For the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, Debbie Millman revisits conversations with distinguished actors Claire Danes, Ethan Hawke, Nick Offerman, Kyra Sedgwick, and Josh Brolin. These excerpts explore how they approach their craft, work with directors and fellow actors, and what it means to inhabit a role and sustain a creative life on stage and on screen.
Featuring Claire Danes, Ethan Hawke, Nick Offerman, Kyra Sedgwick, and Josh Brolin
Josh Brolin:
Yeah, that was just supposed to be a kiss. We filmed it, it was supposed to be a pack.
Claire Danes:
I would rollerblade from audition to audition.
Ethan Hawke:
He said, “You have two lines.”
I said, “Then heck yeah.”
Curtis Fox:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, we’ll hear from some of the actors that Debbie has interviewed over the years.
Nick Offerman:
Oh, I simply finally get it. Just act like yourself.
Kyra Sedgwick:
A lot was expected of me, and I was excited to live up to that.
Debbie Millman:
For the first 15 years of my two decade journey podcasting Design Matters, I didn’t interview actors. I’m not exactly sure why given actors often live exceedingly creative lives, and interviewing creative people has always been the foundation of the podcast. But beginning in 2020, I started booking some of my favorite actors. Doing so allowed me to do something that a lot of other interviewers don’t often get to do. I asked my guests all about the circuitous roads they took and route to becoming the acclaimed artists they currently are.
Claire Danes
First up is Claire Danes. I spoke with Claire in 2020 just after she wrapped the final season of Homeland. For her role as Carrie Mathison, Danes was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won two. But before we talked about her success, I asked her about the very beginnings of her career.
At six years old, you started therapy, which I believe you still continue to this day, and I understand that. I’ve been in therapy for 30 years with the same therapist. And you’ve said that you think it’s a helpful tool and a luxury to self-reflect and get some insight. What motivated you to start so young? I didn’t start till I was in my twenties, unfortunately.
Claire Danes:
Yeah, I went through a difficult time at six. I saw ghosts and other creatures.
Debbie Millman:
Do you think they were real, or do you think you were imagining it?
Claire Danes:
I think I was very confused at the time. Specifically, there was a gargoyle who “lived on the pipes of our loft” and would make me do things. And I think it was more like maybe burgeoning OCD or something, but I have to assume that I had a really unruly imagination and maybe I was confused about how to harness it, identify it, just coexist with it. Once I went to therapy, my parents’ therapist, I finally realized that I had a problem, and just that acknowledgement was sufficient to puncture the neuroses and they naturally dissipated.
I mean, I remember Gideon said, “Can you anticipate when you’re going to see these creatures?” And I guess I had to admit that I had anticipated them. And he said, “Well, then you can also make them go away.”
But yeah, I mean, I was dogged by that anxiety well into my 20s. I was really afraid of the dark. I’m not anymore. I’m really proud of that. I don’t know when that shift happened, but.
Debbie Millman:
I was going to ask you about that actually, how that happened.
Claire Danes:
I remember in college, I called my boyfriend in the middle of the night so that he could escort me to the dorm bathroom so I didn’t have to go alone. It still had a grip on me.
Debbie Millman:
How did you get over it? How did you get over that fear?
Claire Danes:
The iPhone flashlight maybe? I think it was that.
Debbie Millman:
Our technology. The many uses.
Claire Danes:
I don’t know. I think, look, I still have a lot of questions about what lurks in the ether and I’m really, really endlessly fascinated by the subconscious and what happens when our brains go dark at night. So my big phobias are ghosts, rats, and cockroaches, and I realized they’re all nocturnal. They’re all numerous. If you see one, you know there are countless others. It’s that kind of deep stuff that defines and motivates us that we can’t know fully, right? But I also, I mean, love that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I’m fascinated by it as well. What happens when we’re not thinking? What happens when we’re not seeing?
Claire Danes:
Yeah. It’s like the ocean. I mean, there’s so much of it and so little we understand about it.
Debbie Millman:
When you were eight years old, you were bothered by a male classmate and became worried when you considered the possibility that he could read your mind and discover your revenge fantasies. And when you asked your mom if it was possible for people to read your thoughts, she replied, “Your imagination is your own. You can do whatever you like with it.” And there right there is evidence of good parenting.
Claire Danes:
Yes. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to say?
Debbie Millman:
It’s an absolutely wonderful thing to say.
Claire Danes:
Yes. I’m getting goosebumps as you say that. It’s true. I just was so relieved. I was so relieved, because the vision I had was pretty violent.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. What was the revenge fantasy? What were you going to do?
Claire Danes:
Well, I did, I envisioned this circle of people. He was in the center of it, and I guess people just went in and beat him up, roughed him up. And then went back into the circle and another person went in and oh gosh. I don’t think I would ever allow myself to go there even now as an adult, but it was a release at the time.
Yeah, and I think that’s similar stuff that I was wrestling with. I mean, I think that was related to this business of the ghosts and what is a fleeting thought and what’s real and how do I negotiate all of that and what are my boundaries and where do I start and end and how do I engage with the objective world?
Debbie Millman:
Well, that’s also a lot about acting too, of course.
Claire Danes:
That is. That’s a lot about acting. And there has to be a porousness there between what is conceived, what is imagined, and what is actual, and you have to float in and out of those two states of being. I guess I’ve always been really consumed with thinking about that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s interesting because it was also at that point in your life, you decided you wanted to be an actress. But what I thought was so interesting was that you were worried about not being able to make enough money and you decided that you were going to become a therapist for your day job and teach acting workshops on the weekends. And I’m wondering, were you worried about not making enough money, or were you worried about not being successful?
Claire Danes:
That’s a really good question. I mean, it’s really calcified over time as my being nervous about being uncomfortable physically, not having enough money to support myself, which also had to do with a feeling of freedom. I wanted to be independent and have a sense of expansiveness in my life. I think it was more about that, but yeah, maybe there was the fear of doing it in a way that wouldn’t connect with people or wouldn’t be successful. Yeah, that might have been part of it.
Debbie Millman:
I love the fact that at 10 years old, you formally announced that money or no money, you have to be true to your art. There was no plan B. You were going to take the risk and become an actress. You decided this at 10 years old. I believed you announced this at the dinner table. And you went out and found an agent. Talk about independence. How did you find an agent? Did you just look one up in the phone book?
Claire Danes:
Kind of. I mean, my best friend, Ariel’s mom, is a woman called Tamar Rogoff, who’s a choreographer. So Ariel had done a student film and that same director was doing his next student film and was asking for a reference. And Tamar suggested me, so Tamar was my first agent. And then that was my first experience working on a set and in front of a camera. But I guess before that, I guess the first move that I made was to take acting classes at Lee Strasburg at 10 and totally loved it. And then there was a performing arts junior high school called PPAS, which is still around. I went in its first year of its existence, and I met other kids who were working professionally, and I had this student film under my belt and I guess I had done some other student films too. I was in that world.
And then it was at that school through those other kids where I learned what an agent was and what a headshot was. We had this dark room in our loft and the woman who was renting it took my headshot photos and we printed them right there on site and we sent them out, and people answered. Agents answered and then they saw this little film that I had done and I guess that was arresting enough to have them hire me. But it was really funny because I would rollerblade from audition to audition arriving a sweaty mess, but the stakes were so low. I had a day job of being a kid and going to school. And I mean, of course I didn’t feel like it was extracurricular because it was so clearly my life’s calling, but not a whole lot was writing on it. And I was just grateful to have a chance to do it. I just loved it so much. I didn’t have to get the job, I was reading sides with the casting director and that was another turn. So I don’t think I had any smell of desperation.
