When you were filming the show, I read that, um, speaking of Joe, your children would come up to you and say, Kevin's not real.

• 1:06:59Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:00Sam Fragoso?

  And neither is Mare. It's just pretend.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Just pretend.

• 1:07:04Sam Fragoso?

  But can I ask you?

• 1:07:07Sam Fragoso?

  You're already laughing at the question before I ask you.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  I'm laughing because both of my children have now turned into actors. And now I can say to him, can you believe that you would tease me and say Kevin's not real? He's like, oh, and he puts his arms around me and he goes, oh, my God, Mum. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I ever said that. How did you, how did you not just like punch me in the face? And of course, my daughter, the same. She, you know, she was very fortunate to have been cast as Liesel in The Phoenician Scheme, directed by Wes Anderson with Benicio, who was wonderful with her and really took care of her. And so they both know what it means to literally transport yourself

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  into the heart and mind of another character and to do whatever it takes to make that role believable and convincing to an audience. And they also know that it hurts.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  And so I feel grateful that I've had such intense experiences because I now know how to help them come out the other side. Like sometimes literally saying to them, don't do anything today. It's fine. You don't have to expect anything of yourself. I'm just going to bring you things and you're just going to stay right there and watch some shit TV. Here you are. Like, no, because I never had that.

• 1:08:28Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  I never had that when I was younger. But I, but I also, I also tell you, I didn't have, I wouldn't have even had the words to know how to ask for support.

• 1:08:36Sam Fragoso?

  Different time.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Different time, you know, put up, shut up, get on with it, you know?

• 1:08:41Sam Fragoso?

  When you finished the show, it's my understanding that, that you went to therapy and you said in one interview, I had to let it go.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:08:50Sam Fragoso?

  But I just couldn't.

• 1:08:51Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:08:52Sam Fragoso?

  And I had to work out some things. What did you feel like you had to work out and where are you now, four years removed?

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  I'm trying to sort of move on from it quickly because if we talk about it too much, I will absolutely, it's terrible. I was introduced to a really interesting neuroscientist who works with people who get gripped by trauma. And I just happened to meet this guy and he happened to say to me, how do you do it? I said, what, what do you mean? He said, well, how do you do your job? You know, how do you move on and let it go? And I've always wondered how actors are able to do that. And I sort of said, well, I don't know, you know, you kind of just, you know, hope that it will fade after a while. And he said, yeah, but you do know that it only takes six weeks to tell, to give, send

• 1:09:42Speaker 04

  the same message to your brain about an emotional frame of mind until you actually change your brain chemistry. And I said, well, actually it's interesting that you say that because when I did Marevee stown, I kind of got gripped in this trauma. He said, I'm not surprised. He said, and how are you doing now? And just someone asking me how I was doing reduced me to a puddle. So I think I did do a bit of therapy. I didn't do much, but I did enough that I felt. I just felt better aligned emotionally. But also I had to kind of learn how to, you know, I can't really let myself, let myself get so affected in ways that were so long lasting because it wasn't kind of good for everybody. Like it wasn't great.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  And I think I, I think I've learned some actual specific ways in which to be a bit more bounded with my own emotions. Going forward, even Goodbye June was extremely, extremely hard. And there were face value, you know, many things about the character I was actually playing in Goodbye June. That one could say, well, is that quite similar to you? But there were so many things about her that were nothing like me at all. Really nothing like me. And actually I thought that she, I thought that I wouldn't get so affected by playing her, but I for sure did.

• 1:11:00Sam Fragoso?

  Did directing help you get out of that period?

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  I think it did. I think it helped me and I think it also.

• 1:11:06Sam Fragoso?

  Cause like the act of having to show up for all of these people.

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I couldn't think about myself and I would often, I would often say, you know, sometimes if we didn't have as much time to cover a scene as I might have hoped. You know, as I said, we only had thirty five days, Helen Mirren for sixteen days, like I had to get her done. She was going on to another job and I, yeah, I just, I couldn't not make my days because if I, if I missed a scene, there was every possibility that I may never actually get, get it because of time. I would often say to our cinematographer, you know, if he'd say, okay, you know, ideally we'd, it would be good if we had another couple of angles for you to play with. And I would say, don't worry about me, don't worry about me, it's not about me, it's not about me, it's not about me. And I would just push, push that away. I'd say, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know, we've got Helen Mirren, it's just about her, it's just about her.

• 1:11:52Speaker 04

  But I also did have to, to a certain extent with how I wanted to shoot the film, I did have to hold my nerve quite a lot because. I didn't feel fear in terms of not having a ton of coverage in the first third of our story. It was a deliberate choice I had wanted to make, which I worked with my cinematographer in making sure we could pull this off. But even he was a bit like, you just need to make sure you've got things to cut to. And I would say, I know. But you cannot show tension and actual space between characters on screen unless you actually stand back and let the audience observe it.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  So being unafraid to say, no, no, no, no, no, let's, we're gonna stay over here. We're just gonna stay here. I don't need to be in everyone's faces, having a bunch of stuff to cut between this and that and the other. I don't want that. I want to watch these people existing in these very uncomfortable spaces all together as a family so that we know that they don't fucking know what to do. They don't know how to do any of this and we've got to watch them try and figure it out. And so I wanted for us to earn our closeups. And we don't go really close into someone's face until Connor, played by Johnny Flynn,

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  reads that beautiful E. Cummings poem to June, played by Helen Mirren. And then suddenly we are right in Helen Mirren's eyes and it's the first time that I chose to let the audience observe that June does know what's happening to her. She's known for a long time. And she also is expressing the sadness at what she's leaving behind. And we get to see her love for her children begin right there in that moment when she's experiencing so much overflowing love for her son Connor, who's probably her favoured child.

• 1:13:55Sam Fragoso?

  Before we go, you know how you said earlier that that you want to be someone a younger actress can call?

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:14:01Sam Fragoso?

  When something goes awry and then in directing, you want to change the culture that is so male dominated.

• 1:14:07Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:08Sam Fragoso?

  With this movie, Goodbye June and Mayor of Easttown Lee, you produced both of them. Do you see this work, this new chapter as a kind of refutation of the era and culture that attempted to define you early on?

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  I'm really thinking about my answer to that. Yeah, I guess I do. We like to pigeonhole actresses. And we don't like it when they go off piece and they say things unexpected or controversial. And we certainly don't really like it when they physically change their appearance because we feel this need to comment on it all the time. I don't know if you've noticed that in the way that we really don't particularly do that with the men. But then if the men lose shit tons of weight or gain shit tons of weight, applause, applause.

• 1:14:57Sam Fragoso?

  I've noticed.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Right. So with the women, we are still just treated differently. And people actually use different words in conversation with us, whether that's on a red carpet or in a filmmaking scenario, like for me in the edit, sometimes filtering things said to me by other women. If you just maybe use a bit more confidence in your cut.

• 1:15:21Speaker 04

  Don't think you say that if I was a man. It's like staggering. And one thing I know that I have never lacked is confidence because it's the it's the thing that has literally got me through. And it's why I've survived as long as I have and continue to not just survive, but I hope now really truly thrive because I love this job. I'm still busy, kind of, I'm still busy, like redefining myself, like I've still got so much to do. People just don't know the stuff I've still got to do. I've got so much to do, very busy.

• 1:15:53Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. How how do you want to define yourself?

• 1:15:57Speaker 04

  I still just wanna be taken really seriously as a force to be reckoned with. And what I mean by that is that I feel that what I can creatively offer, you know, I want to feel that that's open-ended and limitless, you know, and experimental and inclusive and representative of who people truly are. I care about real people. I care about telling stories that people can relate to, that resonate in some way. I care about advocating for others, but that translates as well into creativity through the stories I'm telling, through characters I'm playing.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  I want for people to feel seen and heard and respected and acknowledged.

• 1:16:44Sam Fragoso?

  And for yourself?

