# Mira Sorvino

An episode of [Drama Queens](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1571792783), 18 Mar 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e53aefd3-699f-4685-9a84-aed700f383fa/921ce447-0da4-490f-8661-b411006b0380/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=cf2e6477-1a1d-4442-8b33-ae320005bb63

Mira Sorvino's story plays out like a movie itself with the resilience, reckoning, and unseen forces that can alter a life overnight. Mira candidly reflects on winning an Oscar for "Mighty Aphrodite" and the fallout that followed her rejection of predatory producer Harvey Weinstein. She also opens up about the profound influence of her father, legendary actor Paul Sorvino, and the twists of fate that nearly altered her path long before Hollywood ever called. To join Mira's fight against human trafficking, go to endht.org or aimfree.org. And learn more about her new movie "Signing Tony Raymond" here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome
[0:15] Speaker 1: back to Work in Progress friends. Today we are joined
[0:19] Speaker 1: by a cultural icon, an actress who's used her fame
[0:26] Speaker 1: for good, for such gorgeous creativity, and who both behind
[0:31] Speaker 1: the scenes and out in the world, has been such
[0:33] Speaker 1: a leader for women. Our guest today is Academy Award
[0:37] Speaker 1: winner Mira Sorvino. She began as a Harvard scholar and
[0:41] Speaker 1: went on to captivate audiences, winning her Academy Award for
[0:45] Speaker 1: Mighty Aphrodite, and then becoming everybody's on screen bestie in
[0:49] Speaker 1: Rome and Michelle's High School Reunion. Behind that fame, mirror
[0:53] Speaker 1: was shaped by a household that was steeped in craft
[0:56] Speaker 1: and conscious Her father, Paul Sorvino Tartar the discipline of acting.
[1:01] Speaker 1: Her mother was an incredible activist, and she was taught early,
[1:06] Speaker 1: and she learned early to speak her truth. Those are
[1:08] Speaker 1: lessons that she's carried into every role and every cause
[1:11] Speaker 1: she has ever embraced, and that hasn't always been easy.
[1:15] Speaker 1: Speaking out against harassment and Hollywood cost her opportunities when
[1:18] Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein retaliated against her, but she channeled that personal
[1:23] Speaker 1: experience into incredible advocacy, becoming a United Nations Goodwill ambassador,
[1:28] Speaker 1: of fighting human trafficking, and bringing urgent stories of both
[1:32] Speaker 1: survival and resilience into the public eye. Her career is
[1:36] Speaker 1: a reflection of artistic excellence and unwavering commitment to justice,
[1:41] Speaker 1: and her latest film manages to echo all of those
[1:44] Speaker 1: lessons in her life. It is poignant, it is hilarious.
[1:48] Speaker 1: It is everything that I think we as an audience
[1:52] Speaker 1: want right now. The film is called Signing Tony Raymond,
[1:56] Speaker 1: and it is an American sports dramedy about a college
[2:00] Speaker 1: football coach who's traveling to rural Alabama to recruit the
[2:04] Speaker 1: nation's top high school defensive end, only to have to
[2:07] Speaker 1: navigate rival recruiters, eccentric locals, and a dysfunctional family headed
[2:13] Speaker 1: by Tony's mother, who, of course, is played by Mira.
[2:17] Speaker 1: Let's dive in and hear all about her iconic life
[2:21] Speaker 1: and legacy. Well, Mira, I'm just so excited to have
[2:35] Speaker 1: you on the podcast today. I'm going to be the
[2:37] Speaker 1: professional person who interviews you, but for the next thirty
[2:40] Speaker 1: seconds I'm gonna not and just tell you that your
[2:45] Speaker 1: incredible filmography, the work you have done on screen has
[2:51] Speaker 1: been such a beacon for me as an actor, and
[2:54] Speaker 1: what you do off screen is just so incredibly inspiring
[3:01] Speaker 1: to me. And when I get like down about activism
[3:06] Speaker 1: or being outspoken, I immediately think of a handful of women.
[3:10] Speaker 1: I think about you. I think about Jane Fonda, I
[3:12] Speaker 1: think about Viola Davis, and I'm like, it's gonna be okay,
[3:15] Speaker 1: keep going. So I just want to thank you for
[3:19] Speaker 1: all of the ways you inspire me and so many people.
[3:22] Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And well, you're
[3:25] Speaker 2: a brilliant actress and activist yourself, so coming right back
[3:28] Speaker 2: at you.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Well, that's really really kind. Thank you. I I think
[3:33] Speaker 1: I feel particularly geeked to ask you this question because
[3:37] Speaker 1: I love to learn about people before the world knew you,
[3:40] Speaker 1: before we could you know, look up. As I said,
[3:43] Speaker 1: you're incredibly impressive filmography on IMDb and you're before sort
[3:49] Speaker 1: of tickles me because I am a New Jersey resident.
[3:53] Speaker 1: My mother grew up in New Jersey, and when I
[3:57] Speaker 1: was reminded that you grew up in Tenafly, I was like, oh, oh,
[4:00] Speaker 1: we have so much to talk about.
[4:02] Speaker 2: Wait did you grow up in Tenafy?
[4:04] Speaker 1: I didn't, but my mom grew up in teen X.
[4:06] Speaker 1: I spoke so much of my childhood, you know, going
[4:09] Speaker 1: there to be with my grandfather. And I'm just so
[4:14] Speaker 1: curious if you could teleport back there today and interact
[4:20] Speaker 1: with yourself at eight or nine or ten years old.
[4:24] Speaker 1: Do you think there are characteristics in her, even at
[4:28] Speaker 1: that age that you would recognize in yourself today.
[4:32] Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. I think I've done a lot of
[4:34] Speaker 2: work as an adult recently at sort of getting back
[4:36] Speaker 2: in touch with little Mira, you know, and trying to
[4:40] Speaker 2: protect little Mirra and validate little Mirra and just celebrate
[4:45] Speaker 2: little Mirra for the core elements of who I am.
[4:49] Speaker 2: You know, Little Mira was always like excited about everything,
[4:54] Speaker 2: very introspective, huge reader, Like I would go to my room,
[4:58] Speaker 2: Like if I was punished to go to my room,
[5:00] Speaker 2: they'd have to call me to come back out, because
[5:04] Speaker 2: you know, just I just was stuck in a book
[5:08] Speaker 2: and lost in it. And so yeah, so there's that.
[5:14] Speaker 2: And then I was very inspired by social justice movements.
[5:20] Speaker 2: My mom marched on Washington with doctor Martin Luther, Reverend
[5:23] Speaker 2: doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and that that always made
[5:27] Speaker 2: such a big impression on me. And you know, I
[5:31] Speaker 2: love I love the world of imagination and fantasy, and
[5:33] Speaker 2: I loved acting, Like I started acting in school plays
[5:37] Speaker 2: at eight and my dad started teaching me then. And
[5:40] Speaker 2: you know that that bug that bit me then, as
[5:43] Speaker 2: you know, carried me all the way through to now.
[5:45] Speaker 1: So yeah, it's so interesting because I think being an
[5:50] Speaker 1: actor and standing up for social justice really go hand
[5:55] Speaker 1: in hand. You know, we learned this craft of how
[5:58] Speaker 1: to tell other people's stories, care about them and when
[6:03] Speaker 1: you tell that story about your mom where you talk
[6:05] Speaker 1: about your dad who you know, Paul Sorvino is an
[6:08] Speaker 1: incredible actor in his own right for our friends at home,
[6:12] Speaker 1: did those lessons always come hand in hand, the acting
[6:16] Speaker 1: and how people's stories fit into the landscape of the world,
[6:21] Speaker 1: or do you think you grew up in a household
[6:24] Speaker 1: where one was about craft and one was about culture
[6:27] Speaker 1: and they were just both so infused in your life.
[6:32] Speaker 2: Well, my parents were great entertainers, and so we would
[6:35] Speaker 2: have these dinner parties where you'd have these long tables
[6:39] Speaker 2: full of luminaries like who was a bull Surprise winning playwright.
[6:44] Speaker 2: My dad was best friends with Jason Miller, who wrote
[6:47] Speaker 2: that championship season for which my Dad was nominated for
[6:49] Speaker 2: a Tony on Broadway and then ended up doing the
[6:51] Speaker 2: movie and then ended up directing a version of the
[6:53] Speaker 2: movie later for Showtime Wow. And Jason Miller was also
[6:57] Speaker 2: the actor who played Father Karras and the Exers Exorcist,
[7:00] Speaker 2: you know, So he was a great actor. He was
[7:02] Speaker 2: a greater writer, a great thinker. Then we used to
[7:07] Speaker 2: have opera singers there because Dad was a big time
[7:09] Speaker 2: opera singer, and other actors, and and my mom's friends
[7:14] Speaker 2: who were very dear, wonderful people, just salt of the
[7:17] Speaker 2: earth people, and my grandparents were always there. So there
[7:20] Speaker 2: was always this foment where you know, this ferment or whatever,
[7:24] Speaker 2: where we would just be bouncing, and they encouraged us
[7:27] Speaker 2: kids to really listen and talk with them, not not
[7:31] Speaker 2: just go off to the children's table or into the
[7:33] Speaker 2: other room. Like I was always treated with a great
[7:35] Speaker 2: deal of maturity, Like I was grateful for that, Like
[7:38] Speaker 2: I was invited into the discussions and brought to the
[7:43] Speaker 2: cultural events and everything. So I think, I think, you know,
[7:45] Speaker 2: there was a real awareness of the wider world and
[7:48] Speaker 2: how you fit into it as an artist with opinions.
[7:50] Speaker 1: This sort of merger of reality and storytelling. I find
[7:54] Speaker 1: so beautiful because in my own way, looking back, I
[7:59] Speaker 1: realized I had that in a fashion. You know, my
[8:02] Speaker 1: dad was a photographer for his whole career. I didn't
[8:07] Speaker 1: have actors in my family, but I had people making
[8:10] Speaker 1: art and you know, gathering friends. And I think, because
[8:13] Speaker 1: I was an only child, very similarly to what you
[8:17] Speaker 1: were saying, I was always treated with maturity because my
[8:20] Speaker 1: parents were social and so I was social. And I
[8:24] Speaker 1: think it's such a gift to give a kid that
[8:27] Speaker 1: kind of both respect and to enable their curiosity really early.
[8:34] Speaker 1: And when I look at your life and I think
[8:36] Speaker 1: about you know, you're being raised in this artistic space.
[8:40] Speaker 1: Your parents are activists, you go to set with your dad,
[8:43] Speaker 1: you know you want to be an actor. And also
[8:45] Speaker 1: you went to Harvard and got a degree in East
[8:48] Speaker 1: Asian studies. And I'm going, you aren't exactly my kind
[8:52] Speaker 1: of person. I love the way your brain works. How
[8:56] Speaker 1: did you pick it? What was the reason? Were you
[8:59] Speaker 1: thinking you wanted to try something different or did you
[9:02] Speaker 1: just want to immerse yourself in a completely new space.
[9:06] Speaker 2: You mean Chinese studies? Yeah, yeah, so I was Actually
[9:11] Speaker 2: I loved Chinese culture from the time I was twelve
[9:14] Speaker 2: because I had a best friend, Angela Wong, who's now
[9:16] Speaker 2: a doctor, lives in Utah, but her family would take
[9:20] Speaker 2: me with them to China talent to speaking opera. I'd
[9:24] Speaker 2: watch her grandmother play Majong and I read The Good Earth,
[9:28] Speaker 2: and I just kind of fell in love with traditional
[9:30] Speaker 2: Chinese culture. And then when I got to college freshman year,
[9:34] Speaker 2: I did not know what I wanted to do. I
[9:36] Speaker 2: wanted to do everything, like I didn't want to narrow myself.
[9:39] Speaker 2: And they had one major called History in Lit, where
[9:43] Speaker 2: you could do both history and literature, but you had
[9:45] Speaker 2: to already speak the language of the country. So for me,
[9:48] Speaker 2: it was either Anglophone or Francophone countries, and they were
[9:53] Speaker 2: very rigid. So like if you took a course about
[9:58] Speaker 2: philosophy of France, right the French philosophers, it would not count.
[10:02] Speaker 2: Like even if you were studying French history in lit
[10:05] Speaker 2: for some reason, you know, or the art, it would
[10:08] Speaker 2: not count. And then it was very rigid at the time.
[10:12] Speaker 2: I really don't know how it is now. And Harvard
[10:13] Speaker 2: also has this great core curriculum or did, where you
[10:16] Speaker 2: got to take this super wide variety of subjects. So
[10:19] Speaker 2: for that, I'm very grateful, and you studied with these
[10:22] Speaker 2: amazing professors like Stephen J. Gould or you know, on
[10:25] Speaker 2: evolutionary biology, and but I just wanted to study everything,
[10:29] Speaker 2: and I probably just should have devised my own major
[10:31] Speaker 2: or made an independent major, which I could have, but
[10:33] Speaker 2: I didn't. And then I took this course called Art,
[10:37] Speaker 2: Politics and Mythology in Bronze Age China, I think, or archaeology,
[10:41] Speaker 2: I don't know. It was taught by the famous Chinese archaeologists.
[10:45] Speaker 2: I'll just casey Jong. And it was so fascinating. And
[10:48] Speaker 2: then my section leader was like, oh, Mira, we have
[10:51] Speaker 2: this major, maybe you would be interested in it. It's
[10:53] Speaker 2: called East Asian Languages and Civilizations and anything you studied
[10:57] Speaker 2: as long as it pertained to East Asia count So
[11:00] Speaker 2: you could take poetry, you could take shinto architecture, you
[11:04] Speaker 2: could take the politics of Vietnam War, you could take
[11:06] Speaker 2: anything as long as it pertained to East Asia. They
[11:10] Speaker 2: did have a canonical choice, of course, you had to
[11:13] Speaker 2: choose like a home country in mind was China, and
[11:16] Speaker 2: so that took you through like you know, you read
[11:18] Speaker 2: the Buddhist sutras, you study Daoism and Confucius and the
[11:22] Speaker 2: you know, the dynastic histories and everything in twentieth century history.
[11:27] Speaker 2: But then anything you took would relate, and so I
[11:31] Speaker 2: chose that. And it was a hard road to hoe
[11:33] Speaker 2: because the Chinese language is so difficult and learning it
[11:36] Speaker 2: away from a Chinese speaking place is very hard. But
[11:40] Speaker 2: in between my junior and senior year, actually my parents
[11:44] Speaker 2: got divorced. They broke up at Christmas when I was
[11:47] Speaker 2: twenty Christmas Day, Christmas Night. You know. It was one
[11:51] Speaker 2: of those like sikes for ruined.
[11:53] Speaker 1: Right, You're like, that's the plot of a Netflix movie.
[11:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just chase after the car in the snow,
[12:00] Speaker 2: don't leave you. Yeah. And I had a really hard
[12:05] Speaker 2: time focusing that spring semester of junior year because I
[12:08] Speaker 2: just was so depressed and it was just like my
[12:10] Speaker 2: whole world had like fallen apart. And so I went
[12:14] Speaker 2: to China for the summer to study third year Chinese
[12:16] Speaker 2: at Beijing University, and then I just decided to stay
[12:19] Speaker 2: and because I felt like I was just scratching the
[12:21] Speaker 2: surface of Chinese culture, just starting to make some friends,
[12:24] Speaker 2: and my language had just gotten to the point where
[12:26] Speaker 2: people didn't seem to be talking so quickly right, because
[12:29] Speaker 2: that's the thing, like if you're learning a language and
[12:31] Speaker 2: then you watch like a news show, people seemed to
[12:33] Speaker 2: be speaking impossibly fast, and if only they would speak slower,
[12:36] Speaker 2: you would understand it. And it was like a train
[12:39] Speaker 2: that all of a sudden slowed down enough for me
[12:41] Speaker 2: to jump on and have conversations and have comprehension. So
[12:45] Speaker 2: I took a semester off of school and I rented
[12:48] Speaker 2: a room from a Chinese woman, and I got like
[12:51] Speaker 2: three jobs. I was editing English language translations of Chinese
[12:55] Speaker 2: magazines and books and I would fix their English. And
[12:58] Speaker 2: then I was singing jazz with two Chinese European jazz bands,
[13:03] Speaker 2: and I had the fake books that my dad would
[13:05] Speaker 2: send me in care packages, and they were all excited
[13:07] Speaker 2: because they didn't have any of the music. So I
[13:09] Speaker 2: was like a very popular person in Beijing because I
[13:12] Speaker 2: had all this Western music. And this was still like
[13:16] Speaker 2: everybody was still in mouse suits. Everybody was still I'm old,
[13:19] Speaker 2: so it was like people riding bicycles everywhere. It was
[13:22] Speaker 2: nothing like the China today, which has completely capitalized, right,
[13:25] Speaker 2: It was still super communist, so the iron rice bowl
[13:30] Speaker 2: in full effect, Like people had no hot water. People
[13:33] Speaker 2: had no phones in their apartments. It was all walk ups.
[13:36] Speaker 2: Like I had to go. I had to walk up
[13:38] Speaker 2: six flights of stairs to get to my friend's apartment,
[13:40] Speaker 2: and then I would have to use hot boiled water
[13:43] Speaker 2: for my showers. And then if I had to call
[13:46] Speaker 2: my family, I had to go down the six flights
[13:49] Speaker 2: and go to this little hut where this SCHIFFU, this
[13:51] Speaker 2: little man sat and I would give him money and
[13:53] Speaker 2: then I'd call the US. You know, but it was
[13:55] Speaker 2: like so it was. And I had a bicycle and
[13:58] Speaker 2: i'd buy my bicycle was stolen. I had to get
[13:59] Speaker 2: another school. But you know, it was a different life,
[14:04] Speaker 2: but it was also very beautiful life because you forged
[14:06] Speaker 2: these friendships with people that were really true. But then
[14:12] Speaker 2: Tenement Square happened, and then it became unsafe to go
[14:16] Speaker 2: back and distasteful to go back, and you didn't want
[14:19] Speaker 2: to endanger your friends, and so everybody in the China
[14:22] Speaker 2: field kind of backed off. And that turned me back
[14:26] Speaker 2: towards New York and acting more full force. I mean,
[14:29] Speaker 2: I was in a lot of plays at Harvard, and
[14:31] Speaker 2: I directed things, but I don't know that I would
[14:35] Speaker 2: have ended up being a full time actress. Had I
[14:36] Speaker 2: gone back to China after graduation if things had been different? Yeah,
[14:40] Speaker 2: So life is interesting.
[14:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, and now for our sponsors, so life takes that
[14:51] Speaker 1: left turn. You can't go back. You do lean in
[14:55] Speaker 1: full to acting and then this career explodes. I mean,
[15:02] Speaker 1: what is it that really sticks out for you? Is it?
[15:06] Speaker 1: Because the obvious question for me is, you know, a
[15:08] Speaker 1: fan and a follower of your work is mighty aphrodite.
[15:12] Speaker 1: But does that? Is there something before?
[15:15] Speaker 2: That was my tenth film? Yeah, so I and my
[15:18] Speaker 2: first film was a film that I was actually on
[15:20] Speaker 2: the crew of before I got cast on it because
[15:22] Speaker 2: I was working at Tribeca Productions as a reader for
[15:26] Speaker 2: Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro. I read script submissions and
[15:30] Speaker 2: this script came in and I thought it was very good,
[15:32] Speaker 2: but I didn't think it was right for their company.
[15:35] Speaker 2: It was sort of like a baby goodfellas. It's about
[15:38] Speaker 2: these three sort of want to be gangster boys in
[15:40] Speaker 2: the Five Towns area of Long Island and written and
[15:44] Speaker 2: directed by Rob Weiss. And so I said, Rob, I
[15:48] Speaker 2: really like it, but I don't think this is going
[15:50] Speaker 2: to be something they're going to go for. But you know,
[15:51] Speaker 2: if you want my help on it. So I was like, yes,
[15:54] Speaker 2: So I became like an associate producer on it or so.
[15:57] Speaker 2: I don't know what my ultimate title was. It was
[15:59] Speaker 2: a very minimal title for the amount of work that
[16:01] Speaker 2: I ended up doing. But then they asked me if
[16:03] Speaker 2: i'd be like the assistant casting director also so and
[16:07] Speaker 2: then I became the reader for all the guys on
[16:09] Speaker 2: the ship on the movie. And I asked Rob. I
[16:12] Speaker 2: was like, Rob, can I audition for Laura, the female lead,
[16:14] Speaker 2: And He's like, nah, nah, I wanted to be cute,
[16:17] Speaker 2: you know, bubbly like a cheerleader. You're You're too deep.
[16:20] Speaker 2: And this is when I had my dark hair. So
[16:23] Speaker 2: when I have my dark hair, I think I seem
[16:26] Speaker 2: more like, you know, introspective and yeah, yeah, more like
[16:31] Speaker 2: my nerdy, like school self rather than fun loving, crazy characters.
[16:37] Speaker 2: And so I said, okay, So I started being the
[16:40] Speaker 2: reader for all the male auditions, and ultimately he was
[16:44] Speaker 2: like and then and then it was taking up so
[16:46] Speaker 2: much of my time, and I had my own pursuits,
[16:48] Speaker 2: and I had done a few short films already, but
[16:50] Speaker 2: you know, and I've done some plays, but I was like,
[16:52] Speaker 2: I have to focus on my acting. Rob, I'm sorry,
[16:54] Speaker 2: this is taking too much of my time, and he's like, okay, listen,
[16:57] Speaker 2: I'll give you the role of Laura, but because I'm
[16:59] Speaker 2: liking what you're doing, but only if you stay on
[17:02] Speaker 2: as third a d cast all the extras and drive
[17:08] Speaker 2: the van. And I was like okay. So that ended
[17:11] Speaker 2: up happening. So I had to like fill like a restaurant,
[17:15] Speaker 2: a diner with one hundred extras on Halloween night with
[17:19] Speaker 2: no money. We gave them nothing and no food and
[17:23] Speaker 2: you know, like just stuff like that. It was just
[17:26] Speaker 2: and then three weeks into making the movie, the movie
[17:28] Speaker 2: fell apart and we had to stop shooting, and then
[17:30] Speaker 2: we had to go around and sing for ours upper
[17:33] Speaker 2: and like show people footage and try and get it
[17:35] Speaker 2: back on board, and they finally did, and then we
[17:37] Speaker 2: finished it and then it went to the Sundance Film
[17:39] Speaker 2: Festival and that started all of our careers.
[17:41] Speaker 1: And that really changed your life in that moment.
[17:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And then I you know, I did,
[17:47] Speaker 2: like I was still moonlighting on and off. I was
[17:49] Speaker 2: still bartending, waitressing, teaching Chinese to Ben Taylor, James and
[17:54] Speaker 2: Carly's son, James Taylor. Yeah, because he was sixteen and
[17:59] Speaker 2: he won to go back to China and Tibet to
[18:02] Speaker 2: study Wing Chung and I think it was Win Chung
[18:08] Speaker 2: is one of the you know, one of the Chikong studies.
[18:11] Speaker 2: He was a master you know, martial artist, and he
[18:14] Speaker 2: wanted to le Mandarin. So I was teaching him. So
[18:16] Speaker 2: that was one of my crazy, like you know, after
[18:18] Speaker 2: college jobs. But I was studying with wynd Handman and
[18:22] Speaker 2: I just adored him. He was the greatest teacher in
[18:24] Speaker 2: New York and we had such a wonderful community in
[18:27] Speaker 2: that class. Yeah, and it just I kept getting jobs
[18:31] Speaker 2: from class, Like people would tell me about something, or
[18:34] Speaker 2: I would go and workshop my audition material in class.
[18:38] Speaker 2: Oh that's so smart, my Afterno, he was my tenth film,
[18:41] Speaker 2: I believe.
[18:42] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's always that thing they say out in
[18:45] Speaker 1: the world it takes ten years to become an overnight success, right,
[18:49] Speaker 1: So it's like people think about you and they go, God,
[18:53] Speaker 1: and she just exploded with this movie and then this
[18:57] Speaker 1: Oscar nom and then this Oscar win. But yeah, your
[19:00] Speaker 1: tenth movie. It's like, you know, but the world saw this.
[19:07] Speaker 1: What I mean, I can't imagine what the moment felt like.
[19:10] Speaker 1: But I think getting ready for today, you know, going
[19:15] Speaker 1: back and seeing some of you know, the footage and
[19:18] Speaker 1: the photos and seeing your dad and the audience watching
[19:22] Speaker 1: that moment for you, was that just the coolest I mean,
[19:26] Speaker 1: what a cool thing to win an oscar in the
[19:28] Speaker 1: first place, but your dad sitting there, I just can't imagine.
[19:32] Speaker 1: It's this massive career moment and this incredibly intimate moment
[19:36] Speaker 1: for you as a human in your family as well.
[19:39] Speaker 2: Sure, it went all the way back to you know,
[19:41] Speaker 2: when I was eight years old and he was teaching
[19:42] Speaker 2: me to cry, and I had to go to the
[19:44] Speaker 2: middle of the stairways halfway up, halfway down and sit
[19:47] Speaker 2: there until I was sobbing over whatever fantasy or memory
[19:52] Speaker 2: I'd put in my head. And then he's like, now
[19:53] Speaker 2: do the scene. Wow. So and then he would teach
[19:57] Speaker 2: me to you know, like emotional preparation, substance tuition, you know,
[20:02] Speaker 2: never he had these. So he would come to my
[20:04] Speaker 2: plays as a high schooler and he would be like afterwards,
[20:08] Speaker 2: every other parent was like, honey, that's amazing, and he
[20:10] Speaker 2: would be like, very good, Mira, I just have two notes.
[20:14] Speaker 2: And then he would set me down for like two
[20:16] Speaker 2: hours and break down the entire performance by beat, moment
[20:20] Speaker 2: by moment, scene by scene, And on the one hand,
[20:23] Speaker 2: it was a little bit like I wish he had
[20:24] Speaker 2: just loved it unconditionally, but at the same time, like
[20:27] Speaker 2: those were invaluable lessons. Like one of the things I
[20:29] Speaker 2: remember him saying is like, you're killing your first impulse
[20:32] Speaker 2: when you sigh and then speak. When you go and
[20:35] Speaker 2: then you speak, you're making an intellectual choice. You're not
[20:39] Speaker 2: going with your instinct. Just speak. Let your unconscious you know,
[20:43] Speaker 2: do the line. Don't don't think, don't change it. Don't
[20:47] Speaker 2: make an intellectual choice a thinking actor as a stinking actor.
[20:50] Speaker 2: You know from Stanford Meisner, right, because he was one
[20:52] Speaker 2: of Meisner's students and Bill Esper and my mom was
[20:55] Speaker 2: also a product of their teaching, and my parents met
[20:58] Speaker 2: in Bill Essper's class. They study partners. But you know,
[21:02] Speaker 2: and he would be like, stick with the other fellow,
[21:04] Speaker 2: and you'll never be wrong. You might be boring, but
[21:06] Speaker 2: you'll never be an authentic you know. So like that's
[21:09] Speaker 2: that's the funny thing when you work with actors who
[21:11] Speaker 2: seem to want to like top you or change their
[21:13] Speaker 2: performance from your side to their side. It's so ridiculous
[21:18] Speaker 2: because then they're kind of killing the strength of the scene,
[21:21] Speaker 2: because the scene is the sum total of the two
[21:23] Speaker 2: people's alchemy in each moment, you know, and you just
[21:27] Speaker 2: have to vibe off of, you know, give back what
[21:30] Speaker 2: you're getting, whether it's low or high. And so all
[21:34] Speaker 2: of those things were so valuable. And I had watched
[21:38] Speaker 2: him work my whole life, and Dad was never nominated,
[21:43] Speaker 2: and for Goodfellows, he was not nominated, which was sort
[21:46] Speaker 2: of crazy, and there was a decision at some point.
[21:48] Speaker 2: There was a there's a famous picture of the four
[21:51] Speaker 2: of them from Goodfellas with him, Joe Pesci, de Niro,
[21:54] Speaker 2: and ray Leoda, and then there's a version of that
[21:58] Speaker 2: picture where Dad's not in it, and it's like they
[22:00] Speaker 2: cut him out of the picture and they kind of
[22:02] Speaker 2: went for the three shot even though there's a bunch
[22:04] Speaker 2: of those four shots out there. And so many people
[22:08] Speaker 2: got you know, recognized for that film, and it's arguably
[22:12] Speaker 2: maybe the you know, him and Brando, I mean, are
[22:14] Speaker 2: the best godfathers ever, right, you know, Allie and Goodfellows
[22:18] Speaker 2: is iconic, right, and he was. It was so different
[22:20] Speaker 2: from his real personality because Dad is not was not
[22:23] Speaker 2: that heavy and not that sort of kind of lead
[22:27] Speaker 2: in the stare that he had that he had to
[22:29] Speaker 2: work on. And he said one day when he looked
[22:31] Speaker 2: in the mirror, he got frightened and he almost decided
[22:33] Speaker 2: he didn't want to do the movie because it was,
[22:34] Speaker 2: you know, bringing up all this darkness, right wow. And
[22:39] Speaker 2: so I think I just wanted to share it with him,
[22:42] Speaker 2: you know, I just wanted to say, well, if you
[22:45] Speaker 2: hadn't been who you were with me, I never would
[22:47] Speaker 2: be standing here. So I want to say that you know,
[22:50] Speaker 2: me getting this is you getting this. And that's when
[22:52] Speaker 2: he burst into tears. I said, when you honor my father,
[22:55] Speaker 2: when you give me this a word, you honor my
[22:56] Speaker 2: Father's taught me everything I know about acting. And that's
[22:58] Speaker 2: when he exploded into tears. And he told me he
[23:00] Speaker 2: wasn't going to cry because he had cried at the
[23:02] Speaker 2: Golden Globes and he realized he was like, I don't
[23:04] Speaker 2: want to pull focus from your mirror, so I am
[23:05] Speaker 2: not going to cry. And that happened. That's so sweet. Yeah,
[23:11] Speaker 2: And the people tell you know, told us for years
[23:13] Speaker 2: that that was their favorite Oscar moment because it reminded
[23:16] Speaker 2: them of the love that they shared with their parent,
[23:18] Speaker 2: you know, so it was a personal moment that wasn't
[23:21] Speaker 2: necessarily about art at all, was just all love. Yeah.
[23:25] Speaker 1: I love that though, because any artist, I mean, you
[23:29] Speaker 1: love your work, but every human is so much more
[23:33] Speaker 1: than what they do. You know, whatever your career might be,
[23:37] Speaker 1: you have this whole life and identity, and I think,
[23:42] Speaker 1: I think when you're able to merge the two, it's
[23:45] Speaker 1: got to be powerful as a person, but I think
[23:47] Speaker 1: it's really powerful for everybody who watches also, mm hmm, yeah,
[23:52] Speaker 1: we'll be back in just a minute after a few
[23:54] Speaker 1: words from our favorite sponsors. It's interesting because that's such
[24:03] Speaker 1: a joyous moment and experience, you know, And then I
[24:08] Speaker 1: think to sort of the other side of it, not
[24:12] Speaker 1: that it's not wonderful, but powerful, scary, intense or the
[24:16] Speaker 1: words that come to mind when I think about the
[24:18] Speaker 1: merger of self and an artistic platform in advocacy, and
[24:25] Speaker 1: you know, I think back when the Me Too letter
[24:28] Speaker 1: was getting put together in twenty seventeen, and it was
[24:32] Speaker 1: you know, who's going to sign this thing that's going
[24:33] Speaker 1: to go in the New York Times, and people on
[24:37] Speaker 1: calls that I was on about that talking about you
[24:42] Speaker 1: and your work and the experience that standing up for
[24:47] Speaker 1: yourself and other women had put you through behind the
[24:52] Speaker 1: scenes that finally came to light, you know, to have
[24:58] Speaker 1: this sensational career, and also to know that someone whom
[25:05] Speaker 1: you simply asked to respect you as a person and
[25:07] Speaker 1: your boundaries tried to get in the way of your
[25:10] Speaker 1: career discouraged you from being cast in things. I mean,
[25:14] Speaker 1: what a I don't want to put words in your mouth,
[25:17] Speaker 1: but from the outside it feels almost like a whiplash.
[25:21] Speaker 1: You know. I am amazed at the grace with which
[25:25] Speaker 1: you have carried yourself through all of that. What did
[25:29] Speaker 1: it mean to you to know that you weren't crazy
[25:32] Speaker 1: when all of that that came to light and people
[25:35] Speaker 1: did say, oh yeah, I was told not to cast
[25:38] Speaker 1: you in this film, or I was told not to
[25:40] Speaker 1: look at you for this job. It doesn't help, but
[25:44] Speaker 1: it helps. Is that the right observation?
[25:47] Speaker 2: I mean, sure, but okay, so, And the thing is
[25:52] Speaker 2: that I actually turned Harvey down three times, and when
[25:54] Speaker 2: I had spoken to Roman Pharaoh, I'd forgotten about the
[25:58] Speaker 2: third time, and it only came to mind later. But
[26:01] Speaker 2: it was right after the third time that he put
[26:05] Speaker 2: the Kaibash on my career and blacklisted me for twenty years.
[26:08] Speaker 2: I was blacklisted for twenty years. I didn't do a
[26:10] Speaker 2: large studio movie for twenty years, and I've still only
[26:13] Speaker 2: doen two since twenty eighteen. So I was covered the world.
[26:18] Speaker 2: I had an oscar in nineteen ninety eight. He shut
[26:23] Speaker 2: my career down for twenty years. And I still worked.
[26:25] Speaker 2: I did indies and I did television, but you know,
[26:31] Speaker 2: I did turn down like one television opportunity that would
[26:34] Speaker 2: have taken me too much away from my little children,
[26:36] Speaker 2: you know, So like I could have had a bigger
[26:39] Speaker 2: career on television probably, but I was you know, I
[26:42] Speaker 2: have four kids, so and I really wanted to be
[26:44] Speaker 2: present there for them. And so, you know, I said,
[26:47] Speaker 2: piecemeal together my work through indies and movies and you know,
[26:52] Speaker 2: television movies and television shows. But when I found out,
[27:01] Speaker 2: because I had kind of made peace with my career
[27:04] Speaker 2: having fallen from being a list to somewhere nebulus, you know.
[27:08] Speaker 2: And I still love what I do, and I still
[27:10] Speaker 2: think I have the same talent and drive, but I
[27:15] Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I guess it wasn't meant to be.
[27:18] Speaker 2: You know, I guess I just wasn't meant to continue
[27:21] Speaker 2: at that level of career, right. And when I read
[27:25] Speaker 2: on Twitter, it was like December, after the fall of
[27:32] Speaker 2: the Me Too stuff coming out and me being part
[27:35] Speaker 2: of Renafaro's Silence Breaker group, and I saw that Peter
[27:40] Speaker 2: Jackson had given an interview in which he admitted that
[27:43] Speaker 2: he was going to cast me at Ashley Judd in
[27:46] Speaker 2: the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then did not
[27:49] Speaker 2: because Harvey and Bob I believe, but definitely Harvey told
[27:55] Speaker 2: him that we were crazy not to work with us.
[28:00] Speaker 2: I mean, I had made four movies with Mira Max,
[28:03] Speaker 2: So how crazy could I have been? Why did they
[28:05] Speaker 2: keep hiring? You know, I don't think it could be possible, right,
[28:10] Speaker 2: But that really sort of broke my heart because it
[28:13] Speaker 2: felt like there was this dark hand of malice that
[28:18] Speaker 2: had come into my life and stolen something that was
[28:21] Speaker 2: rightfully mine away from me just for me not wanting
[28:24] Speaker 2: to sleep with this disgusting man. Yeah, this disgusting human being,
[28:29] Speaker 2: this evil, evil, evil predator.
[28:31] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[28:32] Speaker 2: And that hurt and that took a while to get
[28:35] Speaker 2: used to because the one thing of making peace with Okay, well,
[28:39] Speaker 2: it's just not your night kid, it's just not happening.
[28:41] Speaker 2: Is different from I'm going to destroy you. I'm going
[28:44] Speaker 2: to make sure you never enjoy what you deserve because
[28:48] Speaker 2: you wouldn't play my game. Yeah, you wouldn't let me
[28:51] Speaker 2: victimize you. You wouldn't make a deal with me. And
[28:55] Speaker 2: now you're going to suffer, and I'm going to make
[28:56] Speaker 2: you suffer indefinitely, indefinitely. Yeah, And he had that kind
[29:01] Speaker 2: of reach, Like, I don't think it was just that
[29:02] Speaker 2: he told certain filmmakers. I think that Harvey had a
[29:06] Speaker 2: reach with companies beyond his own, with casting directors on
[29:11] Speaker 2: his own, and that there was literally a blacklist and
[29:13] Speaker 2: there were other actors on it that I know that
[29:16] Speaker 2: are not female, that did not reject him, that he
[29:18] Speaker 2: just didn't like, and that he affected their career, damp
[29:22] Speaker 2: at their careers immensely. And once the Met Too stuff
[29:25] Speaker 2: came out, they remounded, So, you know, And I've become
[29:29] Speaker 2: good friends with a lot of the fellow Silence breakers,
[29:32] Speaker 2: and they're really wonderful women, and I just my heart
[29:37] Speaker 2: breaks for all of them. And I feel like, you know,
[29:41] Speaker 2: there's a second wave of that sorrow and broken heartiness
[29:44] Speaker 2: right now because of the Epstein files. And I think
[29:47] Speaker 2: we all feel such.
[29:50] Speaker 3: Such sorrow for all the victims, living and dead of
[29:55] Speaker 3: these you know, this horrendous, horrendous culture of abuse and
[30:01] Speaker 3: absolute lack of morality and lawlessness and disgusting this and
[30:06] Speaker 3: like predatory, you know.
[30:08] Speaker 2: More than rape, Like the things that we've heard, the
[30:11] Speaker 2: things that we've read in the files.
[30:13] Speaker 1: Ourselves, horrific, heinous.
[30:14] Speaker 2: You're like, how can this world be true? You know,
[30:17] Speaker 2: how can how can these people that we thought we
[30:19] Speaker 2: knew be this bad and have such little regard for
[30:24] Speaker 2: the beauty of children? You know, children are the most
[30:27] Speaker 2: defenseless and delightful creatures on this earth. And to be
[30:31] Speaker 2: to be hurting them in the worst of ways and
[30:34] Speaker 2: just laughing about it, or finding some kind of sick
[30:38] Speaker 2: power us, like deriving power ritually from abusing people, abusing girls, children, boys, animals.
[30:48] Speaker 1: It's unfathomable.
[30:50] Speaker 2: It's unfathomable. And I think I've been having a really
[30:52] Speaker 2: hard time with my own emotions during this time, because
[30:57] Speaker 2: you know, we thought like Harvey was maybe the worst.
[31:01] Speaker 2: He's not even the worst of it.
[31:03] Speaker 1: I think that's what has broken my heart is to
[31:05] Speaker 1: realize that at every level there's a version of this
[31:09] Speaker 1: to exactly your point, that someone would not just want
[31:14] Speaker 1: to hurt you in a moment, but would want to
[31:16] Speaker 1: try to hurt you forever because you didn't want to
[31:20] Speaker 1: be possessed by them in a way they wanted that
[31:23] Speaker 1: you did not because you dared to say, I don't
[31:26] Speaker 1: want that, And so the answer is no to have had.
[31:32] Speaker 1: You know, my girlfriends and I were so inspired by
[31:35] Speaker 1: all of you. We spoke out about a boss we'd
[31:38] Speaker 1: worked for who was terrible, and in the twenty two
[31:44] Speaker 1: years i've been a full time working actor, I've had
[31:46] Speaker 1: one really creepy boss and one really terrible costar, and
[31:51] Speaker 1: I think in twenty two years to work with like
[31:53] Speaker 1: two bad dudes out of as you'll know the thousands
[31:56] Speaker 1: of people on thousands of sets, and great executs, kidves
[32:00] Speaker 1: and great writers and great grips and great transvo guys
[32:03] Speaker 1: and like the best of the best people in our
[32:06] Speaker 1: weird little circus. I recently was being onboarded to what
[32:12] Speaker 1: I thought was going to be the job of my dreams,
[32:14] Speaker 1: and a man in power said, she has problems at work.
[32:20] Speaker 1: I don't need that energy here, and I thought, wait
[32:24] Speaker 1: a second. So standing with my friends on one set
[32:31] Speaker 1: and standing up for other women when I was in
[32:33] Speaker 1: the power position. On another two instances of standing up
[32:37] Speaker 1: in twenty two years of maintaining wonderful relationships and friendships
[32:42] Speaker 1: with everybody else I've worked with for twenty two years,
[32:46] Speaker 1: I'm the problem and not like the dudes who do this.
[32:50] Speaker 1: And I've never been in your position, you know, going
[32:53] Speaker 1: to win an Oscar and going to maybe do one
[32:55] Speaker 1: of the biggest trilogies of all times. But even in
[32:57] Speaker 1: my own relative version of the world, I see that
[33:03] Speaker 1: ripple effect where I go, oh, because I've said no,
[33:07] Speaker 1: are certain people going to say no to me for
[33:08] Speaker 1: the rest of my career? Is that what it's going
[33:11] Speaker 1: to be?
[33:11] Speaker 2: You just don't know, you know, you just don't know
[33:13] Speaker 2: who is what, and you just don't know. You just
[33:15] Speaker 2: don't know if just being outspoken it's not vanilla enough.
[33:19] Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
[33:20] Speaker 1: And the sad part is to your point about these
[33:22] Speaker 1: files and these things, you when the blinders come off,
[33:27] Speaker 1: you go, oh my god. It's literally everywhere, every version,
[33:30] Speaker 1: every place, every level, every age, every Oh my god,
[33:34] Speaker 1: and why. And I don't know the answer to that.
[33:37] Speaker 2: I think it always has been. I think it's something
[33:39] Speaker 2: broken about our species that there has always been this
[33:42] Speaker 2: kind of raping and pillaging instinct. And I don't know
[33:48] Speaker 2: how we fix that. I don't know how we do it,
[33:50] Speaker 2: but I think it's sadly it's just endemic. And you know,
[33:54] Speaker 2: having worked against human trafficking for over twenty years, as
[33:59] Speaker 2: I started working on it in two thousand and four
[34:01] Speaker 2: with mc International for two years as their Stop Violence
[34:04] Speaker 2: against Women campaign spokesperson, and then from two thousand and
[34:07] Speaker 2: nine to last year, I was UNODC's Good Volunbasser against
[34:10] Speaker 2: human Trafficking. And now I'm on the United Nations Voluntary
[34:15] Speaker 2: Trust Fund for Victions of Tracking of Persons. Its short
[34:17] Speaker 2: name is un VTF and I'm on the board of
[34:19] Speaker 2: trustees for that now. And so I've seen this horror.
[34:27] Speaker 2: I did not I was naive. I did not think
[34:30] Speaker 2: it went up to the high sovils of society. I
[34:32] Speaker 2: didn't understand that. I knew that it was organized crime,
[34:34] Speaker 2: and I knew that some people were getting very fat
[34:36] Speaker 2: off of the exploitation of you know, fifty million people
[34:39] Speaker 2: across the globe, but I just I think I was
[34:45] Speaker 2: reluctant to really look into that heart of darkness and
[34:50] Speaker 2: understand how very vertically integrated it was, and that that
[34:55] Speaker 2: came as a shock, right, And I think it. I
[34:59] Speaker 2: think the whole world is still willing for these things,
[35:01] Speaker 2: and I think, you know, how do other countries are
[35:03] Speaker 2: handling it a lot better than we are right now.
[35:04] Speaker 2: But hopefully eventually there'll be some some criminal investigations and
[35:09] Speaker 2: some indictments and convictions eventually, because otherwise what has happened
[35:15] Speaker 2: to us? You know, I don't know.
[35:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think you're right, and I think that
[35:19] Speaker 1: That's what I was going to ask you about, is
[35:22] Speaker 1: I'm so heartened by and grateful for the organizations you
[35:27] Speaker 1: just listed that you have worked with for twenty years.
[35:30] Speaker 1: I mean that that you, in your own way, have
[35:33] Speaker 1: taken your version of experiencing that kind of darkness and
[35:38] Speaker 1: trans transmuted it into advocacy for so many other people.
[35:43] Speaker 1: It's it's understanding that organizations like that have been fighting
[35:48] Speaker 1: this fight for so long. That is really, I think,
[35:51] Speaker 1: to me, the only beacon of hope seeing how vertical
[35:55] Speaker 1: this is. To your point, do you are there is
[36:00] Speaker 1: that people who want to take the offul and try
[36:06] Speaker 1: to add their their reaction and reach for that to
[36:10] Speaker 1: a resiliency. Are there ways for them to get involved?
[36:13] Speaker 1: Are there ways for them to support anti human trafficking
[36:17] Speaker 1: efforts to work at the UN Like I know my
[36:20] Speaker 1: listeners want to rage and change this stuff, and so
[36:25] Speaker 1: I'm curious as you, as we have you as an
[36:28] Speaker 1: expert with us today, where would you point people to
[36:32] Speaker 1: get involved.
[36:33] Speaker 2: Well, there's always local organizations. Most communities have anti trafficking
[36:37] Speaker 2: groups within them, and there's like shelters for women and girls.
[36:42] Speaker 2: There's outreach, you know, there's education, there's people who lobby
[36:48] Speaker 2: for laws in their states to be strengthened or money
[36:51] Speaker 2: to be raised. If you want to do it on
[36:54] Speaker 2: the you know, the the global scale. If you want
[36:59] Speaker 2: to donate a little money to UNVTF, which you can
[37:01] Speaker 2: go to ENDHT dot org and you'll find information about UNITC,
[37:08] Speaker 2: the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes Anti Trafficking programs,
[37:11] Speaker 2: and then you'll find a link to a donation page.
[37:13] Speaker 2: And we help trafficking survivors across the world, like all
[37:18] Speaker 2: of our grants go to organizations that are on the
[37:20] Speaker 2: ground working to provide aid directly to victims and survivors,
[37:24] Speaker 2: helping them exit and then helping them rebuild their lives.
[37:26] Speaker 2: And we are in sixty six countries and we've helped
[37:31] Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people so far. But you know,
[37:34] Speaker 2: including the US. We're in the US, we're in Latin America,
[37:36] Speaker 2: We're in Europe, we're in Asia, we're in you know, Africa.
[37:40] Speaker 2: But I do love the organization. Aim I got the
[37:43] Speaker 2: international missions. I made a documentary about them with CNN
[37:47] Speaker 2: Freedom Project called every Day in Cambodia, and that was
[37:50] Speaker 2: about virgin sales and Cambodia of young girls in this
[37:55] Speaker 2: very impoverished community of paper less immigrants who were just
[37:58] Speaker 2: desperate and loan sharks would create these debts and then
[38:00] Speaker 2: come back to collect by taking the twelve year old
[38:03] Speaker 2: girl to auction off her virginity. And just, I mean just,
[38:08] Speaker 2: but this organization made like systemic change throughout this community,
[38:13] Speaker 2: like they actually were healing the whole community and giving
[38:15] Speaker 2: the parents ways to be self sustained rather than selling
[38:19] Speaker 2: their kids as their only option to keep food in
[38:21] Speaker 2: their mouths, and changing the culture and educating the kids.
[38:25] Speaker 2: They built this school that can hold over three thousand
[38:29] Speaker 2: students and they take all these kids who used to
[38:31] Speaker 2: one hundred percent go into sex trafficking or be taken
[38:34] Speaker 2: into sex trafficking by the time they were twelve or thirteen.
[38:38] Speaker 2: Like now they're having kids be able to go on
[38:41] Speaker 2: to high school, go on to college, and be able
[38:44] Speaker 2: to take their family out of poverty through a dignified way.
[38:48] Speaker 2: You know, So they're great, aim.
[38:51] Speaker 1: Thank you for that. I think. I think giving people
[38:54] Speaker 1: trusted places to go is always something that our audience
[38:58] Speaker 1: is excited about. And then I get when, you know,
[39:01] Speaker 1: we get emails or dms on the show and people
[39:03] Speaker 1: are like, I donated my birthday to this cause and
[39:06] Speaker 1: my family helped me raised all this money. It makes
[39:08] Speaker 1: me want to sob. It's special to kind of see.
[39:11] Speaker 1: I think the potential in that. We'll be back in
[39:14] Speaker 1: just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors.
[39:21] Speaker 1: I want to get us near the end of the
[39:22] Speaker 1: interview on a high note, and I think they connect.
[39:25] Speaker 1: It's not even necessarily a hard pivot. It's actually so
[39:29] Speaker 1: interesting to me, you know, the way you're talking about
[39:32] Speaker 1: desperation in a family versus opportunity. It's not lost on
[39:37] Speaker 1: me that the new movie Signing Tony Raymond, which is
[39:41] Speaker 1: such a sweet film and it's so beautiful and you
[39:44] Speaker 1: play such a dreamboat of a mom. I love her,
[39:49] Speaker 1: but it also, frankly, you're talking about how you know,
[39:54] Speaker 1: the world of professional sports can be predatory, young people
[40:00] Speaker 1: can be taken advantage of. They can also get the
[40:02] Speaker 1: future of their dreams. And all this work you've done,
[40:07] Speaker 1: it seems to me has to have influenced this woman.
[40:11] Speaker 1: You play this mom where you just say, like, listen,
[40:14] Speaker 1: my kid is a phenom and a talent and all
[40:17] Speaker 1: these things, and I'm going to protect him. I'm going
[40:20] Speaker 1: to make sure he has, you know, the future that
[40:22] Speaker 1: he deserves. Do you feel like some of that advocacy
[40:28] Speaker 1: that's in your bones affected you know, who you play
[40:33] Speaker 1: in this movie.
[40:34] Speaker 2: I have to say it's probably being a mom that
[40:37] Speaker 2: affected it. Being a mama bear because I have four kids,
[40:39] Speaker 2: and two of my sons are very high level baseball players,
[40:43] Speaker 2: and your heart leads for them because they work so hard,
[40:46] Speaker 2: and you feel like this is just a dollars game
[40:48] Speaker 2: in a way. You know, people are just trying to
[40:51] Speaker 2: earn money for their schools by filling the stadiums or
[40:55] Speaker 2: getting their boosters to donate or whatever, and so you know,
[40:59] Speaker 2: but I think also, I think Sandy is operating on
[41:03] Speaker 2: another level too, of feeling like they've been marginalized. These
[41:08] Speaker 2: people are like very poor, and she's lost a child
[41:12] Speaker 2: in the past due to, you know, sort of a
[41:15] Speaker 2: crazy accident, but you know, being in the wrong environment,
[41:21] Speaker 2: and maybe if she was had a little bit more
[41:24] Speaker 2: help and a little bit more money, she wouldn't have
[41:27] Speaker 2: been living in an area where her daughter could catch
[41:29] Speaker 2: like a bacterial infection that killed her, you know. So
[41:32] Speaker 2: she's she's just kind of I think she has a
[41:36] Speaker 2: chip on her shoulder for being overlooked, for being sort
[41:40] Speaker 2: of written off as a crazy, dumb lady living in
[41:44] Speaker 2: the sticks, you know, and she's kind of crying out
[41:49] Speaker 2: for her own dignity as well as the protection of
[41:51] Speaker 2: her son because she sees these like coaches come into
[41:54] Speaker 2: town trying to promise them the moon and stars, just
[41:57] Speaker 2: to get their son to sign with them. But they
[41:58] Speaker 2: don't mean most of what they say. Most of what
[42:00] Speaker 2: they say is just campaign promises, right right. So she's
[42:04] Speaker 2: just there to assert that I am not stupid, I
[42:07] Speaker 2: see what you're doing, and I still have some kind
[42:09] Speaker 2: of agency, even though she's drowning herself in pills and booze,
[42:12] Speaker 2: you know, and then that creates some pretty outlandish behavior too,
[42:15] Speaker 2: which is actually quite comedic. So I kind of loved
[42:18] Speaker 2: her unfetteredness, her sort of wildcat spirit, you know, she's.
[42:22] Speaker 1: Just yeah, I was gonna say, mama bear like a grizzly.
[42:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But inside there's like a real
[42:30] Speaker 2: beating heart, you know, that has like this suffering that's
[42:33] Speaker 2: kind of eating away at her. And I love that
[42:36] Speaker 2: there's a combination of comedy and drama in this movie.
[42:39] Speaker 2: It's yes, it's it's a wonderful admixture.
[42:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. It's my favorite kind of thing to watch. Friends,
[42:45] Speaker 1: we're going to be back to really dive into signing
[42:49] Speaker 1: Tony Raymond with the incredible Mirror Sorvino. But before we
[42:52] Speaker 1: go on today's episode, I have to ask you our
[42:56] Speaker 1: very favorite question from this moment. When you look out
[43:01] Speaker 1: at the year ahead, and maybe it's an advocacy, and
[43:03] Speaker 1: maybe it's in motherhood, and maybe it's I don't know,
[43:06] Speaker 1: some random thing on your bucket list, what feels like
[43:09] Speaker 1: your work in progress?
[43:11] Speaker 2: Oh gosh, there's a few. There's a personal project that
[43:16] Speaker 2: I've been making about Italy that I hope really gets
[43:18] Speaker 2: off the ground, which is really connected to my emotional
[43:22] Speaker 2: connection to Italy's culture that I was raised by, you know,
[43:25] Speaker 2: with my grandparents and like they're Italy. So we'll see
[43:29] Speaker 2: if that happens. If it does, I will be like
[43:31] Speaker 2: the happiest camper, like I just you know, it'll be
[43:34] Speaker 2: a sort of emotional homecoming for me to get to
[43:36] Speaker 2: do that and share that with the world. And then
[43:39] Speaker 2: there's a very a project that's super near and dear
[43:44] Speaker 2: to my heart that we've been working for years to
[43:46] Speaker 2: get off the ground and I think we are infinitesimously
[43:50] Speaker 2: close to it being greenlit, but I can't speak about
[43:54] Speaker 2: it right now, But okay, if it happens the next
[43:57] Speaker 2: couple of days, I'll let you guys know and then
[43:59] Speaker 2: you can, you know, give that note or whatever. But
[44:02] Speaker 2: that that would be huge. That would be just like
[44:04] Speaker 2: a full circle thing for me and would I would
[44:06] Speaker 2: be so joyous doing it. But you know the rest
[44:09] Speaker 2: of things, I'm just trying to focus on really connecting
[44:13] Speaker 2: with my children as they're still around, because one of
[44:16] Speaker 2: my daughters is in college and away and Johnny being home,
[44:20] Speaker 2: you know, Pepperdine is like amazing for us because we
[44:23] Speaker 2: get to have them back for a year. It was
[44:24] Speaker 2: like unexpected, you know, but I have two kids left
[44:29] Speaker 2: living at home, and I just want to be as
[44:32] Speaker 2: focused and connected and not just frittering or in my
[44:35] Speaker 2: time like looking at my phone when they're around or
[44:37] Speaker 2: something like that, you know, really just being there for
[44:40] Speaker 2: them and treasuring them because this life is like that,
[44:43] Speaker 2: you know, having lost dad, having lost friends, you know,
[44:46] Speaker 2: seeing what life does like. I just want us to
[44:50] Speaker 2: be there for each other as much as possible, because
[44:53] Speaker 2: ultimately that's the most important thing, and that's you know,
[44:55] Speaker 2: let's circle back to like the the Harvey wan See
[44:59] Speaker 2: and robbery my career at the same time, if I
[45:04] Speaker 2: had stayed an A list actress, if I had gone
[45:07] Speaker 2: from movie to movie to movie, which is what I
[45:09] Speaker 2: was doing the nineties, I had like three weeks off
[45:11] Speaker 2: a year and that was it, Like I would go
[45:13] Speaker 2: back to back and I was almost having a nervous
[45:15] Speaker 2: breakdown because it was so much pressure. I would not
[45:18] Speaker 2: have met my husband, I would not have had my
[45:21] Speaker 2: four specific children. I probably never would have had four
[45:24] Speaker 2: children because I would have been too busy and too
[45:27] Speaker 2: worried about the time it would take to recover from
[45:29] Speaker 2: the pregnancies and get back down to fighting weight and
[45:32] Speaker 2: be like, you know, professionally available. And you know, I
[45:37] Speaker 2: would have been a more self centered person, I think,
[45:40] Speaker 2: and I would not have had the time that I
[45:43] Speaker 2: have had to fully fling myself headlong into the anti
[45:47] Speaker 2: trafficking work, which has become a gigantic thing for me.
[45:51] Speaker 2: It's really my second like non paid career. It's like
[45:53] Speaker 2: a it's a blessing for me to be able to
[45:56] Speaker 2: have an ongoing voice in that fight. So you know,
[46:02] Speaker 2: my grandmother used to say, not every evil comes to
[46:05] Speaker 2: destroy us, which is a you know, Southern Italian epithet,
[46:11] Speaker 2: and and and I have held onto that. And yeah,
[46:18] Speaker 2: not that I am ever that I'm ever saying it's
[46:21] Speaker 2: okay what he did or what he took from me,
[46:24] Speaker 2: But I have a beautiful life that I wouldn't trade,
[46:27] Speaker 2: is what I mean.
[46:29] Speaker 1: But I think the beauty and what you're saying, and
[46:31] Speaker 1: this is a work in progress for me, is to
[46:34] Speaker 1: realize from your from your grandma's saying, I have some
[46:38] Speaker 1: of those from min nanas in northern Italy, but that
[46:43] Speaker 1: even where things break, that's where the light gets in.
[46:48] Speaker 1: And I think when when you find the light in
[46:51] Speaker 1: the ways you've been broken. I actually think that's how
[46:55] Speaker 1: you alchemize the way humans have a tendency to be
[47:01] Speaker 1: into the potential of what we could be if we
[47:03] Speaker 1: keep doing that work. And I think that is that's
[47:10] Speaker 1: like the craft of humanity. And I think, particularly for mothers,
[47:14] Speaker 1: that is the work because women are going to be
[47:16] Speaker 1: the ones who fix this. So I don't, at least
[47:21] Speaker 1: as someone who's so thrilled to share space with you today,
[47:23] Speaker 1: I don't think it's an excusing of what happened to you.
[47:28] Speaker 1: But I do think it's a figuring out how there
[47:30] Speaker 1: was no way your life was not going to be
[47:32] Speaker 1: beautiful no matter what anybody else tried.
[47:36] Speaker 2: And I sorry.
[47:41] Speaker 1: I love that for you, and I love the example
[47:44] Speaker 1: that that sets, so thank you.
[47:47] Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, And I could have done any of this
[47:50] Speaker 2: without God, right, I'm very I'm quite religious, so like
[47:54] Speaker 2: Jesus and God for me, if I did not have
[47:55] Speaker 2: then I would be dead. I'd be dead right now, honestly,
[47:59] Speaker 2: So you know that that is my personal way of
[48:02] Speaker 2: getting through it, as well as with the love of
[48:04] Speaker 2: family and friends and my husband and everything. But yeah,
[48:07] Speaker 2: I would have to say that it would be false
[48:09] Speaker 2: not to say that yeah, I love that for you.

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