Debbie Millman:
Claire Danes in 2020.
Ethan Hawke
In 2021, I interviewed Ethan Hawke. He had just finished his third novel A Bright Ray of Darkness, and also the Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird, in which he played the anti-slavery crusader John Brown. As always, I started asking questions about his early days.
Ethan, is it true that when you were growing up, you had fantasies of becoming a Merchant Marine?
Ethan Hawke:
That is very true. Well, I was a big Jack London fan, and I had a kid who lived down the street from me. He was a grade older than I was, Nick. And he liked Jack London and he was really cool. You know when you’re 16, a 17 year old just feels like he’s got the world by the scruff of the neck. And he went off to be a Merchant Marine and live off his Jack London fantasies. I have no idea what happened to him, but we used to read books together and talk about them and I thought he was a… I wanted to be just like him, but I also want to be just like Jack London. And so I thought that might be a great avenue to chase down an interesting life is to disappear into the seas and come back somebody interesting, because I thought I was pretty boring as I was.
Debbie Millman:
Really? Why is that?
Ethan Hawke:
Well, I think I was pretty boring. I mean, I think most young people struggle with a sense of who they are and what they want to be. And you look around you and some things seem interesting, but most paths feel impossible to walk down. And I think the road of adventure loomed large in my head. I longed to have been born in another time period when the world felt wilder, I guess, but probably every generation feels that way.
Debbie Millman:
Your parents met in high school, Ethan. Your mom was 17 when she had you, but they divorced when you were four years old and when asked in an interview if their divorce scarred you, you stated, scarred put such a judgment on it and then go on to declare that you were formed by it and made by it. And I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Ethan Hawke:
Well, I mean, that’s called the unity of opposites, isn’t it? It is a good thing and it is a bad thing. I find children long to… They long, long, long in their heart and soul and every stitch of their body longs to believe that their parents love each other and that they were born for a reason, that they were born in love. Most of us long for that. And the advantage of being raised from the point of divorce, from that vantage point, is that you see that the world is more complicated than that a little earlier, and you get your heartbroken a little earlier, and that break has opportunity to invite some wisdom into your life or at least some experience. And I think that it can make you stronger. You know what’s that poem, Stronger in the Broken Places? It wakes you up to the idea that no one has the perfect life, and that you were born in love. It doesn’t matter what happened to the band after they made your music. Your music was born out of something beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
After the divorce, you alternated between living on the East Coast with your mother and visiting your dad back in Texas. And I read that this caused you to alternate between personalities. In what way?
Ethan Hawke:
Well, I bet you everybody came from going to mom’s house, going to dad’s house, they know exactly what I’m talking about.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. My parents got divorced when I was eight, so I get it.
Ethan Hawke:
There’s a personality you have that you think makes your mother like you better, and this personality you have that you think makes your father like you better. For a long time, I thought that meant that I was the liar, that I wasn’t showing the real me, who’s the real me. And slowly as you get older, you realize that these people, they’re all me. I love my mother and I love my father and I want them to see the best in me. It doesn’t make me a liar, but I do think it taught me at a young age how malleable my personality was. And if my personality was malleable, probably everyone’s is. And it might’ve been a very good entry point for the life of a performer.
Debbie Millman:
Do you think that that gave you a sense that you were performing for them, for your parents?
Ethan Hawke:
Well, I know that Marlon Brando would tell you that you’re performing for me right now and I’m performing for you, that what is our authentic self is very mysterious. We want our peers to like us. We want to be somebody respect. We want people to think positive things about us and all those things. And we manipulate ourselves and we do do a little bit of… You perform for grandma. “Yes, ma’am, this apple pie is delicious. Grandma, you’re the best, grandma.”
And you walk into your buddy’s house and you say, “Hey, who’s got a joint?”
I mean, it doesn’t mean you’re the worst person in the world. It means you’re bigger than one thing. That’s what I think anyway. Performance, like the thing about divorce, we use all these words. Performance makes it sound like you’re not being true. I am being true when I talk to my grandmother. That is who I want to be for her. Does that make sense?
Debbie Millman:
Oh, absolutely. I read that while you were in high school, it gave you the opportunity to become an expert at fitting in. And I was really fascinated by that because as also a child of divorce, I also had that sort of ability, that range of wanting to be friends with lots of different groups. I understand that you were on the school football team and the church youth group, you had a range of friends that included graphic novel reading geeks, theater nerds, punk rock girls, deadheads. How were you able to slip in and out of so many personas at that time? Because I do sense that it really was authentic in the same way that I felt that as I was slipping in and out, I was still being aspects of me too.
Ethan Hawke:
I think you can be authentic with different types of people. I mean, the positive maybe without breaking my arm, patting myself on the back is that I’m not inherently judgmental. I’m not convinced that I’m the moral authority on anything. And so I don’t really have a belief that somebody’s got it right and somebody’s got it wrong. And I think because I moved around a lot, I was really hungry for friendship, and I would accept it wherever it came. I think that’s a quality I like. I’ve tried to hold onto that quality. It’s a quality that when I see it in others, I like it.
One of the things, one of my best friends is Richard Linklater. And one of the things, we’ve spent a lot of time together. He’s a great filmmaker. And one of the things that makes him a great filmmaker is just a genuine love of people. If you watch Dazed and Confused, you see he has love for every type of category you want to put somebody in, and he sees people with compassionate eyes as opposed to there’s a lot of movies and films out there that are always judging. He’s a good guy. He’s a bad guy. She’s a liar. Oh, he’s the enemy. We’re all caught in this huge spiderweb trying to make sense out of where we were born and who was our grandma and what our aptitude is for, and I’ve just never felt too judgmental. And I think that helped me as a kid.
Debbie Millman:
From what I understand, you wanted to be an actor since you were 12 after your mother enrolled you in an afterschool program and you were a cast in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Was that really when your first seeds of wanting to perform were cast?
Ethan Hawke:
I think a lot of young people want to feel like they matter, like they’re special, like they’re interesting, like somebody cares about them. And one of the first ways you could do that is to jump in front of the class and dance or sing or play a song or be great at sports or some way to set yourself apart. And I think that I don’t believe that my initial interest in acting came from a desire to express myself or some real artistic impulse. I think it came from a simple desire to be noticed, to be liked. And I think that’s a very dangerous fire to play with.
But yeah, I went to an acting class, I really did love it. I was pretty good at it. From my first class, we had a guest teacher come into the… It was at the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts, and this guest teacher came from McCarter Theater and he led a little improv class. And I remember vividly in the parking lot there and he asked me, would I be interested in playing Dunois’ page?
I was like, “Well, do I have any lines?”
He said, “You have two lines.”
I said, “Then heck yeah.”
And so I got to put on armor and be a little page to a knight, his little squire and I had a couple… I had to sneeze, which was very hard to do. Dunoit’s page sneezes and they know the wind’s changed, and I took that sneezing exercise very hard.
But so anyway, my point is my first acting class, I got my first part and my life has been, sometimes I say acting chose me. It guided me. I felt caught in a river almost. Early in my career with Dead Poets Society, that movie could have been a bomb and two weeks later I’d been on a boat chasing my friend Nick, emulating Jack London.
Debbie Millman:
Ethan Hawke from 2021.
Nick Offerman
Unlike Ethan Hawke and Claire Danes, who both got famous when they were still in their teens, Nick Offerman has had a more gradual ascent into stardom. Nick Offerman first hit the big time in his forties when he played Amy Poehler’s boss Rick Swanson on the sitcom Parks and Recreation. I wanted to find out about his early career when I spoke with him in 2021.
In my research, I discovered that while you were in school, you took two semesters of ballet and enrolled in a Kabuki theater class taught by Shozo Sato and ended up traveling to Japan with Sato’s Kabuki troop. Did that work influence how you were approaching your acting?
Nick Offerman:
Well, sure. I mean, all these Illinois kids basically are suddenly learning this traditional Japanese art form, and his genius, he’s an award-winning theater artist, and his genius was for taking the plays of Shakespeare or Greek dramas and interpreting them in the Kabuki style. So the makeup, the wigs, the presentational movement and voice work, it was fantastic. Kabuki Othello, Kabuki Aristophanes, The Frogs or what have you. It was such profound lessons in showmanship. In so many ways, the reverence with which the Kabuki artists, the way they treat the stage and the audience and the art form felt holy to me in a way that church, they always said church was supposed to, but that never really clicked because it lacked the passion of the theater.
I think that’s part of what led me to this stage was growing up in the Catholic Church and I appreciate the values, the lessons of the church, but it just didn’t… Nobody was juiced. Nobody was like, “Man, that sermon really blew me away or made me cry.”
So I wanted to take the values of a religion and take it to a different kind of barn, and that’s what they taught me in Kabuki was before every show, everyone would do this stretching exercise where you line up all the way across the stage kneeling in front of a towel and you do this sort of stretching, it’s sort of yogic. You push the towel, then do a salute to the sun kind of pose until you push yourself all the way across the stage, so the whole company cleans the stage before every show. So I mean, it really has this reverential sort of shrine atmosphere. And then when we started a theater company in Chicago, me and my friends, a lot of us had come from that Kabuki training and so we were able to bring that, a lot of the same aesthetic, to our own crappy little Chicago company.
Debbie Millman:
You earned your degree in theater, but have said that in the four years of theater school, it became clear that you were trying too hard to be hip and cool and urbane and had unwittingly thought that your country rube persona would not be interesting to an audience. When did you realize otherwise?
Nick Offerman:
Oh, I mean, because of the Kabuki show, we took a year off school. We toured Japan and it was Kabuki Achilles, it was an adaptation of the Iliad. And this was 1991, and I always hate this sentence, but the first Gulf War had just broken out while we were in production in Champaign-Urbana. We took the show to Japan, some producers loved the anti-war message of Achilles and Hector ultimately saying to each other, “You are as I. We’re the same. Why are we trying to kill each other?” We ended up touring Hungary, and then we played a theater outside of Philly for six months called the People’s Light and Theater Company in Malvern, which is up the main line from Philadelphia. And so that was a year off school.
So I spent five years in theater school, all told, and then it was a couple years into Chicago after school where naturalism finally began to occur to me where, I don’t know, the insecurity or the ignorance, I just chipped away at it until finally I realized, “Oh, I simply finally get it. Just act like yourself.” And I’m just so thickheaded, it literally took me six or seven years to get it.
So once that happened, my best friend, this genius director and actor named Joe Foust, he had been waiting for it for years. He desperately wanted me to catch on, and I finally got it. And so once that happened, I looked back at all these auditions and said, “Oh, I see. I’m never going to get cast as a cool leather jacket finger popping daddy. That’s not my bag. I’m going to get cast as a laborer or a plumber or a bus driver or what have you, or a scary version of those guys.” Once I realized that, then my life kind of began. That was ground zero where I said, “Okay, the tools that I have, who I am, what I grew up as, that’s the most valuable thing in my toolbox. So let me now begin to build my professional career, my body of work around that particular set of tools.”
Debbie Millman:
You and your friends founded the experimental company, The Defiant Theater, and you’ve said that if you had started auditioning at big theaters before this work, you’d probably still be there. Was it when you developed the Defiant Theater that that realization about your country rube persona first occurred to you?
Nick Offerman:
It was in those years, yes, because my best friend was one of our main directors, and so they would pick shows to do. And I built the scenery for this company. I had all the tools, I drove the truck. So in many ways I was the dad of the company and they would choose shows where I would say, “Oh, perfect. This role is perfect for me.” And then I wouldn’t get the part that cast somebody outside the company and I would say, “Hey man, what’s the deal?”
And my best friend and roommate would say, “You know I’m going to always have to cast the best actor for the show, and that’s this other guy because you’re not that good yet.”
And I would say, “Well, I believe you, and the baby in me is selfishly mad about that, but I understand.”
Debbie Millman:
But at least there was the word yet there, that’s encouraging.
Nick Offerman:
It was. And just like all things, it was a slowly accumulating awareness of what it took, and so I was really grateful. I would get supporting roles, and then finally I did a good enough audition for this play called The Quarantine that Joe was directing, and I finally got the lead. I was perfectly mediocre, but I was better than I had been. It’s the beautiful thing about life maintaining the attitude of a student is that I’m still on the same journey. Hopefully the next play I do, I’ll be better than the last play I did until my faculties give out.
Debbie Millman:
It was around this time that you became friends with Amy Poehler, but you didn’t get involved with comedy until your mid-30s when you started to work with Amy at her Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. Why did it take so long for you to realize your comic chops?
Nick Offerman:
Well, I loved making people laugh. I mean, but when you study legitimate theater at a drama school basically, comedy is simply one of the things you do. You are hoping to work at theaters that put on a season, so you’re prepared to do Shakespeare or Chekhov or Sam Shepard or Absurdist Pirandello or Pinter, you name it, or musical theater or Feydeau Farces. Hopefully in your toolbox, you are able to do anything that’s on the season, and one of my favorite things to do was be funny and make people laugh. It’s a weird specialization in modern thought, and nowhere is more specialized than Hollywood. If my big break was playing a tennis player in a movie, nobody then wants me to audition to play basketball because they say, “No, no, no, you’re the tennis guy.”
And so I met Amy when she was studying at the Improv Olympic and Second City in Chicago, and I didn’t even understand what that meant. I had never been to an improv or sketch theater, and it sounded to me like she was saying she and her friends were making stuff up in a bar to make people laugh. And I was like, “Okay, have fun with that. I’m trying to perform works of literature.” I had some weird snotty separation.
And then years later I was like, “Wait a second, you were on the path to SNL? Son of a bitch.” I had no idea, and so it was only years later that I realized this specialization of Hollywood’s brain, it occurred to me that I was not getting auditions for comedy stuff where I was like, “Oh.”
I specifically had to call Amy and say, “Hey, can I start doing stuff at your comedy theater, The Upright Citizens Brigade, so that the business will view me as someone who can be funny?”
So I did it, and within minutes, casting directors were calling and saying, “I didn’t know you do comedy.”
And I was like, “What? I just do acting. I do whatever. I can be a horrible bad guy or I can be an absolute clown. Sorry, I didn’t realize I had to let you guys know that.”
And then it’s funny, then my big break was Parks and Recreation. Then there was a period where I had to convince people that I could be dramatic. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Debbie Millman:
Nick Offerman from 2021.
Kyra Sedgwick
Kyra Sedgwick joined me on Design Matters in 2023 to talk about her film Space Oddity, a movie starring her husband, Kevin Bacon. It was her debut as a theatrical director, but of course she’d already had a long career in front of the camera, which also started in her teens.
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 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 mean, 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. It was lonely. It was 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 production 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. 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 mean, 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 that in fact you thought you were rather mediocre. Was that something that you were 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.
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, just 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 mine and 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 place. 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 mean, I wanted it desperately. I mean, 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 mean, 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. I mean, it was life changing and 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 soaps 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. Yes, the coat, the Krishnas.
Kyra Sedgwick:
Yeah. A rap group called The Deep Six, and then I had this giant closeup with a push-in at the end. And I mean, I remember when my parents bought a VHS or whatever the.
Debbie Millman:
VHS. Yeah. VCR or 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 mean, 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:
Kyra Sedgwick in 2023.
Josh Brolin
In 2024, Josh Brolin published his memoir From Under the Truck about his rough and tumbled childhood, and an acting career that includes both indie films and his starring role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When I spoke with him in 2024, I asked him about his very first Hollywood film.
You got your first movie role, a starring part in the 1985 Steven Spielberg story, The Goonies. You were 17 years, I just rewatched it by the way. It still holds up. Still holds up. You stated that to prepare for the part, you were reading Stanislavski and you asked Steven Spielberg if the tunnel in the film was a metaphor for your mother’s womb.
Josh Brolin:
I can remember it like it was yesterday. I remember his face being very patient and nodding while I was talking, and then he looked down and then he looked up and he said, “You know what? Why don’t you just say the words that are on the page?”
And I was like, “Okay, that’s what I’ll do.” I want it to be good. I want it to be-
Debbie Millman:
Of course.
Josh Brolin:
I want it to be good. I was reading Stanislavski. I was reading Grotowski. I was reading Antonin Artaud. I was reading about the Theater of Cruelty. I was in it. I was in it. I just wanted to be better.
Debbie Millman:
I think that’s probably one of the themes of your whole life if you want an outsider’s perspective now that I read your memoir. Your next two movies were Thrashin’ in 1986 and Finish Line in 1989. And you didn’t make another movie for another five years. And you said the problem back then was that you were a C-minus actor who had no nuance, no depth, and no innate natural skill. You began to supplement your income as a landscape artist and then day trading. What made you decide to play the stock market?
Josh Brolin:
I had met a friend, Brett Markinson, who’s still a close friend, and I had met him. I did something called Into the West. It was like a miniseries. It was a Western miniseries. I had done an episode of that and they flew us to New York to promote it and they were flying us back. And it was a friend of a friend, Skeet Ulrich, who introduced me to Brett Markinson. And we just laughed for six hours on the plane back. And I asked him what he did and he said he trades stocks. And I said, “I was always a math guy. I was always very good at math. I was always the guy who was actually looking for extra credit from the math teacher because I had just enjoyed doing that.”
And he said, “Yeah, well, it’s all about reading graphs.” And then I just started asking question after question after question. And I liked him and he liked talking. He liked teaching.
I wasn’t making a lot of money. I was working once every 12 months, 14 months or something like that. I never was in a position for two decades to know while I was doing a job, what the next job was going to be. I always went this long span of time auditioning and seeing the normal people in the hallways and, “Thank you for coming in, Josh. That was wonderful,” lie, and knowing that I wouldn’t hear from them again, popping up from behind the couch and pretending like I have a gun with my thing and I’m in the Black Forest in Germany, whatever it is, you know what I mean? It’s all so ridiculous and just shame spiraling my way through this career. And when I would finally get a job, it was great.
But trading just brought, I don’t know, it allowed me to utilize a part of my brain and find my way through this labyrinth of discipline that I really enjoyed because he said, “Any instinct that you have in trading is meaningless. ‘I have a feeling this is going to happen’ should not exist in your vocabulary. Look at the graph. It’s all practical.” And once you really learn how to start reading the graphs, all you’ll see is fear and greed and you’re playing off that, you’re playing off momentum stocks, you’re playing off the foundation of a company, you’re not looking for the big win, you’re just looking for little breaths on an upward trajectory.
And I did and I got it and I made a lot of money and I would never do that today because I don’t have the time and a bunch of young kids. I remember when I was trading, my older kids were, they’d be like, “We have to go to school. Please, God, get in the car.”
And I’d be like, “One more. I’ll be right there. I’ll be right there. I’ll be right there. Yo.” And it’s not gambling. It was really a design and I had a lot of fun doing it. So I won more than I lost and that was the point, and I was able to survive a little bit longer and still call myself an actor.
Debbie Millman:
At that time, you described it being one when no one wanted to hire you. You were then cast as, and this is actually one of my favorite roles of yours, as the bisexual ATF agent in David O. Russell’s brilliant 1996 film, Flirting with Disaster, which co-starred Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin. Ugh, she’s amazing in that film.
Josh Brolin:
Amazing.
Debbie Millman:
Patricia Arquette. Now, I read that you actually improvised the scene where you lick Patricia Arquette’s armpit.
Josh Brolin:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
True?
Josh Brolin:
Yeah, that was just supposed to be a kiss. We filmed it. It was supposed to be a peck. And David O. Russell very smartly said, “This is boring. It’s not working.”
I said, “What about, I don’t know, what if I suck on her toe or what about something like that?” And we’re thinking about it.
He said, “Well, suck on her toe. I don’t know.”
And then Patricia said, “What about licking the armpit?” And she had grown out her hair for that role. It was more like a hippie mom.
And I was like, “Nah, I don’t know about that idea.”
And David goes, “Oh, that’s great.” So we did it, we’d have wet wipes on the side to wipe off my tongue.
And then David says, “I know the armpit hair is really getting in the way for me.” So then we did it a third time with no armpit hair, and that was the one.
Debbie Millman:
Your role in that movie, I don’t know, I feel like that’s the movie where you became an actor. You were so good in that movie. You were unrecognizable in that movie.
Josh Brolin:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
In so many ways.
Josh Brolin:
I had done a lot of theater before that with Anthony Zerbe, and I felt like I had done roles like that in the past, I had just never, I was still stuck, I think, in people’s minds in a certain way. I was a jock or they didn’t know what to do with me or that… Miramax did not want me to do that film. They actively tried to get David to get somebody else to do the-
Debbie Millman:
Why?
Josh Brolin:
Because I think at that point, what was I? 27. My mom had just passed during the rehearsals of that film, and I just think I was a guy in their minds that should have hit and didn’t so I was like damaged goods. I was rotting fruit. I think that role was Mark Wong or something. I wasn’t even right for the role the way it was written. Wong was not me, but I came in and I auditioned. They let me audition. I improvised through some things and he really liked me so he forced me down their throats. And then I ended up being a Miramax guy after that, and he used me for several roles until I turned down a role and then I was blacklisted for 10 years.
Debbie Millman:
At that point, did you feel like your acting had improved? Because I forgot that you were in that movie. I forgot that it was you in that movie. It was such a departure from all of your previous roles. When I was looking at your filmography, I’m like, “Oh my God, he’s in one of my favorite movies and I didn’t even realize it.”
Josh Brolin:
I love that movie. I love that experience. And I was such a fish out of water because I had, like I said, I had done roles like that on stage and I was a Harley guy and I was writing my Harley to work, and so there was some rebellious thing that I was playing out, some idea of that. And then you see Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal. And I’m like, “You’ve got to be… I so don’t belong here. I don’t blame Miramax for not wanting me. Why am I here?”
And we developed that character. He was just a bisexual ATF agent, and we did the tattoos. We did the armpit licking thing. We did the scene in the back of the car where we’re talking about proper blowjobs and all that kind of stuff. And it was really fun because I felt like, was I a better actor? No, but I felt like it was more along the lines of my sensibilities. It was character. It was what interested me. What are people about? What’s behind the cosmetic presentation? It’s like when I researched Wall Street too, when you take a bunch of billionaires out, they’re going to present a certain type. Get them drunk and then you get to find out some real stuff. And I found out some real stuff.
Debbie Millman:
Josh Brolin in 2024.
You can hear my full interviews and hundreds of other interviews with some of the world’s most creative people on our website: designmattersmedia.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back next week with another special episode called From the Many Years I’ve Been Doing Design Matters. Yes, this is the 20th 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 can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Curtis Fox:
Design Matters is produced by the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Master’s in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The Editor-in-Chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland