Pod Insights The Louis Theroux Podcast S8 EP7: Olivia Wilde on the pitfalls of long-term love, her unusual family name, and the 'garbage disposal' of tabloid media About this episode Today, Louis speaks to actor, director and renaissance woman Olivia Wilde. Following the release of her film The Invite, the pair discuss the secrets to a healthy relationship, her unusual family name, and her experience in the 'garbage disposal' of tabloid media.
Warnings: Strong language and adult themes.
Links/Attachments:
Film: The Invite (2026)
https://a24films.com/films/the-invite
Film: I Want Your Sex (2026)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32332915/
Film: Booksmart (2019)
https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81061054
Film: Don’t Worry Darling (2022)
https://www.netflix.com/title/81592177
Documentary: Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (2026)
https://www.netflix.com/title/81920687
Book: The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Oscar Wilde (1888)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/31359/the-happy-prince-and-other-stories-by-wilde-oscar/9780241776285
Book: Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel (2006)
https://www.estherperel.com/mating-in-captivity
Podcast: Where Should We Begin? (2017 – present)
https://open.spotify.com/show/3fKOTwtnX5oZLaiNntKWAV
Advert: Dinner With the Russians, Cockburn’s Special Reserve (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17rOl7i55ag
Book: Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/books-by-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/
Credits:
Producer: Millie Chu
Assistant Producer: Maisie Williams
Production Manager: Francesca Bassett
Production Assistant: Artemis Chu
Music: Miguel D’Oliveira
Audio Mixer: Tom Guest
Video Mixer: Scott Edwards
Executive Producer: Arron Fellows
A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify
www.mindhouse.co.uk
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 12,561 words · 3 speakers
0:05 Speaker 00 Hello there and welcome to another episode of the Louis Theroux Podcast.
0:18 Speaker 00 Today, my guest is director, actor and filmmaker Olivia Wilde, real name Coburn, more on that later, whose new film The Invite, a comedy starring Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, premiered to a rapturous response at Sundance, sparked a bidding war and landed at A24. I've seen it as part of the preparation for my interview, enjoyed it. As an older man in a mature relationship, it spoke to my life experience. It's about two couples spending the evening together. And I don't want to give too much away, but the themes are to do with intimacy in a long marriage, sex, polyamory, communication, the stuff of life.
1:03 Speaker 00 Was that a spoiler? No. Nevertheless, it says spoiler alert, so I might say a spoiler in a minute. The film is the third Olivia's directed. Her 2019 debut was Booksmart, a coming of age comedy, which was followed by Don't Worry Darling in 2022, which starred Florence Pugh, Chris Pine, Olivia herself and her then boyfriend, Harry Styles.
1:26 Speaker 00 There was an astounding amount of furore around the film to do with behind the scenes shenanigans. There was a casting shakeup early on with Shia LaBeouf departing the production and rumours of tension on set. It all became a lethal cocktail that we discussed the impact of in the chat, what that level of scrutiny felt like, what it was like being in the eye of the storm as Olivia was.
1:52 Speaker 00 Before all of that, there was Olivia's career in the mid 2000s starring in the TV series The O.C. and then landing the role of Dr. Hadley on House: Hugh Laurie, that made her a household name. We don't talk about that, that's just background. So House fans, prepare to be disappointed. Similarly, O.C. fans. It is what it is. We recorded this conversation in July this year. Olivia was in town promoting the invite. She managed to squeeze in a couple of hours between junkets to speak to me. That was nice of her. So I wasn't in the junkets. I was non-junket, because I'm creme de la creme. A quick warning,
2:34 Speaker 00 this conversation contains adult themes. All that and much more, coming up.
2:59 Speaker 01 Thank you so much for reaching out.
3:00 Speaker 00 Oh my goodness, thank you for...
3:02 Speaker 01 Sliding into those DMs.
3:03 Speaker 00 Thank you for reaching back.
3:04 Speaker 01 That was really exciting.
3:06 Speaker 00 When you say slide into the DMs, that sounds indecent.
3:09 Speaker 01 You did it, though.
3:09 Speaker 00 I guess I did. I guess I did. Have you got everything you need?
3:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they're gonna bring me a tea, which is very nice, but...
3:19 Speaker 00 Nice. Well, I think we'll just jump straight in, if that's all right.
3:23 Speaker 01 Do I wear these?
3:24 Speaker 00 I don't think you need to. I'm not gonna wear any.
3:27 Speaker 01 Okay.
3:30 Speaker 00 Congratulations on your new film. Well, film's plural, but one of them you've directed, and I loved it. I want to talk about that.
3:37 Speaker 01 You loved it?
3:38 Speaker 00 I did.
3:39 Speaker 01 I'm so happy.
3:40 Speaker 00 You must be getting a lot of good feedback on it.
3:42 Speaker 01 I am. I am, and I'm so relieved. I cannot describe the extent of my relief.
3:51 Speaker 00 And you've got a film, also another film you're in called I Want Your Sex. The previous one, which I was mentioning that you directed, is called The Invite. I think we're going to be talking about that quite a bit because it deals with relationships. Relationships, when do you call time on a relationship that's ending?
4:05 Speaker 01 Right.
4:06 Speaker 00 Um, there's a lot of deep themes to do with, uh, well, the state of marriage.
4:11 Speaker 01 Yes.
4:13 Speaker 00 In the mature adult, you know, not old, but as you sort of have relationships mature.
4:17 Speaker 01 Isn't it funny that mature inherently sounds like we're saying old?
4:21 Speaker 00 Sounds like old.
4:22 Speaker 01 If people keep saying like, a comedy for mature people.
4:26 Speaker 00 Did I use that word?
4:26 Speaker 01 It really sounds like we're in the like AARP, like we're only talking about like the elderly. And the other thing that I've realized is that when people say midlife, and I realize they're talking about the age that I am, I'm 42, and I'm like, oh, wow, yeah. If we're lucky.
4:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:46 Speaker 01 This is midlife.
4:48 Speaker 00 Well, we're going to get on to life extensions if we're not careful.
4:51 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, yes.
4:52 Speaker 00 There's people now who think they're going to live forever. I interviewed Brian Johnson.
4:55 Speaker 01 You did.
4:56 Speaker 00 He doesn't want to, he's not gonna die.
4:58 Speaker 01 I know you did. I listened to that and I loved that interview. Yeah, he's not gonna die. The thing is like.
5:02 Speaker 00 I think he is, but I mean, I disagree with that, but.
5:05 Speaker 01 Does he look that young? I sort of feel like he looks sort of his age.
5:10 Speaker 00 I think there's a certain, when you do a certain amount of work on yourself, you no longer look old or young. You just look different.
5:20 Speaker 01 It's so true. It's this other age.
5:24 Speaker 00 It's another, he looks a bit like an elf in Lord of the Rings.
5:27 Speaker 01 Yes, and he'll stay that way for the next hundred or so years.
5:30 Speaker 00 If he's lucky.
5:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:32 Speaker 00 He might just end up like one of those really weird looking people.
5:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
5:36 Speaker 00 Bride of Wildenstein or, was she the Catwoman? And then there's guys, there's a French, there were some French scientists and they just, their chins just got bigger and bigger. Did you ever see them in there as they got more and more implants into their cheeks?
5:49 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. Why does everyone get? Wider.
5:53 Speaker 00 I was talking to a Hollywood star last night.
5:56 Speaker 01 Okay.
5:58 Speaker 00 Well, that's not a name drop because I didn't say who it was. But they said that at the Golden Globes in the gifting tents, they offer one of the, you know, where they give you free stuff.
6:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:07 Speaker 00 And even in my world, at the BAFTAs, at the TV BAFTAs, you know, you might get perfume or a wireless Bluetooth speaker. But in the gifting tents at the Golden Globes, you get holidays and facelifts.
6:19 Speaker 01 Stop.
6:20 Speaker 00 You must have, I should know this from the, so have you got, you've got a Golden Globe.
6:24 Speaker 01 Oh, no. No, I, I've presented several years ago. I, I remember actually one year Ricky Gervais was hosting masterfully. Just, it was the year that he actually had my favorite joke at the Globes, where he said, listen, I enjoy a beer as much as the next guy. Unless the next guy is Mel Gibson.
6:48 Speaker 00 Was that the famous one where he said, so come up on stage, take your little award and fuck off?
6:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that was the same year. But they, they hilariously had him back.
6:58 Speaker 00 And then he had a fairly aggressive pop at the Sex and the City girls.
7:04 Speaker 01 Oh, did he?
7:04 Speaker 00 Remember that one?
7:05 Speaker 01 That's a bit rough. He, he did go after everyone for Harvey Weinstein, which was pretty funny. He was like, you all worked with him.
7:12 Speaker 00 Did he do?
7:13 Speaker 01 And I think he, I, I don't want to get it wrong, but I think he said something like, come, you all knew, you all worked with him, which I, I don't think everyone knew. But it was so alarming to be confronted, I think. Wow. Is that the Hollywood star who you were with?
7:28 Speaker 00 You are taking, I'll be taking a few calls during the interview.
7:32 Speaker 01 It's fine.
7:32 Speaker 00 That's okay, right?
7:34 Speaker 01 I mean, he, he was, he was so brilliant. I wish he would do it again. I'm sure he just, I also loved, the last time he did it, he kept saying, I'm not coming back. I don't care. I don't care. And it really was so refreshing. But he also, the year, I think the last time I, I presented, because that was the only way I was ever there, I think. He, he was introducing me and Rob Pattinson. And I remember we were backstage like, oh, God, what is he gonna say? What is it gonna be? And it was relatively kind, but he said, the next two presenters have shiny hair and white teeth and said something else nice physically. And he goes, and that's why they're here tonight.
8:16 Speaker 01 I was like, fair enough.
8:18 Speaker 00 You got off lightly.
8:19 Speaker 01 Really lightly. He could have been, he could have been way, way more cruel. But I think it's very important to have satire. We don't have enough of it in Hollywood, in our country, in, in the world. But he, that was my, my experience at the Golden Globes was just waiting backstage to see what, what Ricky Gervais would say.
8:44 Speaker 00 Um, well, you may be going back in a different capacity.
8:49 Speaker 01 Well, maybe they'll give me a free facelift.
8:51 Speaker 00 Uh, in which case you can claim your free facelift. I've mentioned you on the show before because, uh, we had Florence Pugh on as a guest and I, I really enjoyed Don't Worry Darling.
9:03 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you.
9:04 Speaker 00 And, and I remember seeing the trailer, you, you, you know, people obviously know you as, as an actor and then coming up and then you, you became a director. Booksmart was your first film, which was a kind of, um, I, I, it kind of reminded me in some ways of Superbad. It's like, it's a friendship story, a coming of age story set on a single 24 hour period in which two, two girls got on this journey. And it's exquisitely and very humorously directed by you and was beloved. In fact, it got like, I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes, it's got like 96% trash from the critics. Um, and then Don't Worry Darling came out and there was a kind of, there was a little bit of a smell around it for reasons which we can or you don't have to go into
9:47 Speaker 00 to do with behind the scenes stuff. So I wasn't sure what to expect when I watched it and I loved it.
9:53 Speaker 01 Well, we're interested in a lot of the same things. I mean, your Manosphere doc was excellent.
9:59 Speaker 00 Appreciate it.
10:00 Speaker 01 And I, I think we share a fascination with the incel community.
10:04 Speaker 00 Why don't you tell us a, tell our audience what, uh, Don't Worry Darling is? What's it about? What's it all about?
10:13 Speaker 01 That film was, is, it still exists, about simulation theory. And that concept, for anyone who, who, who hasn't gone deep into the Reddit forums as I have about simulation theory.
10:35 Speaker 01 Or listen to Elon Musk talk about simulation theory because he's quite fascinated with it, which is creepy in its own way. Is the idea that it's very likely that we aren't living in a real reality, that we are living right now in a simulation. And that that's because the trajectory of technology suggests that it's exponentially developing, so that it makes sense that this reality would be some sort of simulated reality created in the future that we are now experiencing.
11:04 Speaker 00 So we're in a kind of waking dream?
11:07 Speaker 01 We're in a waking dream. And when I started reading about that, I thought, whoa. If the people in charge currently, and certainly a couple of years ago when we made this film, could create any sort of simulated reality, it would certainly be one that reaches into the past that these men in charge love to fetishize, where women were kind of stripped of all real agency and power, and where men lived a kind of Rat Pack existence.
11:42 Speaker 00 It's kind of Mad Men-esque.
11:44 Speaker 01 Exactly.
11:44 Speaker 00 It's beautiful. It's almost double edged because you're sort of enjoying the stylings.
11:49 Speaker 01 Well, that's the, the idea is that, I mean, I'll speak personally, I love the Rat Pack era. I loved Mad Men because it felt like an existence without consequence. Everything goes and everything's beautiful. And you can drink martinis for breakfast and smoke all day and wear beautiful clothes and great music and everyone's having fun. And it is this era that we have, I think collectively fetishized as one that is just like, just, just when everything was fun and great. And then if you really kind of hone in on it, it's like, well, was it great for everyone?
12:31 Speaker 01 Ooh, certainly not anyone of color, certainly not, you know, many, many, many people. And you think of women and you think, how did women factor into the kind of power structure of American society at the time, to be specific, because the movie's very American. It's obviously.
12:51 Speaker 01 Uh, easy to forget that at the time, you know, women couldn't have credit cards and very few women in medical school and women were, you know, it was obviously a time before much changed. And yet we fetishize it. So I was thinking like, I'm interested in how women participate in the patriarchy. I'm interested in my own participation, my, that we can say like, God, it's really fucked up that, you know, we've been, that the patriarchy smashes down our power and our agency in society. But boy, are we a part of that, that machine. And I thought, I want to create a fantasy of this world and, and draw people's attention to their own, um, attraction to it.
13:35 Speaker 01 And so the idea of that movie was to make everyone really, um, lulled into this dream and to think, I like it here. I would live there. I want that. I would live in, you know, we, we shot it in Palm Springs and the idea was, I want those clothes. I want to live that life. That sounds great. And then to reveal that this is a simulated reality and all of these women are here against their will. And now to hopefully make you, the viewer, look back and go, oh, wow, I was fully fetishizing their, um, kind of entrapment and what does it mean? And, and, and yet, you know, all of these conversations about what the film was trying
14:19 Speaker 01 to say never got to occur. And the irony is that by kind of poking the hive of the incel world by kind of trying to talk about these things, you know, it is a, it is a actually small community. I don't want to give them too much significance, but they're very loud.
14:44 Speaker 00 Do you mean the online influencers or do you mean?
14:47 Speaker 01 I do.
14:47 Speaker 00 Opinion makers on TV?
14:49 Speaker 01 No, I mean the online. I think I mean online. I was quite harsh about Jordan Peterson and then he went on Pierce Morgan and cried.
14:56 Speaker 00 Okay, I'm glad. I was gonna raise that. So you said in a promotional interview that you said that the Chris Pine character, it takes place, as you said, in a sort of community that's a bit like Palm Springs. It's in the desert. Slightly hyper-real, like you kind of, it's decontextualized and there's a Twilight Zone-esque atmosphere over the whole thing. And there's this Chris Pine figure who seems to be the leader of the community. He plays it brilliantly, by the way.
15:24 Speaker 01 He's great.
15:25 Speaker 00 And you call, you say that he's partly based on or inspired by Jordan Peterson, who you described as a pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. So that was, I guess, that came onto Peterson's radar.
15:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:38 Speaker 00 I would say like, he seems, I think, quite smart, like, but his identification is very much with what he sees as men, and maybe we kind of beta, quote, quote, "men who are losing out in the increasingly Darwinian struggle of masculinity." So when he's asked about it by Pierce Morgan, he literally starts crying. And then Pierce was like, "What's happening, man?" And he goes, he said, "I'm thinking of those lonely young men, quote, 'dying for a lack of an encouraging word.'"
16:09 Speaker 01 Wow. Lack of an encouraging word is so absurd. I'd say there is a a large booming word of encouragement happening at all times for these men, which is just, "This world is yours and you are entitled to it," which I think is deeply ingrained in our society. And the idea that they need some sort of reminder of encouragement, that they deserve more, is ludicrous. The thing is, you know, it might have been unfair for me to call him a pseudo-intellectual, because I agree with you that he seems like a smart guy and he's a professor and he obviously thinks about things deeply.
16:53 Speaker 01 And I just feel that he operates in a way as almost like a buttoned-up version of
17:03 Speaker 01 The type of thinkers that lead to the Andrew Tates of the world. And I mean that there are different layers to that community. Some of whom, I think, speak more clearly the points that they're all actually filtering through. And my issue with Jordan Peterson is that a lot of people who are not in any way misogynists have, I think, adopted or are sort of attracted to the sanitized version of this philosophy
17:45 Speaker 01 that I believe is rooted in this deep misogyny, that is weaponized by the incel community. The basic point of it that I'm referring to is entitlement to power. And I think that that is something that many men are struggling with in a way that is understandable. I mean, this really, you dove so deeply and with such empathy into this topic, that it is something they are raised with, that is being shouted to them through advertising, through, obviously, political rhetoric. It is in the water. I mean, it's like plastics are in our bloodstream, not because we're trying to consume plastic, but because we are just existing in the world and it's everywhere.
18:28 Speaker 01 And I think that is the same with a lot of this misogynistic rhetoric and truly a sense of entitlement. So I think I came off, obviously, quite unsympathetic, but I was disturbed by what I saw as this kind of misogynistic philosophy that was being, obviously, weaponized in a way that was leading us to, you know, elect Donald Trump twice and beyond that, just empower these groups of people who I think are very dangerous. And I imagined that if they could create a simulated reality, it would look something
19:12 Speaker 01 like what we created in the film. And the reason it was in the desert, I got very excited about the idea of...
19:23 Speaker 01 Palm Springs to me feels like man creating something where nature doesn't. Man overpowering nature. I got very excited about the design of it, which I love production design and I loved creating that world because I thought everything should be manmade. There's nothing that would have grown naturally because the whole idea is that we did this. We are more powerful than nature, which I think is a big part of what these guys talk about. And it's certainly, I mean Elon talking about how we don't have enough people, the world is underpopulated, we could handle another billion people. If you ever want to be really disturbed, and I'm sure you've seen this, but the conversation
20:04 Speaker 01 between Peterson and Elon a couple of years ago.
20:09 Speaker 00 Love that we're all calling him Elon now, like he's our friend.
20:11 Speaker 01 Like Madonna.
20:14 Speaker 01 He's not our friend, not my friend.
20:16 Speaker 00 Have you met Elon Musk?
20:18 Speaker 01 I have. I met him before he turned into this creature. I really resent him now. I really deeply resent him. What was the context? I met him many, many years ago. I think SpaceX had just built their headquarters in LA and I got to go on a tour because I wanted to see the rocket ships. And he was interested in donating money to an organization that I was a part of in Haiti that was building hospitals and schools. And he was quite interested in donating money and I believe he did donate a little bit of money. And that's appreciated. But I was kind of confused by him.
21:03 Speaker 01 I never would have predicted that he would go the path that he's gone now because he did seem really smart.
21:12 Speaker 00 So we were talking about how when then the film came out, it was derailed by publicity. I mean, multi-dimensional mini scandals.
21:24 Speaker 00 Your relationship at the time was breaking up. You had a well-publicized relationship with your co-star, Harry Styles. And there was a kind of misogynist dimension to a lot of the coverage of the drama, the fallout.
21:37 Speaker 00 Full disclosure, I didn't follow it that closely.
21:40 Speaker 01 Good.
21:40 Speaker 00 I was confused by, maybe naively, the atmosphere of judgment.
21:45 Speaker 01 Hmm, me too.
21:46 Speaker 00 I guess question one would be, do you have any reflection on why that wasn't in any way... Like, it feels like it hurt the film, and why would that be the case?
21:55 Speaker 01 Hmm, hmm.
21:57 Speaker 00 And then question two would be, any learnings from that?
22:06 Speaker 01 I think it did hurt the film for sure, because we didn't get to have the conversations about what the film was trying to say, which was a shame because so many people worked so hard to make that film in the depths of Covid. We made the film for thirty million dollars. Yeah, I think it looks like a much more expensive film because of the work of people like Matty Le Batteik, who shot the film, Katie Byron, who production designed the film, and this incredible group of a couple hundred people who showed up every day, testing for Covid, wearing masks, wearing shields, working together, living in this bubble, showing up
22:50 Speaker 01 to tell a story that everyone felt really passionate about, that felt was relevant and significant enough to show up in these uncertain times. But we never got to talk about that, so I think it did hurt, it hurt, it hurt the film. It hurt me for sure, because I was so naive up till that point about the grinder, the kind of the garbage disposal that, that the internet can be. So, at this point, I have enough of a perspective on it, I think, that allows me to kind of
23:34 Speaker 01 experience it as a fascinating time. It is interesting to witness a tornado from the inside.
23:45 Speaker 00 Did it feel like it was coming mainly from a particular platform, certain accounts? Or is it just amorphous?
23:53 Speaker 01 I don't know. It's interesting. There was a study done at some point, and I'm trying to remember the name of the organization that did this study. And it was really interesting, that they looked at the existence of bots as the engine driving a lot of negative traffic about people. And they were specifically looking at women in the media. And it was a pretty high percentage of the kind of negative discourse that was driven by bots. I don't really understand that so much because I don't really know where the bots. I still have a very vague understanding of like bot farms.
24:38 Speaker 01 I don't really get those. But I think there were a lot of people as well. I don't want to discount the people who felt very passionate about their negativity. They were real. They weren't bots. They were real people. And I don't blame people for filling a vacuum with assumption. Because I think what happens is when we aren't given information, we have a human instinct to assume. And I think that people right now, particularly now, feel distrustful and they feel manipulated by people in power. And they should, because, I mean, right now, we're being told by Fox News, which is being fed this by the administration, that the reflecting pool in DC, where I'm from, is blue,
25:23 Speaker 01 when we can see that it's green. I mean, it's Orwellian to such a ludicrous extent. It's a comedy.
25:30 Speaker 00 Because Trump had said he was going to pay for it to be cleaned up, right? And so, because it was going green, maybe because of the heat, was it?
25:38 Speaker 01 They drained the reflecting pool and...
25:43 Speaker 01 Lined it with blue so that it could be the color blue he wanted.
25:48 Speaker 00 Right, for the two hundred and fifty years.
25:50 Speaker 01 For his big party that no one came to.
25:51 Speaker 00 Right.
25:52 Speaker 01 And then the lining, of course, reacted badly with the water, created algae. The whole thing turned like really hideous green. And then he now claims that people sabotaged him, of course, because he is a perpetual victim, by putting something in the water so that it turned green. And these pundits from Fox News are shamelessly standing in front of this green puddle now saying like, it's blue, the same way they're standing in front of the four attendants of his big party, saying it's packed. I love, did you see the very funny thing of, um, they were lying about there being thousands of people there and then there was a performer on stage who had sunglasses
26:33 Speaker 01 on and you could see in the reflection of his sunglasses that there were like two people in, in the audience. And they quickly realized they had revealed this and then reposted the, the photo and cropped that guy out so you couldn't see. I mean, the thing is, I get why people are distrustful. That is a healthy instinct to say like, I don't believe it, you're not giving me information. I think I know the truth and I'm going to figure it out on my own. So I appreciate the instinct of questioning, a questioning public. When it comes to tabloids, we have lost track of a little bit of critical thinking.
27:17 Speaker 01 And it's very dangerous in the age of AI to lose track of that, of course. But what happens is we are fed a very rapid infusion of headlines, which don't provide context, which allow for gaps to be filled with assumption. I think that what we were experiencing in that whole tornado of tabloid drama was a lot of that phenomenon. And that, that's what I mean when I found it really interesting. Cause I, I didn't understand it at the time and I just felt, whoa, overwhelmed. But now I look back and I think, oh, people were being given headlines without context and it's a natural instinct to start trying to fill those in.
28:04 Speaker 00 That's a lot though, isn't it?
28:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:07 Speaker 00 Would you get PTSD from something like that?
28:10 Speaker 01 Well, it's interesting because this is my first time back into the press cycle since then, and I did wonder, would this feel quite traumatizing?
28:23 Speaker 01 I find that the conversations around the invite are so wonderfully interesting to me. And I've actually been allowed to have them. So it's it's been actually kind of healing because I understand that it's it's not always a garbage disposal. That can happen and you can get through that. I think you must, if I'm saying you, I suppose, two people in my position, who who or if you were to ever be put into that situation, I would tell you that you you mustn't confuse your real life with the one you're seeing reflected in those
29:08 Speaker 01 tabloids because it is a very different thing. It is a it's not actually a reflection of who you are. And I think that anytime any of us in the public eye confuse our real selves with what is, whether it's good or bad. If you confuse yourself with what is being represented in in the media, that's a dangerous slippery slope.
29:30 Speaker 00 And in fact, it feels as though the new film, The Invite. Well, you've obviously taken time out and you've come back with this new film, but it feels like it's informed by. Well, I don't know if it is or not, but maybe, you know, it's about the the possible potential breakup of a of a relationship. And just to reflect back on something you said, you know, breaking up is hard enough, let alone that it's being documented or speculated upon by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. As if that needed to be made more painful and exposing and raw. But in the new film,
30:10 Speaker 00 it's an examination of a couple and and and a lot of people have remarked on this, but I'm going to join the crowd, that it's it's got, it has as its sort of epigraph, a quote from Oscar Wilde.
30:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:23 Speaker 00 The quote is, tell me what the quote is.
30:26 Speaker 01 The quote is, "One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry."
30:33 Speaker 00 Which is very wild, Ian. By the way, it was in preparing for this that I learned that you took your name from Oscar Wilde.
30:39 Speaker 01 I did, I did. Which is in no way to suggest that I am comparing myself or ever meant to suggest that I was in any way as brilliant as Oscar Wilde. It was very much inspired by his work because I, as a young, young person, really fell in love with Oscar Wilde. I loved performing when I was a teenager.
31:08 Speaker 01 I think the importance of being earnest really became the one. I remember the moment of being on stage doing that play, playing Gwendolyn, if anyone's read it, and I just was so thrilled by it. So, yeah, for me, it was a very personal thing. It was about remembering that feeling.
31:25 Speaker 00 How old were you when you changed your name?
31:27 Speaker 01 I was 18. And I never expected that it would be, you know, it's not like at 18 I thought
31:34 Speaker 01 that I would be where I am now. I wanted to be an actress. I did not think, and then I will become a, like a public figure or anything like that. I just wanted to act. I wanted to act on stage. And so I thought, oh, this, this name will remind me of the feeling that feels very authentic to why I'm actually doing this. It's funny because then when I did become an actress and I was on a lot of different TV shows and got kind of cast in the public eye more as like a,
32:08 Speaker 01 I mean, ingenues always do, but like an object of desire. Then the name became, of course, used as an adjective. And it was always like, every headline was like, born to be wild. You know, wet and wild. Ooh, I hope that one was never used. Probably was.
32:25 Speaker 01 But I I was I remember thinking like I'm such a nerd. It never occurred to me. Wild used as like wild. I thought like wild, such as Oscar, not wild in that way. But it was also because he's Irish and I'm Irish and I wanted that connection. And I thought it was romantic.
32:46 Speaker 00 Uh, I had the pleasure of revisiting The Happy Prince and other stories. Um, as as a dad, reading to my my youngest and it that story and and also the one called The Selfish Giant.
32:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:59 Speaker 00 Are are are actually because I don't cry very much. And it was kind of weird. I was reading to my son and I had to stop reading because I was about to start crying.
33:07 Speaker 01 Oh, but why not cry? Let him see you cry.
33:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, it was. I think it would have. He might have found it a bit weird. Uh, you know what I mean? Like, I was trying to wind him down.
33:17 Speaker 01 Right.
33:20 Speaker 01 Cry me to sleep, Daddy.
33:21 Speaker 00 You see that thing where you have to stop for a second like.
33:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:24 Speaker 00 Oh, let's just breathe for a second.
33:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:26 Speaker 00 Um, I recommend those stories to to any listeners or or viewers. Um, he is a mischievous writer who almost enjoyed playing with emotion and and kind of being excessively sentimental as a very dark joke sometimes.
33:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a lot like Roald Dahl. That it it was there was such a um, a cynicism. I mean, I think I think Oscar Wilde also as a as a satirist. You know, it's it's not full like Jonathan Swift, like we should eat the babies. But it is, um, that's, by the way, that's a real thing. That's from an essay. That's.
34:05 Speaker 00 That's right.
34:05 Speaker 01 That's something.
34:06 Speaker 00 Modest Proposal.
34:07 Speaker 01 Modest Proposal.
34:07 Speaker 00 That has an Irish connection.
34:09 Speaker 01 Exactly. But the idea of we can uh, use storytelling as a way to make observations about uh, humans trying to coexist is is what Wilde was doing. It it it can be misunderstood to be way more shallow than it is, but actually very emotional. And I think that quote that we put at the beginning of the film.
34:37 Speaker 01 Sounds really cynical, but I hope that by the end of the film, you revisit the quote in your mind and you think, oh, actually, I understand that it's a bit more sentimental. It's a little more romantic, I think. The idea is one should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry is actually, one should always be in love and that marriage can often seem to put an end to that kind of act of loving, the engagement of loving, which is an active process that has a lot to do with curiosity and evolution and allowing for someone else's evolution. And I think that marriage can feel like something more final,
35:21 Speaker 01 something that puts a engraves something in stone in a contract that then you are beholden to. And it's like, wait, when you were 24, this was your personality. And this is who you were. So I'm interested in that. It's a big part of the film, the idea of like, are you being authentic in your life as you are now? Does your partner understand who you are now? Have you shared that? And are you forgiving of how they've changed as well? So that was the intention of the quote.
35:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's making me think of the phrase happily ever after, which is what's said at the point in the fairy story where the prince and the maiden have got married. But actually, what happens for the next 50 years, you know, when they are married? And just to go back, just on Oscar Wilde, because there's also real truth there. And I think for those of us in long, you know, mature relationships or I've been with my wife for 23 years.
36:21 Speaker 01 Wow.
36:22 Speaker 00 And I feel like we've had several different relationships.
36:25 Speaker 01 Do you?
36:25 Speaker 00 In the course of that, you know, with each other. Do you know what I mean?
36:28 Speaker 01 Yes, I do. I do. I'm fascinated by that.
36:30 Speaker 00 And so in watching The Invite, and I should say, so we've got Seth Rogen and your good self as one of the couples.
36:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:37 Speaker 00 You both play excellently.
36:40 Speaker 01 Thank you.
36:40 Speaker 00 Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz are the other couple. Those, it's a four-hander, ladies and gentlemen. Those are the only people.
36:46 Speaker 01 That's it. Yeah, there's no escape from us.
36:48 Speaker 00 And 98% of it takes place within the apartment.
36:52 Speaker 01 Yes, everything but the opening credits.
36:53 Speaker 00 The opening bit isn't.
36:56 Speaker 00 And he goes on this roller coaster of what's going on in these relationships.
37:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's based on a Spanish film, originally a play called, in Spain it was called Sentimental. Here it was The People Upstairs, written and directed by a guy called Seske. He made the film from his own play. Then that film was adapted into several different languages in several different countries. And I find this really fascinating. Everywhere from, I believe there's a French version, an Italian version, I believe a German one, a South Korean one. And then our version is an English language offering as an adaptation. But each of these films are very different. I haven't seen all of them.
37:42 Speaker 01 But I love the opportunity to adapt something that clearly is tapping into something interesting enough to be felt universally or at least in these several different cultures and to adapt it into our version of it. I like that challenge. I think it's why we love doing, you know, Macbeth, because everyone can do their own version of it. Hamlet, probably done more than anything else. It's not to suggest that the invite is Hamlet. But it is something that I think is an interesting challenge. Can you take a story that's been told before? And can you put it through a different prism?
38:20 Speaker 01 And can you allow for these actors to personalize it and specify it in a way that feels original? I think that's an interesting challenge. And when Will McCormick and Rashida Jones wrote this English language adaptation and I read it and I laughed so much. And I thought, wait a minute, this is an opportunity to tell a story and make a film in a way that I had fantasized about for a long time, which is to really simplify the process. It takes place in one location, which allows for shooting sequentially. So we shot the film in page order, which is really fun and allows.
39:03 Speaker 00 How unusual is that?
39:04 Speaker 01 Very.
39:05 Speaker 00 Because as a layperson. I think a lot of people assume, oh, they filmed it in the order that you saw it.
39:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, almost never.
39:11 Speaker 00 But that's not economical.
39:12 Speaker 01 No, it's logistically really, I won't say impossible because I'm sure people have figured it out. It's usually very, very, very difficult for location reasons and for schedules. We not only got to shoot it in order which allows you to feel like you're doing a play. It also allows you to continue workshopping the material as you go. So you learn from where your character has been and you can make decisions based on that. You know your character much more thoroughly by the end and can perform the end in a way that is much more authentic to who the audience has been spending time with. We also had two weeks of rehearsal, which I also have never experienced. It's very rare.
39:54 Speaker 01 And I had dreamed of having that because it's crazy that most films, the performances you're seeing have not been rehearsed because there is just no time built in for it. And you think, how ridiculous to put something out there that hasn't been marinated and the actors are expected to kind of immediately plug into a tonal rhythm with each other and it makes it much more difficult than it has to be. I think it robs the experience of so much value, unless it's your intention to try that kind of like complete unprepared spontaneity, which is its own cool thing. But we had two weeks of sitting with our screenwriters and our cast around a table,
40:36 Speaker 01 pulling the script apart and forcing ourselves to justify every decision and to really investigate the conversation we wanted the film to have, which is about relationships and whether they can survive over a long time and why they do or don't. And what is the definition of a happy couple versus an unhappy couple? And how much sex is normal? How many secrets are people allowed to keep from each other? All these questions that I think we all found interesting.
41:04 Speaker 00 What did you conclude about how much sex is normal?
41:07 Speaker 01 I think my real conclusion is that no sex is not normal. And that is something that I think a lot of people have miss...
41:18 Speaker 01 Sounds very judgmental to say this one.
41:19 Speaker 00 Just say it.
41:21 Speaker 01 I think, I think that.
41:23 Speaker 00 I heard you say that, was it on the Call Her Daddy podcast?
41:26 Speaker 01 Maybe.
41:27 Speaker 00 On one of you said, you said.
41:28 Speaker 01 I've been talking too much, it's probably, I have no idea.
41:30 Speaker 00 You said something like, you know, you feel like actually if there's no sex in the relationship.
41:35 Speaker 01 It's a bad sign.
41:36 Speaker 00 It's not a good sign.
41:37 Speaker 01 It's not a good sign, and I think that.
41:39 Speaker 00 It's a sign that it might be a friendship.
41:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a roommate. I really think that.
41:44 Speaker 00 They call that the dead bedroom.
41:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, bed death.
41:47 Speaker 00 What about, have you heard of bedroom divorce?
41:49 Speaker 01 No, what's that?
41:50 Speaker 00 It's when you sleep in separate bedrooms.
41:52 Speaker 01 I don't know, I think that's kind of sexy. I'm intrigued by that. You could, you could invite her over in a way that allows for maybe there's a little bit of mystery in there. I think that's interesting.
42:04 Speaker 00 Isn't that interesting? Like, it's that whole thing, like, how can, how can I, you can only chase something that's moving away.
42:09 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:09 Speaker 00 How can I miss you if you'll never leave?
42:12 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly. We, I mean, this is very Esther Perel, who was a consultant on the film, and.
42:20 Speaker 00 Who wrote Mating in Captivity?
42:21 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:22 Speaker 00 The manual to keeping the physical side alive in a long-term relationship.
42:27 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:27 Speaker 00 I haven't actually read it.
42:28 Speaker 01 Oh, I recommend it. I, and she just.
42:31 Speaker 00 She's got a podcast as well.
42:32 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:33 Speaker 00 Called.
42:33 Speaker 01 Where Should We Begin?
42:34 Speaker 00 Where Shall We Begin, where she deals, she talks to couples coming back from infidelity or.
42:40 Speaker 01 All sorts of things. And what's interesting about her podcast is you get to kind of listen in on a couples therapy session and then hear her asides, you know, hear her insights, and you kind of feel like you're in her head. There's a very good recent episode about a man in love with his AI. It's fascinating.
42:59 Speaker 00 It's happening more and more.
43:01 Speaker 01 It's happening more and more, and I understand.
43:02 Speaker 00 I'm developing feelings for my Spotify, not Spotify, for my Duolingo.
43:07 Speaker 01 Nice Spotify plug, though, that was good. Contractually obligated.
43:11 Speaker 00 Even I'm developing feelings for my Duolingo AI.
43:15 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. And you get upset when the Duolingo is disappointed in you. The little owl looks so sad.
43:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, they guilt trip you. Yeah, like, the owl's dying because you haven't practiced your French.
43:26 Speaker 01 Yesterday, it went please with like 11 E's. And I was like, oh, this is bad, this is desperate.
43:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:35 Speaker 01 But I, I think that what's interesting about having.
43:40 Speaker 01 Esther, as our consultant, is that she wasn't on set with us, but it meant that we could ask her questions about her research as it pertained to these conversations that are happening in many relationships and how we could have the most authentic version of it in the film. But I really learned a lot about how little sex a lot of people are having and how they assume that's normal. In marriages? Yeah, yeah, and particularly after children. Wow. It, it, it, it makes me sad to think about how people have misunderstood intimacy
44:20 Speaker 01 to be about merging identities and yet not really maintaining a curiosity about this person that allows for the kind of necessary separation that leads to eroticism, right? And that's very, that's very Esther. I'm badly paraphrasing a lot of her ideas, but I think it, it was a large part of the research for the film was, you know, why, at least in, I would say in, in American culture, why do we think, oh, we're so intimate, we know everything, I know everything about him, he knows everything about me, that means we're really close? And it's like, are you close? Are you close? Or do you feel an entitlement to this person's private life because that makes you feel
45:05 Speaker 01 somehow safe? And does that work for you in one way, but inherently remove the necessary erotic charge that keeps you interested in this person? And is that one reason why so many marriages fail? Maybe. In, in our movie, there's a lot of shame in this couple about
45:32 Speaker 01 Their lack of sex, they, they, they, they never talk about it. They instead just kind of um bicker and subtly resent each other. They're sort of standing on a vibrating volcano of resentment, but they just allow it to come out in little barbs.
45:53 Speaker 00 They haven't had sex for a year. But I think maybe this says more about me. Like, I could imagine a relationship in which you bicker and are passive aggressive, but actually love each other and
46:05 Speaker 01 Oh, yes.
46:06 Speaker 00 It kind of works, more or less.
46:08 Speaker 01 Well, I think that
46:09 Speaker 00 As long as it's not um belittling and
46:12 Speaker 01 Well, that's the thing. If it veers into contempt, I think you're in a bad place.
46:16 Speaker 00 Contempt is supposed to be the toxic.
46:17 Speaker 01 That's, I think, what's hard to come back from.
46:19 Speaker 00 Apparently eye-rolling is a big thing.
46:21 Speaker 01 Oh, God, it's my pet peeve. That is the worst.
46:24 Speaker 00 If you do that, it's like
46:25 Speaker 01 Because it's very disrespectful, and I think when you lose respect
46:28 Speaker 00 Because it's saying, what does an eye roll say?
46:30 Speaker 01 Dismissal, it's
46:34 Speaker 00 It's like, you don't, that's not worthy of a response.
46:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's not worthy of a response, and there's no value to what you've just said, and I, I won't even engage in it, because I do think the opposite of love isn't, hey, I think it's indifference. I think it's just like, oh, I've just, I don't even, there's, I don't have time for your feelings.
47:07 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Claude. I have Claude on my phone. It's an AI that helps out with projects, gives me advice. I asked it for the best episodes of the Louis Theroux podcast. It came back very quickly, mentioning Adam Buxton, John Wilson, Marco Pierre-White, all solid episodes. Nice to have Claude as a listener. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight, not something I do very often, but you might, or strategizing your next business move, I definitely do that. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.
47:49 Speaker 00 Claude's been helpful for me. You know, sometimes you just need like a screen grab, like a metaphorical one, a sense of what the landscape looks like. What's the key part of the narrative? You know, Steve Coogan, what are the key episodes? What are the parts of his story that I need to dig into? The landmarks on the journey? And it'll give you citations. You can click through to the relevant websites, magazine articles, stories, podcasts. And like that, in the blink of an eye, you have all the information at your fingertips. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/thero. That's claude.ai/thero. And check out Claude Pro, which includes all of the features mentioned in today's episode.
48:43 Speaker 00 Do you think, this is a tee up, do you think women and men have different attitudes to sexuality, connection, and maybe even different sex drives?
48:56 Speaker 01 Sure. I think, in my non-professional opinion, that the language of intimacy is very, can be very different in men and women. I think women are more verbal, and so we can communicate our needs in a way that sometimes it can feel very frustrating that men don't. But I do think that's partly the way men are biologically designed, maybe, but really the way they're raised. I think there is an encouragement of verbal communication in young women that they seem, we seem to come to more easily. And I mention it because
49:38 Speaker 01 I'm interested in how that relates to physical intimacy as a kind of communication. That I, they think that there is something to non-verbal communication as an essential part of being in relationship. It's not only about expressing verbally what you need and how you feel about someone else. Sometimes there is a need to do that without words. And I think sex is a part of that. It's a part of communicating. And so I think that there's this really unfair thing, this assumption that women don't want as much sex as men. And in many marriages, it becomes a battle of who is engaging, who is instigating, right? And that's something that comes up in the film. There is a conversation that Seth and my characters have that I'm really,
50:22 Speaker 01 I'm proud of because it feels very authentic to me. Where we battle over whose fault it is that we're not having sex. And he says this line, he says, you're supposed to want me. And it's very sad. And I think that people are familiar with that feeling. You're supposed to want me, you married me. And that makes me feel entitled to you being attracted to me. I mean, whoa, does that veer into the manosphere in cell conversation? But in terms of like, in a lot of relationships, this sense of, I shouldn't have to earn this.
51:04 Speaker 01 I just want to be loved, which is connected to how we feel about our parents. You should, you are entitled to the love of your parent. I do believe that. I think that as children, children don't need to earn affection from their parents. They should, it should be completely unconditional. And I think if we hadn't, if we haven't been given that, which many people haven't, there is a frustrated sense of like, you should love me. Just hold me and want me and no matter what I do. But that is a familial thing. It is not something that should exist between couples.
51:39 Speaker 00 There's, there's, in a relationship, there's times where one person wants to have sex in order to feel connected. And then the other person might only want to have sex because they feel connected.
51:55 Speaker 01 Exactly. That was said so much more succinctly and perfectly.
51:59 Speaker 00 My wife sometimes says like, foreplay starts 12 hours before.
52:03 Speaker 01 Correct. I, I do think that there is something kind of tantric about a long lead up to, to, to sex that I.
52:16 Speaker 01 I think that there is a thing that we do when we're dating where we say you are, let's let's meet next week. Should we have dinner next Thursday? And it's like, yeah, sure. And what we're really saying is like, do you want to have sex next Thursday? So the next, you know, six days are going to be a lead up. And I get to enjoy a slow build of anticipation. When we're married or in long term relationships, it feels pretty corny to say like, shall we have shall we have a date next Thursday? It feels like this is sad. We shouldn't have to do that. But actually, I think there's something really tantalizing about a bit of a long runway. And saying and and everything up until then will be a part of this anticipation and seduction.
53:01 Speaker 01 So I get that. I think that people feel that that is energy that shouldn't be required. That it feels like, oh, God, I've already given you my hopes and dreams. I've given you my life. I'm not going to also make dates with you. I mean, that's certainly the couple in the movie. They feel this resentment that they have not spoken about that is really surrounding their their dreams that they've given up. They're both frustrated artists. They gave up. He gave up a music career. She gave up a career as a visual artist. And they've never talked about how they blame each other for this sense of complete dissatisfaction in their own creative lives. And so the sense of like, and you want me to take you on a date?
53:45 Speaker 01 It becomes like, I'm sorry, I've already done all this and now this. And now that's too much for me. I resent you. But if we've never actually talked about the first part, it feels very unfair. And the movie is trying to suggest that through the introduction of this other couple, which ostensibly is the sexy, happy couple.
54:05 Speaker 00 Sexy upstairs neighbors who've been having very loud sexual activity.
54:11 Speaker 01 Yes, kind of rubbing it in our faces.
54:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, one of them is kind of a sex therapist, the Penelope Cruz.
54:17 Speaker 01 She is.
54:17 Speaker 00 Character and the other guy's a firefighter.
54:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:20 Speaker 00 Edward Norton. He's so good, isn't he?
54:22 Speaker 01 He is so good. Let me just explain how good he is. Because I think that being able to watch these actors up close was really. Exciting for me because I've admired them for a long time and it was like getting to be right up against, you know, Yo-Yo Ma as he's playing the cello and really getting to look at what he's doing. And I I found myself just in awe of the way that they prepare these characters with so much depth and so many layers. And it's not just about I've shown up and I've learned the lines and I'm here to perform them. It's about an enthusiastic authorship of the character that builds in so much texture.
55:02 Speaker 01 And for Edward, he created a character that had so much dimension that wasn't necessarily there when we all began the workshopping process of the script. It became his internal process that I was very excited to kind of bring into the material. So I'll give an example. We've talked about it a little bit, but I'm really excited by it, that there is a story he tells in in the third act of the film.
55:29 Speaker 00 He's called Hawk.
55:30 Speaker 01 Yes.
55:31 Speaker 00 And he's kind of a, in other hands, like it might have been a kind of cartoon character.
55:37 Speaker 01 Completely.
55:37 Speaker 00 He's so self-actualized. He's on the edge of being almost like a Woody Allen movie character where.
55:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
55:43 Speaker 00 He's like, I've forgotten my mantra, kind of a thing. Do you know what I mean?
55:46 Speaker 01 Greatest line of all time.
55:47 Speaker 00 Overly therapized, sort of ludicrous California self-help.
55:52 Speaker 01 Exactly.
55:53 Speaker 00 Avatar.
55:54 Speaker 01 Exactly. And yet, what we learn is that there is a real source for that choice that this character has made in his life and what that, I don't want to give it away, but basically that that there is a reason he changed his name to Hawk. And it's actually based in in a very painful experience that he tells us about. And when we were making the film, Edward said, I have a reason. Well, his name was originally, I think Lance and then Shane at some point. And because it felt like kind of a funny name for a sex-obsessed fireman, I guess. And then, once we started really working the material, he said, I think he should have
56:38 Speaker 01 changed his name, which is a very funny thing, you know, people come up with Burning Man names and that kind of thing. He should have changed his name to Hawk. And then he said, I have a reason for why Hawk and I'll just keep that. And I said, well, I think it would be great to hear that at some point. And he said, well, why I I have this story. And I said, OK, don't tell me the story. But at this point in the in the story, in the script, we'll just write in Hawk's story. Hawk tells a story. And on the day of filming, we'll set the cameras up on on Seth's character and my character, and then I want you to tell the story for the first time. So we hear it for the first time on film.
57:22 Speaker 01 And this was something Edward and I got really excited about because you very rarely get to have this opportunity when making a film. And I was thrilled by it because, wow, as an actor, the gift of actually getting to have an authentic spontaneous response to something is really exciting. So I I was I was excited by that. But as a director, I was so curious. What will this be? And and I think there are very few other people I would trust with something like that because we were, you know, rolling actual film and film is expensive. But I I can't stress how moved I was by the story he tells and and also moved by the generosity of Edward as an actor to create something like this, which we really needed
58:07 Speaker 01 as a kind of emotional, a ramp between two different tones in the film. And I would argue that the film does take a turn and and he allowed for that through this story. And then Seth Rogen, because he is such a fucking genius, his response to it is a perfect leveler for tone, and it was totally spontaneous. So my experience of directing this movie was just getting to be continuously surprised by these people who were bringing so many great ideas. Penelope Cruz came up with the whole Sade sequence.
58:43 Speaker 00 Right.
58:44 Speaker 01 And
58:45 Speaker 00 She's dancing with Seth and and Sade's playing.
58:48 Speaker 01 Sade is playing, which, oh, God, it's so funny. It's so funny.
58:52 Speaker 00 And kind of romantic as well.
58:54 Speaker 01 It's very romantic, and she's also singing to him, which is and he's singing with her. And I'm there's so much, there's so much that they brought to it. It felt it was the most collaborative experience. It was the most joyful experience. We had these great screenwriters who were so generous and they're open as to the evolution of this piece of material that they care deeply about. And it kept changing because we kept getting so excited. And I think when you're making a film, It can become this process that then is high-stress and logistically difficult and becomes about kind of checking boxes, did we get it done? And you can overly kind of sanitize it. And this didn't feel that way. It felt, it felt very fertile in terms of creative ideas.
59:37 Speaker 01 So many of the things, there's a lot of improvisation. I can't overstate how fortunate I feel for the whole thing. And I know this sounds like bullshit, but even if the film had never been picked up by a distributor at Sundance, which was not a given, we went to the festival with no distribution. Even if we weren't now able to be in theaters, which is incredible and very rare for a comedy these days, I would feel as proud of it. I would feel as happy I had this experience because I think personally it created a really deep opportunity for catharsis and, and kind of a restoration of my faith in this business and all of it.
1:00:19 Speaker 00 I want to move on, but just before we do, I'll say also, it feels very of the moment.
1:00:25 Speaker 00 I think what I got from it was have high expectations for your relationship, but don't expect them to be just to happen, right?
1:00:34 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:00:35 Speaker 00 Work on them. And also separation is not something to overly stigmatize. In fact, I was talking to a friend and he said, you know, I'm a big fan of divorce, which sounds quite dark, but actually in some contexts is completely appropriate. And that we're living in a time when certainly in the States, they want to get rid of no-fault divorce. There's significant forces on the right of the Republican Party who, who want to turn back the clock to a kind of manosphere era in which people are constrained to remain in relationships that either aren't fulfilling or might even be abusive. Like the arrival of no-fault marriage laws was a massive achievement.
1:01:18 Speaker 00 And you know, it really, the, the government benefits from marriage. That's why they incentivize it through tax incentives and other ways.
1:01:28 Speaker 01 I think that it's becoming less popular. People are getting married less. People are having kids less. This threatens the establishment. I think it's healthy. That sounds unromantic. I'm obviously not a married person and you are. But I, I believe that it is a good thing for people to get married for the right reasons and to get unmarried if they so choose.
1:01:50 Speaker 00 Are you, is your energy all right?
1:01:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, I feel good.
1:01:53 Speaker 00 I would love to talk to you a bit about, you know, your upbringing, your family. You come from a very literary family. And in fact, your, your, your given name at birth, your surname is Coburn.
1:02:04 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:02:05 Speaker 00 Spelt.
1:02:06 Speaker 01 C O C K B U R N. Spelt Cockburn. Try going, growing up with that one. I mean, people, did people call you Throoks? It's not as devastating.
1:02:17 Speaker 00 No, but Throoks doesn't sound like you've got a genital injury. You know what I mean?
1:02:23 Speaker 01 I know exactly what you mean.
1:02:25 Speaker 00 You must have got a lot of shit for that.
1:02:26 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:02:27 Speaker 00 It's an Irish name, is it?
1:02:28 Speaker 01 It's, I think a Scottish name originally. And, and, uh, yeah, there's Coburn's Port, which is a port wine. But I, I absolutely was thrashed for it emotionally, you know, by, by, by kids in school. And, you know, I understood it and I still do. I, there was never a part of me that felt, um, like, how could you get that wrong? I was never horrified, yeah, obviously.
1:02:50 Speaker 00 You will see it written down and you would.
1:02:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:02:52 Speaker 00 You'd have to know in order to call it.
1:02:54 Speaker 01 I too would get it wrong.
1:02:55 Speaker 00 Do you remember the advert? No, because you didn't grow up in the UK.
1:02:57 Speaker 01 No, but my dad has shown me these.
1:02:58 Speaker 00 Really?
1:02:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:02:59 Speaker 00 And they, they meet a Russian guy, like in the Navy and.
1:03:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's like those who call it Cockburn's Port. Some, I can't remember the punchline. That's terrible.
1:03:07 Speaker 00 He goes, so in Russia, I come from Moscow.
1:03:12 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:03:12 Speaker 00 That's the joke. Like if, if Coburn is pronounced, if Cockburn's pronounced Coburn, then Moscow must be Moscow.
1:03:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. We used to say in our, like cockroaches or cockroaches. Like we used to joke around a lot about it. Obviously we had, we, we, my family has an amazing sense of humor. We were raised to laugh. It is a formative thing to, to grow up with a name that teaches you to laugh at yourself young and to kind of be able to understand that, you know, to make the joke a lot or before anyone else in a way was my.
1:03:49 Speaker 01 Was my way of kind of surviving it as a kid. I felt bad for my brother because I think it's harder to be a, maybe, no, maybe it's harder for, what's harder?
1:03:56 Speaker 00 For a woman, I think.
1:03:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:00 Speaker 00 I think it would be, maybe, I don't know.
1:04:03 Speaker 01 It's hard, it's hard. I think, I think, hard for both. I really, you know, it's funny because I have such deep respect for my family. I revere my dad and, and, and his family and my mom, you know, proudly took his name.
1:04:19 Speaker 00 Andrew Coburn?
1:04:20 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:04:20 Speaker 00 And then there's Alexander Coburn, also, your dad was a writer, Alexander Coburn's a writer, Patrick Coburn is a writer, your mom is Leslie Coburn.
1:04:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, and my grandparents were both writers. My uncles, as you said, cousins.
1:04:38 Speaker 00 And they were, many of them writing on serious international relations, subjects.
1:04:44 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:04:44 Speaker 00 Like Soviet studies or the Middle East.
1:04:48 Speaker 01 Correct, yeah, yeah.
1:04:49 Speaker 00 American politics and culture.
1:04:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, and my dad still is. He, he writes for Harper's and he's the most interesting person I've ever known. And it's because he's the most interested person. He's so genuinely curious about people and about things and he's so brilliant.
1:05:10 Speaker 00 And you had like literary people stopping by, as I understand it, like Christopher Hitchens?
1:05:17 Speaker 01 Yes, I loved came by and very much. He was a very, very dear friend of my parents and, and he was, he was a part of this kind of community of people who raised us, these incredible, and right by raised, I mean that they were just present and he, he did babysit for me, which has become kind of a, a funny thing that's mentioned. And I think he wrote about it. He wrote a profile for me. I think I did, I can't remember what fashion magazine it was, it might have been Elle, but it was so funny to have Hitchens writing this profile of me. And he described me as headstrong, which was the most generous way to describe me as a child. But he was very much a part of this community of people around when I
1:05:58 Speaker 01 was a kid. It was like a salon, salon, as you might say. I really, I feel grateful for that because it just exposed us to lots of different types of conversations. And they always took us seriously when we were kids, like they, they asked what we were thinking about and reading and.
1:06:15 Speaker 00 Was there a time when you thought you might be a writer?
1:06:18 Speaker 01 It's funny, I I never considered it as a professional path. I think probably because I was too intimidated, the idea of following in those footsteps. But I have immense respect for journalists and documentarians such as yourself. And I grew up with my mother producing 60 Minutes and Pieces for Frontline, ABC News, and working in really dangerous places, doing interesting things. But you know, the basement of our house in DC was her editing room. So I used to be kind of plopped on the carpet while she was editing these pieces about, you know, the famine in Somalia or, you know, different conflicts.
1:07:01 Speaker 01 And I I I got a front row seat to watching a woman in a male-dominated field thriving in a way that was very inspiring.
1:07:12 Speaker 00 I know the door's open, which I think means we're coasting. We're we're coming into land, ladies and gentlemen. I wanted to squeeze in two quick ones because it's too tantalizing not to. One was, my notes told me that you had a brush with competitive eating.
1:07:29 Speaker 01 No.
1:07:29 Speaker 00 And ate 22 pancakes in 30 seconds.
1:07:32 Speaker 01 That's sort of the last question I expected you to ask.
1:07:34 Speaker 00 Is that true?
1:07:36 Speaker 01 22 seconds? No, minutes.
1:07:37 Speaker 00 22 pancakes, it said 30.
1:07:39 Speaker 01 30 minutes.
1:07:40 Speaker 00 Minutes.
1:07:41 Speaker 01 Seconds would be really gross.
1:07:42 Speaker 00 That would be insane. 22 pancakes in 30 minutes.
1:07:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was.
1:07:46 Speaker 00 Is that true?
1:07:47 Speaker 01 It is true. It is true. It's the only award I've ever won.
1:07:50 Speaker 00 But how big were the pancakes?
1:07:52 Speaker 01 Pretty big. I came up with a system, though.
1:07:55 Speaker 00 Go on.
1:07:56 Speaker 01 To stack them five at a time, and this also sounds disgusting, but it works, and eat them like a burger. And that was how I won. And the reason I did it is because I was in Australia, I was 15, and this wasn't like last week, I was 15, and I was in a pub, I was part of like a student group that was traveling through Australia. And we saw that there was this competition, and I said, has a has a woman ever entered or won? And they said, no. So then I had to do it. It was part of a period of my life when I I think that that kind of thing felt like I had a duty to to to to do, you know, to do the thing. I never turned down a dare.
1:08:40 Speaker 00 Really?
1:08:41 Speaker 01 No, that was something I made. I think a part of my personality for a long time. Now, I, God, I can barely be dared to go out past like 10.
1:08:53 Speaker 00 Did you not feel ill afterwards?
1:08:55 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, I was extremely sick.
1:08:57 Speaker 00 Keep it down?
1:08:58 Speaker 01 No, no. But competitive eating, I think famously that's never the requirement. I think they often don't keep it down.
1:09:05 Speaker 00 Many of the, certainly back in the day, many of the great competitive eaters were skinny Japanese guys.
1:09:10 Speaker 01 I can, there was a guy who did the hot dogs.
1:09:13 Speaker 00 Yes, famously, the Nathan's hot dog one in Coney Island. And every year the guy would turn up and it was a tiny Japanese guy. And then there'd be these huge Americans who'd turn up and get completely rolled over by, by this skinny Japanese guy.
1:09:27 Speaker 01 Don't judge a competitive eater by their size.
1:09:30 Speaker 00 By their size, by their appearance. Jennifer Lawrence once vomited while watching your 2017 Broadway debut playing Julia in a production of Orwell's 1984. What, what was that all about?
1:09:42 Speaker 01 She really helped us sell tickets with that vomiting because basically we did this production of 1984. And it was directed by Rob Icke and Duncan MacMillan, two British theater directors and really brilliant people. The production was extremely intense and involved a lot of flashing lights and sound design that was very intense. It was meant to evoke the, the kind of torture chamber that exists within that book and play.
1:10:21 Speaker 00 When Winston Smith's taken off to be reprogrammed. Cause he's showing dissident side. Yeah, that's right, it's room 101, isn't it?
1:10:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:28 Speaker 00 He's got a fear of rats.
1:10:30 Speaker 01 Oh, God, it's so scary. And the production was really scary. We would have around.
1:10:36 Speaker 01 Twelve people either having seizures or fainting or getting, getting sick was rare. That was really Jen who was an outlier. I, I think that she was actually sick for another, I think she had food poisoning, but it was great for our publicity because when she threw up during the play, that was publicized and it made people think, oh, this must be, this must be intense.
1:11:01 Speaker 00 Intense, yeah.
1:11:02 Speaker 01 This is in the theater, sounds cool.
1:11:03 Speaker 00 If you dare.
1:11:04 Speaker 01 And we sold out.
1:11:05 Speaker 00 Did it.
1:11:06 Speaker 01 So thanks, Jen. It was, it was, it was a really wild experience, that play, because Orwell is co-opted by both sides of the political spectrum, that text in particular. And so we had this very weird range of fans. Some, you know, like really right wing Breitbart journalists, if you call them that, were big fans of the play. And I guess it makes sense because they, they each see it as a confirmation of their bias. But I would, I, I count myself, I suppose, as part of that. I'm on, on the left, I see that text as a, as a warning, a warning we haven't taken because we're living in a strange time.
1:11:51 Speaker 00 We're in a self-administered surveillance state in which we're surveilling ourselves with our handheld devices, surrendering massive amounts of data to sinister tech platforms.
1:12:01 Speaker 01 Constantly. And, and we are now doing the job of, of surveillance by, by agreeing to not only film ourselves but each other. I remember in the book and the play, the, um, the thing that became scary was sleeping because you, if you spoke in your sleep, they would hear you. And I think about that a lot now with all the, the devices that are obviously, you know, we've agreed by checking boxes and contracts, contracts none of us read, um, to have them listen to us.
1:12:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, famously a Samsung smartphone was harvesting your data. And they could do it because they, well, they're only accessing it constitutionally if they listen to it. So we're just scooping it up, but don't worry, we won't listen to it yet.
1:12:41 Speaker 01 Yet, unless we, unless we need to.
1:12:42 Speaker 00 Unless we find, you know, find out we think we should.
1:12:44 Speaker 01 But at what point will we be afraid to sleep because we might say things that get us thrown in prison?
1:12:52 Speaker 01 Anyway, the invite's a comedy. Go see it.
1:12:54 Speaker 00 And a very funny one at that. Thank you for joining, Olivia.
1:12:59 Speaker 01 Such a place. This is a real dream come true for me. I have been a fan of yours for so long. I think you are an essential part of the discourse. And I learn a lot from you and I hope you do it forever.
1:13:18 Speaker 00 Thank you. I'm glad Millie heard that. She'll definitely be taking that out of the final edit.
1:13:38 Speaker 00 And welcome back. Big thank you to Olivia for coming by.
1:13:44 Speaker 00 Perhaps I should slide into more people's DMs, Millie. Leave the booking to me. I'll take care of it from here. It's tricky because it feels like you're presuming on, um... What is it? Well, it's because I'm exposed and I'm the one going like, hey, you want to come on? It's a direct invite. There's no buffer. If Millie or the team reach out to the star or the guest's team and they're like, "Fuck no", and then that could come back as like, "It's not quite right now", you know, "But they love the podcast", it can all be softened. There's a few stars I've DM'd and they haven't said, "Fuck no", but they've said, "Oh, big fan, but let's hook it up when you're coming through."
1:14:29 Speaker 00 Someplace I'm never coming through, right? Or they don't reply. That's quite a common one. It's kind of a lame thing, like, "Will you go on my podcast?" You know what I mean? It feels a bit like, "Really? Like, you're gonna be that guy? Come on my podcast." I've spoken before how like, having a podcast isn't a real job, right? It's like a thing that everyone does. And that's like a cliche of people in Brooklyn. Supposedly, the most romantic thing a man can say to a woman, if he's of a certain age and a certain kind of, I don't know, media class or something, is to say like, "I don't have a podcast."
1:15:08 Speaker 02 It's a green flag.
1:15:10 Speaker 00 It's a green flag if you don't have a podcast.
1:15:14 Speaker 00 Literary names.
1:15:17 Speaker 00 Millie's written, "These talking points, were you in a rush? Harper Beckham is named after Harper Lee." And I've written, this one is interesting, Lionel Messi is named for Lionel Richie. You're saying, "Is that literary?" And I'm saying, "Have you read the lyrics to Hello?" It's like a poem. Well, there's a World Cup connection, so that's not completely random. Yeah, Lionel Messi, every time you see him playing on the pitch, some little part of you should be thinking, um, she's once, twice, three times a lady. Listen, this is the important thing I want to share with you.
1:16:00 Speaker 00 I messed up the punchline to the Coburn's port advert. And even in the room at the time, I knew there was another bit which lands the gag. There's upper crust British guys and they're taken on to the Russian sub. And they explain about Coburn, he says Cockburn. And they go, "No, no, it's not Cockburn, it's Coburn." Then this is a cloak, he's pointing at a clock. He said, "No, that's a clock." Then this is a sock, he's pointing at his sock. "No, that's a sock." And then he says, the Russian captain says, "In that case, I come from Moscow."
1:16:38 Speaker 00 I did that bit, but then the posh English guy says, "Yes, I think you probably do." Did I murder that gag? It's on YouTube and you can decide whether you think it's funny. It's kind of a little bit funny. That's it for this week, apart from the credits. The producer was Millie Chu, the assistant producer was Maisie Williams, the production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify.
Previous S8 EP6: Mike D discusses breaking rap into the mainstream, the infamous hydraulic penis, and disbanding the Beastie Boys Next S8 EP8: Gary Stevenson discusses his Mormon upbringing, sparring with Rory Stewart and why a wealth tax could save the economy Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated