Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:00]

Hey, folks, this election season, there's only one source for campaign coverage that's funny enough to make you happy yourself with laughter while informative enough to make you pee yourself out of fear. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is bringing you all the election coverage you can barely handle. Trevor and his team of correspondents will break down the issues and answer this election's biggest questions from now. Up until the last mail in ballots are counted in 2023. Plus, catch Trevor's exclusive interviews with artists, activists and leaders in the fight for social justice for perspectives you won't hear anywhere else.

[00:00:36]

Tune in to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. They cover the election, you cover your face. New episodes weeknights at 11:00, 10:00 Central on Comedy Central.

[00:00:46]

Lock the Gates. All right, let's do this, how are you? What the fuckers, what the fuck buddies, what the fuck stirs? What's happening on Marc Maron? This is my podcast. Welcome to Sarah. Snook is on the show today.

[00:01:09]

She's on one of my favorite shows, I think maybe ever succession. She plays Shiv Roy and she's Australian, which I didn't know. And she was in Australia when I spoke to her actually in Australia. And it was a pretty good connection, I thought.

[00:01:26]

Yeah, we live in amazing times, both for for good and for horrendous. For fucking horrendous. Yeah, man, I just I can't sleep like I used to. I think that happens as we get older, I'm told, and.

[00:01:45]

Like, I start tossing and turning about four, 30, that's when shit starts spinning and that's where I miss. Linoleic, that's when I think about my own mortality, that's when I think about the end of the world, those scenarios, the how many days do I have before they start pulling people out of their homes and shooting them in the gutters, out in front of their houses? How many more days?

[00:02:08]

And then I get up. God, it I got some emails, some messages, some things, some people who related to the dynamic I have with my father, while I'm here to tell you, I called him yesterday, talked to him.

[00:02:25]

He seemed OK, level no real politics. He did seem to suggest that the virus might just go away a fucking doctor. He was a fucking doctor. Might just go away, things go away. What do they like, what has gone away in recent history without a reasonable vaccine or treatment or behavioral changes? We can get into it. He didn't fight me on it, I think he just wasn't thinking, you know, when people say that, like so I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking that's the problem.

[00:03:03]

Just wasn't thinking, but it's a different tone and they don't admit to it. They could just be like, wow, you're right, I just wasn't thinking because I was feeding my brain with garbage, there was a spigot of garbage going to my head. So it felt like I was thinking it felt like it. Then they would say things that would lock out the feelings. And then it felt like I was thinking, but I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry.

[00:03:28]

I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking I the stress is on I. Yesterday was my 21st sober anniversary. Twenty one years without a drink or a drug, can't say I haven't had some cake or some pie or jerked off a couple of times or had some pretty intense sex. But not a drink or a drug, you find other things, don't you, add some coffee, a lot of coffee.

[00:04:02]

I blow my brains out on caffeine, but none of it's the same. Nothing makes my life unmanageable. Be careful out there with your. Vaginas and penises. All right, just be careful. If you're going crazy, take it easy. They can only take so much before they go a little pneumonia, but I don't know what's going to happen. Nothing's working good. That's the way you want to go out. Twenty one years, and I'm very grateful about it, and I've I've enjoyed the help of you people and I've enjoyed the feedback that I've helped you people.

[00:04:37]

That's the way it works.

[00:04:38]

Couple couple alcoholics, drug addicts trying to stay sober, talking to each other. Do I feel better? I don't know. Am I happy that I'm awake for this? Sure. I don't think about it more. That's one of the gifts that for me and I only speak for myself. I am not a representative of any organization or group. But for me, working the program in the secret society, after about four or five years, I the obsession to drink and use drugs went away.

[00:05:07]

I didn't no longer thought about it as an option or even a default like somehow or another. And I'm a guy that thinks about shit compulsively for sure. I can't get on this Mike without getting a coffee or tea or, you know, or having something to eat. Eat nine things.

[00:05:23]

I just ate some cake, ate some fucking cake, ate a mountain of tortilla chips today, homemade guacamole, grilled oysters, which were dubious because I left him sitting in the fucking fridge.

[00:05:33]

I'm just saying that I am prone to compulsive behavior, thank God not gambling. And I know what it's like to certainly like when I was doing the nicotine. It's going to be a year of nicotine in a couple of weeks, you know, just looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. My reward, my relief, my ticket out.

[00:05:50]

Get me out of here. Help me. I deserve this. But I'll tell you, man, I don't think I don't think of it as an option, not only do I not think of it as an option, I don't think about it. Hey, man, I want a cigarette. Hey, man, what's some weed? Hey, man, can I have that one head or do they still have one entertainment? Take a shot. Can I get a shot?

[00:06:13]

Can I get a shot? I get a shot of Jamous and I get a shot of Jack, can I get a shot? Take a pint, pint of lager. Just I'll just do one line, just one line, just one line. Cross your fucking. Crush it up. I don't even know the swaying anymore Krushchev fucker. I snort that shit. Tap out the bubbles, mother fucker. Nope, don't think about it, and that's a gift because that struggle and that's the struggle a lot of people have at the beginning where they're like, am I ever going to not be crazy?

[00:06:47]

It's going to take a few years, man, because you're fucking crazy.

[00:06:51]

You've been medicating crazy. You have to get through the crazy. And I know this is the bad time to have to deal with this shit, but it might be a great time. This might be a perfect time for you to start getting sober. What else are you doing?

[00:07:07]

What are you drinking away? Well, I mean, I get it, but like all those stresses, if you're in dire straits, unemployment, money, that kind of stuff. Housing, sure. I don't think drugs are going to make it better. I don't think drinking is going to make it better.

[00:07:20]

But if you do have the the wherewithal and some safety net in your personal life and you think you have a problem, this is a great time to try to get sober because you can focus, man, focus on it, see if there's some zoom meetings around there all over the place. You can go to a meeting anywhere in the world right now.

[00:07:45]

I'm just saying there's hope out there. It does feel better. You don't want to be anyone.

[00:07:51]

You don't want to be a slave to anything, do you? You don't want to not have a choice. Because that shit in your dresser owns you. Huh? Come on. The house is quiet. I feel the absence of both monkey and obviously I feel the absence of Lenn, the sadness, but I got a little fucking buster, that little bruta.

[00:08:19]

Buster Keaton, that little bruiser, and it's weird that he's acting different because he's like he's lost his bully juice, he used to run around like crazy in the morning.

[00:08:29]

I think that was just a fuckwit monkey.

[00:08:31]

Now he's just I don't want to project I don't want to anthropomorphize too much. I don't want to assume he's sad or grieving or mourning. I think he's adjusting to being the only guy. And now he's got my full attention and I don't think he knows what to do with it.

[00:08:47]

Would you? Would you know what to do with my full attention? Do you know how exhausting that can be when I'm paying full attention to something or somebody? But I realized I didn't really know that guy Buster.

[00:08:59]

I knew him a little bit when he was younger.

[00:09:01]

What is that? Oh, my God, what's happening? Oh, my salmon's ready. Oh, fuck. Oh, even on there, I'm so I'm like, it's on a temperature, I'm kind of smokin it so for later because I have nothing to do and I cook when I have nothing to do.

[00:09:19]

And I'm still cooking as if, like many people are around and there's no one around but me. I'm cooking and buying food and I'm making food like there's still two people eating it. And I look at the food, I open the fridge, I look at it, I go, that's great, I got a lot of food and I don't end up eating it. I used to eat popcorn every night with and now I haven't seen any popcorn at all since she's been gone.

[00:09:42]

I can't eat popcorn anymore. I'm eating garbage. But, Buster, I just didn't know him. And now I'm getting to know him and it's OK, we're going to we're going to be all right. But it's sad, man, it's sad. That's where I'm at. OK, so Sarah Snook, who I love, she's great on the show Succession, she's been nominated for an Emmy for supporting actress in a drama series for her role as Shiv Roy in that show succession.

[00:10:26]

She's also in an American pickle with Seth Rogen. Which I neglected to talk about with her, which is streaming on HBO, Max. And also, there will be a very short discussion about the end of season two of succession, and I've been yelled at enough times about spoilers that I will interrupt the interview to let you know it's coming and tell you how to skip ahead.

[00:10:51]

All right. Spoiler people, you should have watched it by now, though.

[00:10:57]

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. This is me and Sarah Snow coming up in the. Folks, I love Ben and Jerry's, and if you've been listening to me over the years, you probably know that I have my favorites. I have my rituals for eating them.

[00:11:21]

I even toured the Ben and Jerry's factory. And now there's an entirely new line of Ben and Jerry's for all of us to experience. Ben and Jerry's has three new nondairy frozen desserts that are a brand new twist on vegan euphoria. The Ben and Jerry's flavor gurus have taken a big leap this time. People they made the new non-dairy frozen desserts with sunflower butter, sunflower butter.

[00:11:44]

They're the perfect, sweet treats for vegans, vegetarians and everyone in between. They've got milk and cookies flavor without any actual milk. There's also creme brulee, cookie and mint chocolate cookie. All right. All plant based, all delicious. We all know that going plant based is smart for a whole lot of reasons. But I get it. It's hard to pull the trigger. That's what makes these Ben and Jerry's flavor so great. You can make that plant based leap while you're treating yourself to some top notch sweets.

