Jason Isaacs - Part 1

Jason Isaacs is a remarkable actor, philanthropist, and Sophia's TV Dad on their new show, Good Sam. You may have seen Jason as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot, or Hap in The OA. Today, you'll get to see Jason in a whole new light as he talks with Sophia about his childhood, what drew him to acting when he was in college, and so much more. Don't forget this is only part 1, so be sure to check back next week for part 2!

Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions

Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo

Editor: Josh Windisch

Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters

This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, It's Sophia and welcome back to work in progress.
Today's guest is Jason Isaacs, remarkable actor, philanthropists and someone

(00:20):
who makes me laugh every day at work. I'm gonna
guess that you already know Jason. If you don't know
him as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, you
might know him as Captain Hook and Peter Pan or
Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot, or Hap in The
o A. When we first met Trust that I fan
girl to him about that show. Perhaps you've seen him

(00:41):
in his latest tour to force film mass or maybe
you know him the way I know him best as
my TV dad, Dr Rob Griffith on Good Sam. Jason's
coming awfully long way since his first appearance in Mel
Smith's The Tall Guy In Originally from Liverpool, Jason and
his family moved to London when he was a child,

(01:01):
where he experienced his own injustice that shaped his outlook
and no doubt influenced the legacy he wants to leave
on the world around him. You might have heard, but
Jason has been an incredible supporter of the British Red Cross.
With his ultimate Harry Potter quiz that raised seventy eight
thousand dollars just last year for the Red Cross. He's

(01:22):
visited refugee projects to learn how the Red Cross is
helping over half a million refugees rebuild their lives, and
he works constantly to destigmatize their experience by lending his
platform to their voices. Whatever he's doing. Throughout his career
of well over a hundred films, he has been an
advocate for those who feel inferior, for those who have

(01:45):
been marginalized, and for those whose voices are not being heard.
For someone who often plays a villain, Jason Isaacs is
an incredibly caring and deeply empathetic human being who I
am so glad to call my real life friend and
my make believe dad. We're going to find out more
about his life, his career, and his incredible work right here,
right now. And we had such a good conversation that

(02:06):
we've actually decided to break this up into two episodes. Enjoy.
You know, And it's weird you're not talking on microphones.

(02:29):
I know it is weird. I think I can look
at you. It's funny to be first of all, it's
funny that we're sitting in my living room where we've
sat before, but with microphones, and it's weird. I know
I was saying this to you before I turned the
recorder on. But other than you and Sky, I haven't
interviewed anyone in person since. But you know something, that's

(02:52):
my favorite bit of when we lived in California. So
I lived into Pango outside you know where it is,
but but it was about a forty five minute dry
to take the kids to school, and we have these
amazing conversations because we weren't looking at each other. And
when you look at someone, if I sit down my
teenage kids now there, they wouldn't sit down, but it
would be a three second conversation. But in a car
you can do it. And somehow, maybe remotely, you can

(03:13):
have conversations because you're not looking at someone. I might
have to my chair away from you, like in a therapist.
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna turn my chair away
because it's weird. It's already a weird dynamic that in
all interviews are weird on there because I always want
to apologize to journalists afterwards and go if I meet
you socially, I'll just listen to you all night because

(03:34):
it's one side, and you know, notionally you're meant to
do all the talking, and you try and make it
social and normal, but that's not normal, it's just rude. Well,
you can ask me things if you want to. I will.
Nothing's really nothing's really after something. So you're so good
at the social stuff. I watch you navigate your way
around all the social media, and I have many friends
who do it. But some stuff is off. So everybody

(03:57):
has this version of I'm going to share what I
think confeeling to share, even if I've mental health issues,
or will Smith and his family sit down and pour
out their marital issues and stuff? What's private? What did
we you know? So what version of the do we
share with the public and what do we keep? I know,
it's really it's tricky to figure those things out, especially

(04:18):
because if you have nothing that is sacred, you have
nothing that is yours. But then I know, for example,
you brought them up, you know, I know how revolutionary
watching Jada show Red Table Talk has felt to me,
and the way that they've been able to usher certain
conversations into households. I think he's so incredible and and

(04:43):
recently when he was on his book tour, something clicked
for me, and I wonder if it might resonate with you.
I looked at him and I went, oh, they're in
their teaching stage. They had a privacy stage, and now
they're they're in a teaching stage. And I know that
as an individual, I've gone through so many stages, and

(05:04):
I know there's more stages of my life to come.
And I wonder if maybe some stages you want to
be deeply private and some of them you want to
shout from the rooftops. I don't know. I think it's
unquestionably to the right that then exposing themselves, peeling all
the layers back, it's incredibly helpful to people watching. There's
no no And you and I both know Este Perel,

(05:25):
who I think it's magnificent, and her podcasts where couples
come and have kind of all their therapy, is incredibly helpful,
useful to people listening. I'm just saying that you and
I are performances, so I think it's valuable. What the
Smiths are doing is incredible. What they're doing. I just
don't want to be that person. So but I'm look,
I'm much older, new I sometimes have to remind myself

(05:47):
that I'm playing your dad because I'm actually old enough
to be your dad, which is odd because we're empoies.
But I still feel and it's ludicrous to hang onto
things that just aren't going to reverse. But I still
remember how much I worshiped those actors that seem so
enigmatic to me that I only saw on screen, and
whose private lives. I knew nothing about their sexuality. I

(06:09):
knew nothing about their what income brackets they came from,
you know, whether they did Roberts, you know his father
being a well off painter and stuff, you know, just
anything about the character. I wanted to suspend my disbelief
watch them on screen and think they could be anybody
they pretend to be, and and as an actor, I
still kind of fantasize that that ought to be the case.
I don't want people even to hear me talking this

(06:31):
accent it, since I play Americans so often, I don't
want to be watching, Oh he's putting on American accent um.
But I think it's just it's ludicrous. That just isn't
the way the world works. Yeah, it's all true, and
none of it's true, and it's all happening simultaneously, and
it's so confusing, and I do I try and chair
if I don't know, I don't remember what to do
with social media. I don't know who to be on it. Um.

(06:53):
I do think people are given comfort and strength when
you pull the curtain back on us and you show
them that you are also scared or unsure or a
bunch of other stuff. Um. It feels like that's a mission,
that's a vocation. So why before the pandemic, I used
to go around to conventions around the world because I've
been in so many different fantasy films and it will

(07:17):
be very easy to sit there and sign autographs or whatever,
and and make people feel like they've met one of
their I don't know superheroes, well, it was people they
placed on a pedestal, And I always have felt it's
my mission in that one minute to make them realize
that I'm just an idiot who forgets to take the
bins out, put some makeup and funny voices, and don't
deserve any more space in the world than they do,

(07:39):
because that can happen. So I do think social media
is useful for that, but not when you want people
to watch us and believe that we are father and
daughter surgeons, for instance, they know too much about us. Yeah,
I think there has to be a bit of a balance.
You know, I'm not a person who puts a ton
of my private life out in the world. For a
long time, I didn't put any of it out in
the world, which you know, as you know, lead to

(07:59):
such It always leads to the rumor mill where you go,
am I dating that person? That would be cool? Um? Wow,
I didn't know that. My god, this money that no
one ever told me about. Where is it? The Internet
says I have and where is it? Um? I think
what's been powerful for me about the space is the

(08:21):
ability to connect unexpectedly and you know, as you said,
what you can create when you're a person with a platform.
And I think that's even an interesting term because listen,
if someone listening has, you know, an account with five
followers who are their friends, they have a bigger platform
with those five people than I ever will. Um. But

(08:43):
I think when you when you sort of are willing
to spend the privilege of a platform with some honesty,
maybe even some radical honesty, what's been very cool for me,
you know, talking about anxiety or navigating mental health or
trying to figure out my place in the world as
a woman and a creative And I meet people, you know,

(09:05):
at at the conventions we do, and they say, you know,
I read this thing that you wrote, this post that
you shared, and I realized, if you struggle with that,
I'm not weird because I struggle with it if it
happens to you, Like, why wouldn't it happen to me? Sure,
if I'm not in any way questioning the value of

(09:26):
that's what we do in art, telling fictional stories as
well as the factual stories about ourselves. I'm just saying
that I I feel odd about doing it. I'm really
glad other people do it and I do do it sometimes.
It's one of the reasons though I have no idea
who to be on Twitter or Instagram and over those things,
because on the one hand, I was railing against Donald
Trump for a long time and trying to persuade people
to see the truth of what was going on and

(09:48):
other political things. I work for some of the charities
and have trying to make people see refugees of the
human beings and not parasites or whatever, just to dispel
the myths and and then I meant to promote things
that I'm in and then I want to make really
stupid jokes. You know, I want to post ridiculous gifts
as well. And I think, you know, if there's hundreds

(10:08):
of thousands of people waiting for some sense that they're
not alone politically, they don't want to read my pums.
And if there's people who want Harry Potter gossip, they
don't want to be told that most of Afghanistan is
starving right now and could do what I help. You know.
So I'm not quite sure which of my multiple personalities
to be. I'm not either, But what I lean on
all the time is I'm a complete person. And if

(10:32):
I was draw a part of myself, not necessarily on
social because again there's things I don't share there, but
if I withdraw a part of myself, I'm just turning
my back on part of myself. I'm making myself smaller.
And you know, we talk about this. I live in
a very mean head. I don't need any more encouragement
to be small, and then the engouragement from my own brain.

(10:55):
But I'm fascinated just by the it, the duality and
the opposition and the juxtaposition even in what it means
to be an artist and to try to make art,
to be unknown so that you can be anyone, but
also to be known enough that you get to play people.

(11:17):
There is a paradox in that I would do back
to back independent movies, uh in disguise if I possibly could,
because I come from that tradition where which is nonsense,
by the way, but it's a tradition where you think, well,
every time I act, I should be unrecognizable from part
to part. Where does that come from? That's the kind
of European you know, camouflage, chameleon, notion of Olivier putting

(11:41):
faint noses on and finding different voices and walks. It's nonsense.
It's not true. Your job has been the story to life.
It doesn't matter if you're the characters could have grown
up in the same block as some other characters you
played one time. But I I felt the struggle right
form the beginning of I don't want to be a
show off. I don't want people to look at me.
I don't want to do a job or a hobby,
which is about, you know, the kids standing on the

(12:04):
table doing the tap dance. So I always felt like
want of the stories when I started, the stories to
be so powerful that they grant people and they made
them phone a helpline or change their life, or treat
people differently, or questioned the lives. And that, of course,
isn't how a career works out. Plus that very thing
you just said, you don't get the opportunities to tell interesting,
good stories that you think you know put something great

(12:26):
in the world unless you have a profile, which means
unless you've got yourself a little bit famous, or finance
herbal which involves doing a bit of standing on the
table and tap dancing, which is so there's a kind
of playoff between the two. The simultaneous truth we each
truth is the opposite of the other. Is something confusing.
But it's interesting that you say that you didn't want

(12:47):
to be looked at, because that's how I feel now.
I really want the stories we tell to have eyeballs
on them, because I think that they make people think,
and I think they are the types of stories that
can make you smarter, kinder, perhaps more tolerant, perhaps more

(13:07):
willing to listen to another person. And yet when I
am not at work, my nightmare is to have my
picture taken my like, there's nothing more jarring than being
sort of stopped in the middle of doing something. I'm like, me,
what I want to, like, crawl back into my little hole.

(13:27):
I don't understand it. And people find that so funny
because they'll say to me, but you're on camera for
a living. I'm going yeah. But as someone else about
the fact that people think that public speaking, which is
most people's worst fear. They'd rather die than speaking public.
They think that actors should be able to do it,
whereas in fact, we're telling stories that other people have
written and were interpretive artists. They've created the world, and

(13:49):
other people aren't expected to be great. But I'm expected
to be great if I find it crippling, Lee, I'm
myself crippling, me self conscious if I'm just meant to
talk to a table of twelve people at my own
birthday party because I feel like it ought to be
a great speech. This is why you wanted me to
do your e PK with you the other day, isn't
it press? I find easy. That's you know, the only

(14:10):
thing that's hard for me. I've been doing it so
many decades onl than you. If someone asked me a
question to which there is a decent answer. It's just
normally a story that I've told a thousand times. And
if for whatever the you know, contingent of fans are
still sticking around, they're like, oh, not that again. No,
And he told it exactly the same way. I'm not
even sure if they're true anymore. They're just things I've

(14:30):
dusted off because they are the answers those questions, the
places you come from. That's that's actually the place I
normally like to start with people, Because you're right, there
are people who have been present in your career. There
are people who have found you through a variety of
avenues and performances and who follow what you're doing and
who are very excited about it. We we all at

(14:55):
work comment on this sort of magnificent in tensity of
the excitement of the Harry Potter fandom meeting the one
Tree Hill fandom in our in our show. And obviously
it's just one thing, but I am curious about where
it started. It's not lost on me that so many
people know you as a character from a film, from

(15:17):
a TV show, from a series of films. Maybe it's
a blockbuster, Maybe it's an independent. Maybe it's a fantasy,
but I always like to know who people were before,
and I really, I must say, perhaps with you more
than anyone. I'm very curious to hear your answer when
I ask you, I just because you know what it is.

(15:40):
We've done so much backstory about my character's childhood with you,
and granted that's make believe, but we've talked a lot
about each other's families. But you've talked to me a
lot about your experiences as a father. I've talked to
you a lot about my experiences as a daughter. I
don't know who you were when you were a little boy.

(16:03):
I don't know if there's a beautiful film called Petite
Mammal but we watched which is so gorgeous about little
girl getting to know her mom's a little girl when
he was listening. You should watch it. I don't you
know that I don't really know. I'm I grew up
in Liverpool and those people who have a really canny
here might be able to hear the odd vowel sound
buried under there, but I think only me come with

(16:25):
this a slightly different angle. So I've played lots of
real life people in my life quite a few soldiers
in black all down and other things, but also um whatever,
politicians and just the football is for various people, and
sometimes I've got to meet them, sometimes I haven't. Sometimes
I speak to them, and I've found it to be
the case that you get a much clearer, more honest,

(16:46):
emotional picture of the I don't know infrastructure or forced
the subterranean forces in people by talking to everyone else.
I don't know that anyone really knows themselves very well.
I don't know that people can describe themselves well. I'm
reasonably about articulate verbos. So you know, I can talk
about myself. Whether it's real, whether it's an accurate self
analysis or not, I don't know. It may be a

(17:08):
story I've told about myself to myself. Um So when
it comes to like how did you why are you
an actor? How did you get into acting? I have
this narrative of um, a little boy who never quite
felt comfortable, although other people who knew me saying I
seemed incredibly confidence. So I don't know that that's true.

(17:29):
But I was very self conscious and always managed to
fake being whatever I thought other people needed me to be.
So I was in lots of different crowds and that
that's something. I think it's called code switching nowadays, but
that didn't exist. But I was. I was from Liverpool,
and I was Jewish, and we moved to London, and

(17:49):
I was in a world that was neither of those things. Um,
I was in this kind of still Jewish suburban ghetto socially,
but I went to school that wasn't And then I
started skateboarding and skateboarding professionally when I was fourteen and fifteen,
and I would go to the South Bank where I
was one of the only white kids, and everybody was
very rough and from very different worlds, and I was

(18:09):
from and then eventually I went to university. All of
these places I had completely different subcultures, and I would
be whoever I thought that people I was mixing with
needed me to be. Vocally, it's a particularly British thing.
But you know, I'd changed my voice enormously. An accident
probably changed my character. I was probably acting all those years.
So I went to university, and you know, I'm not

(18:31):
starting a little. I remember this to be true. I
went to university. They all sounded like Hugh Grant to me,
or postiate Hugh grant you know that we're all family,
and they certainly seemed to me they all have the
same clothes, they mean, the same schools. And I wanted
to fit in with the people that I was mixing with,
and I tried to sound like them. I don't know
if I pulled it off or not. I went out
and bought second hand clothes to try and look a
bit like them. I'm sure I didn't pull any of

(18:53):
those things off. And a couple of weeks in drunk
because they said we all drank a lot, but I
used to drink and take a lot of drugs, and
to many ways, I think it's an equalizer, like if
everybody's wasted, then there's nothing that separates anyway. I saw
a sign from an audition in the union building of
the university, and it said, can you do a Northern accent?
And the one thing that I've been hiding that I

(19:14):
definitely could do was a Liverpool accent. And I went
to an audition for this play and somebody cast me
into play, and I went to rehearsals whenever it was
the next day, and for the first time in maybe
my life, I felt completely relaxed about I didn't worry
about who I was outside the room when I was
pretending to be someone else. So when I was exploring

(19:35):
how human beings behaved, what makes them laugh, cry, shout hate?
You know it was a new play, and I had
the same thing you've seen rear its ugly head on set,
sometimes absolute certainty there was only one truth in a scene,
and that everybody had to see it, everybody had to
perform my way. I just I suddenly found this volcanic

(19:56):
passion for telling stories and exploring what human beings like.
So who I was and I was young, I don't know.
I I there are people who think that they knew
a version of me and don't recognize my own descriptions.
I think I was always inside my head. My inner
dialogue was how are you so comfortable? How do other
people just seem to be easily themselves? And I probably

(20:20):
pulled off looking like that. One of the strangest things
that ever happens to me in my life is when
people tell me that I seem incredibly confident, powerful, like
I do it all because my experiences, I'm terrified all
the time. I wonder how everyone else is being so normal,
how they managed to have conversations and what are they
texting about? What do people text about? And I feel

(20:43):
like I don't do anything every day, like I haven't
done anything enormously. I want to say, not intimidated by
you because I'm so old. I feel like it's okay
that you're different. But I watch you just firing on
so many cylinders. The fact that you're doing it while
you're insecure or wondering if you're doing all great is
a tribute to the fact that you know. Courage is
not not being scared, it's being scared and doing it anyway.

(21:05):
So you're doing this podcast and you do another podcast
with your castmates, you work with us, and you're better
prepared than anybody else on the set, which is we
may get to have my deliberate anarchy of being unprepared. Um,
you have businesses, so you do achieve an enormous number
of things fantastically well. The fact that you don't think

(21:25):
that you're great while you're doing them is what makes
you nice, because if you did think you were great
and that you were doing them are brilliantly would be obnoxious.
Maybe I would just like to be a little less stressed.
But yeah, it's you think you'd be less stressed if
you did less. I'm not sure you would. It's not
that the doing less, it's that I wish I wasn't
the I don't know how to describe it other than

(21:48):
to say, you know, the moment before you fall, when
you trip and you go oga. I feel like that
all day, like oh, the floor is coming all day
and it would be really nice to you know, hear
you make the list and go yeah, I do that
all day and I'm like, this is hilarious. I don't.
I don't know anybody who does as many things as

(22:08):
you do without feeling what you do. Everyone I know
who is driven to achieve in many different areas like
you are. It's because of those feelings. That's why. That's
what makes people do that much. People who grow up
and have a very easy, happy life and wonderful relationship
their parents and siblings, they don't become performers, don't achieve
that much. They open a cake shop and they go

(22:31):
home and they have dinner, and they got to bed
at seven o'clock, and you know, they live contented lives
and they don't feel the need to achieve. I don't
feel the need the drive in order to make their mark,
so you don't get one without the other. Yeah, so
we just have to be slightly mack. Yeah. I mean,
I think I my coping mechanism for feeling like I

(22:52):
wanted something to be different. I've wanted to get out
in the world and make reshape the world. So it
wasn't the one I was living in was to take
a lot of drugs for twenty years. I was you know,
I took a lot of drugs for twenty years and
it really helped for a long time. It was fantastic
until it was awful and you know, and ruined my life,
and so um yours has been. I'm good. I'm going

(23:14):
to do things, and I'm going to do them well,
and I'm going to keep doing them, and I'm gonna
keep opening pushing open new doors. It's fantastic to watch.
I love watching you do it. Sorry, I know it's
sickening pretty one listening. It is true. I love that,
you know. It just struck me as you said that
that I think you and I both are relentless, and

(23:35):
each of us has had to figure out where our
willingness or are inability not to be relentless is useful
versus harmful. Yes, that's true. You put yours into much
more constructive things. I find myself obsessed with because I've
only done the one thing, you know, acting a little
bit of producing, some writing stuff and maybe some directing

(23:56):
coming up. But but I mostly because I've done this
single thing. I find myself obsessed with moments, even long
after I've filmed them or been on stage just uncovering.
It's like I don't know, it's like a sketch or something.
It's like, you know, or a piece of sculpture. I
just it's never quite right and I and it stays

(24:17):
in my head. These moments stay in my head, and
the writing stays in my head. I think, you know,
I can't. I sometimes, as you know, I get obsessed
with I want to turn a phrase around, I want
and there. We have a magnificent writer on our show,
and she's God. I've never worked for anybody who has
as open and collaborative. But I still get like a
six year old in my head, like you know, tears

(24:37):
well up in my eyes. I go, I want to
say this instead of this. She lets us anyway, because
she's great. If it doesn't ruin things. But I, um,
I have a I have an obsessive drive. You're right,
and I've channeled it into a single thing. You've channeled
into twenty things, which is probably much healthier. I don't
know that it is, because it's probably why I feel
like I'm I have this sort of sense that I'm

(24:59):
k of a lot of things, but not really phenomenal
at anything. That's how I feel. That might not be
what you'd say to me. Yeah, but who are these
people who think they're great when you and me but
also they're awful? But in the arts or in any
other field, it should be walking around saying I mean,

(25:19):
it's very English thing to think. That's very Australian as well. Oddly,
the whole tall puppy thing, no one should go I'm wonderful,
I'm great. Look at this thing I've done, Isn't it?
Isn't it? I don't think it's about the the version
of that that's rooted in conceit though. I think I
think it's about um for me, because conceited people, I
just want to kick in the shin, just like a

(25:39):
swift kick with like a pointy mule, you know. Um,
But I see people who are beautifully confident, and I
think to myself, what must that feel like? Yeah, you know,
and and and I usually be easy at night without
worrying at all that they that they may or may
not have done things. Well, yeah, I mean, you talk

(26:00):
about old jobs. I made this movie the summer that
I turned twenty three, and like the last week we
were on the movie, things really devolved with the director.
It was his first feature. The producers, they were like
screaming at each other all the time. I was so
scared and nervous that it really took me out of
my head in terms of being able to focus. In

(26:22):
the last week we were shooting the end of the movie,
I'm haunted by choices I wish i'd made. And people
are like, I loved that movie, and I'm like, well
just check cut me out of it, and they're like,
we can't. You were the lead of the movie. But
it makes me crazy. And it doesn't mean it's real.
It doesn't mean but it doesn't mean you know, that's

(26:43):
that's the life of an artist. Pretentious thing, but it
is true. Nonetheless, I love that yourself deprecating and you
call it pretentious, but I do. I do think it
is very universal. I think a lot of people experience that.
And I'm curious about the ways we channel things, because
I know what it's been two not channel my sort

(27:07):
of relentlessness into healthy zones like to you know, being
fixer upper relationships where I'm determined that I'm the one
who sees it differently. In nonsense, that's, you know, terribly
common for too many wonderful women. But when you talk
about your history and and I so admire the way

(27:31):
that you talk about sobriety, in the way that you
show up for people, I am curious, if you don't
mind telling me about it, how do you go from
as you said this, you know, close knit Jewish community.
You've you've described yourself as a person who is profoundly Jewish,

(27:52):
but not in a religious way. You're your spiritual You
think that was probably in an interview with the Jewish newspaper.
I mean, maybe really not. I think I grew up
doing all of it. You can't separate the religious from
the cultural. So I grew up heavily steeped in everything,
and then I walked completely away from it. And you know,

(28:12):
I missed the songs. I know all the song why
was it because I went to I grew up, my
parents grew up in the forties, you know, And then
and then they were teenagers when the war ended and
the Holocaust was revealed to them, and they experienced much
worse anti Semitism, I'm sure than I ever have. And
and so they had a siege mentality that this notion
that everyone was out to get the Jews, and at

(28:32):
any point someone would turn on you can really trust
anyone at some point would be kicked out of England
or whatever, and you're temporary business um. And I inherited
quite a lot of that until I started having friends
and lovers and partners and children who are not That's
just not my life, that was theirs. And so I'm
I'm very Jewish in the sense that the world will

(28:54):
never let me forget that that's who my background was,
and that there are many people in the world still
who would kill me or bring me up or burn
me for because of my heritage. So I'm so somehow
to turn my back on it and say, well, that's
just not me, it's not who I am, knowing full
well that it defines me in so many other people's eyes.
Seems like an abdication of responsibility maybe, And the other

(29:18):
thing is really very trivial. I remember the songs, I
can read. I can read the language, like you know,
I'm so steeped, and I spent so many years and
I love just like people love Christmas trees or people
love Easter bunnies or whatever. You know. I love all
the food stuff that I loved, all the rituals. But
I have an on Jewish wife, I have not just children.
We don't do any of those things. And so I

(29:40):
guess it will fade with me. And so um, when
I said I'm profoundly Jewish, what I meant was I'm
never allowed to forget. And I don't forget because it
feels like walking away from a fight that I'm in.
Part of I don't believe in God, for instance, I
even get offenders the wrong world, but I stupidly do
that thing. Uh of always wanted to bring up faith, abortion, taxes,

(30:05):
whatever is most difficult in any conversation. That's what I
want to talk about. And God is always at the
health of things. Yeah, I think that's why, you know,
because I come from a very blended family, were a
bunch of Catholics and Jews and Agnostics and you know,
a couple of atheists mixed in there, and so it
led me down this path growing up with both, you know,

(30:27):
practices of religious traditions. As a kid, I was like,
but I don't understand they basically say the same thing.
Like my analogy when I was young was Okay, your
sweaters are different colors, but you're both wearing sweaters. Why
are we arguing about sweat? Like this is so stupid?
And it it led me to study Eastern philosophy, and
I spent my whole senior year in high school studying Islam.

(30:50):
I really wanted to understand what is the root of
belief for people? And why don't we see that most
of our belief is much more similar than different. That's
something that fascinates me so much. I might actually be
making in television serious about beliefs coming up soon, because
I know it's not really possible, but because of what
we do for a living, and because you know, who

(31:12):
knows what stories we tell next. I kind of think
of myself as a pretty blank vessel. And I studied
law originally partly, I think because I can see all
sides of everything, and you know, people sometimes ask me
why do you play all these antagonists or villains, and
I go, well, I try not to take the part
unless I recognize a human being in it. You know,

(31:33):
Lucy's mouth boy being maybe the most high profile. He's
a racist, he's an area and then it's not very
it's thinly disguised. He's a guy that thinks the world
was better when people like he ruled it, and that
mixed blood is an offense against some kind of you know,
eugenic purity and stuff. And you know it's not far
fetched or magical. Um those people. There are people elected
that seats all over Europe and the White House for

(31:55):
a while who believes in those things. Um anyway, So
that the more general point is that I feel like
I'm blank, or I can be blank. I can see
how anybody could believe anything given their context, given what
they're listening to, who they're listening to, what era they
grow up in, what the mores of the society they
live in is. And that's partly if we tell the truth,

(32:18):
if we play characters truthfully without judging them, then people
will recognize that. People will go you know, people if
not recognize themselves in the character recognize that as a
truth about humankind, which is which leads to them understanding
each other a bit more. Possibly. I don't know if
that's a it's a lofty goal, but I think if

(32:40):
we just told the mirror up to nature, you know,
you get something as a viewer, even in you know,
we're making essentially lighthearted entertainment at the moment. You know,
a medical show has high stakes, has tears, has laughter. Um,
but if we can do things truthfully, if we can
find moments of truth, it makes people feel I think

(33:00):
I hope it makes people feel slightly less alone and
that their own kind of inner dialogue is not unique. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean I would gone into that from God because
I can see why people believe in it and want
to believe in it. When I grew up, I was
told very early on I saw those images I was
taking to other sharem interditionally, So you know, I've seen

(33:22):
mountains of corpses. They meant nothing to me. They didn't
look like people that certainly weren't me. They weren't related
to me. But I was told all about the Holocaust
and everybody at some point it was going to kick
the Jews out, kill them at the same time, we
were telling stories a passover of this giant bearded creature
in the sky that reached down and smoked Egyptians with
all these plagues. And and it's true of Islam, minis

(33:44):
true of Christianity and Judaism, that there is this God
that if you appeal at the right time, in the
right words, maybe every Sunday, every Saturday, we'll lean down
and help you. And I was growing up thinking, well,
where the funk was he? And as I began to
read newspapers ago, where is he now? Where is he
when a consonant is blighted with childhood cancer or AIDS

(34:05):
or the Armenian genocide or anything like, where is this
interventionist God? And people go, well, it's about free will,
and you go, but that's not the stories you're telling
pretty will. So for me, there's such an inherent contradiction
in all those monotheistic religions. I just I don't understand it,
but I but my somehow, my mission um as a

(34:27):
storyteller is to be able to understand how anybody can
believe anything and become anyone. The best way I've ever
made sense of it comes back to story because for
me my personal belief, having grown up with so many
books about so many faiths in my space and seeking
out more, is simply that the you know, bearded guy

(34:53):
in the sky, I mean the irony that we would
think that a god, that god could be gendered. But anyway,
we're sitting in a chair like what are we doing?
The best way I know to make sense of it
for me is all of these stories are metaphors about
the way humans can treat each other. We can be vile,
we can be cruel, we can be homicidal, genocidal, violent,

(35:17):
But at our best we serve, we save, we show up,
we give. And who do we want to be? Do
we want to be more faithful or more vicious? Pick?
And the idea is that every day you can pick
to be better. And aside from that idea, I don't

(35:39):
really have time for people arguing about it. That's the
only sweater I want to wear. No I complete with you.
That's the uh. That's so much of what things have
crystallized for me in the last few years is um
despite what it might look like if you read my
Twitter rents when trumpet in power? Is what can I
affect and how can I affect. I can act other

(36:00):
people around me by being gracious and by trying to
act out of generosity and love and not trying to
make other people feel worse to myself feel better. And
where can I make a difference, And where can I not?
If I can't make a difference, don't let it occupy
real estate in my head, because it's just rotting stuff
in there. But that's I think why you have to
round sometimes, and that actually being rooted in that kind

(36:24):
of love and showing up for people is why I
can speak for myself here why I fought so hard
against Trump, because to watch a man in modern times
literally copy Hitler's playbook and then have people say that's
not what he's doing. Oh no, no, the smart enough
deliberately to plagiarize. I think it's an instant, an ugly
instinct in all of those plutocrats that that they recognize

(36:48):
in all human nature. Is this is an instinct you
can play into, which is to tell people if their
life isn't perfect, then it's not their fault. It's and
then fill in the blank and it could be Mexicans, Jews, women,
gay people, immigrants, but it doesn't matter what it is
if your life isn't perfect. And I think there was
a tribal instinct and has been throughout time that we

(37:10):
have to continually monitor. You know, the catchphrase whatever, it
is not catchphrase wrong where, but the tagline for Holocaust
memorial days always never forget. And it bothers me. Not
that it's the wrong tagline, but it it makes people
think they're being told never to forget these piles of
corpses and the crematory and stuff. It's not that I
don't think that's useful. And and sometimes I hear that

(37:33):
complaint the Jews want special treatment. So you know, the
Holocaust comes up. There's too many films about it, too
many documentaries about it. Actually, the only reason to revisit
is not to remember the dead, although they should be honored,
all dead should be. It's to never forget how it
starts and to never do it again. Well, yeah, but
if you tell people don't become murderous, genocidal monsters. It's

(37:53):
easy if you go, but just remember how it started.
It starts with othering, it starts with going. Those people
aren't quite like you, believing any tropes, believing any cliches
about any particular group of people in my life. At
the moment, I sometimes have things to do with the
Red Cross. It's great privilege to be around silent seekers
and refugees. Britain has a minute, minute percentage of the

(38:16):
number of people who displaced in the world. But the
ridiculous lies that are spread about them, the notion that
people have, even my liberal for proggressive friends, thinking they
know who these people are and what they've been through
and what they want at the country have arrived at.
And it's it starts by going, you know, well, if
people aren't looking for a job, then we need to
cut them off from welfare. We're not rich enough. Actually

(38:39):
we're perfectly rich enough to have a safety net that
catches everyone. Have more than enough money. And yeah, and
that refugees have come the economic opportunities that have come
in just to send money back. And I've met numbers
of people who have been kept as sex slaves in Yemen,
who watched their family drown, who have you know, to
risk their life to get on a floating piece of

(39:01):
cardboard to come across the channel because they had an
uncle who speaks English, who's in England, and that's the
only place that might seem safe because their families are dead.
And it's extraordinary the myths that are perpetuated. So for me,
never forget. It's never forget how it starts. It starts
with jokes, it starts with mother ing, it starts with
thinking they're not quite like me. You know, there's a
country that that we haven't given vaccines to India or

(39:22):
to various other countries, but they don't regard death in
the same way. I've heard that they don't regard actually
heard it from a very prominent Indian person when I
was shooting there. I said, God, it's so shocking being here.
I've never seen, and I've read about and I prepared myself,
but actually to witness poverty and starvation on this level
of places that I've been. You said, but you have
to understand, Jason, people view death differently here. And I

(39:45):
was thinking, no, I don't believe you. I don't believe
that those people I passed today, who I'm sure of
starving and dying, view death differently from the way you do. Um.
So it's that that never forget for me is never.
We must police ourselves continually. How it's dolts, not how
it ends. I think that's what was hardest about, you know,
the last five years for me is to watch the

(40:09):
swift uptick in the glee at dehumanizing other people. Absolutely,
and I worry about what happens to us when we
don't view each other as neighbors. You know. I I
am a staunch defender of justice, and I'm pretty willing

(40:30):
to sit down with almost anyone and hear their perspective.
Because what I've found in traveling all over the country
and all over the world and moving to towns and
cities and places, is that even people who don't think
they'll have anything in common with me if we share
a meal, by the end of it, we're friends. And
a lot of the hatred and blame it comes from ignorance,

(40:51):
lack of contact, lack of exposure, you know, why not
about you. But sometimes when I was and I backed
off from it completely, when I was hysterically rapid political,
when Trump was in and using blame as weaponizing blame
or hatred all the time, I would look at some
of the outpouring of violence, you know, murderous hatred towards
me for saying and I'd click on those people's timelines

(41:13):
and I'd read where who they were talking to, they
were listening to. And I think, you know, if I
only had these sources of information, I would think the
same as you did. You know, and you know, and
you have to question, you will, are my sources as valid?
Who am I thinking that the media that is so
introduced by Trump and everyone else, that lamestream media, maybe

(41:35):
they're aligned to me, but actually they have journalistic standards.
I mean America more so than Britain, certainly printed press,
you've have three independent sources of cooperation exactly. I mean,
there are objective standards that just aren't adhered to elsewhere.
My friend Stephanie teaches community college in Oklahoma, and one
of the things she teaches is trying to get her
students to find what verifiable, reliable sources are before their

(41:59):
form opinions and when they're writing, and it's very difficult.
They can't even agree often on one of verifiable sources. Well,
and I think it can be very hard to even
imagine that there are entire troll farms, you know, funded
by dark money, that literally spend all day making disinformation

(42:20):
look like real news. You know, we we don't do that.
You and I don't do that all day. Most people
can't imagine that that's real. So when something looks real,
they think it is real. We're we're in a new
kind of battle that I think a lot of people.
But you never win a battle with someone who thinks
something by turning them their wrong. And there lie the
only way. And it's impossible. I was talking about it

(42:42):
before these reason Mike one could someone I was talking
to a Hollywood mogul the other day going listen, you
have all these have all these people that you can influence,
you tell these stories on a gigantic scale. Can you
use your smarts and contacts to establish a neutral source
of fact so that everybody, whatever side of any political
special they sit on, go, well that's a fact. Let's

(43:05):
start joining And he went, no, of course I can't.
That's impossible. But that's that's the biggest task facing us,
whether it's on climate change or immigration or anything in
the world. What's a fact? Yeah, it's crazy how they
go this was there a question? Well, we started I
feel like I'm on a soa. We started way back

(43:26):
at the beginning of our tangent talking about you know,
sort of growing up and identity and I guess I
My my curiosity, um, was to dig a little more
into you know, the community that you grew up in
Liverpool versus when you moved to London and you began
having your sort of chameleon multiple personalities in various different places.

(43:50):
Yeah yeah, I wouldn't they were, they really were. But
but to your point about being a performer, you you
had your sort of chameleon stage where you experienced all
of these things with all of these groups, and you
talked about college and that sort of bizarre world that
you dropped into. But that's where you found acting. I

(44:11):
also found an identity because I didn't know who. You know,
what was my label before? That was I. It was
either kind of slightly vulgarian from north West London, Jewish world.
Was I, you know, a guy from Liverpool. I was
Jasoniced as a student actor or student director like that
was the thing. I had a label, UM, and I
loved it. I loved it. I had someone to go to.

(44:33):
It might have been maybe it would have been just
as comfortable a community if I joined the Origami group whatever.
Just I had some people. I had my people, UM,
and the stuff that we talked about it seems so
much more interesting than stuff that that people were talking
about when they were having drinks in each other's room
or party, but stuff talking about the stuff of life.
Now we hadn't really lived any life ourselves yet, but

(44:55):
still we were talking about those things. And we also
did all those things that student draw me. Know, you
think it's clever to be naked and swear a lot,
and all the players are always about sex. But but
I love that village, you know that suddenly there's a
new village every time. And I went to the Edinburgh
Festival at of Fringe Theater a lot, and to the
National Student Theater Company a lot. I really I think

(45:19):
I probably dealt with or engaged with it in the
same way engaged with books when I was younger, or
candy when I was younger, or drugs when I was older.
Like it just I went full tilt. I went, oh,
this is the thing, let's do this. And that's what
it was like getting into the theater. Yeah, just just
let's do Why would I do anything else? Like why
any part of my day that isn't doing this is

(45:40):
a wasted part of the day. Like when I used
to smoke a lot, anytime I inhaled, and I wasn't inhaling.
Smoke seemed like a wasted inhale. And that's what it
felt like doing plays and putting plays on and directing
places and stuff. That's sort of you know, you hear
the term adrenaline junkie, but I think about some of
that relentless almost as being like a pleasure drunkie in

(46:03):
the way that you describe it. This like desire to
really feel, to have it be experiential all the time.
You found it in theater. But you say that you
knew you had it. Perhaps you knew you had it.
Upon reflection as a child with books, with skateboarding, I didn't.
I didn't have a sense that I liked extremes when

(46:26):
I just you know, if I wanted to finish a book,
I would make myself finish the book. If I was
tired falling asleep, I'd prick myself with pins or splash
myself with water. I'd be under the cover with a
flashlight because I'm going to finish this book tonight. And
I finished the book. You know, I just I had
a tendency to I don't know what to too extreme,
to extremity, to not want you to give in too.

(46:49):
I don't know what good sense I think, why what
is giving into good sense feel like giving up? No,
I don't know. I mean, I don't really stand it.
I recognize that I've had it in my life and that,
you know, it's what has sustained me. Sometimes it's helped
me achieve things. At other times it's destroyed me. At
other times it's just an instinct to push through and

(47:14):
not to settle for mediocrity. Yes, So then, how as
that sort of drive is applied to theater, do you
wind up graduating with a large degree? How does that happen? Well,
I mean I have a law degree. It's technically true.
First of all, none of those laws are still in place.

(47:35):
I don't think that I studied them, you know, pre thatcher.
But I think they gave me the law degree in
the end because they didn't want to failure on their books.
I did very well in the first and second year.
By the end of the third year I knew, I
do know. At the beginning the third year I was
going to go to drama school, and so I didn't. Yeah,
so the so I didn't go into the law faculty

(47:55):
at all. I did know lectures. I did know essays
and no tutorials. UM. And then I took the exams,
you know, and I wrote down what I thought the
laws ought to be, not what they were, and I
drew pictures to illustrate some. I even tried to cheat
at one point because I just had there was a subject,
I just knew nothing about it at all. And I

(48:15):
shared a house with other student lawyers, and I got
them to try and come in my room and briefed
me the night before. And the notion that you could
be briefed in one night for what these very smart
people had studied all years laughable. And I tried to
look at a little kind of cheat sheet, M and
I wrote down a list, because in those days, studying
laws a lot about memory, memorizing cases. UM. So I

(48:36):
thought I wrote out ten case names. I write them
on a piece of paper, and I thought that would
jog the memory of the thing I had half looked
at at four o'clock this morning. That morning, UM, and
I went into the exam and I knew nothing, and
I went to the toilet and I pulled this piece
of paper out and I looked and I tried to
remember four names that I could come back and expand
on UM. And I went and sat back down to

(48:57):
my scene, and I couldn't remember what they were, so
I think they gave me a degree. They took my
honors away, so it's an LLLB with honors, and they
took the honors away because I've done well in the
previous two years and they thought in that third year, Um,
he's not going to be a lawyer. He's not going
to shame us in court, and we don't want to
have a failure in our books. Was there a conversation
about this with your brothers, because they went very traditional.

(49:19):
You have a lawyer, you have a doctor, you have
an accountant. You know, in the troop of the four
of you, did you admit to them what was going
on at the time or now? No? No, I was,
I mean I did. That's funny. My god a daughter
at university now and she never calls and and she
doesn't really answer when I call her, and I get
incredibly upset because we've been very close as parents all
the time. And then I remember that I would call

(49:40):
once every couple of weeks on a pay phone for
five minutes. You know, I really I walked away from
my family, away from the world. Whe it was a
pretty dysfunctional family. You know, you don't become a drug
addict or an actor, frankly, unless there's some cracks in
the mold. And we were not that kind to each other.
There's some very destructive behavior going on, and so I
didn't share it with them. I did talk to my

(50:01):
dad today was nine. He asked me what my daughter,
who's studying English at Cambridge is going to do? And
I said, no, I did Dad. He said, well, but
what does your plan to do a job but being
English teacher? And I went, I don't think so why
is she studying English? And I said, Dad, because what happens?
You were poor? My dad left school at fifteen and
work with his hands. And I go, and you wanted
your kids to do better. They needed to study something professional,

(50:24):
have a real job. So we all study these things
that would not be you know, someone working with their
hands like you were. And then I made some money,
and so my kids don't think about having a job
at all. They'll probably be poor and work and so
their kids will once again be back on the cycle.
But my kids just think that life is about dreaming
and following you know your passions and who knows where

(50:48):
they'll land. But yeah, they didn't mind. I guess for
my parents, they had all the boxes ticked. And also
I wasn't really a kid that you stopped doing what
he wanted to do. I just I was pretty single minded.
I did think. I don't know, you were you very successful,
very young, um, and obviously made money. When I chose
to be an actor in Britain, I chose to be poor,

(51:09):
I thought. I mean, I chose a life of art
that I imagine would have me in kind of one
bedroom studio apartments, eating cold beans out of a tin,
but being artistically fulfilled. There was no part of me
the thought I would ever make a living at all.
But I just thought, that's that. That's okay. I'll be
okay with that for a while. Yeah, I mean, I

(51:29):
didn't you know I spent years hustling and on the
audition circuit and um, working retail. I'm like, no, I didn't,
I didn't, did you know? They always say it takes
years to become an overnight success, but I was in college,
so I think it was less surprising. Um. God, I

(51:53):
lived in ship holes at school every every summer because
I didn't want to go home. My parents couldn't believe
I didn't want to come back to the house for summer,
and I was like, are you out of your minds?
You think I'm coming home to a curfew? Like get
out of here? Um Like, I wanted to act because
I wanted not to be myself, wanted to explore other worlds.

(52:13):
I wanted to be anything other than where what I was,
where I came from. Yeah, you're looking for I for
a person who I've learned other people view as um
very in the middle of things. I genuinely feel emotionally
like I'm in the corner most of the time. And

(52:36):
I was such a voracious reader. And when I did
my first play, it it's such a silly thing to realize,
but it was like profound for me. I realized a
play was just a book come to life and and
the big story. Yeah, but it but it was it
was the world's I would go into and feel seen

(52:59):
and rep presented and see what I desired in my
own life. It was that world was real while we
were on stage. And did you like expressing your emotions
in ways that you didn't do in your life? Where
is that not true? For sure? I like shouting and
crying and screaming and being angry fighting, not being scared, never,

(53:23):
because when you have dialogue, you know, unless you're playing
a scene where your character is fearful of something, I'm
never afraid because I know I know what's coming. I'm
I'm high on the unexpected experience inside of the container
that I know that's an ultimate rush, but there is

(53:46):
a safety, and this is the scene, and it will
begin and it will end, and you will express and
you will be free. You can find something but still
know it. And it's a very strange duality that I
think is so beautiful about what we do. You can
have a completely unexpected experience on a road that is

(54:09):
completely expected. But it was very affirming for me and
in my own life, there was a lot of expectation
to be good, always be good, always be home on time,
never break curfew, never sneak out, always let someone else
be the problem. So I never complained. I never had

(54:29):
an issue. No matter how terrible something was, I gritted
my teeth and I bared it and I did it
and I made sure everyone else was okay. Well I
did which you inherited because I'm not breaking confidence you,
but you had some very unhappy work experiences where you
also didn't speak out and didn't do this. Yeah, where
we figured out inside spaces how to look out for

(54:52):
each other, but we were never allowed to challenge authority.
And then as I aged and got to understand more
and did challenge authority, it got worse, not better. And
and so I it gave me an immense amount of
like DNA level understanding of other people in their own

(55:17):
versions of those kinds of situations because you learn to
cope so that it doesn't get worse. And it's part
of the reason that I behave the way I behave
on our set. It's remarkable. I you know, I did
the whole David Us for our show yesterday and they're like,

(55:38):
so tell me about Sophia Bush. What does the Bush
like to work with? And and it is remarkable to
watch you walk the walk and Katie, I'll showing a
walk the walk that they both want to create a
work environment that is full of people who want to
go to work and feel like if they can, if
they need to, they'll be heard if they speak out,

(55:58):
and that they are being head for and listen to
and uh, you know, there's that's the kind of corporate
speak one expects to find absolutely everywhere where. When would
anyone ever not say those things? But to see you
do it and put it in motion and ask about
people and see have Katie do it too, and Katie
and Jenny whose company makes the show, for them to
say um, which I found remarkable. So you know, I'm old.

(56:21):
I've heard most sayings before. I certainly heard most bullshit
Hollywood sayings a million times. And then for them to
say I can't remember which one of Katie Jenny said.
When people come to me with something, my first instinct
is to say yes, and then I want to work
out why. And I've been around, only been around people
who who want to say know and how dare you?
And then work out why? Um? And And so I

(56:42):
see you at work, not that you're losing focus on
the acting, but that you want work to be a
place where justice prevails and the people are treated right
and that ah, it's just you know, I've been working
a long long time, and I've worked on some very
lovely sets with some very lovely people, But I've never
been around a place where that is a priority and

(57:02):
put into action like it is. We're around here. It's remarkable.
That makes me so happy. Well, this is a lot
of fun. Do not forget that this is just part one.