Julia Louis-Dreyfus on How Podcast Changed Her Views on Aging – Hollywood Reporter
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On her Ambie-nominated podcast ‘Wiser Than Me,’ the ‘Veep’ star speaks with supremely completed older girls, whom she calls an “untapped pure useful resource.”
By Caitlin Huston
Enterprise Author
Fifteen minutes into the debut episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast, the ability is knocked out by a bomb cyclone. Her visitor, Jane Fonda, continues talking, unaware the connection is misplaced, and Louis-Dreyfus frantically makes an attempt to reconnect, amid a couple of selection swear phrases and a blaring dwelling alarm.
Fairly than edit it out, Louis-Dreyfus noticed it as an asset and saved it within the episode: “It’s simply humorous. So, I figured why not? Let’s embrace it. All people can relate too. I used to be so tense.”
The Veep and Seinfeld star was impressed to create Wiser Than Me after watching the 2018 documentary Jane Fonda in 5 Acts and reflecting that older girls, regardless of having cultivated a long time of knowledge, are hardly ever heard from. In every episode of the podcast, Louis-Dreyfus asks visitors, together with Diane von Furstenberg, Isabel Allende and Carol Burnett, about their careers and relationships, in addition to their views on intercourse, getting older, physique picture and ambition. In flip, she shares her personal anecdotes gleaned from her life and profession, and ends every episode with a name together with her mom.
Associated Tales
The present, which is produced by Lemonada Media, is resonating with audiences, having been named Apple’s 2023 podcast of the 12 months and nominated for an Ambie Award for finest interview podcast.
And it has been renewed for a second season, with a roster of extra illustrious visitors, together with Sally Discipline, Julie Andrews, Billie Jean King, Beverly Johnson, Ina Garten, Anne Lamott, Patti Smith, Bonnie Raitt, Gloria Steinem, Debbie Allen and Vera Wang.
Forward of the subsequent season, which debuts on March 27, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how the podcast has modified her views on getting older and has led to new connections together with her visitors, together with now exchanging Wordle scores with Burnett.
What in regards to the podcast do you assume is resonating with folks?
I don’t assume there’s any type of platform the place we solely need to hear from older girls, seniors. It’s an untapped pure useful resource, proper in entrance of our faces. Each women and men appear to actually reply to this present.
Talking just for myself, selfishly, I like the thought of speaking to someone who’s actually been by means of it, a long time and a long time and a long time of life, and asking them what they’ve discovered.
Have you ever utilized any of their tricks to your life up to now?
I feel there’s a standard theme with all the ladies that I’ve spoken to, and admittedly the ladies that I’m talking to now for season two, and the theme is being very comfy in their very own pores and skin in a means that was completely not the case once they have been youthful. And there’s a type of satisfaction that’s in place that possibly was not fairly there earlier than. There was a type of questioning. I feel that’s emboldened me as an individual who’s not fairly sufficiently old to be a visitor, however, as I become old, it offers me a confidence about getting older.
On the podcast, you ask the visitor’s precise age after which what age they really feel. You latterly turned 63. What age do you are feeling?
I really feel like I’m a really assured 35-year-old.
In your dialog with Carol Burnett, she referred to as you “one of many best comedic actresses of our time.” What did that imply to you?
I may barely take it. I began to cry. Truthfully, after I launched her, I began crying. I cry all all through the podcast. I’m weeping the entire time. I discover these conversations to be very shifting. And Carol Burnett has been impactful in my very own life. So then when she stated that on the finish, I virtually fell over and handed out.
I hear that you simply now play Wordle together with her.
Oh, sure, now we Wordle and we’ve turn out to be associates, and now we have dinner sometimes, which is very nice, too. Let me let you know, this girl is unimaginable at Wordle and all phrase video games. She does Spelling Bee till she will get not Genius, however Queen Bee. This girl doesn’t fuck round on the subject of phrase video games.
You begin every episode with anecdotes that may get fairly private, together with tales about recovering after a miscarriage and the sexism and energy you’ve felt as a lady within the office.
My intuition to do it was actually primarily based on my want for these conversations to have an intimacy, so it looks like a fuller expertise because of this. It’s born out of the conversations with every visitor. There’s an authenticity in place, I hope, with these conversations themselves, and due to this fact, I really feel prefer it’s applicable to share a few of my experiences previous to having these conversations with these superb girls.
You embrace a cellphone name along with your mom, discussing your dialog, on the finish of every episode. What made you determine to try this?
My mom is a really considerate particular person. I speak to my mother lots, and she or he’s very mental. She’s a poet and a reader and an absorber of arts and letters and books and all the remainder of it. So she has an unlimited quantity of knowledge and perception, and I assumed, “Jesus, why don’t I speak to her about a few of these conversations?” As a result of frankly, I’d anyway. I really feel like she’s the key sauce. It’s type of the right full circle to have my mother within the factor.
This story first appeared within the March 6 subject of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.
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