Best known for her Emmy and Golden Globe-winning role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama The Closer, Kyra Sedgwick joins to discuss her remarkable acting career and new directorial debut, Space Oddity.
Debbie Millman:
Who doesn’t love romantic comedy? When it’s good, a romcom scratches itches we forgot we even had, for human connection in a world that seems designed to frustrate it, for things to actually work out in spite of the obstacles we face. And yes, for the sheer pleasure and experience of joy. Kyra Sedgwick’s latest directorial effort, Space Oddity, scratches all those itches with a little sci-fi thrown in the movie mix.
Kyra Sedgwick has had an extraordinary career in front of the camera since the 1980s, both in film and television, including her award-winning role as Brenda Leigh Johnson on the long-running television show, The Closer. Kyra Sedgwick has also been behind the camera, directing quite a lot of episodic television, but Space Oddity is the first narrative feature film she’s directed. She joins me today from Los Angeles to talk about her acting career, and her brand new directorial debut. Kyra Sedgwick, welcome to Design Matters.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Thank you so much. So happy to be here.
Debbie Millman:
Kyra, I understand you have a fear of food that looks like people. What is that about?
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s not quite that. I have a gag reflex that gets triggered when I see food anthropomorphized.
Debbie Millman:
Anthropomorphic food, yes.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Thank you. And for instance, yesterday I went to my neighborhood movie theater, which is this tiny, funky movie theater called Los Feliz 3, and it is in my funky neighborhood in Los Angeles, and they have this old-fashioned, go to the snack bar, and the popcorn bag is dancing, and the soda is cha-chaing, and it just doesn’t work for me. I literally feel like I’m going to gag and will have to look away.
Debbie Millman:
Apparently, you’re not the only person who has this fear. It even has an official phobia name. It is cibolasiphobia.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I’m so glad I’m not alone. I feel like I’m not alone in this. I feel like this must gross other people out as well.
Debbie Millman:
I’ll have to check if it’s in the DSM of official ailments, but I thought you’d appreciate knowing that.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I really do.
Debbie Millman:
Kyra, you were born and raised in New York City, as was I, Your mom was a therapist, and your dad was a venture capitalist. And I understand that you’re also a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Which signer are you related to?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Gosh, you know what? I should know their name, which is pretty… My father is rolling in his grave. “How could you not know?” I think it might be John Sedgwick, but I don’t know. I think it was a general. I also know that one of the guys in the movie Glory also is one of my progenitors. I think it might even be in the Matthew Broderick character, I don’t know. But all I know is that in my teens, my father was like, “See Glory. You have to see Glory.” It was the only movie he told us we had to see.
Debbie Millman:
You’re the youngest of six children, and you’ve said that your older brothers, Rob and Niko, toughened you. I’m wondering, in what way?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh my God, in every way. They were mercilessly… They teased me mercilessly. My brother Rob really was nearly violent with me. Not even nearly, his favorite pastime was strangling me and my brother, or saying, “We’re going to time you. Go get me a grilled cheese sandwich. We’re going to time you.” Making you do dumb things. And then as if that wasn’t bad enough, they would throw in all this love, occasionally, but that was only occasional. And they would, most of the time, sort of gang up on me. And I think that it helped me realize at an early age, yes, indeed, it is a man’s world, and get used to it.
Debbie Millman:
Do you have any sisters? Or all of your-
Kyra Sedgwick:
I do. I do.
Debbie Millman:
… other siblings brothers?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I have two I sisters, but I didn’t get them until later on, until I was about six. So then I realized how great that could be. And just as a PS, my brothers and I are incredibly close now, and we were close as kids. It’s just that my mother didn’t do any… It was in the 70s and 80s. It was the benign neglect theory of parenting.
Debbie Millman:
Your parents divorced when you were four years old, and your mom remarried an art dealer when you were six, and you’ve said that as a result, you became a keen observer of human nature. You’d watch people talk and study their eyebrows, and their bodies, and felt a lot of responsibility for everyone you knew, and how they felt. That’s a really big burden for a little girl to carry. How did you manage?
Kyra Sedgwick:
How did I manage? I managed by thinking I had a lot of control. I think that’s how I managed, because I think that I felt so out of control and things felt so chaotic, that I had to convince myself for my own survival that I could control things. And then occasionally, you get these little wins and you’re like, “I did control it. I can do it again.” It’s sort of an okay thing to think when you’re younger, but as you get older, you realize what a horrible burden that is. As I’ve grown, I’ve definitely grown out of that, and realized that it was a burden, but at the time, I think it felt like a superpower.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I’ve read that. I’ve read quite a lot about how children that have been through traumatic experiences very young tend to become hyper aware in an effort, both to control things as best as they can, but also to be prepared for catastrophic things that still might be coming.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
I also understand that you were a serious tomboy. Instead of playing with dolls, you’d spend hours playacting. At one point, you were a ballet teacher dancing around your room. You said you were not a happy kid. Did you spend a lot of time alone, aside from getting beaten up by your brothers?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah. I think I did spend [inaudible 00:06:38]. I did spend a lot of time alone, for sure. Again, I think it was the 70s and 80s, and I think that parents didn’t really do what they do now, which is insist on family dinners, or just show up in a different, more present way. I think that my parents did better than their parents, but I think that, yeah, I had a lot of time alone. I also watched a ton of television, that was a real healing balm for me, which ultimately was actually a good thing for my work. But it was lonely. It definitely wasn’t a happy childhood really until 12, which sounds really young, but when I fell in love with acting, that was when things really shifted for me, and I had a dream, I had a goal, I had a passion, and that helped me a lot, find connection within myself and others.
Debbie Millman:
What made you decide to try out for that eighth grade school production of Fiddler on the Roof?
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s pretty funny, actually. That’s actually a great question, because I remember when I signed up to audition thinking, “Who do I think I am that I can play this character in this show, or what makes me think that I can get up on a stage and make people look at me?” But I guess I must have had a little guardian angel or something, or there was something in me that was calling me to that. And I remember after I auditioned, my English teacher, who at the time did not think of much of me, I can tell you that right now, because I was a bit of a hippie, actually, at 12, looked at me and said, “Oh my God, you sing like a bird,” he said to me, and I remember thinking, “Is that good? Is that a good thing?”
Debbie Millman:
So did Joni Mitchell, by the way.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah. And so yeah, my English teacher was the drama teacher, as is often the case in these kinds of schools. And I got this great part, and that was it. I was happy all the time, especially when I got to rehearsal. And actually, on the days that I didn’t have rehearsal, I wasn’t so happy. But the days that I did it was like, “Oh my God, this is it. This is everything.”
Debbie Millman:
Now, before you even tried out for the play, I read that you didn’t think that you were talented in any way. And in fact, you thought you were rather mediocre. Was that something that you were sort of self-creating? Or was that something that you were told?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Truly, my stepfather was a very exacting serious man. He had what is still considered one of the greatest artistic eyes that there ever have been.
Debbie Millman:
He’s a great art dealer, yeah. Collector.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Great art dealer, yeah. He bought the first Jackson Pollocks, the first Rothkos, the first Jasper Johns, Rauschenbergs, Barnett Newmans, he was a serious connoisseur, and if he could spot it, you got it. And he was also highly intellectual. And I think that when we moved into his home at age six, my dad, who had been like, “Everything you do is great,” and, “Hey, we’re all playing touch football and playing tag, and you don’t have to be special in any way. I just think you’re the pips because you’re mime, because you’re a kid and you’re adorable, and I love you,” it became much more exacting, and I felt criticized on a very profound level constantly.
And so he was critical of all of us, and probably himself. Now I can look back with so much empathy, but all of a sudden when someone’s looking at you like that, you start going, “Oh, well, I really am not really that special or worthwhile or anything.” And we weren’t focused on, so that probably also had a lot to do with feeling like I wasn’t interesting enough to be focused on. That all changed so profoundly in almost a really uncomfortable way when I was 12 and I was in that play. Suddenly, my parents were like, “Oh my God, you’ve got this enormous talent.” And all of a sudden their eyes were on me. And it was almost terrifying, in a way.
Debbie Millman:
I read something that I just was so moved by, about your reaction to being on stage at that age, and you said, “I felt like my soul had left my body and was dancing around the stage.” What a profound experience to have in a lifetime.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh, God, it really was. It was.
Debbie Millman:
And then you got your first gig as a player on the soap opera, Another World. And I understand your mother had a close friend from college, a man named Philip Carlson, who was a manager, and she said, “Yes, you could audition,” because she didn’t think you’d get it, and then you got it. What was that like at 16 years old to be auditioning for a major television show?
Kyra Sedgwick:
It was crazy. I wanted it desperately. Between 12 and 16, I had decided this was definitely what I was going to be doing with my life, and I had pursued it in the ways that I could pursue it. I went to acting camp, and I studied at HB Studios, and I was taking it very seriously, but I didn’t think about actually pursuing it professionally at that young age, until this friend of my mother’s was like, “How about you just audition ‘for fun’, and see what happens just to give you practice in auditioning?” And I was like, “Yes.” And my parents said it was okay, and so yeah, I auditioned, and I felt in my element. I don’t think I even felt scared. I think I was like, “Well, I got this.” And I did get this. And then doing the actual show was amazing. It was life changing, and it was… It’s a very professional atmosphere. They’re not going to cut you any slack because you’re 16. And so a lot was expected of me, and I was excited to live up to that.
Debbie Millman:
Your first on-screen television appearance was on January 15th, 1982. You played a 16-year-old, Julia Shearer, the troubled granddaughter of Liz Matthews, the soap’s matriarch. What was the experience of becoming a professional actor like for you?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I was so incredibly excited. I sat in the makeup chair, I got my makeup done, my first scene was just me in a phone booth calling my grandmother…
Debbie Millman:
Very dramatic.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
The coat, the krishnas…
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, a rock group called The Deep Six, and then I had this giant closeup with a push-in at the end, and I remember when my parents bought a DVR, like a DV… VHS player.
Debbie Millman:
VHS, yeah. VCR, something like that.
Kyra Sedgwick:
VCR, yeah, whatever, and they recorded it, and I was like, “Oh my God, there I am.” And I thought I looked pretty after not thinking I was pretty at all. It was mind-blowing. And it was also weird, but just great. I really felt totally in my element, and it was a very professional, funny situation there. And I would just live for scripts in my mailbox, and oh my God, and look and see how many scenes I had, and oh my God, counting my words, the whole thing.
Debbie Millman:
You studied acting at Sarah Lawrence College, and then you transferred to the University of Southern California, where you graduated with a theater degree, but at that point, you gave yourself a deadline. You gave yourself six years to make it. Why six years? How did that number come about?
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s so funny. I have no idea. And also, first of all, I just want to clarify that I have not graduated from college, and I went to US-
Debbie Millman:
You attended it, then.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I attended, exactly. I attended. But I have no idea except to say that I didn’t want to take my parents’ money. And I knew that at a really young age. I didn’t want to be under anybody’s thumb, and I wanted to make my own way. And so I figured after the soap opera, I think I figured I had enough money for X amount of years, but six sounds like a lot, frankly. But I really did feel, and I really do believe, that if I didn’t start booking things, that I would’ve quit, because I was very aware that it was an artistic endeavor, yes, but that I had to make a living.
Debbie Millman:
In 1983, you auditioned for the movie Flashdance. Is it true that you scolded the director Adrian Lyne for taking a phone call during your audition?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I totally did. I totally did, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I love that.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I was like, “You’re not going to pick that up, are you?” Because he was reaching for it, and he looked at me and burst out laughing. I had a lot of those kinds of things with men, where I would bust them, and they loved it. I think it was one of the reasons why I got born on the 4th of July with Oliver Stone, was because that, one of the first things he said to me was, “So you went to Brearley, huh? You’re a spoiled private school kid?” And I don’t remember what my retort was, but whatever it was, he just was like, “Oh, okay, this is great. I don’t have to worry about this person. She’s going to bust me right back if I try to bust her. If I say something, she’s not going to shrivel up and die.” And I’m grateful to my stepfather for that kind of prowess.
Debbie Millman:
It’s funny, I find that sort of the more powerful a man is, the more likely they seem to acquiesce to push back. I remember making a creative presentation to the CEO of a major health food company, and while I was making the presentation, he ended up… He was texting or doing something on his phone, and at the end of the presentation, he goes, “Ah, I don’t really understand it.” I said, “Well, I’m not surprised since you really weren’t paying attention.” And that was when I won him over.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh my God, amazing. I love that so much.
Debbie Millman:
Now, I know you worked with Jennifer Beals on Proof. Did you ever tell her about auditioning for the role that she ultimately got?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I think I might have said something, because the other funny thing about that story was that I got a callback, and they asked to do the dancing part. And they asked us to pick a song, and to just do improvisational dancing, but we had to wear a leotard with no tights and heels. And I did not do that. And I remember my agent being like. “That it’s a big mistake if you’re not going to do it.” And I just said, “You know what? I can’t. I can’t with just a leotard.” So I got myself a little mini-skirt and did it that way. But I think I might have told her that, she might have laughed. I didn’t get anywhere close, but I do remember dancing with these ridiculous red heels that I’d gotten, because I didn’t have heels. I didn’t know from heels at that time in my life.
And I had gone to some drag store downtown on Canal Street or something like that, and I remember there was a giant table at the other side of this warehouse size loft where we were supposed to be dancing, and there were just 10 men, one of whom had on mirrored sunglasses. And I can’t remember what the song was, but I just remember thinking, “There’s just no way I’m getting this.” And I definitely did not get that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s so interesting that they were making you do that kind of dancing when, in fact, there was a dance double for the movie.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Well, she did definitely do some of the dancing, but there was a lot of very muscular kind of break dancing and stuff like that. But I’m sure they didn’t think that at the time. Plus, I know that… I’m certain that Jennifer’s a good dancer in her own right, but maybe at the time, they didn’t think about that.
Debbie Millman:
Your very first movie role was the lead in the 1985 film, War and Love. How did you land a starring role in your first film?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh my God. It was hell. I think I auditioned 30 times for this thing, that nobody ended up seeing, but it felt critical to me at the time, and not only because it was a movie that I wanted to be a lead in the movie, but really because it was about the Holocaust. It was about the children in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, and frankly, I think was just so moved by playing Fidel in Fiddle on the Roof, and that whole Anna Tefka song, and how the Jews were persecuted, and this was another version of that.
I wanted it desperately. I auditioned so many times. Moshé Mizrahi was a very well known and famous Israeli director at the time, but it was great. I was 17, I turned 17 in Budapest where we shot the movie. We shot in Budapest and Hungary, and we actually shot at Auschwitz Birkenau, and it was a harrowing thing to experience as an actor. And I remember that feeling of having been through something, stayed with me for many years after I finished that movie, and I was so young. It’s kind of remarkable that it hit me so hard.
Debbie Millman:
The movie didn’t get particularly good reviews, but the New York Times film critic, Vincent Canby stated that, “Kyra Sedgwick, a pretty blonde actress who looks like a teenage Julie Christie, does surprisingly well.”
Kyra Sedgwick:
I love that so much.
Debbie Millman:
I know, right? I wonder what that really is saying in terms of the pretty part, but in any ca… Obviously you’re gorgeous, but it’s funny how that becomes… Nobody would say that about a man. “He’s a pretty blonde actor,” right?
Kyra Sedgwick:
No, no, no, no, no.
Debbie Millman:
Do reviews matter to you?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh my God, reviews. It’s so funny, because when I hear that review, which I remember my mother quoting young Julie Christie, because that just made her so happy. It was like… Oh, my God.
Debbie Millman:
I can understand that.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Forget it. There’s nothing… That was the best compliment I could have possibly gotten. When reviews are good, they’re not good enough. And when reviews are bad, they’re devastating. So I do everything I can not to read reviews to this day. And Kevin and I have a deal that neither one of us read reviews, so that we don’t know something that the other person doesn’t.
Debbie Millman:
Is it hard to maintain that?
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s hard to maintain it, yeah, sometimes, especially when you look up on your IMDb and something pops up like, “Hey, notification.” But they have a job to do, and they do it well, some of them, but you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. You’re damned if you read them and they’re great, and then you believe it, and then when they don’t love you, it’s horrible. I have a very complicated relationship with it, and yet, I have to say, that if I’m going to go look at a movie, I sometimes look. So I give it credence, but I try not to as an artist.
Debbie Millman:
You met actor, director and musician, Kevin Bacon, for the second time while you were both starring in the 1987 television film, Lemon Sky, and you said you knew right away he was the one. But in all the accounts I’ve read of your courtship, Kevin has always said that you were aloof and standoffish at the beginning, and wouldn’t have dinner with him for weeks.
Kyra Sedgwick:
That’s true.
Debbie Millman:
So you knew, but you also didn’t want to-
Kyra Sedgwick:
I knew pretty quickly, but I did not know right away. I thought he thought he was all that in a bag of chips. That he thought he was really super cool, and-
Debbie Millman:
Well, he kind of is.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Exactly. And I was dating somebody else at the time, and I was like, “Why would I have dinner with you? I’m dating somebody, and plus you don’t really want to have dinner with me anyway. You’re just saying that,” kind of thing. I think I thought of that at the time. But it was very… It really was two weeks of him sort of wooing me, and then when we did have dinner that one night, he walked me home. And the next morning, I literally woke up and I was like, “Oh my God, I had this very warm, safe feeling in my belly, and what is that? Oh, it’s that guy who I just had dinner with.”
And I was like, “That feels like home.” And I was like, “Well, what does that mean?” Because I never really felt like home anywhere was really home. But then I thought, “Oh, I guess it’s him.” Then I went to work, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s definitely him.” So once I actually spent a minute with him, I was like, “Oh, this is it,” because I’d never had anything like that. I think I kept myself very safe in the world of romance and opening my heart, for fear of having it destroyed smartly. But I was aloof in the beginning, because I thought, “What does this guy keep asking me out for dinner for?” I was confused.
Debbie Millman:
I hinted that your meeting on the film wasn’t actually your first meeting, and I was wondering if you can share the story of that actual first meeting.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, so my mother was a big fan of his, and he was about seven years old… He is seven years older than I am, but as we’ve said, I fell in love with acting at 12. And so for my birthday… I mean for Christmas, the year that I turned 12, my mother gave my brother and I theater tickets. And she was a big fan of the theater, she still is, and she had seen Kevin in a few plays, and this latest play that he was in was called Album. It was a very cool little play down at the Cherry Lane Theater about four 20-somethings, and he was one of the stars, and mom thought that my brother and I would love to go see it.
And so she gave us tickets for Christmas, and we went and saw it, and afterwards, we were leaving the theater and we went into a deli to get something, and my brother Nico said, “Oh, Hico, there’s that guy from the play, that guy from the play.” And we thought he was really good. And he goes, “Go up to him and tell him you thought he was good.” And I was like, “No, I don’t want to go up to him. Come on.” He’s like, “Come on, come on. Tell him you thought he was good.”
So I went up to him, and I was like, “Hi, I thought you were really good in the play.” And he was like, “Thanks, sweetheart.” I remember him saying, “Thanks, sweetheart.” And I was like, “Oh,” [inaudible 00:25:46] like a little kid, which of course I was, I didn’t think of myself as a little kid. He was 19, I was 12. Anyway, it was funny. And then years later when I worked with him, I was like, “Do you remember that I came up to you in a deli afterwards?” And he goes, “No, of course I don’t remember.”
Debbie Millman:
Oh, that’s a wonderful story. And I didn’t realize that I was at the Cherry Lane Theater, which is my absolute number one favorite theater in New York.
Kyra Sedgwick:
So great.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that you didn’t ever have any great role models for healthy marriages, but you knew in your heart and soul that Kevin was the right person, and it has been an unquestionable truth in your life. And you’ve been married now for 35 years. You just had your 35th anniversary, happy anniversary.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
In Hollywood years, that’s like 135 years, but what do you attribute to your longevity?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Longevity, that’s what I attribute to longevity. Longevity.
Debbie Millman:
Okay, yep.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, I just think that not getting divorced. I never wanted to get divorced. You never wanted to get divorced. We really like each other. We really like spending time together. We enjoy working together, we enjoy playing together, we enjoy puzzling things out together, we enjoy raising children together, we enjoy walking together down this road of life. And I feel incredibly grateful that I found somebody who can let me grow and change and shift, and doesn’t get threatened by that. We just got lucky. That’s the only thing I can say about how we attribute it. We really got lucky right off the bat.
Debbie Millman:
There were two things that I read that really struck me that I’m going to try to take into my own marriage, which is only three years, so quite a long way to go, but you state that couples should play sexy and fight clean, which is something I think is really true, but then also to always be aware of a WME, and what is a WME for our listeners? And how do you manage the WME?
Kyra Sedgwick:
The worst mood ever is a WME. And mostly I think that if either one of us are in the WME, the greatest thing you can do is just give someone a lot of space to be in the WME, and not try to change it. That’s a good one to remember. It took me many years. And it’s not personal, they’re just in the WME.
Debbie Millman:
Right. You got married when you were 23. You conceived your son Travis on your honeymoon, and when Travis was five and your daughter Sosie was two, you had an epiphany. You realized that your parents had split when you were three, and it became clear that for your children, everything was mom and dad in how they dealt with each other. Did that help you understand your own childhood better?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, I think that was a moment where I went, “Oh boy, I’ve got to do some work. I’ve got some darkness in here, and she needs to come out and be talked about, and looked at, and examined, because she’s in here running the show, and I don’t even know it.” What I realized was that parents are incredibly important. And I could see in my kids that we were their everything. We were their everything.
And if there were to be some cataclysmic shift that happened where we would split, it would rip their world in two. And I think that that kind of honor and respect for a really traumatic thing that happened in my childhood had not… We had not been taught that that was something that would affect us later on in life. I think that both of my parents, probably out of their own sense of needing to be okay, I completely understand it, for their own sense of not being terrible parents, would tell us that everything was fine. Yes, we split up, but mommy and daddy still love each other, and mommy and daddy will always love you, and it’s not going to affect you later on in life.
I don’t think that there was any kind of emotional space held for, “This must be really hard for you.” Ever, ever, ever, ever. And that’s something that would never happen today, at least with on top of it parents. We’ve learned how important it’s to hold a space for all the feelings. But at the time, I think that for their own preservation, and I know for my mother’s, she really needed us to be okay. And when I say us, I mean me and my two brothers. So we acted like it was okay.
In fact, one of the amazing things that happened between Kevin and I when we first met was on one of our dinners, first or second or third dinner, he said to me, “Tell me about your childhood,” or something like that. And I said, “My dad left when I was three, and my parents got divorced a couple of years later.” And he was like, “Oh, wow, how was that?” And I said, “Oh, it was fine. They handled it really well, so we were completely fine. It didn’t affect us.” And he laughed and went, “Well, I guess you can keep thinking that for a couple of more years.” And I remember looking at him like, “What? What are you talking about?” But it wasn’t until many years later that I was like, “Oh.” And I remembered him saying that, and I think that it was just a story I told myself. It’s like that great movie that incredible Sarah Polly did called-
Debbie Millman:
Women Talking?
Kyra Sedgwick:
No, called Stories We Tell.
Debbie Millman:
Yes, that’s [inaudible 00:31:40].
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s like the stories we tell ourselves, and then suddenly you’re like, “Why am I telling myself a story that at three, when my dad left my mother and she almost had a nervous breakdown, I was fine? And when they finally got divorced, that was fine?” It wasn’t fine. I’m sure it was… I know it was horrible. I don’t remember it that much, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect me. So I think that those are the kind of things that come right up in your face when you have children, in a way that you could probably skate by on your subconscious level forever, and be perfectly fine about it, and then suddenly when you have kids, you’re like, “You have to look at this thing.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because you did all of that work to understand it better for yourself. I’m wondering if there’s any correlation to right after you had kids, a lot of the roles that you were getting became significantly more prominent. You were nominated for a Golden Globe for your part in Miss rose White in 1992, another in ’95 for the film Something To Talk About, where you played Julia Robert’s sassy sister, so I’m wondering if getting that more clear in your own mind facilitated a better sort of understanding of your talent.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I think there’s no question at all that the more inside job work we can do, we’ll be better for everything in our lives. Ourselves, the ripple effect with family is undeniable, and learning about yourself as a human, and accepting all the parts of yourself can definitely help your acting. And absolutely, people see it. And then they want you to portray someone in that point in their life. And drama, conflict, tension is at the core of comedy, drama, everything at movies place, everything.
Debbie Millman:
I have one sort of trivia question for you about Something To Talk About. My wife and I watched it the other night again. It’s one of her favorite films.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh, that’s so nice.
Debbie Millman:
And she actually has a question for you. Emma Rae King, what did she do for a living? Because she didn’t work for the horse farm.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh, I think… I felt like she did a lot of accounting for her dad, and did the hiring and firing, actually. I thought she was the one that would tell people the bad news when they were getting fired. Because at one point he’s like, “You’re going to deal with telling your sister that the shit’s hitting the fan with her husband, right? You’re going to do that for me, because I can’t do it.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, we were taking bets on, maybe she was the lawyer or the financier, we were really flummoxed about it. In any case, you got your first producer credit in 1996 for the beautiful movie Losing Chase. You also starred in the movie with Helen Mirren and Beau Bridges, and you said that you’re a good producer because you’re bossy and opinionated. And while you don’t always think you’re right, you think you have good ideas and love giving people jobs. And so given your nature, what was it like being directed in that film by your husband? Because that was his directorial debut.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Right. Well, it was funny, because I got that script and knew I wanted to produce it. And at that time, what producing meant for me was getting financing, which came really easily, because Showtime, for whatever reason at that time, was making movies and wanted to make a movie with me, and hiring other people. Hiring the pop sort of group.
And when Kevin read the script and he liked it, I was faced with a very difficult decision, because I knew that if I were to give him this job, it would be Kevin Bacon’s first directing job, and not Kyra Sedgwick’s first producing job. And that is the way it is still considered to this day. I knew I was making a sacrifice. Having said that, the material really spoke to him. He’d spent a lot of time in Martha’s Vineyard, he knew what I was going for, and I thought it could help the movie to have him as the director. So it was one of those moments where it was like, “Oh, yay, I get you to have my first producorial gig, but it’s going to look like something else for people.”
Debbie Millman:
So people think that the director… People that aren’t in the movies think the director’s the boss.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
So what was it like being the boss, but then being directed by your husband?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah. Well, I think that that answer gives you the sense of what I was grappling with. Because as we’ve established, we live in a patriarchy still, and also we live in a world where people love movie stars. And so he was definitely the one that everybody felt was the leader of this whole thing, that maybe possibly I’d gotten some credit just for fun. As a producer, at that time, I was much more of a just creative producer, where I was like, “Okay, I got the script, I’m going to hire the director, I’m going to take it to someplace and have them do it.” So that was sort of the beginning and the end of my job as a producer, until it came to editing, I went back in there. But I really had to, as an actor, let go of that hat while we were shooting.
Debbie Millman:
2005 was a big year for the Sedgwick Bacon family. You were all involved in the film Loverboy, another film that Kevin directed and starred in, along with you and your two children. Loverboy was a very, very… Or is a very dark movie, with a totally unexpected ending. Crazy unexpected, at least to me. How do you incorporate playing someone so evil in your own psyche?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, it’s funny. I never thought of her as evil. I thought of her-
Debbie Millman:
Creating so much harm.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah. No, I know. It’s-
Debbie Millman:
Evil is not the right word.
Kyra Sedgwick:
No, no. Listen, she tries to commit a double suicide with her seven-year-old son. I would call that a version of evil. But I knew in order to play her, I couldn’t really feel that way about her. What I felt about her was that she didn’t get enough as a child. She had parents that were narcissistically in love with each other. They were everything to each other, and the child was like an afterthought, always. And they were never letting that child into their partnership. And so she has this child to have something of her own.
And I have to find some way into the character where I find some nugget of connection. And my connection with that character was having had two children of my own, there always comes that moment, that first moment when your child lets go of your hand. And it happens either on the first day of kindergarten or the first day of daycare, or sometimes it doesn’t happen until much later for some people, but there’s always some time in which your kid is walking away from you and growing up on some level, and they will never, ever need you in the same way as they do when they’re infants and toddlers.
And that is something that is very difficult for some people to get over. It was impossible for this mother to get over, but I can tell you that I have… I feel like the tragedy of motherhood is that it is a slow moving letting go that happens all the time at every year, at every level of their development. And it’s the only job that if you do it exceedingly well, you get fired. And that, to me, is heartbreaking. And I could really relate to the mom in the movie because of that.
Debbie Millman:
2005 also brought you one of the roles you’re now most known for, playing the great, complicated, beautiful, brilliant Brenda Leigh Johnson on the television show, the Closer, for seven seasons. Now, I initially read that you wanted to turn that part down, but it was Kevin who urged you to take it. Why were you so unsure about taking the part?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I wouldn’t even read it for a bunch of months. My manager at the time was like, “You have to read it. It’s great.” And I was like-
Debbie Millman:
It’s you. It was meant for you. No one else could have played that part. No one.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Well, I knew it shot in LA. That was a deal right there for me, for months. And then Kevin said to me, “I really think you should read it.” And then when I read it and I fell in love with it, he was like, “I really think you should do it.” And we knew,, on some deep level that the kids were not going to move to LA. And I don’t really know even how we knew that, but I think Travis and Sosie were just such… We had just made this choice early on in their life to raise them in New York, and that felt very important. And then it became important to them.
So it was a hard choice to make because of the kids. And I think that what Kevin was saying was like, “Look, there’s been a lot of things you’ve turned down because it wasn’t the right time for the kids, and I think it’s time you stop doing that. And this is a great role, and so I will not work when you’re shooting.” And in the beginning it was four and a half months, and they would come out every other weekend, and Sosie was 12, which is still really young. Travis was 16, and a very old 16, really. And I don’t look back with regret at all about taking it, and I missed stuff. No question that I missed stuff.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you won nearly every award you could for playing Brenda Leigh Johnson. An Emmy, A Golden Globe, a Satellite Award, a People’s Choice Award, the cast was nominated for a Screen Actor’s Guild Award every year you were on the air, you were also awarded a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television. For most of the run, the show was cable television’s highest rated drama. People loved your character so much, they wanted to look like her. Fashion blogs filled up with detailed examinations of the vintage jackets and your floral skirts. It was so much fun reading through all of this. And for many years after this show ended, there was a company making replicas of the purse that you carried, the one that you shot the gun through the purse in the last episode. What do you think it was about Brenda Leigh Johnson that resonated so deeply with people?
Kyra Sedgwick:
She was such a surprising character. She was just a bundle of contradictions. She was wildly underestimated in a way that I think that people just love. She seemed like this pretty blonde to go full circle, who didn’t have a brain in her head, who spoke with a lilting southern draw, and wore nothing but skirts and heels and sweater sets, and was the smartest badass in the room, who could elicit confessions, which are the only airtight way to send a criminal to jail. And she did it every episode, [inaudible 00:43:23] a few, and she did it with a lot of panache and a hell of a lot of style. And she was funny, she was flawed deeply, she was morally ambiguous, and she was a compulsive eater. And-
Debbie Millman:
Ring Dings. I love that they were Ring Dings.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, exactly. And was utterly accessible. I loved her. She mattered to me. She mattered to a lot of women. I know a lot of women that have gone into that business, into some kind of criminal investigatory business, because of it. And she was incredibly important because she made people a lot of money, which in this business, is the key to longevity. And that felt really good. And she paved the way for, I think, a lot of women being in starring roles from that moment on, because they saw that it paid.
Debbie Millman:
Well, one of the interesting things I think about Brenda Leigh Johnson was the fact that she was all of those great things and flawed. And you saw those flaws, and it somehow felt comforting that here was this sort of brilliant, strong woman who also did sometimes have questionable ethics. But I think you knew deep, deep down through and through, she was a morally noble person.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, exactly. I remember the first episode, that chocolate thing, we’re rewarding herself with the Ring Ding at the end, or Ding Dong, West Coast, East Coast-
Debbie Millman:
Exactly.
Kyra Sedgwick:
It’s a battle to the finish.
Debbie Millman:
As long as the tin foils around it.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yes, exactly. And I remember saying to James, “Well, you’re going to keep that, right? You’re going to keep it in the subsequent episodes?” And he was like, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” I was like, “Oh no, you have to. You have to keep it.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. You lay on the bed and go, “Mm.”
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh yeah, forget it.
Debbie Millman:
What’s better than that?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Nothing.
Debbie Millman:
After seven seasons as the top-rated most awarded show on television, you made the decision to leave. You decided to retire from the show. Why?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I really didn’t want to become one of those number one on the call sheets who is really kind of bitter and sour and icky, and not treating people well, and not grateful, and that was a big part of it, honestly. And I had never been that person. It was a joy from top to bottom, and it was all consuming, but I didn’t want it to turn. I also didn’t want to hang around too long in that role, and then only be known for that role. That was the biggest reason, really, was because I’m an artist who needs to be fed in different places.
But it was a hard decision, because I knew how deeply it would affect so many people, all the crew. We had no defectors. People came back every year to do the show, and it was only 15 episodes. And all our crew came back every single year. So I knew that it meant a lot, breaking up the family, but I knew it was the right thing for me to do as an artist. And ultimately, I don’t want to hang around too long and then have the audience start to turn on us. That was just too heartbreaking to imagine.
Debbie Millman:
In the 10 years since you left the show, you’ve continued acting on both episodic television and in films, you’ve continued producing, but you’ve also taken up an entirely new role, directing. After working on set for so many years in front of the camera, what motivated you to get behind the lens?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Well, I think there were a couple of things. I think that I had reached critical mass in seeing work that I had done as an actor not cut well, not shot well, not written well, I think I had gotten to the point where I was like, “Why is my best stuff on the cutting room floor? Why did they edit it that way? Why do I not have any coverage in this scene?” Honestly. And I think I just got to the point where I was like, “Well, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” When you look back on my career, I had worked with so many great directors for so many years, like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then I think that kind of fell away, it felt like. And so I was, I think, becoming increasingly frustrated with what was coming to me, and also what ended up on screen.
And Kevin actually, again, featured prominently in… My eye for the way something is directed, became more and more keen. And he would always say, “I don’t know why you’re not directing. You have such a… You think of things directoraly, you see things you directoraly, you always, when we leave a movie, talk for a long time about the way things were shot and the arc of the character, but also arc of things visually, and you should think about it.” And I was like, “No, no, no, I’ll never direct.” And I used to say, “I’ll never direct. I’ll never direct.” And I think that honestly, a big part of that was because I thought I would never be great at it, as if one has to be great right off… out of the gate.
But I think that ultimately what happened was, I had this script that I had been trying to produce for 10 years called Story of a Girl, it was a book that I had optioned with my friend, I was meeting at Lifetime with Tanya Lopez to talk about producing stuff for them, and I was sitting outside in the waiting room, and there was a little video that they had done about female directors. And I watched the video, wasn’t thinking much of it, but then when I went into speak to her, she said, “Hey, listen, if there’s something that you are interested, we’re doing this mandate here where we’re only hiring female directors for a certain amount of time, and if you have a passion project, and…”
I just blurted out, “I have Story of a Girl and I want to direct it,” and kind of turned around and was like, “Who the hell just said that?” And realized, that was me. And she read it that night and said, “I want to do this with you and I’ll give you a little money,” and that’s how that came about. But I think that it was one of those things where my soul was kind of ahead of my brain at that moment, but it was daunting and scary and wonderful and turned out really well.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. You said this about directing actors, “I think that every actor is ripping themselves open and leaving a piece of their soul on the floor for you, so you better honor what that is. I feel like I know that intrinsically. That’s not something I had to learn. That’s something I deeply understand.” Kyra, how do you best create a space for an actor to sort of rip themselves open like that?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Well, I think that simply by virtue of the fact that they know that I know how it feels to be so vulnerable, and to have this giant piece of machinery, this camera, between you and the other actor, all you’re trying to do is tell the truth, and you have to do it between action and cut, I think that they understand intrinsically that that’s something that I understand. Having said that, I just try to be incredibly kind and loving and celebratory, and create a really safe place for them, so that they can fly without a net and give them whatever they need to get there. Every actor needs something different, but I think that you learn their instrument, and then do what you can to try to help them play. And I help them try to play their interest instrument the best that they can.
Debbie Millman:
I want to talk with you now about your most current project, your first narrative film project, a theatrical movie titled Space Oddity. Your production company, Big Swing, acquired the rights to the story, which in many ways, is a love letter to the planet, but it’s also an intimate portrait of family connections and disconnections and hope and sadness and grief and new love. What drew you to this project?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Well, all those things you just mentioned. I’m like, “Sign me up. I want to watch that movie, I want to live in that movie.” There were so many themes that were in the script, and that we spent a lot of time cultivating with the writer that were just of primary importance to me as a human and as an artist. I think that storytelling can change you, I think that storytelling can help you to exercise your compassion in such a beautiful way, and only humans get to do that, although there are some mammals that feel compassion as well, but learning about ourselves through art, whatever that art form is, is just a critical part of living for me.
And so all of those themes feel critically important to me, and more important as I get older. That idea of there’s no place that you can go that you’re not going to be hurt, that people aren’t going to die, that there aren’t going to be struggles, and the way through it is with connection with others, and there’s no other option. And being present means you’re going to get hurt, but it’s worth it.
And the journey of it, the movie was so entertaining, I found it, on the page. I was flying through the script just thinking, “I love these characters. I don’t understand them necessarily, but I want to stick with it until the end.” The payoff felt so beautiful. I love the book ending of the movie of like, “I’m going to go to Mars.” “No, I’m going to stay on Earth.” And then everything in between is, how do you be that person who wants to check out in the ultimate sense because things are just too hard, and then you become that person who goes, “No, I am fully immersed and planting myself in the soil.” I just love that journey.
Debbie Millman:
I do too. I also was so impressed with the way in which the decision making was shown. So many times in a movie where there’s this sort of cataclysmic moment, or this cinematic climactic moment of awareness, it sort of pops up. And here you sort of see the process of struggling through it. And that’s one of the things that I enjoyed the most about it, was really feeling like I understood the inner dialogue of this journey, without it being a surprise to discover. You felt like you were going along in that decision making. I love the movie. It’s a beautiful movie. You said it was really hard to raise the money for this film. Why?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there’s no question, I’m a female director, and even though I was nominated for a DGA award with Story of a Girl, it’s not like it made a lot of money for people. It was a respected movie on Lifetime, which is not going to win you a lot of financial support for your next gig. I think it’s a sweet movie, which I think that in the world where it’s just so hard to get people to go to a movie often, they want it to be possibly about a true story, or a horror movie, or something that you look at it and go, “I know what that’s going to be.”
And I think this movie demands more of you than that. And I do think that there’s something weird about sweet tales, even though I feel like what we need so much is sweetness in the world right now. Not saccharin, we’re going to take you on a ride, and we’re going to give you some pain, because there’s definitely some pain in this movie, but ultimately, it’s going to be hopeful, and you’re going to feel good about life afterwards. I think that’s something that we’re having trouble selling, even though I think it’s what people crave.
And I also think that what I heard a lot is it’s execution dependent, which means, “We don’t know if you can do it. We don’t know if you can cast it. We don’t know if you can do it.” And I find that so shocking, because I think everything is execution dependent, but I think it means something else in Hollywood that I didn’t know at the time. But we have 15 executive producers, and we made the movie. And I trust that it will find its people. You know what I mean?
Debbie Millman:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Which is the good thing about, yeah, it was only in the theater for a week because that was the only… That was the deal. It was only going to be that. But the fact that it’s going to have a long life on streaming, and that feels good about what’s happening in the world right now in movies, but even though it’s kind of painful that we’re not all together having an experience in the movie theater.
Debbie Millman:
Well, in this particular movie, I think it’s a very intimate movie. I don’t necessarily want to be listening to somebody eating their popcorn next to me while I’m sort of feeling the feelings.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Good. I’m glad.
Debbie Millman:
But you’re the third female director I’ve interviewed this season. Sian Heder, who directed CODA, Sarah Polly, who directed Women Talking, and it’s so incredibly disheartening to hear the same thing over and over about women directors in this business. And I really hope that that changes a lot sooner than it’s changing.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Me too.
Debbie Millman:
Because these movies matter. Much of the movie is set on a flower farm. How did you find this flower farm? Where can we go see this flower farm in real life?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, this flower farm exists. It is a working flower farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. I think that’s it. I might be wrong, but I know the town of Wickford is where we shot the movie, and they were close by Wickford, and it’s called Robin Hollow Farm, and it is a family owned farm, husband and wife, Mike Hutchison and Polly, and it is a stunning flower farm. And I was in Los Angeles in February of 2021, and I was desperate to find a flower farm, I knew I wanted to shoot in Wickford, Rhode Island because I love the town, it was perfect, and I needed to find a flower farm. And I went online and I looked up a bunch of flower farms in Rhode Island, and this one really stood out at me in every way. And I called them, I cold called the farm on the day before Valentine’s Day, and I called and-
Debbie Millman:
Busiest day of the year.
Kyra Sedgwick:
I know. And Polly picked up the phone and I immediately launched into, “Hi, I’m Kyra Sedgwick and I’ve got this movie that I want to shoot this summer in Rhode Island, and I saw your flower farm online and it’s so beautiful, and might you consider letting me shoot there?” And she said, she took a pause, and she goes, “Well, I’m going to have my husband call you back, because he’s a little more knowledgeable about the film world than I am, but I did want to remind you that you are calling a flower farm the day before Valentine’s Day.” And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I hate Valentine’s Day. I mean, I love Valentine’s Day. I mean, I just need [inaudible 00:59:02].”
And it was like I was talking to some rockstar. But yeah, we met with them that spring, and they went for it. They let us shoot there in the summer of 20… I guess it was summer of 2021. And it was absolutely incredible. Or maybe it was ’22. Sorry, I don’t remember my dates exactly. But in any case, that’s how I found the flower farm, literally online. And then I just got lucky.
Debbie Millman:
The casting is also really wonderful. I read that Kyle Allen, the young man who stars in the movie, came on board at the last minute, that somebody else had dropped out. Is he by any chance related to David Duchovny? He looks like an exact replica of Fox Mulder in the early X-Files days.
Kyra Sedgwick:
That’s so funny. People say he looks like him, they say he looks like Heath Ledger, which I also really see, and Mark Wahlberg, who I also see.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah.
Kyra Sedgwick:
But no, he is not related, as far as I know, to any of the above. He is his own creation, and he is a classically trained ballet dancer. And I think that was a real plus for me, because I know how hard it is to be a classically trained ballet dancer. And so this guy was going to know how to work hard. Aside from being a wonderful actor, with a lot of tenderness and soul and pain in his eyes, I knew he would know how to work really hard.
Debbie Millman:
And the chemistry between him and Alexandra Shipp, the young female star in the movie, is just palpable.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
Really wonderful casting.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah, I got lucky.
Debbie Millman:
And I read that though your husband is in it, he was not your first choice.
Kyra Sedgwick:
That is right. That is correct, yes.
Debbie Millman:
How do you feel about that?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I offered it to somebody else… Fine. When I asked him, he said, “I was wondering what took you so long.” I didn’t want to ask him to be in the movie because I didn’t want him to think that… He was in Story of a Girl, and I didn’t want him to feel like, “Boy, she can’t get a movie off the ground unless she puts me in it.” And honestly, that was the reason
Debbie Millman:
Your husband has stated that he’s never seen you happier at work than when you’re behind the camera. And you’ve stated that this part of your artistic journey as a director feels much more like a calling than your acting. And I think that’s just a wonderful thing to be able to discover in an artistic life. What advice would you give someone steeped in any career about making a significant pivot?
Kyra Sedgwick:
My mom was a really great role model in that way. She worked with kids with learning disabilities from the time I was little, until she was about 50, and then she studied and became a family therapist. She was a really great role model in going, “It never stops. You can keep learning, and you can keep trying new things.” So I would say keep trying new things. And sometimes it’s not that you are feeling old, it’s that you are bored.
And I’ve always had a love for learning, and while this is very much adjacent to what I do as an actor, it’s a bigger piece of the pie. And I think that in a way, as a woman, I was told, “You’re only supposed to have this little piece.” And I think that growing up in the business, I didn’t see a lot of female directors, so if you can’t see it, you really can’t dream it. And so I think that was part of it, but I think that it’s never too late to start something new, especially if you do the footwork to get you there.
Debbie Millman:
Is there anything you’d like to tackle that you haven’t yet?
Kyra Sedgwick:
I’d love to do a big action movie. I’ve done some action on City on a Hill, which was a show that I did for Showtime, and Ray Donovan, I did some action in that one. I’d love to do more of it. Again, I feel like it’s something that women aren’t invited to that party, and so I want to crash it.
Gina Prince Bythewood is just an idol of mine in that way. She just does action so well. And as an extension of great character, I think it can be something really wonderful. And I really want to lean more into big ballsy comedies. I love comedy, and I think I grew up on some of the greatest comedy of Mel Brooks and Bugs Bunny and Albert Brooks and Catherine O’Hara and all these incredible people, and I’ve got a real ear for it, so I want to do more of that as well.
Debbie Millman:
Well, speaking of action movies, this is my last question. You and Kevin both have parts in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special. In the film, Kevin is essentially abducted from his home, and I recently saw a video of you zooming in from your home on a late night talk show, and the house you were calling from looked suspiciously similar. Is it possible that your home was featured in the Guardians of the Galaxy special?
Kyra Sedgwick:
Oh my God, hell no. I have been in this business… Both of us have been in this business way too long to even consider letting anyone shoot here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not at all.
Debbie Millman:
It seems like they designed something that was rather similar in terms of the windows. I don’t know, maybe I’m making it up.
Kyra Sedgwick:
That’s so funny. Yeah, maybe because it looked a little modern or something like that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it.
Kyra Sedgwick:
But that was a billion-dollar house, and our homes are decidedly not that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I love that you were both in that, in the Zoom.
Kyra Sedgwick:
It was fun. And I love that I can say on IMDb that I’m in the Marvel universe, so that’s pretty exciting.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Kyra Sedgwick, thank you so much for Thank you making so much work that matters. And thank you so much for joining me today on Design Matters.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Thanks. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Debbie Millman:
Kyra Sedgwick’s latest film is Space Oddity, and it is out now. And it is wonderful. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.