• 1:16:46Speaker 04

  I just wanna keep going. I just wanna keep, I just love it. I just always want to be doing it. I saw Helen Marin the other day, she's so hilarious. And she said to me, now, at the end, so when you get to the end of all this, you've finished all the press, and I swear, I thought she was gonna say to me, go on a nice holiday. She says, you really must throw yourself into something straight away. You know, you know that, don't you? You can't stop. You've got to keep going, very important. You've got to jump right into something very challenging. I hope you're doing that. Are you doing that? And I felt bad to say to, actually, no, I'm taking a small break. Oh, good, okay, well, where are you going? But she's, that's, you know, Helen, look at her. Helen is eighty years old, loves to work. It lifts her up, it inspires her, it challenges her all the time. She loves to be on set. That's me.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  So do, so do I, in any capacity. Championing others, for sure. Continuing to change the culture. Elevating others, giving people opportunities where they still are waiting to have that first shot. Not just as actors, but as crew members as well. That matters to me, like, more than I can possibly say. And that's also part of changing the culture.

• 1:17:52Sam Fragoso?

  My last question. This is totally random, but cold water swimming. I keep going back to this. The kind of person that puts themselves through that. What is that about?

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  I have never felt so alive as I do when I step out of cold water. And it's such a great way of being able to tell yourself that you can do something, even though your body is saying, don't, don't do it. It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be horrible, it's gonna feel nasty. But knowing that you can never regret it, ever, it's a thrill. It's properly a thrill.

• 1:18:31Sam Fragoso?

  Sounds like directing a movie.

• 1:18:32Speaker 04

  It is like directing a movie. It's exactly like directing a movie. You could never regret it and it's a thrill. And it's something that, you know, initially you think, oh, my God, how am I gonna do all of that? And then I feel like, look at me now, I did it, I did it all. I was across everything, did everything that was asked of me, delivered on time, didn't drop a single scene, even got extra stuff. Everyone came out happy, the children had an amazing time. It was like they were on a 35 day extended playdate. They loved it, it was wonderful.

• 1:19:00Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I just wanna say, as we leave, I think there's a tendency in interviews and in the press to deny people's experiences. Anyone listening to this or watching it, seeing what you absorbed and endured to make Mayor of Easttown, to make so much of the work we talked about, is not lost on me. And I wanna thank you for that.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  Thank you very much, I really appreciate that.

• 1:19:26Sam Fragoso?

  And apparently we're both neurodivergent?

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  I think we are.

• 1:19:29Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  Maybe we should get assessed together.

• 1:19:32Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, we'll do that, that'll be part two.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 1:19:34Sam Fragoso?

  Kate Winslet, thank you for the time.

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:19:37Sam Fragoso?

  Good?

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  That was so good, that was so great. I'm gonna do it again, that was so good.

• 1:20:12Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode with Kate Winslet, do us a favor. Share the program on social media. Tag us at Talk Easy Pod. You can also leave us five stars on Spotify or review on Apple. All the things that every other podcast tells you. It really does help us out and we appreciate the support. I want to give a special thanks this week to Heidi Lapata and Alexis Hopper at Narrative. I also want to thank Netflix, Claire Duar, Sam Bear, Red Gaskell, and our guest today, Kate Winslet. Her new film, Goodbye June, is now out in theaters. It arrives on Netflix Christmas Eve.

• 1:20:54Sam Fragoso?

  For more episodes with other great actors, I'd recommend Josh Brolin, Viola Davis, and Michelle Williams. If you'd like to watch this episode in full, it's now available on our YouTube page. Just type in Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso on YouTube and it'll pop right up. If you want to purchase one of our mugs that come in cream or navy, you can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Chinixi Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Corey Attad and Matt Sasaki. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was engineered by Brett Tubin out of the Relic Room in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Pack. Our illustrations, Kresha Shanoy.

• 1:21:39Sam Fragoso?

  Photographs today come from Sarah Schneider with research assistance from Ben Eisen and Kiki Giorgio. This episode was made in partnership with Higher Ground Media, and I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here on Sunday with our final episode of 2025 with comedian Robbie Hoffman. Until then, happy holidays to you and yours. Stay safe and so long.