April 16, 2020 • 17 mins
A movie star (and self-described “hugger”) tries to embrace new ways of connecting.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Danny Shapiro and this is the way we live now.
Today is day number thirty seven, since most of us
have been staying at home, and day number three of
this podcast, and I am thrilled to be joined by actor, writer,
and all around amazing human Jamie Lake Curtis. Thank you
(00:34):
for coming on my show today. Well, thank you for
you know, thinking of something else to do besides the
myriad things you already do, because you are a card
caring wife, mother, human as well as you're sort of
day job. He amy, enough about me, how about you, Jamie?
(00:57):
So you know, the idea for this show really came
out of an awareness that I was feeling so deeply
that all we want so much to gather just a
little over a month ago. And this is so crazy
for me to like just realize how recent it was,
because it seems like a galaxy long ago and far away.
(01:18):
You and I were having lunch with friends on a
beautiful sunny afternoon in l A. We were together, And
now those kinds of gatherings feel like they're a little
bit for the moment in a time capsule. So invite
us into your home and your life metaphorically right now. Like,
where where are you right now? Where are you sitting?
(01:40):
What do you see? Who's with you during this period
of time? So I'm in my home in Los Angeles.
I've lived here with my husband Christopher for a very
very long time. I've lived in Los Angeles my entire life. UM.
I've raised both my children in this house. I am
sitting in a room that is my office, UM, which
(02:01):
was originally an outdoor eating patio that had no windows
but was covered, and I changed it almost immediately when
we bought the house into an office for myself. It's
very bright. I look at trees, which then of course
(02:21):
brings bird life and nature to me. I live nearish
the ocean. UM. I can hear the ocean, I don't
see it. And so that's where I am. Christopher's I
believe watching the replay of the Masters in the other room.
I just woke up from a little nap. It was
(02:42):
so funny because a friend of mine is named Joe Puyasy,
and Joe as a fantastic photographer. I have loved his work.
Both Christopher and I have collaborated with him on projects,
and he, as a way to deal with this forced isolation,
(03:03):
decided to start taking portraits of people in isolation, and
he he just started contacting friend of his and saying,
can I just literally drive by your house and put
my camera like over the fence. And it was a
beautiful um series of photographs that he shot for Instagram
(03:25):
that he just did as a creative person as a
way to comment. And the reason I bringing it up
is that then the Hollywood Reporter saw some of them
on Instagram, they asked him if they could publish it
in their journal. Two mornings ago, I woke up with
a text from a friend of arts saying cool cover,
(03:49):
and I said what and what? The reason I brought
it all up is the it was my husband and
I on the cover of the Hollywood Reporter in this
portrait that Joe took in twenty three seconds between I'm
here the text when he said I'm here to me
(04:11):
opening the front gate. Twenty three seconds later he said goodbye.
And now this picture was on this magazine, but the
words they described were alone together. That's why I brought
it up because what this has yielded is that my
(04:32):
husband and I are alone together. Our schedules are off,
and they're just sort of always been off. And now
they're more off. So I get up at five am,
four thirty five am every day and Christopher goes to
(04:53):
bed at eleven thirty every day. So I go to
bed at seven thirty eight o'clock. And you know, and
so we're having this interesting time where I spend a
lot of time on my own in my home, even
though Christopher is in the same house. That's what's been
(05:13):
the reality, which is very much our marriage, but it
has been highlighted by this forced isolation. I mean, I
think so many things are getting underscored or deepened during
this time. Then there are these deeper understandings that are
(05:35):
going to be explored in our main relationships. And it
was just an irony to me. If that's the correct
use of the word. You went to college, you write books.
If alone together is it really would be a portrait
of how we are. So I spend a lot of
(05:56):
time alone. And the one aspect of this that has
been the most challenging for me that has brought me
to my knees. And I said, literally, in the minute
I say it, I started cry. It's just astonishing what
it's It's touched in me. Ah, I I don't do
(06:18):
the phone very well. I hate the phone. You and
I have been friends for a long time. Have you
ever gotten a text longer than two words? For me,
it's usually yep, nope, m okay. I usually use even
though my friend Aleankovic would hate me for it. I
use K for an acknowledgement. I speak in emotional haikup.
(06:45):
I hate the phone. I hate it. I have never ever,
prior to three weeks ago, done FaceTime. People try to
face time me. I laugh in their face time, unlike
put that away my daughter. Only three weeks ago I
posted a picture where my daughter taught my husband Deny
(07:09):
how to work, to zoom and how to be in
a video conference. Now I do recovery meetings every day
on them and I'm now like miss techno. I'm like,
I don't know, go to speaker of you. No, No,
I'm mute yourself. I mean, but that's not me, and
it has it has demanded that I participate in a
(07:31):
way that is unnatural for me, and that has been
very challenging. I'm just not that person. Also, you know,
I was thinking about you and you're a hugger. I'm
a hugger. I can actually like call to mind what
it feels like to get one of your hugs. It's
an embrace. It's warm, it's like pillowy and enveloping. I'm tactile, yeah,
(07:58):
and I am in most chinal and hactile. This has
required other parts of me which I don't feel are strong.
I was speaking recently with my friend Sylvia Borstein, who
is someone that I hope to have on this podcast.
We were talking about what's happening with technology and the
(08:19):
way that we are all seeing each other, whether it's
in classrooms, or it's in recovery meetings, or it's other
kinds of meetings, and she said, you know, we are
creatures who operate with five senses, and we only have
access to two of them. When we're talking to and
(08:41):
seeing someone on a screen, we're only seeing and hearing.
We can't smell, we can't touch, we can't taste. We
only have those two dimensions. I guess one of the
things I really wanted to ask you, And it's funny
because I had literally written the question down, what do
you find most challenging? And you went straight there and
I knew you would. But what do you hope we learn?
I mean, do you do you have any thoughts about
(09:02):
what might come out of this. I'm concerned that there
will be a generation of germophobes, and that this the orthodoxy,
the gradations of color of how people take the possible
threat of human contact being the source of illness. One
(09:28):
moment occurred that sort of changed everything for me. And
it was the day that Princess Diana had died. And
it was August, and I had heard this news, and
I remember sitting The phone rang and it was my
assistant who had traveled with me, and she said, news
the thing. I turned on the TV and I just
remember the moment of the voice, the face, and the
(09:51):
voice of this young man who had to read the
official news that to the assembled press corps that she
had passed away. I remember sitting on the edge of
my dad, and then I turned the TV off because
I knew what the TV would do. I knew what
was about to come, and there was a book next
to my bed. Now I'm going to cop to this
(10:13):
on your podcast. Please if you run into me in person,
please don't ridicule me harshly for what I'm about to say.
But I was so uninformed that I used to leave
books next to my bed, so that if by chance
you came over to my house, you might go, wow,
(10:34):
look what she's reading next to her bed. I think
there was war in peace and something else. I mean,
it was heady, intellectual work. And at the top of
this pile was a book about insight meditation by Joseph
Goldstein and Jack Hornfield that had been given to me
(10:56):
by a friend of mine. I opened up this book
and in the first couple of pages of this book,
it talks about mindfulness, and it says people who have
tried to live mindfully at the time of their death
asked themselves two questions. Did I learn to live wisely?
(11:18):
Did I love well? And I remember sitting there and thinking, really,
that's it. And then I thought about her, and then
I thought about in both ways that she had answered
affirmatively to those questions. And the reason I brought up
this entire long story was because Princess Diana was the
(11:41):
first public person to touch an AIDS patient. If you remember,
she went to a clinic and she reached her hand
out and she touched the leg of a man. I
remember that moment because it at the time when we
didn't know and all of the fear mongering about the
(12:07):
AIDS epidemic, was telling us what was going to make
us sick, and here she was reaching her hand out,
and I remember that moment as this transformative moment for
the world, that this woman reached out and touched someone,
And that, in answer to your question, is what I'm
(12:31):
concerned about, is that we will somehow equate human touch
with illness, and that would be a tragedy. That's beautiful, Jamie.
Let me ask you one final question. What are you
doing or reading or thinking about these days that's bringing
(12:52):
you any kind of solace or comfort. What brings me
real solace is seeing how people like yourself top of
the list, have shape shifted, have answered the need through
a different action. My friends Hans and Patty, Rock and
Wagner have gone from being restauranturs to purveyors who have
(13:17):
offered all of the restaurant deliveries of vegetables and foods
and food stuff which we're going to rot because nobody
was buying them, and they figured out a way to
sort of flip it and reverse it. To Missy Elliott
here on your podcast, my old assistant Jennifer Arthur. It
(13:38):
lives in a in a community where there are a
lot of nurses and she just adopted them and said,
I am going to adopt five nurses and their families.
And she delivers food stuffs. And this is a hard
working single mom who works her ass off in her
day job, and here she's just chosen to do it.
(14:00):
Those stories give me solace. Those stories make me go
mm hmm every time my neighbor calls, or even my children,
my beautiful children, the way they have gotten very concerned
about us because we're old and a little militant about it,
which I really accept and appreciate. That gives me solace.
(14:22):
And then lastly, I'm a doer. So here's my offering,
and I'm going to take advantage of this in any
written form to anybody. When I'm communicating, at the end
of it, I say my hand in yours, which is
to say, you are not alone. My hand is in
your hand. If you're going to the doctor, if somebody's
(14:43):
having a medical procedure, if I'm not there, if they're
going through a hard day, I say my hand in yours.
The one thing that has occurred during this is that
I was sitting in my little chair and I thought
you know what I can offer, palliative comfort, words from
my own mind in a small way. And that morning
(15:08):
I started a new Instagram account called my Hand in
Yours and it has given me tremendous comfort, and that
has actually given me a way to communicate in the
way that I am a communicator and make an offering,
(15:29):
which is something I can do. The word offering is
exactly how I've thought about this show. It feels like
an offering, and I think that that's what we do now.
You know, what we do is dig deep. You know,
it's the chop wood, carry water, dig deep. But also
like the quotidian part of life, the thing that is
(15:53):
the same anywhere in the universe is also the beautiful
thing that we're doing, which is elemental, elemental. My dear Watson, Jamie,
thank you so much for talking today. I love you,
Jamie Curtis and this was I love you. Danny Shapiro,
I thank you, and Michael Jacob I thank you, and
(16:18):
God bless you all. And my hand in yours, My
hand in yours until we meet again. Okay, I can't
wait for that hug. Thanks for listening to today's episode
of the Way We Live Now have a question or
want to share what your life is like today. Join
(16:38):
The Way We Live Now is Facebook group at Facebook
dot com, slash groups, slash the Way We Live Now
pod That's all one word or leave us a voice
message at nine O nine one three eight nine nine
That's nine O nine seven one three t w w
L for the Way We Live You can also follow
(17:01):
me on Instagram at Danny Rider. The Way We Live
Now is a production of iHeart Radio. It's produced by
Lowe Brolante. Our executive producer is beth Anne Macaluso. Special
thanks to Tyler Clang and Tristan mc neil. Be safe
out there. For more productions from iHeart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Danny Shapiro and this is the way we live now.
Today is day number thirty seven, since most of us
have been staying at home, and day number three of
this podcast, and I am thrilled to be joined by actor, writer,
and all around amazing human Jamie Lake Curtis. Thank you
(00:34):
for coming on my show today. Well, thank you for
you know, thinking of something else to do besides the
myriad things you already do, because you are a card
caring wife, mother, human as well as you're sort of
day job. He amy, enough about me, how about you, Jamie?
(00:57):
So you know, the idea for this show really came
out of an awareness that I was feeling so deeply
that all we want so much to gather just a
little over a month ago. And this is so crazy
for me to like just realize how recent it was,
because it seems like a galaxy long ago and far away.
(01:18):
You and I were having lunch with friends on a
beautiful sunny afternoon in l A. We were together, And
now those kinds of gatherings feel like they're a little
bit for the moment in a time capsule. So invite
us into your home and your life metaphorically right now. Like,
where where are you right now? Where are you sitting?
(01:40):
What do you see? Who's with you during this period
of time? So I'm in my home in Los Angeles.
I've lived here with my husband Christopher for a very
very long time. I've lived in Los Angeles my entire life. UM.
I've raised both my children in this house. I am
sitting in a room that is my office, UM, which
(02:01):
was originally an outdoor eating patio that had no windows
but was covered, and I changed it almost immediately when
we bought the house into an office for myself. It's
very bright. I look at trees, which then of course
(02:21):
brings bird life and nature to me. I live nearish
the ocean. UM. I can hear the ocean, I don't
see it. And so that's where I am. Christopher's I
believe watching the replay of the Masters in the other room.
I just woke up from a little nap. It was
(02:42):
so funny because a friend of mine is named Joe Puyasy,
and Joe as a fantastic photographer. I have loved his work.
Both Christopher and I have collaborated with him on projects,
and he, as a way to deal with this forced isolation,
(03:03):
decided to start taking portraits of people in isolation, and
he he just started contacting friend of his and saying,
can I just literally drive by your house and put
my camera like over the fence. And it was a
beautiful um series of photographs that he shot for Instagram
(03:25):
that he just did as a creative person as a
way to comment. And the reason I bringing it up
is that then the Hollywood Reporter saw some of them
on Instagram, they asked him if they could publish it
in their journal. Two mornings ago, I woke up with
a text from a friend of arts saying cool cover,
(03:49):
and I said what and what? The reason I brought
it all up is the it was my husband and
I on the cover of the Hollywood Reporter in this
portrait that Joe took in twenty three seconds between I'm
here the text when he said I'm here to me
(04:11):
opening the front gate. Twenty three seconds later he said goodbye.
And now this picture was on this magazine, but the
words they described were alone together. That's why I brought
it up because what this has yielded is that my
(04:32):
husband and I are alone together. Our schedules are off,
and they're just sort of always been off. And now
they're more off. So I get up at five am,
four thirty five am every day and Christopher goes to
(04:53):
bed at eleven thirty every day. So I go to
bed at seven thirty eight o'clock. And you know, and
so we're having this interesting time where I spend a
lot of time on my own in my home, even
though Christopher is in the same house. That's what's been
(05:13):
the reality, which is very much our marriage, but it
has been highlighted by this forced isolation. I mean, I
think so many things are getting underscored or deepened during
this time. Then there are these deeper understandings that are
(05:35):
going to be explored in our main relationships. And it
was just an irony to me. If that's the correct
use of the word. You went to college, you write books.
If alone together is it really would be a portrait
of how we are. So I spend a lot of
(05:56):
time alone. And the one aspect of this that has
been the most challenging for me that has brought me
to my knees. And I said, literally, in the minute
I say it, I started cry. It's just astonishing what
it's It's touched in me. Ah, I I don't do
(06:18):
the phone very well. I hate the phone. You and
I have been friends for a long time. Have you
ever gotten a text longer than two words? For me,
it's usually yep, nope, m okay. I usually use even
though my friend Aleankovic would hate me for it. I
use K for an acknowledgement. I speak in emotional haikup.
(06:45):
I hate the phone. I hate it. I have never ever,
prior to three weeks ago, done FaceTime. People try to
face time me. I laugh in their face time, unlike
put that away my daughter. Only three weeks ago I
posted a picture where my daughter taught my husband Deny
(07:09):
how to work, to zoom and how to be in
a video conference. Now I do recovery meetings every day
on them and I'm now like miss techno. I'm like,
I don't know, go to speaker of you. No, No,
I'm mute yourself. I mean, but that's not me, and
it has it has demanded that I participate in a
(07:31):
way that is unnatural for me, and that has been
very challenging. I'm just not that person. Also, you know,
I was thinking about you and you're a hugger. I'm
a hugger. I can actually like call to mind what
it feels like to get one of your hugs. It's
an embrace. It's warm, it's like pillowy and enveloping. I'm tactile, yeah,
(07:58):
and I am in most chinal and hactile. This has
required other parts of me which I don't feel are strong.
I was speaking recently with my friend Sylvia Borstein, who
is someone that I hope to have on this podcast.
We were talking about what's happening with technology and the
(08:19):
way that we are all seeing each other, whether it's
in classrooms, or it's in recovery meetings, or it's other
kinds of meetings, and she said, you know, we are
creatures who operate with five senses, and we only have
access to two of them. When we're talking to and
(08:41):
seeing someone on a screen, we're only seeing and hearing.
We can't smell, we can't touch, we can't taste. We
only have those two dimensions. I guess one of the
things I really wanted to ask you, And it's funny
because I had literally written the question down, what do
you find most challenging? And you went straight there and
I knew you would. But what do you hope we learn?
I mean, do you do you have any thoughts about
(09:02):
what might come out of this. I'm concerned that there
will be a generation of germophobes, and that this the orthodoxy,
the gradations of color of how people take the possible
threat of human contact being the source of illness. One
(09:28):
moment occurred that sort of changed everything for me. And
it was the day that Princess Diana had died. And
it was August, and I had heard this news, and
I remember sitting The phone rang and it was my
assistant who had traveled with me, and she said, news
the thing. I turned on the TV and I just
remember the moment of the voice, the face, and the
(09:51):
voice of this young man who had to read the
official news that to the assembled press corps that she
had passed away. I remember sitting on the edge of
my dad, and then I turned the TV off because
I knew what the TV would do. I knew what
was about to come, and there was a book next
to my bed. Now I'm going to cop to this
(10:13):
on your podcast. Please if you run into me in person,
please don't ridicule me harshly for what I'm about to say.
But I was so uninformed that I used to leave
books next to my bed, so that if by chance
you came over to my house, you might go, wow,
(10:34):
look what she's reading next to her bed. I think
there was war in peace and something else. I mean,
it was heady, intellectual work. And at the top of
this pile was a book about insight meditation by Joseph
Goldstein and Jack Hornfield that had been given to me
(10:56):
by a friend of mine. I opened up this book
and in the first couple of pages of this book,
it talks about mindfulness, and it says people who have
tried to live mindfully at the time of their death
asked themselves two questions. Did I learn to live wisely?
(11:18):
Did I love well? And I remember sitting there and thinking, really,
that's it. And then I thought about her, and then
I thought about in both ways that she had answered
affirmatively to those questions. And the reason I brought up
this entire long story was because Princess Diana was the
(11:41):
first public person to touch an AIDS patient. If you remember,
she went to a clinic and she reached her hand
out and she touched the leg of a man. I
remember that moment because it at the time when we
didn't know and all of the fear mongering about the
(12:07):
AIDS epidemic, was telling us what was going to make
us sick, and here she was reaching her hand out,
and I remember that moment as this transformative moment for
the world, that this woman reached out and touched someone,
And that, in answer to your question, is what I'm
(12:31):
concerned about, is that we will somehow equate human touch
with illness, and that would be a tragedy. That's beautiful, Jamie.
Let me ask you one final question. What are you
doing or reading or thinking about these days that's bringing
(12:52):
you any kind of solace or comfort. What brings me
real solace is seeing how people like yourself top of
the list, have shape shifted, have answered the need through
a different action. My friends Hans and Patty, Rock and
Wagner have gone from being restauranturs to purveyors who have
(13:17):
offered all of the restaurant deliveries of vegetables and foods
and food stuff which we're going to rot because nobody
was buying them, and they figured out a way to
sort of flip it and reverse it. To Missy Elliott
here on your podcast, my old assistant Jennifer Arthur. It
(13:38):
lives in a in a community where there are a
lot of nurses and she just adopted them and said,
I am going to adopt five nurses and their families.
And she delivers food stuffs. And this is a hard
working single mom who works her ass off in her
day job, and here she's just chosen to do it.
(14:00):
Those stories give me solace. Those stories make me go
mm hmm every time my neighbor calls, or even my children,
my beautiful children, the way they have gotten very concerned
about us because we're old and a little militant about it,
which I really accept and appreciate. That gives me solace.
(14:22):
And then lastly, I'm a doer. So here's my offering,
and I'm going to take advantage of this in any
written form to anybody. When I'm communicating, at the end
of it, I say my hand in yours, which is
to say, you are not alone. My hand is in
your hand. If you're going to the doctor, if somebody's
(14:43):
having a medical procedure, if I'm not there, if they're
going through a hard day, I say my hand in yours.
The one thing that has occurred during this is that
I was sitting in my little chair and I thought
you know what I can offer, palliative comfort, words from
my own mind in a small way. And that morning
(15:08):
I started a new Instagram account called my Hand in
Yours and it has given me tremendous comfort, and that
has actually given me a way to communicate in the
way that I am a communicator and make an offering,
(15:29):
which is something I can do. The word offering is
exactly how I've thought about this show. It feels like
an offering, and I think that that's what we do now.
You know, what we do is dig deep. You know,
it's the chop wood, carry water, dig deep. But also
like the quotidian part of life, the thing that is
(15:53):
the same anywhere in the universe is also the beautiful
thing that we're doing, which is elemental, elemental. My dear Watson, Jamie,
thank you so much for talking today. I love you,
Jamie Curtis and this was I love you. Danny Shapiro,
I thank you, and Michael Jacob I thank you, and
(16:18):
God bless you all. And my hand in yours, My
hand in yours until we meet again. Okay, I can't
wait for that hug. Thanks for listening to today's episode
of the Way We Live Now have a question or
want to share what your life is like today. Join
(16:38):
The Way We Live Now is Facebook group at Facebook
dot com, slash groups, slash the Way We Live Now
pod That's all one word or leave us a voice
message at nine O nine one three eight nine nine
That's nine O nine seven one three t w w
L for the Way We Live You can also follow
(17:01):
me on Instagram at Danny Rider. The Way We Live
Now is a production of iHeart Radio. It's produced by
Lowe Brolante. Our executive producer is beth Anne Macaluso. Special
thanks to Tyler Clang and Tristan mc neil. Be safe
out there. For more productions from iHeart Radio, visit the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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