[00:12:11]

My favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor is peanut butter cups. So if they can do a great job with these new flavors, how about we get some non-dairy peanut butter cup in the mix? How about that, huh? Let's do that. Let's do it. Check out the Ben and Jerry's sunflower butter lineup and the whole nondairy family at Ben Jerry's dotcom. That's Benjy R y dotcom. Folks, here's the thing about home security companies. Most trap you with high prices, tricky contracts and lousy customer support.

[00:12:41]

So while there are a lot of options out there, there's only one no brainer and that is simply safe, simply safes. Got everything you need to protect your home. With none of the drawbacks of traditional home security, it's got an arsenal of sensors and cameras to blanket every room, every window and every door tailored specifically for your home. Professional monitoring keeps watch day and night ready to send police, fire or medical professionals. If there's an emergency, you can set it up yourself in under an hour.

[00:13:11]

Just peel and stick the sensors exactly where you need them. No technician required. And there's no contract, no pushy sales guys, no hidden fees, no fine print. All this starts at fifteen bucks a month. We're not the only ones who think simply safe is great. U.S. News and World Report named it the best overall home security of twenty twenty head to simply safe dotcom crash WTF and get a free HD camera for WTF Wisner's that's simply safe dotcom.

[00:13:38]

So wtf to make sure they know that our show sent you.

[00:13:49]

What's going on down where you're in Melbourne? I'm in Melbourne. Yeah, is that where you live? I live in New York, but I've lived in Melbourne this year out of a suitcase because I got stuck here at the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah. Oh, really?

[00:14:06]

And you couldn't get out? No.

[00:14:07]

Well, I could have, but it just was not reasonable to go back to New York at the time. It was like March. Yeah.

[00:14:15]

Why go back to New York? I get it more exploding there. And I was like, well, you know, to lay low in Melbourne for a bit. And that was March and cut to where we August. I don't fucking know.

[00:14:29]

It was just, you know, like my it was my nation's birthday two days ago. Yeah. August was.

[00:14:36]

Oh, God, it's happening.

[00:14:38]

Yeah. Were you able to go have a party, do that sad front yard drive by shit that people do?

[00:14:43]

No, not even that she's in Queensland. We're all sort of desperate. We've been separated as well.

[00:14:49]

Is that how far is it that the other side it would be 19 hours for me to drive, plus two weeks quarantine if I went to Queensland, to Queensland, if I went and visited. Our state borders are closed. And because I'm in Victoria, in Melbourne, where sort of like the pariahs at the moment of Australia.

[00:15:05]

So this is the first time Melbourne's closed up?

[00:15:09]

No, this is the third. We did like look down in in in March, April. And then we went down into a lockdown at the beginning of. What month end of July and then we went into another lockdown during that lockdown, that lockdown has been canceled. We've got a lockdown, two point one where we have a curfew. Now, you can't leave your house after 8:00 p.m. at night till 5:00 a.m. in the morning. You can only leave to go out for an hour of exercise per day.

[00:15:36]

One person per household can go to the shops and supermarkets. Really?

[00:15:41]

How are they enforcing that? I don't know just how many good community minded people.

[00:15:47]

Hopefully, I guess I guess we had that, too. I guess it was. That's the way it was at the beginning. And I imagine getting heading back for that. Do you like. So are you just everyone's wearing masks.

[00:15:59]

I don't know why.

[00:15:59]

I think I'm treating Australia like it's another planet, but I have no sense of it right now for me, like I'm at my friend's house living off the kindness of my friends out of the suitcase.

[00:16:10]

And I do feel very isolated, like I'm on a different planet. I had to go do some work yesterday. I had to do it. And I guess I got special dispensation to go do it. For what? I'm just for a film, for pieces of a woman film.

[00:16:26]

But guys, you can shoot another season, a succession. Did you not yet know that it was a film I shot in January. So you guys are stuck?

[00:16:35]

Yeah, well, we're stuck sitting, waiting to begin again.

[00:16:38]

That's such bullshit because it's like the one show that I like to watch. I can't even qingguo they put that off until next year.

[00:16:46]

So we're not even going to shoot our fourth season till next year.

[00:16:50]

They've definitively said not to go next year. Yeah. Yeah. So like OK.

[00:16:55]

Is that when, where it we're still in this conversation of like no no. We're going to begin, we're going to begin. We just don't know when, where do you guys shoot this month.

[00:17:02]

And then New York and most of it's shot in studios, no doubt in people's houses.

[00:17:09]

And there is studio stuff and we have been told that they will build more studio stuff.

[00:17:14]

But, you know, we we shoot out on the street a lot and we shoot.

[00:17:18]

Yeah, yeah. We went to the Hamptons and we were right. Right. Amazing places. We were meant to go to Italy and Dubai. I think, you know, places that were for this season.

[00:17:30]

Yeah. But that's I don't know what's going to happen with that. That's all being re calibrated, I guess.

[00:17:36]

Have you seen the scripts? No, not at all.

[00:17:39]

I don't think they're still being written. I think they're taking the time now. Just kind of tinkering. Yeah.

[00:17:43]

So if when we do go back to work, they're better not be any of that, like, well, we're still writing.

[00:17:47]

No, you keep me not a OK with that. I'm okay with that because I think with that show like we get presented a script at the read through and then you know, we might be shooting in the next two or three days. There's always a draft, the chemistry that's changed and again, change. And then when we get to set, it gets changed again and we get given, you know, like eight pages of all of these lines.

[00:18:09]

You want to change that, change that. And it's very like there's a there's a communication about how it evolves and develops, whether that changes Major, on a plot.

[00:18:17]

That's right. But I mean, I know that's fine. I understand that. But I mean, they should definitely know where everything is going. Yeah. Yeah, they should know. Yeah, yeah. What's going to happen.

[00:18:27]

I always wonder about that, though, with these shows, because, you know, I've had a show on the air and we didn't fucking know. Yeah. We'd sit and go. It wasn't like succession. You know, this is not the arc of like this this super rich, powerful family.

[00:18:41]

But I always wonder, like in the mind of the writers, do they like do they know how many seasons they got planned?

[00:18:48]

I know that, Jesse. I think when he pitched in to HBO, he he would have had seasons like outlines of what was going to happen then. Sure. What season. Right.

[00:18:57]

I just wonder, because most most shows, they want them to run forever, like they never want to stop them. And I think the best shows are like we're going to do four and then we're done for season.

[00:19:07]

I feel like Jesse would be classy like that. I feel like four or five. And I don't see this like, you know, running to the finish line, exhausted. I feel like not Game of Thrones.

[00:19:20]

I don't know, I, I don't know. I never actually saw the end of Cameron.

[00:19:24]

I never saw any of it. I saw the first two seasons. You never saw any at all. No, I know.

[00:19:29]

Don't be so shocked. I mean, it's easy. You just don't watch it. You're sure.

[00:19:33]

Were you a person who decided not to watch it because the rest of the world was talking about it so much? And you.

[00:19:38]

No, I just like I've just never been like the fantasy guy. I'll give a shit about dragons and knights. Yeah. And it all seemed very complicated, like I'll sit and watch the wire and I watched three episodes a night, but I'm not going to watch, you know, armored people and I'm flying lizards.

[00:19:54]

I can't do it. I'm not even a judge. It's just not judgmental. It's just I don't know if it'll hold my interest. Yeah, no, fair enough.

[00:20:02]

I didn't think I would do that for me, but I did like it did. I certainly was interested. But then there was a part of me that was like the rest of the world's talking about it.

[00:20:11]

I'll get to it another time.

[00:20:12]

But how many would that make like twenty seasons. How many seasons were there. Nine, eight.

[00:20:17]

Eight. Eight, I think. Eight or I want to say like seven and a half, but definitely eight, and then I think they expanded one into two.

[00:20:27]

What do you mean watch it now, 10, 15. Great. That show so much. It's the second time I'm watching in my house. My dad has never seen it.

[00:20:34]

Oh, I was like, let's go back. I talked to them. It was good. They're amazing. Like, it's so easy to forget that the adults and not like it's actually 13.

[00:20:45]

It's pretty fascinating. And one of them was on my show for a couple episodes, actually.

[00:20:49]

Anna Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. It's actually amazing to watch it again to get like the just the tiny things that Anna does, particularly with her face that is just so right.

[00:21:02]

Able to play at 13 year old, a 12, 13 year old girl pretending to be a mature woman like this, that could kind of a mothering maternal instinct about it. Right. And yet not like an adult. Right. It's amazing. It's trippy.

[00:21:15]

Right. And they do it. You believe it? Yeah, I don't know. And now, like, they're screwed because they were going to do another season, but not, you know, but not change the year they're going to have because like all those kids are going to be like you all 20 by the time we shoot again. No, no.

[00:21:35]

I never thought that that would be so particular about that one in particular.

[00:21:38]

I remember asking them, are you going to is the next season going to be like the next year? And they're like, no. And I'm like, are you going to get new kids? All those kids are going to you know, they're not going to be like in school.

[00:21:50]

Yeah. For some reason. So it's like, what is your story?

[00:21:54]

So you're like a huge star in Australia.

[00:21:58]

I don't know. I don't know.

[00:22:02]

Maybe done because I love your work and but I don't know a lot of it. And I know that because I'm looking at, you know, what you've done and scrolling my MTV.

[00:22:12]

Well, I usually go to Wiki for some reason, but but there's like, oh, there's a whole industry in Australia. Where did you do all your schooling and everything there? Would you grow up?

[00:22:23]

Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Adelaide, in South Australia. What does that compare to painting a picture of Adelaide? What's it like?

[00:22:29]

Adelaide's Adelaide is like a big it's a city. Yeah, it feels like a big country town. And always the first question people ask in Adelaide is, oh, yeah, what's what did you go to? OK, and then then you would know somebody from that school or somebody who went to that school with it. Therefore you would know that brother or sister or.

[00:22:44]

Oh, so it's like I like how you related somehow medium sized city.

[00:22:48]

Yeah. It's like a million people or when I was growing up small town. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I grew up next to a national park in the hills and you know, I've always felt like I was really distant, like when my mom moved in with my stepdad was in the north of Adelaide and we grew up in the south of Adelaide. And I remember thinking, oh, my friends are going to visit me.

[00:23:11]

It's so far away. And I was there recently and two years ago and I drove from from that area, from Prospekt to the hills. It's twenty minutes.

[00:23:19]

It's like, oh, was it not that far at all. But you live in the Gulf. It was so huge.

[00:23:25]

Yeah. You're a kid you like. Oh no. Yeah. How old were you. Yeah.

[00:23:28]

I'm down the plains. I left when I was eighteen.

[00:23:32]

How would you. And you had to move up north. That was the big shoot down of the hills. I would have been fourteen.

[00:23:40]

Fifteen. So that makes sense. That's a big change. Schools. Yeah. Yeah. Well that was just Kastor into high school. Yeah. What a nightmare. New people fucking.

[00:23:51]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:55]

And also having gone to one year of high school with all my friends so we get disconnected from their lives and you can't keep up.

[00:24:04]

Yeah. No I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm glad about it now like I.

[00:24:08]

Yeah it builds resilience. Right. Did it well you into a different area.

[00:24:13]

So when's your parents break up. Like how old was that. Eleven. Oh so that was a night. Yeah. Oh yeah. Traumatic.

[00:24:21]

It was right. I was fine. I mean yeah I was.

[00:24:24]

Yeah but I don't like now not I don't have any a really.

[00:24:29]

Everybody cool. I wouldn't have it any different. Right. No I mean the silence and hesitation with my voice. No I wouldn't have different because it, it's made me today like for sure.

[00:24:38]

I think that's a good way to look at life if you can manage it.

[00:24:44]

Like I tried. I tried to do that. Yeah. I mean my parents it's great because like, you know, they're, they've got their good things in, they're bad things. But like, you know, I just try to focus on the good things and yes.

[00:24:57]

Suppress the bad stuff and not hate them for it. Yeah. It's OK. Yeah.

[00:25:01]

As long as you don't get into the serenity now situation, it's just you're like, thank God they have the good things and bad things. Yeah I know people.

[00:25:09]

I don't know man. What your dad is. Are they around still.

[00:25:14]

Yeah. Both my parents are around my dad. My dad is in Perth. My mum's in Perth. That's like way over there, that's like the belly button of the world. It's like the most isolated city in the world and it's very distant. It's from Sydney.

[00:25:29]

It's a five hour flight. What do you do there when you go in? And what is there what does he do there? Oh, what does he do that he sells pools he sells for.

[00:25:39]

Yeah. And then retail swimming pools. Yeah.

[00:25:41]

So because it's warm over there, it's very hot above ground swimming pools or both in an above ground and ground.

[00:25:48]

So he's got he's got guys to dig a hole if you want a hole. Yeah.

[00:25:52]

I guess he plans the hole digging in and what I once and so they build a pool.

[00:25:59]

That's a racket.

[00:25:59]

That's what he always did. No, no. I think he wants to get out of the racket soon. I think out of the pool is 70, but is he. Seventy one is getting out of the pool game. It's about time to buy the pool rather than go to man.

[00:26:13]

Yeah, that sounds good. And do you have siblings?

[00:26:16]

I do have two older sisters. There's all sisters. Yeah. Yeah, three girls near the last one but ten and six is. And the baby. Ten years older.

[00:26:27]

So one year. Yeah.

[00:26:29]

Oh. So you were like what, what happened. What happened was the eight year old.

[00:26:36]

Yeah. I would think a happy one.

[00:26:39]

Happy accident if they had it down and we say did you or did your older sisters have to take care of you half the time.

[00:26:48]

Would you know what, I didn't realize this. You know, like I think as you become the ages that your sisters were, at some point you realized new things.

[00:26:56]

Right, with my sisters have kids now, and it occurred to them and me that I was their first baby. Oh, yeah. Because my sister was was ten or nine and a half when I was born.

[00:27:07]

And so she was able to hold me and carry me and. Right.

[00:27:10]

Look after me, feed me and figure out not to hurt you and drop me like two years old. She, you know, that's wild. So they have their own memories of that.

[00:27:20]

She was like, well, and in some ways I realise also that they've known me longer than I've known myself, like my consciousness about how old I am.

[00:27:28]

That's interesting. Yeah, that's right.

[00:27:32]

Because when she was 15, you're five and that's like, you know, they left home, both of them left home at eighteen. So I then I had a family of five that went to a family of two.

[00:27:43]

That's always a sad, sad story. Yeah.

[00:27:45]

And then like, you're all alone, then you get ripped out of high school, dragged up, really painting a really traumatic childhood.

[00:27:55]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's not like Oliver Oliver Twist, you know. I get it.

[00:28:02]

I get it. And what about your mom? Was she what did she do for life?

[00:28:06]

She she did bits and pieces. She went, you know, when I was I think this was probably pretty instrumental by chance, I guess. Yeah. She was a Disney sales rep at some point at one point where she would sell the videos that Disney was. Yeah.

[00:28:22]

So I got like first look at The Little Mermaid and at The Lion King and Aladdin and I would sit in the rumpus room. Do you guys a rumpus rooms in America? It's like such a thing in Australia from the eighties and nineties.

[00:28:35]

I like the redone basement. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, it's the basement. Yeah, we had that at the end of the house. I just sit watching Disney films back to back and on repeat and crying every time Zimmerman's dad died. But at the end when a guy like pushes them off, cry. Oh yeah.

[00:28:55]

And then repeating it, knowing all the lines from the genie, do you think that was instrumental in in nurturing your performative imagination? Yes, I think so, and I think you had it recently, I was like the this I would intuitively know don't want the Disney films because of all the princess stuff and because that's not me. You I don't like that kind of narrative like a man swooping in to save the princess. Yeah, but but I watched all those films growing up and they didn't get me into this at all.

[00:29:30]

I watched those films. I wanted to be Ursula and Scott and Jamie and Jaffa and all the bad guys. Sure. So yeah. What do I know. Talking about princess films.

[00:29:41]

So you're but you're like at this point you're you're alone that older sisters have gone your parents and you have a new dad. Right. Yeah, he came in at like 14. Yeah, nice guy, but a new mom. So I said, Mom, yeah, he's lovely, is fine. Everybody's OK.

[00:29:59]

You get along with everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

[00:30:03]

Someone has said sort of like, well, I don't know where my dad is and 9:00 at night.

[00:30:09]

Good. And you and your sisters, you get along with them.

[00:30:13]

Yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:16]

How rosy are they. Do they live nearby or your sister's nearby. No, my sister's in London. One's in London. The other one's in Papua New Guinea. New Guinea.

[00:30:27]

Yeah. What's going on there? I mean, it's a pretty interesting country. So when did you like start doing performing things like it seems like like from when I was a kid.

[00:30:38]

I guess you did. You did school plays and things.

[00:30:41]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never, never professionally, I never I never got paid to do it until I graduated from drama school. But you know, I was one of those kids who was the drama kid who would do a performance at assembly or you know, that was like our junior art.

[00:31:00]

And I have to compete in speech writing things where you had to ten minutes write a speech and then perform it a debate.

[00:31:07]

Did you do debate? No, I really I wasn't into debating. I don't know why was just the speeches. Yeah.

[00:31:13]

Maybe I was like monologuing, not debating dialogue.

[00:31:18]

Yeah. I don't want to defend anything and I don't want to argue with it, but it's about, this is about me and I'm going to do it myself. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:27]

And I want it all laid out, structured and I want a character to play. I don't want to be myself and argue a point. I want to be somebody else.

[00:31:33]

Say, Oh, you did characters then. As audience. Yeah. Oh really. Yeah. Did you make them. I yeah.

[00:31:41]

And we did, we did plays and would make up plays and things like that. And I learn all the Roald Dahl revolting rhymes off my heart. The one Roald Dahl's revolting rhymes. What are those. Oh. Oh my goodness. That great.

[00:31:55]

I've got to write it down. What is it an Australian thing or am I just stupid?

[00:31:58]

No. Roald Dahl. You don't know Roald Dahl. How do you spell Roald Dahl had you are a Aldy.

[00:32:06]

DHL is the best children's writer ever. He wrote the witches.

[00:32:12]

So I don't know. I know I wrote it down thinking that maybe it was your accent and there was no way I was going to understand what you were saying. Wow. And now I've written it down and I don't know who that is.

[00:32:23]

Wow. Oh, I'm so excited for you. I mean I mean this there's a lot of children's stuff, but he's he's got a lot of adult fiction as well, which is great. The short stories. OK, he's an amazing writer.

[00:32:33]

I feel bad that I don't know him. So you did a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I would read to myself at night, you know, read the witches aloud. Yeah, yeah. And then those revolting rounds, I think Stephen Fry and a bunch of other famous British actors that I wouldn't have known at the time did voice like they did a tape that I would use. I used to listen to a lot. And then I just learned it by listening to the tape.

[00:33:01]

OK, OK.

[00:33:02]

With my family when we would go camping that now where not thinking like.

[00:33:09]

Right, you finish dinner. Let me perform.

[00:33:13]

Were those tapes. I'd like to see the videotape.

[00:33:17]

There is one of me doing a dance to the dividend that edited it like Under the Sea Little Mermaid T-shirt.

[00:33:27]

And I thought I watched the tape recently and I from my memory was like, this is amazing. I've done all the moves, the choreography I've practiced all day. My sister's going to tape it. It's really good. Yeah, it's not.

[00:33:39]

It's not at all. I old like shaking.

[00:33:42]

Jellyfish would have been hate just running around and doing flips thinking I was really cool.

[00:33:49]

I mean I don't think you can be too hard on yourself looking at it at your age now I don't think you should judge. It was probably very sweet, probably amazing. I'm sure it's very cute.

[00:34:00]

So ask your parents what you did. You just you go right into drama school after, you know, whatever your version of high school is there.

[00:34:09]

Yeah, I did. I auditioned at the end of my HSC sort of last exams, year 12 exams. I auditioned for drama school then.

[00:34:19]

And you did plays throughout high school or just the oratories stuff, huh. Yeah.

[00:34:23]

So and you had to get to plays. Did you have good drama teacher in high school. I did.

[00:34:28]

I had, I had a couple good ones because I went to a school that had a really good drama program and I went there on a scholarship.

[00:34:36]

You went, oh, you mean for high school? Yeah. So I went on a drama scholarship. So I had to I got to do it, had to do the the senior and junior team came Cuéntame like after school and extracurricular drama stuff, which was great. So as a year as a thirteen year old, I was I was able to work with and learn from the 15, 16 year olds. Right. Yeah. And that was with Mr.

[00:35:03]

Jefferies.

[00:35:04]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then we had good drama teachers in high school as well.

[00:35:11]

Ashleigh, this is a strange thing you said before about like when you grow up and you become the age of your siblings. My drama teacher was twenty seven twenty eight when she was teaching us. And you passed that age and you go, oh of course. That's why we were we were friends and close at high school. We're still friends now that it makes sense to me now. But at the time it was she was so much older and she had a whole life and she's only twenty seven.

[00:35:36]

Well, it's good when you have those experiences where, you know, you can look at it and still be impressed as opposed to like oh my God, that person was that age and now I'm this age like what were they doing with their life.

[00:35:50]

How can you have any of those.

[00:35:54]

I'm trying to think usually that's limited to I camp counselors and things like that. Like what was that person doing. Yeah, but yeah, everybody was like, yeah, my, my parents, my mother had me when she was twenty two. Can you even fucking imagine that.

[00:36:09]

Whoa. If you got brothers and sisters or just have a little brother.

[00:36:13]

But she was twenty two now just that's just what people did. Twenty two.

[00:36:18]

Yeah. Yeah that's young. I mean it's, it's not I guess at the time and it's perfectly fine but is it not the twenty two.

[00:36:27]

It's weird because like, like you look at pictures of people, my parents' generation like when they're twenty two like I looked at their wedding album recently and they were forty, they look like you're thinking what did they have like Bob behind a beehive.

[00:36:42]

Like some of that going on. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The thing I love about that generation as well though is they certainly in Australia there's a generation of particular like Italian, Greek family, all the generation who just wear the same clothes that they were wearing when they hit adulthood.

[00:37:01]

And so they look older.

[00:37:03]

They always look older because they're wearing clothes that were from the 60s, like white suits were the three piece suit, the waist coat and the hat.

[00:37:14]

You never change. Yeah, you just look older as as a thirty year old, you look like you're sixty.

[00:37:18]

Yeah.

[00:37:18]

At some point my mother decide to go the other way and try to hold on to like twenty seven for, you know, to this day, you know, in her 70s and I can't even go into it then.

[00:37:30]

No idea what hair color she I don't know what her real hair color is. No idea.

[00:37:35]

Yeah. Yeah she might. Yeah, not now, I don't think so, but all right, so do you feel do you feel like most of the stuff that you earned in terms of acting, you learned before, like in high school?

[00:37:50]

I mean, do you still use I mean, I, I don't I know it's hard to talk about acting, but sometimes I ask people because you seem to have a specific approach to it. And I always wonder because I know a lot of it's just natural.

[00:38:03]

But were it was there stuff that you learned from these people that were influential to you at that age where you sort of keep using?

[00:38:12]

I think the stuff I learnt at high school was that you can get by on talent, but that it will run out at some point. That's still very well.

[00:38:24]

When does that happen? You know, I thought that was going to last me the whole time. That's all I've got. You're peddling talent. That's all now you have. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:37]

I feel like you've got to have a little. That's just like becoming an adult. Right.

[00:38:40]

You just have a bit of technique. I have that I repeat things over and over again.

[00:38:44]

You know, you know what you're doing. You got it. Easy with that kid is like throwing at a wall and seeing what sticks.

[00:38:51]

Well, you can get by on charm, you know, for, you know, you can get you can charm your way through most things, you know, other than mathematics, almost anything else.

[00:39:01]

You can charm that.

[00:39:03]

Maybe that's why I quit mathematics. This is not working anymore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:10]

You can't you can't be like, come on, let me you know, I go to algebra.

[00:39:16]

I was I could do algebra. Some letters in this I could do this. It's conceptual. I couldn't do it's creative. I get this.

[00:39:22]

But one of those times tables I couldn't, I couldn't do algebra plus one. I couldn't do it. I could I could not do algebra. Yeah.

[00:39:30]

How long did you try for the guy?

[00:39:34]

I did the I, I couldn't just quit. I just like almost flunked out of it. I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. Geometry I was good at because it had a shape. Yeah. And you had to make an argument. You're like sort of like you get to prove that this is this.

[00:39:47]

I'm like, OK, all right with that because you're dealing with the shape. I didn't know what the hell algebra was.

[00:39:54]

Yeah. I'm like interesting maths. Oh I love maths was there's a couple of YouTube channels, right. That teach maths to adults that.

[00:40:05]

Yeah, I'm really on board with so much so that I've never even bothered to look at the how is it going to help me to me that I might like those.

[00:40:13]

What do they do enough for you just to keep their brain active? The fuck do I need that for now?

[00:40:17]

Yeah, I'm trying to get my just some talent.

[00:40:20]

They're trying to get to know how is that what am I going to be out in the world being like? Let me just work this out.

[00:40:26]

An algebra problem I've got you're saying. Yeah, they want me to go there to shoot. What. OK, so that's X equals. Yeah.

[00:40:35]

No, I'm not going to have to pay for this at the store to pay for it.

[00:40:39]

But to be honest with you, like in terms of acting, I mean I knew that I was bad at it and then like I but I also knew that I could I had a certain amount of raw talent, but I didn't really start applying any real technique to it until later.

[00:40:54]

And it was sort of on the job training. I you know, I'm a comic. So that was my life for decades.

[00:41:00]

And then when I got a show, I knew I would suck for at least two seasons. And then and I kind of did.

[00:41:07]

And then the third and fourth season, I got the hang of it and I got cast in this other show and I'm like, I know how to do this. I can be this guy.

[00:41:14]

Yeah, I'm not quite he's not exactly me, but all I have to do is take out a couple of things that I always do out of my personality and be this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:24]

You got it. Thank you. I just don't run the drama school. I was that. Yeah. Just here's what you do. You are who you are and it's beautiful when you look at the character, change it. Right.

[00:41:32]

You look at the character and you see how that person, that character is different than you. And then you make your adjustments and then you go forward.

[00:41:42]

Yeah, but see, I feel like that's a really good way to just be a human being. Right?

[00:41:47]

I can't apply it to being in a hell of a lot more empathy for the people who have a different opinion or think I have a different religion or think differently. You just take out the parts that aren't you and consider some parts of someone else that is different and then reapply them to you and go, oh, OK. That's how it feels to be somebody else. Oh, I won't treat them badly.

[00:42:08]

But what if that's how it feels to be a racist monster?

[00:42:12]

Oh, but yeah, I'm going to go ahead and judge them.

[00:42:16]

I was thinking the racist monster should do that in the first place and think of it like to be somebody saying that this is something.

[00:42:23]

I get it. You're already you're probably a step ahead. Right. This is a technique for the for the bad people that you're. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, sure.

[00:42:32]

Maybe we can get them all together and teach them this.

[00:42:34]

Just travel the world. So what happens? You go to did was there any famous people that came out of your high school? My high school like that is a fancy drama high school, right, where because I know you know. Yeah, Australians in Australia seems to manufacture fairly good actors and actresses.

[00:42:57]

We do seem to we seem to function that way for population. But somehow we've got a lot. I wonder why that is. Have you thought about it?

[00:43:06]

Maybe you guys need to pretend just to get by because you're stranded down there by telling stories. Yeah, yeah. We're like your Australia.

[00:43:15]

There's a there's this sort of inferiority complex to the entire country. Oh, huge. Yes.

[00:43:20]

So huge. The entire country. And if we, you know, with a tall poppy syndrome, if you. Right. Raise your head above any kind of other puppies you get. Oh really. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

[00:43:30]

About you know, I've heard I've heard some variation on it. I don't know if I've called it if, if I've heard heard it called that. But I understand what you're saying. Well I mean that would lend itself. So instead of doing that, if you do something spectacular like become, you know, a different person and entertain, you can't really be accused of that.

[00:43:49]

But you can be and you could still be better than other people. Sure. But as your regular person. So if you say I'm better than everybody else and that's just you being put in check. No, but no.

[00:44:04]

But if you do it as a character like this guy and I'm on stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get to live out. Yeah. That's I'm still wild is a that's how you rise above in Australia.

[00:44:17]

Put on a show I on. It's good. Good. You are an actor.

[00:44:25]

To see how I became that guy was unbelievable. That was like, it was almost like a cartoon kind of crazy.

[00:44:33]

Like sometimes I'm just in it right away. Like it almost seemed like I built, I spent time working on that guy.

[00:44:40]

I could tell so. So what happens. So you go to a fancy drama academy. I did, yeah. I went to NIDA in Australia. Naida was that. It's in Sydney, the National Institute Dramatica. Is that the one that Cate Blanchett went to. That's the one. OK, yeah she.

[00:44:56]

Is that the one she's involved with or she doesn't she have a theatre like she started a theatre did. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:01]

She was artistic director with her husband of the Sydney Theatre Company.

[00:45:06]

Right. So which is now National Flagship Stadium.

[00:45:10]

So you went to that school and that's where you learned the technique.

[00:45:16]

Were you were you took all your raw talent. Yeah.

[00:45:22]

And learned how to harness it.

[00:45:26]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, as any journalist who you sort of get beaten down, stripped bare and emotionally and then built back up again and then have to do a lot more building and rebuilding once you've graduated.

[00:45:37]

But I had to you know, I had a fine time with a drama school.

[00:45:41]

I sort of in some ways flew under the radar and in others was my first. And my first was a first time assessment. I think I was it was a bad thing, but I was told that I was too much of an enigma. And then I needed to express myself more. Oh, that was me. I think just being I prefer to just, you know, see how the land lies.

[00:46:04]

But they read it as far as being like, you know, like you were hiding. Yeah.

[00:46:10]

Holding back hiding. And what did you do to stop holding back to did some teacher put you into some role where you had to like, you know, be the crazy guy?

[00:46:22]

I remember I took an acting class in in college and he made me do a monologue. I don't even remember what monologue it was.

[00:46:30]

But he forced three or four other dudes in the class to hold me back while I tried to walk across the room doing this monologue.

[00:46:43]

This is a real barrier stuff, right? Yeah. I don't know what the hell it was. Maybe it was just him entertaining himself, uh, because I was full of rage.

[00:46:51]

Yeah. That's putting a real obstacle in your place. Yeah. Like I didn't like I don't have enough already like you. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm Matt. Nonmanufacturing obstacles as we speak.

[00:47:04]

Yeah. I don't remember ever being physically held down and Austin monologue, but we did other things. I did play Irina in Three Sisters, which is the youngest of three sisters.

[00:47:16]

I was I it's taught me how to do this, but I don't know if I did a very good job. I do remember having to cry on stage, but I sneakily had an area backstage where I could go to just before grab a switch, a hankie that had tiger bones in it.

[00:47:31]

And then I had shaved my eyes with tiger balm and then look as if I would cry.

[00:47:37]

You're a cheater.

[00:47:39]

Mm hmm. Well, neither of you know is acting. You know, the way things are. You got to go. You have to go too deep into it. Yeah. Just pretend that. Yeah, yeah. But you can cry now. But they believe it, right. Can you cry on cue. Oh sure. Really.

[00:47:57]

I mean, yeah sure.

[00:47:58]

Sometimes if I'm in the mood I could cry.

[00:48:02]

I think I could cry like. Yeah. Cry and cry.

[00:48:05]

No, no, no. I mean I probably could. Yeah. I mean I think all of us could at some point in some ways give sugar.

[00:48:16]

Most of us could use a good cry. I think really it's very good for catharsis. Yeah. Yeah. How long was that program. Four years. Three, did you do sword fighting and everything, fencing, dancing, that did you know we did.

[00:48:31]

It's been utterly useful.

[00:48:34]

Now we know I just like it just seems that when there's a long drama program that, I mean, in order for it seems for them to extend it or for you to get your money's worth, there's going to be some dancing and some and some swordplay and some fencing.

[00:48:48]

Yeah. Weirdly enough, I had done fencing in high school not for very long, but I did do fencing in high school in the same kind of situation.

[00:48:56]

I think the drama department there were like, oh, well, they'll need to learn fencing and so I'll play for theater stuff and really only men do that. And most of the time in the Shakespeare. Oh, that's right. Because it's only really ever in Shakespeare and it's only men who use the Stones and Chase.

[00:49:12]

Now what's your what's your what's your take on Shakespeare?

[00:49:15]

I mean, to be honest with me, he's he's got a couple good. Good thing. He's great. I think you'll go far. It's been around a while, probably for a good reason.

[00:49:27]

I'm just I'm just sort of a dick about Shakespeare. I'm like, you know, I, I don't like you know, I know he's great, but it's just hard for me to get through and I don't really get it because I have not spent the time necessary to appreciate it.

[00:49:40]

It's a matter of listening that, you know what you can give up with Shakespeare, especially if you're watching it. And if it's not being done while you could be like, I'm exhausted.

[00:49:48]

That's the thing. Yeah, and they are long plays, but I do. I've seen this a lot.

[00:49:53]

And every time I see it, I hear something different and go, wow, how extraordinary to create that piece of imagery in that part of the imagination. And then in some ways, I love it because you skate off over there and you miss what's going on and then you have to come back. Yeah.

[00:50:08]

And you have to know the play to really appreciate it. Sure. Because it's Shakespeare and you've probably seen it three times or read it five times. I mean, most people who enjoy Shakespeare of whatever they're seeing, they've seen it done a dozen times and they've read it, however, you know what I mean?

[00:50:21]

It's not there's not going to be any surprises other than how it's performed.

[00:50:25]

Yeah, but also the stories with still doing those stories. It's still the person who wants power over the person who's weaker. And then that person comes back and kills them and then has something to do with their mother. And, you know, there's like how the stories we just keep. Well, that's what's great about succession.

[00:50:43]

It's definitely Shakespearean. You're right.

[00:50:46]

Yeah. And even as a different King Lear situation going on.

[00:50:49]

That's right.

[00:50:50]

But even like the like what what I didn't realize at the beginning of watching it was that the language is heightened.

[00:50:59]

It's like they're not you know, it's so integrated into these characters and so well conceived. But it's it's it's heightened language. It's not I don't I don't feel that people talk to each other like that necessarily.

[00:51:14]

No. But I feel like they it's believable that that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Like, yeah, it's yeah. It's Shakespearean in that it's some sort of take on the language of power and it's, it's contemporary and poetic, but it's not natural, but it's very convincing.

[00:51:31]

And then it's it's hard for us. Well it's enjoyable for us to have to improvise in that world.

[00:51:38]

And I love that the the family sort of talk to each other in this particular way, which I wonder how different it would be, because you, for instance, I don't know what friendship group she has, if she has any friend. Right.

[00:51:51]

But how she would talk to them at all.

[00:51:54]

What's what's what are her friendships outside of the family and outside of this way of communicating with these particular people?

[00:52:03]

They'd be like you'd be like hanging out with, like the Trump daughter, with the vodka or somebody.

[00:52:08]

Sure. Yeah. She's got friends, right? I guess so. Yeah.

[00:52:14]

She's rich, aristocratic weirdos. You're not. They're not. It seems like whenever those people slum it, it's like Jeremy Strong's character. It's like when they when they walk among the the the the the norm, the regular people, they're on drugs or doing something horrible. Yeah.

[00:52:32]

Like that scene where was like I'm doing Pocock. I haven't done pork for years. Oh yeah. You're the ones keeping the industry going really. It's not. The people in the park are getting slapped with fines for it. It's the job is giving the industry guy. So how do you.

[00:52:49]

But did you do Shakespeare. A lot of shaking I did not use, but the first play I got cast in outside of drama school was King Lear and I played Cordelia and the Fool did the the the double character with a little bit of editing you can do.

[00:53:07]

Who is King Lear? John Gayden, who is a wonderful Easterlin actor who played it, was the third time he played King Lear in his life, and it was the first time he was actually the age, the right age to play the game. Really.

[00:53:21]

I think the first time he played King Lear was when he was twenty eight, a sort of wild. But yeah, that was. Oh, and you know what?

[00:53:28]

I had to cry on stage. That's you know, I told John, I said, I can't cry.

[00:53:36]

I'm having a lot of difficulty crying. And I think she's meant to cry here. And he had his little secret. I've never cried on stage. Can't do it, won't do it, refused to do it. I can't do it. And as soon as he said that, somehow it relates to me and went, if John Gaden don't cry on stage, I don't have to like that. Yeah. And then I could you know. And I could.

[00:53:54]

You could do it. Yeah. Yeah. Not all the time. But it was there was a release.

[00:53:58]

Was it a trick he was playing. Did you want to outdo him. Did you want to. It could have been playing a trick but I think he was being honest. He's a pretty honest guy. Yeah.

[00:54:07]

So once you started working because I was wondering this, you know, there is a way like I, I was under the impression I was surprised that you were in Australia and there was part of me that thought like that.

[00:54:18]

You live there, but you live in New York.

[00:54:20]

Really? I yeah. I mean, I moved the show. I'm from Australia. I've lived in Australia. But could you live there and work in show business and just in Australia. Yeah, because it seems like there's a lot going on. There is.

[00:54:34]

There is. But the kind of work I wanted to do was overseas.

[00:54:38]

And what were you doing like TV or TV and no, I'd never done episodic TV.

[00:54:43]

This is the first episodic long-running series TV that I'd done the TV and it was short form series of six episodes, miniseries, that kind of thing.

[00:54:53]

But you spent time in L.A., right? Not heaps. I the longest spend spent in L.A. was two months.

[00:55:00]

But did you like go I'm going to move to L.A.. And you moved here. No, never. Because I knew that it didn't suit me as a person. I really felt like I wouldn't have been able to keep my mental health balanced if I moved to L.A. in a here's what I got.

[00:55:17]

I'm going to try and make it in L.A. What were you basing that on? Why did you decide that about yourself? Because it just wasn't me, I just knew that if I got there and felt like I had to prove myself to a bunch of people that I didn't know, I knew that I would inevitably sell, flagellate and think that I was shit.

[00:55:36]

Not only did you do not know them, but they don't know anything for sure. But then how could you choose to disrespect the people who you want to respect you? So I was like, well, I just won't put myself into that situation.

[00:55:49]

So I'll remain in this race to build a career here and then go when I'm and and to be honest, I just didn't say that I didn't live there and in Australia, I didn't say that I didn't live there. So I just. You'll go when you're summoned.

[00:56:04]

Sure. When I'm good. And ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not going to if they don't want me, you can't have me.

[00:56:10]

But I mean. But then how do you deal with I mean you have to audition for things. It seems like half of that, you know, horrendous parade of or the horrendous self judgement and insecurity comes from, you know, auditioning. It was it's specifically that there was such a broad spectrum of garbage that's produced in this city that, you know, you would feel compelled to sort of go out for everything and have your spirit trampled upon over time.

[00:56:40]

Yeah, I would definitely have felt it was my job to go out and audition for subpar stuff just to be seen and be working st- feeling like I was working. Yeah. And I didn't do that when I was in L.A. for two weeks or three weeks at a time.

[00:56:59]

You did some of that and I felt that feeling, you know, you know, you're in you're in a room full of people that you feel that you completely less than because they're far more beautiful, far more blonde, Farmington, fumo leggy family.

[00:57:14]

I mean, when you're waiting to go in, you're waiting to go in or you read the brief and it says beautiful stuff and you're like, why beautiful? One of just like Suffa really cool stuff.

[00:57:25]

Yeah.

[00:57:26]

Why is it why is it some sort of visual aspect of this character that a writer has to put in. Right.

[00:57:31]

But then you call your agent, you're like, did you read the description of the person? Why are you sending me out on this? And they're like, well, they don't know really what they want, but it's written down. But they don't know. Yes, but do you ever have you ever had that way?

[00:57:45]

You read that thing, though. It's not made in the age. Like we wouldn't have put you put you up for that if you weren't possibly able to be considered. Is that that's a lie.

[00:57:55]

That is a lie. Right. Yeah, but how would how would you get me put up for something that you think that you're completely wrong for, even though an outside perspective might think that you're right for it, it's your agents trying to make you think that they're working for you.

[00:58:10]

And I feel like I'm kind of pessimistic here.

[00:58:15]

That's definitely definitely crossed my mind, but perhaps it's different now.

[00:58:20]

I'm just saying, when you're when you're starting out, I mean, you're kind of a known thing now. You know, you're doing, I don't know, hyperbole.

[00:58:27]

I mean, I like I like I'm I'm completely like I love your work based on, you know, the very little of this one character.

[00:58:37]

Well, thank you very much. I'm going to go see other stuff and you and your fun. You realize I'm terrible. I know you're a fun person to talk to. I think you're very talented. You're not you're not going to, you know, but I think not only are you just talented, but you have technique that you've applied you. Oh, yeah.

[00:58:53]

Yeah, I do.

[00:58:55]

Now, what was this thing with Helen Mirren that she I just had her on?

[00:59:00]

Did she really want a woman? Oh yeah. It's great. Wow. But didn't she like you like help you out or give you a big nod.

[00:59:11]

Yeah, we did a film called Winchester with the Spirit Brothers and I had worked with them before and predestination. And I think she watched, they had been interested in me for a role in Winchester and and went out to her for a role in Winchester as well.

[00:59:25]

And she watched predestination as a suspect just to see what they're up about. Yeah. What they like. And apparently she had said, I'll do it if you cast Sarah. As far as the character as this other character, I want her in the film, which is like, oh, my gosh, swoon.

[00:59:46]

Oh, and so I yeah, I got to work with her and meet her and do that and it's wild.

[00:59:52]

Did you have a lot of scenes together? We had a few, yes. And and I was able to just be on set while she was working as well, which was. Yeah. And we had the same which was so silly, like there was an explosion and you're hiding from ghosts and it's a horror film and. Sure. And we you know, it was fun and silly and we stepped off and she goes, oh, actresses like us, we should be doing some up, shouldn't we?

[01:00:13]

Like, Oh, say what? It's like I'm going to have ninety results.

[01:00:22]

She likes doing goofy shit though.

[01:00:24]

She's great. She was, she's so great.

[01:00:26]

She the thing that she had when, when she got to Melbourne that she asked for in terms of like a writer or what can production do for you.

[01:00:36]

She said I'd like a bike and the myki card and I'm like card is our travel card like a like a metro card in Melbourne?

[01:00:43]

That was it has it's going to jump on your bike, ride around and catch the trams.

[01:00:49]

She here when I grow up, but she did some weird experimental movies like that were pretty great. Pretty sexy. Yeah.

[01:00:56]

Weird things, but she's still pretty vital. Very charming.

[01:01:01]

Oh she's she's wonderful. And the thing that is I think what she has enduring sex appeal, whether the people talk about is that she saw herself. She so I think that there is an essence that is her, that she is really tapped into and she's not afraid to to be that and also be kind and and generous with her time and and know her own boundaries. Yeah.

[01:01:22]

Yeah. She's like and she I don't know, I was completely excited about the whole thing.

[01:01:28]

So how does. How are you picked out of Australia if you're not in L.A., how does the hand of show business come to Australia and pick you claw me out?

[01:01:42]

Yeah, there's a thing called the Internet and we sell tapes. That's the thing. We can we can put it in so we can put ourselves on tape and send them to us. I got a roll on some tape.

[01:01:55]

Which one, the glow in glow. Sam Sylvere. Yeah, it's a succession wow, that's what I that's what I did.

[01:02:03]

You never expect to get him myself to you, which I think is. That's the key, right?

[01:02:08]

Well, yeah. Because you like you don't give a fuck you. All right, let's do it. So we saw what happened.

[01:02:13]

How did it how how do they reach out to you?

[01:02:18]

I had auditioned for Francine, was there a couple of times before, casting agent, casting director. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She thought of you. I think, yeah, she wanted to cast me in something before and and had a small role in Steve Jobs and and, you know, I think had been had my back in terms of wanting to to find something for me. And so this came through when I was in Australia. I didn't want to put a tape down because I thought it was out of my league and out of reach what I put in for that character.

[01:02:51]

Yeah. And also HBO.

[01:02:53]

And just you decided that you weren't going to sell tape because you weren't right for the role of deciding not to go into the room and debase yourself. But it wasn't even a room. You were all alone.

[01:03:10]

Yeah, sure. Self-confidence and. I read it was like, this is awesome, but obviously this is too awesome for me, so and I'm not what do you think was what was the well, what was the disconnect from the character upon first reading?

[01:03:28]

Why did you think she's like she's she's wealthy, she's beautiful. She's, you know, sassy. And, you know, they named a few people like think about this. And and I read that.

[01:03:38]

Well, I'm I'm going. That's not me.

[01:03:43]

Really. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And there was another role for a film that I wanted to do was a Linklater film. And I was like, oh, one more chance doing that.

[01:03:53]

Which one would you go?

[01:03:55]

Bernadette, you who talks you into doing to do in the tape.

[01:03:59]

Just Toby who's who's an actress in Australia who's a friend of mine, and she helped me put the selfie down for that.

[01:04:06]

That she shoot you. Did she shoot the tape. Yeah, we had a tripod set up on an ironing board in my house in like one place I rented in Melbourne. Yeah, and she yeah, she was in cases like you got to, you know, just put this one down because, um, because you can't just put the effort into setting up a tripod and an ironing board, so you might as well.

[01:04:32]

Yeah. So I did. And I think it's the thing of going I'm not going to get this so whatever. Right.

[01:04:39]

And that kind of indifference. But you made some choices, right?

[01:04:44]

Well, yeah. Yeah, sure. And the kind of less fair attitude I guess, to going this will be fine. Yeah. I'm not stressed about this because this is so unlikely. And even when I got told to come over for the test deal, the last the final edition, even then I was like, oh, I'm being used as a as a bargaining chip for someone who's far more famous, has a much bigger profile. Oh, yeah.

[01:05:11]

You understand show business.

[01:05:13]

Yeah. You get a free trip to it of somebody else. Yeah.

[01:05:20]

Yeah. So going in with that attitude of thanks for the holiday to L.A. for five days and seeing my friends. Right. Probably, yeah. I reckon that works.

[01:05:30]

Yeah but but what did you what did you do when you came over. Did you read what the other people. By chance, I ended up reading with Jeremy because I didn't know actually what happened, but I auditioned and then I had to and I was waiting to do something else. And then the Francene said, oh, if you want to read Jeremy, he's going to come in an hour and half an hour. Did he already have the part you didn't know?

[01:05:57]

So why don't you read with him? Because there's a scene that's with him and you can just and then we also improvised terrifyingly. And he was so much better at it than I am. And I think, again, that maybe works because you just kind of keep the mouth shut and watches and yeah, for me and kind of you know, you can see her thinking and then she talks.

[01:06:18]

Yeah. Great assessment of my accent. Thanks. Oh no.

[01:06:26]

But I genuinely I think what she does is thinks and then waits to talk. Yeah, I know. I think it's good.

[01:06:33]

Fortunately sometimes does those things talk without thinking and then you get like episode five and. Right.

[01:06:39]

And then it's right. But then all the episodes after that are like, you know, did she fuck up.

[01:06:45]

Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:46]

So Jeremy, what's that guy's story? He seems to be in it.

[01:06:50]

He is is very in it is very he loves it is in it is committed. Yeah. Yeah. Nice guy. Lovely. Yeah.

[01:06:58]

Oh this is the thing. Like we're all great friends. It's really such a lucky group of people to be a part of because I have enormous respect for the work that they're able to do that I feel I can't do what Karen does. I can't do what Nick does. I can't do it. Matthew does. Maybe I can do what I do, but I have I look to to them in the work that they do every day and find it inspiring.

[01:07:23]

And that does sound like I'm hyperbolic, but I do genuinely love to go to work with them because I find it challenging and good.

[01:07:31]

It seems like you said that off screen. We all get along, which is nice.

[01:07:33]

It does seem like just by the nature of the material that, you know, it's got to be engaging as actors because, yeah, everybody's sort of you're actually acting where everyone's trying to outdo each other and get a jump on each.

[01:07:46]

So there's a competitive element to the characters.

[01:07:50]

So it must be very exciting to like almost daily to be in that.

[01:07:55]

Like, everybody thinks you're getting fucked by the person they're talking to and, you know, you've got to be in that. So that must keep everything pretty lively. It does.

[01:08:05]

And maybe it's the same thing about when you shoot a horror film. It's often one of the some of the most fun scenes you get to do because the vibe on set is not, you know, ghosts and killing writer and then.

[01:08:19]

Right. It's all very light and fun to counter what's going on on screen. And I think, yeah, where all the all the machinations and planning and manipulations and being cunning is happening on screen.

[01:08:30]

But off screen, it's it's it has to be the opposite to balance it in the way. Right.

[01:08:34]

The only one that can be sort of like that on screen is Karen it seems. He's certainly yeah.

[01:08:43]

Yeah. He seems to have a good time.

[01:08:45]

Well effervescent little improved as much as in and goes off and you go, wow, you just took a dump and it was amazing.

[01:08:53]

You can do anything and it's and he's something you're all, you're all very good. The guy who plays your husband, what's his name.

[01:09:00]

Matthew Boyages. Take him. What a punching bag he's thinking. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:08]

He's had a lot of fun to work with. He's a British. Mm hmm. Yeah, his name is Mr. Darcy, he rose and he's, you know, he's played many different roles, but he's most known for, I think, the kind of upstanding, troubled, romantic lead male guy.

[01:09:26]

Yeah, male guy. You're right. But playing this role, I think for him it's been a lot of fun and great for audiences to see him in a different light.

[01:09:35]

I've interviewed Cox great comedy shows. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Brian like yeah he's yeah there's a there's a there's a mountain of experience there. Oh yeah.

[01:09:45]

And he did some Shakespeare for you as well. Can give you a monologue.

[01:09:50]

He's, he's living Shakespeare. That guy.

[01:09:52]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Etched on his face. It's amazing to see like because he's always been good and always sort of this off to the side kind of guy. But like I've every time I'd see him in something I'd be like a guy's fuckin amazing going all the way back. And I think he was the first Hannibal Lecter, wasn't he? Yeah.

[01:10:11]

Yeah. And, you know, but he's like to find success at this point in his life with this the kind of this type of attention just to see a guy like that kind of be finally kind of relaxed into this amazing thing.

[01:10:25]

It's kind of great. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

[01:10:28]

That's what's kind of great about this industry, I think, as well. It's there's it's not a regular you can't like a sine wave. You can't go oh you go up here and then you go down that it's unpredictable. You can go off. Sure.

[01:10:40]

If you know, if you're like that, like if you're that good a character actor and stuff, if he can play all those different kind of roles, you know, I can I don't know how it works, but yeah, it seems like if you stay in the game and you've got the chops, you're going to get handed something. Eventually the amount of stuff is done.

[01:10:55]

If you look at his. Yeah, I'm with you. Whatever it it boggles the mind how much that man is. Well, he's one of those guys. Are you reading.

[01:11:02]

You're like, oh yeah. That he was. I remember. Yeah. A lot of that like super troopers.

[01:11:07]

Super troopers. Yeah. Yeah. OK, hi. Sorry to bug you, but this is the point where I talked to Sarah about the end of season two of succession. And I've got to say, I really don't think we reveal anything specific, but I know some people hate spoilers of any kind. So consider yourself warned.

[01:11:23]

OK, right now I'm warning you. Skip ahead thirty seconds and you'll miss it.

[01:11:29]

All right. OK, now's your chance. Hit the skip button unless you don't want to, because here we go.

[01:11:35]

The end of that fucking season was so good. Right now I'm just going to be like a fan of the show.

[01:11:40]

That was crazy. It's great. I didn't know that was coming and I got to read it until Dave was like, no, no.

[01:11:49]

The it was handed out the day before. No, I read it the day of the final read through.

[01:11:55]

No one knew.

[01:11:56]

Hey, no. I mean, Jeremy apparently knew and Brian I think knew but I didn't.

[01:12:01]

And I it was like being handed out and I ran to my green room and I'm like flipping through the pages and getting through and loving and, you know, the script is like eighty five pages long or something crazy and then got to the end and by myself in, in my trailer going oh oh what, what's going to happen.

[01:12:22]

So yeah, I want to get back to should say the word of God damn right.

[01:12:27]

So you're telling me like because this is like this is like very sophisticated, kind of dead on satire. It is a comedy. It's easy to forget that.

[01:12:37]

Right. Structurally. Really. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:41]

Just by nature of it. But but it's heavy.

[01:12:44]

So what you talked about improvising. How much room is there really for that. Is that I think.

[01:12:53]

Do you know, I think it comes down to what we're talking about before with the writers knowing what the series arc is going to be, knowing exactly what the characters are going to be doing, that nothing ever changes in the plot and nothing ever changes in the structure of the scene so much. But there is improvising around how the line is said, what is said in the line, like you've got an insult here, then there's nine different versions of that.

[01:13:16]

And so you could choose. Oh, so reading.

[01:13:18]

And so you don't come up with it necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keirin and the people who are better at it than I am certainly do. But there's a few things like I love creating my favorite kinds of improv, improvising of creating a memory that didn't exist before.

[01:13:35]

And the characters, it was one we were talking about the Ghost Train I think in the second episode, and Tomen Chiva walking along and talking about something about the Ghost Train, and then just occurred to me to say, Oh yeah, I get my first job and it goes right in the ghost train and then keep walking in like that now is like a created a memory for sure that that was, that was the case and it's not, not in the script but.

[01:13:58]

Sure. Why not.

[01:13:59]

Why not. She did. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:00]

And it's that kind of stuff I love and that doesn't influence plot or anything like that. Right.

[01:14:04]

But it's the detail that to move as the details. Yeah it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And like right. Ridership that Alan Rock I mean to see him again doing his like that. It's just a crazy beautiful character. Everyone's so good. Yeah.

[01:14:21]

It's so wonderful. He's another one who can just drop in a line or drop and he's great at having the different versions of lines as well. Oh really.

[01:14:30]

We had one scene where something like, yeah, she wrote you it was talking about Reya and how I had fucked over shivs and he just had like endless versions of. Yeah. She wrote you like. Yeah. She just right. Yeah, yeah.

[01:14:46]

Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Yeah. What was, what was the.

[01:14:53]

The sort of kick it in to this, what was the portal into this character, what you know, how did it you know, like what was the thing that you kind of locked into to make her work?

[01:15:04]

I think it was the dynamic in the siblings that made it work. I like I think I grew up as the youngest of three. Right. And by a decent amount of age gap. So I was able to sort of grow up and see what they did and the ways that they had success or failures in the family dynamic as well as their own sort of personal lives. And then I was able to kind of go, oh, I'm going to do that.

[01:15:29]

I'm not going to do that. Yeah, like someone doing it before you get a you get a chance to see how right you might do your own life is a blueprint. And then I think Shiv is kind of like that. She's the youngest of the four. And I feel like she and her parents, like Logan and Caroline, would have broken up with a similar kind of age. I was with my parents. So just what is it?

[01:15:54]

Yeah, like we were saying, what is it about me that is the character? And then in what did you add in the other part that oh, the confidence, the sort of the sass and the and the I feel like she's good at pretending not to consider somebody else's point of view, like she'll just double down on a position. She won't blank somebody. Right. If they've got to go a different way of thinking about steamroll right through it.

[01:16:22]

Same role. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And those were decisions you made that that you can hang the character on this felt right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[01:16:30]

And that she's got a difficulty being vulnerable. She doesn't like to be vulnerable, she doesn't want to be in that position where she's not in control and not in power. And that's why she's with a lot of why she's probably with Tom, but none of them really want to be vulnerable.

[01:16:47]

No, I mean, that's the whole trick to the language of the thing.

[01:16:50]

Everyone's avoiding vulnerability. And it's just Jeremy's character, by virtue of the fact that he's a complete fucking drug addict is the only one that can't help but be vulnerable. And then that turns out to maybe be a trick.

[01:17:03]

I think maybe that's what it is about the show that people like in that he has a family who seem to have otherwise everything financially and tangibly, but they are also just as afraid of being vulnerable as everybody else.

[01:17:17]

Yeah, it's weird how the characters show their vulnerability when you start to learn about, you know, current sexual problems and Jeremy's drug problems and your what is what is your commitment issues.

[01:17:29]

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty it's pretty solid. The timing on that episode. Ten cents on our wedding night, you asked to have an open marriage. That's rough. That's like.

[01:17:42]

Right.

[01:17:42]

But also like they got married and then she says, by the way that but that doofus that you fuck in the show like it makes it makes me mad that that's like I'm like, come on, cheve. You're better than this.

[01:17:56]

Yeah.

[01:17:56]

She could have gone further afield something, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a great show, so how does it feel to be excited about the Emmy nomination? That's got to be exciting.

[01:18:10]

Yeah, I don't know if it unconvincing, but, you know, I think you're trying to be you're trying to be humble. It's OK. You can try. No, no.

[01:18:19]

You know what it is? It's it's being so distant from it because in the same way as feeling. How do you how does someone from Australia break into American TV? I feel like getting an Emmy nomination and being in lockdown in Melbourne is right.

[01:18:32]

It feels close to a surreal dream.

[01:18:36]

Yeah, well, wait, wait, this do you do the ceremony on Zoome, the whole thing.

[01:18:39]

No, I got an email asking, like, what would I be comfortable with, because I think that planning like what are they going to do. And it's so you know, it'll be, it'll be streamed in what context. Who knows.

[01:18:52]

But it's so sad. You're going to have to like who's going to get you?

[01:18:59]

How are you going to get a dress?

[01:19:02]

Do I want to dress up? I mean, I think you should do it like this right now. But I mean, my present great, great Trekkies and my great teacher do like this, I think is the way to go.

[01:19:13]

And you should be eating, I think, sir, while you're waiting. Yeah. To check to see whether you want a Slurpee.

[01:19:20]

So great. Really great. Yeah.

[01:19:23]

Food around my face.

[01:19:24]

I think you'll be nominated for another Emmy for your Emmy performance show and then maybe I'll get to go to the ceremony. Yeah. Well, but you're excited.

[01:19:36]

Oh yeah.

[01:19:37]

How could you not be reading, reading your name in a group of those women is like, who else was I? I didn't know that.

[01:19:47]

Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep.

[01:19:52]

Oh sure. Tandy Newton. Oh yeah. Julia from Ozark Gonner.

[01:20:01]

Oh she's good. Yeah. Laura Dunn.

[01:20:03]

Wow. I mean, Jesus. No, he just he's just making these names up.

[01:20:10]

He's just listing just the best people in the world. Yeah. But they can't all be in one category. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[01:20:19]

That's exciting. Yeah. That'll be exciting to see you all your squares and your different environments. Yeah.

[01:20:27]

We get to see into people's homes. I don't know how they're going. I don't know what the plan is. Maybe they'll give everybody a backdrop. And stream. Yeah, like a camera crew could come or they'll take you because also we'll have just come out of lockdown maybe four days, five days beforehand because I look down at the moment is is you can't have anyone to your house. You can't go anywhere. You can't have anyone over. And that lasts until September 13.

[01:20:53]

I think we're going another six weeks. So that was the fucking outbreak.

[01:20:58]

Not that bad, comparatively. We were on one hundred or so cases a day and we went into the first lockdown end of July. And then they were getting seven hundred cases a day in Victoria. So they doubled down on that and said, you can't leave your house at all except for an hour of exercise or if you have to go to work elsewhere or study.

[01:21:19]

And so in about six weeks is until the 13th, I think, of September. So it's not out of control. They're just doing the right thing. They're just trying to do the right thing. We have it's compulsory to wear masks and everyone does, which is nice. It means a few people who tried to make it political.

[01:21:33]

And, yeah, you've got to have freedom. You got some dummies there, too. We do. Yeah, we do. But for the most part, people are aware. I just don't understand because I have like a sneezed twice and was like, what if I kill somebody? Yeah. It's not it's not like I'm afraid of other people.

[01:21:50]

Right. I'm afraid of hurting somebody else. Yeah. No, if why would you not wear a mask if it could be possible.

[01:21:56]

Oh because those people are selfish monsters. Yeah. And they can't think that way then. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:04]

There's, there's a problem like it's like you try to be empathetic and you realize like I'm hitting a wall here because I, I don't understand the humanity of what you're fucking doing.

[01:22:16]

Yeah I but it's a very individualist kind of approach and I just really don't get on board with that so. Humanity, yes. Well, someday you'll have to play, you're going to have to play a masked protester and find the partner. Yeah, that could be fun.

[01:22:38]

Yeah, interesting. Well, I understand.

[01:22:40]

So did you eat breakfast? What happens now? You're up early. I had breakfast. I had leftovers for breakfast. That's good. I heard I roasted some eggplant and roasted some capsicum and then put it on toast with an egg. This morning, I was very impressed with myself.

[01:22:55]

Wow.

[01:22:55]

You roasted the eggplant last night and ate it last night with the capsicum last night and red pepper and then. Yeah. And then had it. Eggplants, tricky man.

[01:23:08]

No, I always thought I was drinking, too. It's not just cut it out to centimeter rounds in the oven at 20 degrees Celsius. That is fine. OK. Thirty five minutes.

[01:23:20]

Soft bit of oil on top. That's it, huh? That's the little eggplant.

[01:23:25]

The big eggplant. Hmm. OK. OK. Well, not a little it didn't get tight and spongy and. All right.

[01:23:34]

OK, ok, ok, OK. Believe me I do, I do.

[01:23:40]

I have. How many times have you done it? This is like my fourth, fifth. I'm just I'm just hearing it because I'm not a cook and I've really learned to cook this year because of this pandemic. I have never been interested. It's always kind of bored me cooking for myself, know whatever. Yeah. Or cooking for other people.

[01:24:00]

Don't get too adventurous and put way too many things in. Sure.

[01:24:04]

But now for some reason I have time to fail. I have tried and I'm finding ways to fly four times.

[01:24:12]

Oh good. You're feeding yourself like an adult. Well I. Well I mean I'm very proud of you and good for you.

[01:24:20]

They think I'm drinking like an adult and feeling like an adult.

[01:24:25]

Good for you. It's about time we've all been waiting. Well, well, good luck with the break away.

[01:24:33]

Hope you win an Emmy. I'm very happy we talked. I love the show. I love your work. It was great getting to know you.

[01:24:40]

Yeah. Thank you. Maybe I'll see you in real life someday. Yeah, that'd be great. All right. Take it easy.

[01:24:46]

You do. Well, that was very enjoyable. What a sweet person, I'd like to meet her in person. Both seasons of succession are streaming on HBO Max and HBO on demand. She's also in the HBO Mack's original movie, An American Pikul with Seth Rogen, who I think is back on good terms with the world's Jews. And now I will play guitar for you, as usual.

[01:26:49]

Blumer. Monkey. The Von. Don't forget people Ben and Jerry's three new nondairy frozen desserts are a new twist on vegan euphoria. The Ben and Jerry's flavor gurus have taken a big leap. This time there are three new nondairy flavors are made with sunflower butter, and they're the perfect treat for vegans, vegetarians and everyone in between. Check out the Ben and Jerry's sunflower butter lineup and the whole nondairy family at Ben Jerry's dotcom. That's been G.R. y dotcom.