February 17, 2026 • 48 mins
On this special live episode of Bookmarked in collaboration with Apple Books and Apple TV, we’re celebrating Laura Dave’s newest novel, The First Time I Saw Him—January’s pick from Reese’s Book Club—and the highly anticipated second season of The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV. Danielle Robay is joined on stage by Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Laura Dave, Angourie Rice, Judy Greer, and Rita Wilson for a candid, funny, and deeply thoughtful conversation about bringing the story into its next chapter.
BOOKS MENTIONED
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave
The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
JAmes by Percival Everett
Stuck Up & Stupid by Angourie Rice & Kate Rice
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,
I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
So I'm going to tell you a short story and
it'll be brief, I promise. So a few days ago,
on a stage in Los Angeles, I had one of
the best nights of my life. Okay, here's what happened.
(00:21):
Apple Books, Apple TV, Reese's book Club, and Hello Sunshine.
Brought together an incredible group of women for a conversation,
and there was so much to celebrate. We had Laura
Dave's new novel the first time I saw him, which
was January's Reese's book Club Pick. Then we were celebrating
season two of The Last Thing He Told Me, which
(00:41):
is premiering on Apple TV on February twentieth. And beyond
the book and the show, we were also celebrating something
close to my heart and I know yours too, the
magic that happens when women take agency in their lives
and become the heroes of their own stories. That stage
was filled with actors and producers, writers, friends, mothers, daughters.
(01:06):
It was a room full of brilliant women and the vibes. Okay,
the vibes were immaculate. I'm not gonna lie. The energy
in the room was electric today. I am so excited
to share that conversation with you. You already know you
are in the right place. So let's turn the page
(01:27):
with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Laura Dave and Gowrie Rice,
Judy Greer, and Rita Wilson. Thank you so much for
the war and welcome. I'm looking at all of you
and I want to congratulate you on season two. But
(01:48):
also I feel like I'm with the Avengers of TV
and film right now. Everybody is so familiar with all
of your voices. But because there are seven of us here,
I'm wondering if you can help me out and share
your name, please share your role in bringing this story
to life. And then, thirdly, maybe just one word to
describe season two and how it felt creating it. Reese,
(02:13):
this is your book club. Can I start with you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Hi?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I'm Reese Witherspoon, I'm an executive producer, and one word
to describe this show is thrill ride.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Ooh.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Hi, I'm Jen Garner, I'm executive producer and I play
Hannah Hall and one word that is not one word
is intergenerational family trauma.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I like that. I'm Laura Dave.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
I'm the author of the last thing he told me
in the first time I saw him, and I'm lucky
enough to get to work on the show with these
wonderful people. My one word would be two words.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Second chances, you're the author, so you get two words.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (03:07):
I'm and Gary Rice. I play Bailey, and I think
one word to describe it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All is action packed.
Speaker 8 (03:17):
Judy Greer, I play Quinn. I'm new one word.
Speaker 9 (03:24):
I was thinking suspense. Ooh, but I want more words,
but I'm in the sick Listeste.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Are you a rule follower? Yes, so am I. I'm
Rita Wilson. I play Carol.
Speaker 8 (03:37):
Carol's my mom.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I play Hannah's mom, and I'd say the one
word would be super califragilistic, gigsbilidocious, great word.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Great, thank you for that. I got to interview Laura
a few weeks ago, and I learned that she's absolutely hilarious.
I also learned she's very humble, so she won't share
these stats. But I'm going to the last thing he
told me became a phenomenon. It sold over five million
copies after it was chosen as a Reese's Book Club hit. Well,
(04:13):
it became a New York Times number one bestseller. And
you're breaking records again because the First Time I Saw
Him was the first sequel that Reese's Book Club chose,
which was very exciting. What made you think that this
story needed another chapter?
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Well, I have to just start by saying that before
that first book even came out, I got an amazing
call from Reese Witherspoon and Laura Newstatter, which is a
call that as a writer you don't think you're going
to get, which is, we want to give this a
second life. And so from day one it has been
a pretty unbelievable experience. What's funny is I worked on
(04:53):
the first book for ten years, on and off, so
I kept putting it down. I wrote two other novels
in the pre but I couldn't let it go. And
the very first ending of the last Thing he told
me the first last chapter I wrote, was actually the
last chapter of the First Time I Saw Him. So
I think I was writing two books all along. I
(05:14):
just wasn't aware of it. When this whole journey began.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I just didn't know it. Reese, you read more books
than anybody I know, I think more than anybody. Anybody knows.
When you read the last thing, he told me, what
about it said to you, I want to bring this
to the screen.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
I think it's just the relatability of Hannah's character. The
minute I picked it up and started getting into it,
I immediately thought I could be this person, and this could
happen to me.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
This could happen to any of us, And it's that
kind of.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Every person experience in an extraordinary situation. We all thank
God if something terrible happened, I would know what to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But you really thought about that so clearly.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
So I think you just let people love Hannah first
in her complicated relationship with Bailey. Also, I thought, was
really the final chapter of that first novel is so
beautiful that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You just wanted more.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You mentioned loving Hannah, Jennifer. I heard you loved Hannah
from the get go. You actually emailed Reese to sort
of pitch yourself for this role. And I know that
there are so many scripts that come across your desk.
Why could you not let Hannah go?
Speaker 5 (06:29):
I hadn't read the script Actually, I had read the
book aloud to one of my kids and we kept
staying up way too late, just we couldn't stop reading reading,
and I loved it so much, and there was another
actress attached, and I just thought, I can never think
about this story again because I have an like a
heartache for this character. And then when that actress fell
(06:54):
out for scheduling reasons, and I heard that Reese wasn't
thinking that she would have time to play the role,
I mean, there's I entered into the conversation with a
lot of humility because we have been friends for twenty
five years and I did not want to be like, Hi,
can you put.
Speaker 8 (07:10):
Me in this show?
Speaker 5 (07:11):
But I just had to write to Reese and to
Zach and to Laura Newstatter is, Hello Sunshine, to everyone
and kind of say, I don't know why I feel
so compelled to do this, but I have to tell
you why I'm connected to Hannah, why I feel so
connected to Hannah Hall. And it really was her, you know, Laura,
(07:32):
and I always say Hannah is the grown up in
the room, and she doesn't necessarily want to be, but
she is. And I've had those moments that I just
understood that in her so deeply and how committed she
was to figuring out being a mom, which is such
a complicated thing.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
And I've had those moments.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I understand that in a really deep way. And then
the action element or the thriller element is something that
for some reason, this nice old gal connects to you.
I don't know why I like to run and fight
and you know, hit the men, but I do, and that's.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
Something I get.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
So anyway, Yeah, I stayed up all night, and then
then then they had the audacity to write me back
and I had to do it again the next night.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I was gonna say, it's so fun to see you
boxing and kicking and all of that again, because we
saw you on screen doing that for so long. I
know that we have a cast of book lovers, which
is really special. Judy, you were such a book lover.
Was there book recommendations happening on set? Were you guys
trading Rex? Yes?
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I mean, if I think, like, if I just go
down the line everyone here, I have read something that
everyone has recommended.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Laura, I'm reading right now The Cocktail Hour by T.
S Elliott.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
No.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I actually I finished that. Judy gave me The Alchemy.
Oh yeah, the Journal of Alchemy. Yes, you know the
Alchemy souleka. Yes, so I'm on number like fifty, have
numbered those?
Speaker 8 (09:05):
I know. I I did it myself, you did?
Speaker 5 (09:08):
And then Reese's book and everything that you recommend in
the world. Yeah, and Gallery wrote her book one coming
Out with her mother.
Speaker 7 (09:18):
Yes, yes, thanks, yes, yes, I wrote a book with
my mom which was so exciting and so like wonderful
and it was chosen as a Reese's Book Club pick,
which was just like the most exciting thing ever.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I found out on set.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Jen called me into the trailer and they filmed my
reaction and my mom was on FaceTime. It was it
was so lovely. So yes, we've got a very bookish cast,
which is lovely.
Speaker 10 (09:44):
Rita.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Did you have any rex that people gave you, or
any recks that you gave them? In particular, the.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Ones that I loved recently were trust by her Nandiez,
which was fantastic. I read Anne Patrick's Bell Canto, which
I had never read because I went on a big
and Patchett fas this summer. I read Ethan Frome Edith
Wharton like I had never read that either. I mean,
there's just it's endless. A lot, there's a lot of
(10:12):
there's a lot of books.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
In our house.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
We say booky book books rule because my granddaughter said
it once.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
No, you can make it into a meme too, rid it? Laura,
you had this totally surreal experience as an author. Season
two of the last thing he told me was filming
at the same time that you were writing the sequel novel.
The first time I saw him, I've never interviewed anybody
who has done that. What elements did you feel were
so important to stay the same between the book and
(10:39):
the show.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
Well, you know, when I was working the book and
started with three words over my desk, and they were redemption, salvation,
and forgiveness. And I knew that everything in the book
was moving toward this idea of what are we willing
to do to be forgiving? And which is a very
different thing than do you believe in forgiveness?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Do you not? What are you?
Speaker 6 (11:00):
What is the effort say about how we love people
and what we need to do to get to a
better place. And so I sat down with the showrunners,
one of whom I'm married to, and said, this is
where the book is going These are the first hundred pages.
These are sort of my bright lines of what's really
really important.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It was a real exercise and trust.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
And one of the reasons that I felt so comfortable
is the people sitting on this stage all care so
deeply about these characters, and they all are bringing something new.
And the thing is that I think you can get
to those words, to those ideas in a variety of
(11:44):
different ways. But these beautiful things started to happen when
I finished the book, and then I got to start
reading the scripts and see everything. They were still on
episode six or seven, they were writing those at that moment.
And a line that I wrote in the book about
what a woman and is willing to do to protect
her family, someone had written a line of dialogue that
(12:05):
Quinn says that like matched it, and we hadn't even
shared that yet. So there were these like sort of spellbinding,
incredible moments.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And Gari, did you think about forgiveness in this season
because Bailey is a very different person?
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Yeah, she is.
Speaker 7 (12:22):
It's I mean, it's five years later, and so they've
really Hannah and Bailey have worked so hard to become
a team and a family, and those years from sixteen
to twenty one, So much happens in that time, and
to have one missing parent in that time I think
would have really been felt by Bailey. I think when
(12:44):
that family dynamic of one parent and one child suddenly
becomes a trio, as it did in season one with
Hannah coming in, that changes everything. And then in season
two that dynamic changes again. And I think I was
thinking a lot about forgiveness and and letting go, and
I think something Bailey struggles with in this season is
(13:06):
that she's surrounded by grown ups who have been unable
to forgive, and they're still holding on to old grudges
and old wounds and they cannot let that go. And
Bailey has to really think about, Okay, what is the
cost of that. It's affecting her life. She wasn't there
for any of this and it's changed everything for her.
(13:27):
So what is she going to do to try, and
I don't know, help the grown ups around her kind
of break that cycle.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Absolutely, that was so well said. I think everyone on
stage was like, yeah, okay, So part of this season
was filmed in Paris, and I know that the fictional
reason is a bit tense, but in real life that
seems so much fun. I'm wondering if you have any
Parisian memories. I see JG and JG eyeing each other
(13:56):
because we were all sort of looking on Instagram at
your amazing fotos together. Can I start with you, Judy?
Do you have any Parisian memories you loved?
Speaker 9 (14:05):
Yes, we had so much fun. We had so much
fun on our one day off, but also at lunch,
we would sneak away, go to lunch, have an omelet
go back to set. It's very civilized. It was kind
of magical just being there and be there with my friend, Like,
(14:26):
when would we ever get to take a vacation like that?
Holy buckets. It was so fun. Yeah, I have a
million memories. I'm not going to keep talking, but it
was so fun. We got to do some very dramatic
scenes and acting. Yeah, we also acted there.
Speaker 8 (14:45):
We acted so hard in Paris.
Speaker 9 (14:50):
You guys are gonna die when you see how much
we acted.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
I can say this because I wasn't responsible for it
in any way.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
When you see.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Them acting in Paris. In episode eight, so everyone stick
around for episode eight. There is two scenes that are
just gonna If they don't blow your socks.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Off, they will blow your socks off?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
How was it for you, guys? Because you're such good
friends and all this history in real life, but your
characters are actually they have a lot of friction in
the show.
Speaker 8 (15:28):
What's that like, We're never gonna play friends? No, No,
nobody wants to see that. Yes we do.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
There were there were times where we had to be
separated because we would giggle. And then when we really
when things really got serious and our little Bailey was
at stake, all bets were off, we just we didn't
look at each other, we didn't deal with each other,
and then.
Speaker 9 (15:53):
Yeah, we had to be separated sometimes sometimes because we
were being awful and we weren't paying attention and we
were goofing, and sometimes because we just really needed to
like focus.
Speaker 10 (16:03):
I can fully see the dynamics.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
I guess it're all just coming to life for you.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I'm surprised the show even got mede. When I interviewed
Laura a few weeks ago, I learned that you love quotes,
and that's something that we share, and so usually every
week I ask our guests to share something that they've bookmarked,
and it can be a fun quote or something that
they've saved on social media. But this week, because of
(16:30):
your love of quotes, I'd love for everybody to share
a quote that they've bookmarked this week. And if it's
not this week, it could be maybe something that you
live by, something that sticks with you. Because she's laughing,
I'll start with you, Rita.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There's a quote that I had on my bulletin board
for a really long time and it's from the sculptor Michelangelo.
And someone had asked him, how do you make these beauty, full,
beautiful sculptures? And he's from these massive blocks of marble,
and he said, I see the angel in the marble,
and I carve until I set him free. And for me,
(17:12):
that is a metaphor of what it's like to be
a woman. We start at a very young age and
we then develop these other identities that are either imposed
on us or we think we have to choose, and
at a certain point in your life, hopefully it starts
to shift and you start carving away and shipping away
at the things that are extraneous, that don't matter, so
(17:35):
that you can arrive at the essence of who you are.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
That was so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Thank you, Deep thoughts, Deep Thoughts.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Judy not going next? Hey, Gary, can I put you
on the spot. I'll come back.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
I want to say to Samuel Beckett quote and I
think I had it on a postcod. I think my
mom gave it to me on a postcod. That's something
like try again, fail again, fail better. It's something like
that about like it actually doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Matter if you fail and fail again.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
You're You're just gonna keep failing and you'll fail better
and you'll get better at not being good at something,
which I think is which, Yeah, there's value that.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Its value to fail in order to get Yes.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
Yes, So I kind of like that. And I had
that postcard up in my in my bedroom.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I like that too. We're also scared of failure and
it kind of takes that away.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
Yeah, it's we're all going to fail all the time,
and then sometimes we succeed and that's great too.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Judy, can I popcorn back? I?
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Uh, I don't remember an exact quote, but I was
at a memorial recently for Don Mischer. I don't know
if any of you know him.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
He was such a wonderful.
Speaker 9 (18:53):
Man and and I'm thinking about him a lot with
the Olympics on because he often produced Olympics opening ceremonies
and things like that, and and he in his memorial
there was a quote but I can't remember it exactly,
but it's about seeing the wonder and everything and and
and so I have that written on a post it
(19:15):
note above my desk, but I can't remember the exact quote,
but that I think of a lot, because you want
to see like the the special in the Kotidian, you know,
And that's kind of what we do, is we take
the every day and make it come alive. So that's
so something about seeing the wonder. So it's not really
(19:36):
a quote at all. Sorry, it's okay.
Speaker 10 (19:39):
It was still an idea.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
And also I know that you read so much because
you've just said the word quotidian, so thank you for that.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
I also love Pan Kotidian the restaurant.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
And there's one in my neighborhood, so.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Not taking credit for that big word.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And it's also French.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
And you went to Paris for the show and you
were like.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Pan quotean city play.
Speaker 10 (20:09):
Lauric, may I go to you?
Speaker 6 (20:11):
Well, I have two because the first one's not from
a book, which feels sacrileged to like not be quoting
from a book but Adam Grant talked about Lindsay Vaughan's
fall and he said something which I thought, well, first,
told everyone to shut up, which I appreciated if they
had a note about her choosing to take a risk
and be brave. But the last sentence of what he
(20:34):
wrote was success is about the distance from the start
that you're willing to go. And that really stuck with me.
It's not about the result, it's about the distance to
the distance to the start.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So that was something. And then Jennifer here knows.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
I reread Heartburn by Nora Ephron far too often. It's
my cozy book, even though it's about the end of
a marriage. And if you on a really great listen,
Meryl Streep does the audio book of it, so that's
pretty special too. On the idea of starting, uh, I
just got to the end of this read and one
(21:12):
of the things she says in the second to last
chapter when she's getting to a point of forgiveness, is
and she can't really get to anything wonderful yet, but
she's able to remember something that was magical between them,
and then she says, and this feels like the moment
where we start.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And I thought that was lovely.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
That is lovely, Thank you for that.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
I only have things my mom says in my mind,
like weeping may last through the night, but joy comes
in the morning. Or happiness is your own responsibility, or
don't marry a man thinking you can change him.
Speaker 8 (21:49):
So those are those are Pat garnerisms. They come from
the Bible or you know ma.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Ingles, but.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Yeah, same difference. They're all kind of mixed into one.
Pat Garner Bible ma Ingles truly.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Wise words for you stand a quote.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
You know what I read something this year I thought
was great at this author Percival Everett who read this
book James. He won the Booker Prize. It was last year,
but this quote really stuck with me, and it's, you know,
apropos of being in a room talking about books. He said,
the most subversive thing you can do nowadays is being
a book club.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And to me, that means.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Let's read books, let's discuss ideas.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We need to.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Stop listening to people's opinions and actually form our own
opinions and create community with each other where we're socializing ideas.
So every person in here who is an influencer, who
deals with books and reads voraciously You're part of the revolution.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Ooh, I love that. That got me excited. Yeah, so Jennifer.
In the second season and in the second book, we
reunite with Hannah five years later. As Andngari said, and
(23:10):
at the end of season one, you are in survival mode.
Where is Hannah season two?
Speaker 5 (23:18):
At the end of season one, there was no season two.
So shout out to Laura Newstatter and Ellison Shining to
Reach for calling Laura Dave and saying we may need
another book here, and to Laura for realizing that actually, yes,
the story did continue and there there was a there
was a ways to go in those five years. Hannah
(23:41):
wanted Bailey to grow up and have her space, to
become a young adult and go to college and feel safe.
So Hannah has tried to put a bubble around her
daughter while also preparing for the inevitable danger that was
that would follow them.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
And as the first episode.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Takes off, which is the only way to think of it,
kind of a blast off. You see Hannah like, you know,
this idea of competency, competency porn, like somebody who's so
good at what they do. She's this, I'm Mary Howard,
She's a step ahead of every single thing that could
possibly be happening, and she has it all planned out
(24:24):
and is like the locks are falling into place. Boom, Okay,
if this happens, then this has got to happen. Then
this has got to happen, and then this, and it's
so it was so satisfying to read, to shoot, to play,
to watch, I love, love, love Hannah's brain, and then
danger catches up with them.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And it gets really exciting at that point.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Yeah, and they're a team at this point, as at
Gowerie said, they've become a family, They've become a team,
and it only gets screwed up when you know when
Daddy comes back into the picture.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Do you feel that teamwork? Do you feel the shift
in your character here?
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (25:01):
Absolutely. I mean it's so great because I think both
Hannah and Bailey have committed to their relationship. And there
are moments in season two where they disagree and they
have a different idea about how to kind of solve
the next problem or go about the next adventure. But
(25:23):
their conversations are not arguments anymore. They're listening to each other.
They're having a discussion, and they know that they love
each other no matter what, and they're in it together.
So I loved I loved getting to play that, and
also that they're a stepmother and a step daughter and
that's kind of they've chosen each other as family as well.
(25:48):
And Bailey is on a mission to discover more about
her biological mother as well. But that is that's a
journey that Hannah has like respects, and she gives her
the space to kind of explore that.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
So it's just great.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
Seeing a mature relationship and a healthy one too. I
have a great relationship with my mom, and so getting
to play a really good mother daughter relationship is kind
of it's kind of a relief in a way. It
feels normal and natural.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I didn't realize until you just said that about the choosing.
That's part of what makes the relationship so exciting to watch.
I think, to see you two come together, it's a choice. Judy,
it is so fun to see your character in this show.
I've never really seen you play this type. You're kind
of this power broker.
Speaker 10 (26:37):
Oh yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
What made you want to sign on?
Speaker 9 (26:42):
Aside from your best reason, I I really I don't
get to I don't get offered roles like this very often.
I mean, just like looking at the rack of clothes
at my costume fitting, I'm like, I am in a
different league. I I loved the I mean Quinn, She's torn.
(27:05):
I think it's really I love the scene when I
see when quincyes Bailey for the first time, because she
sees her best friend for the first time and how
many years, and it is so overwhelming for her, and
all of this past comes back at her, and it
is so hard for Quinn to not just like, I think,
(27:27):
just crush Bailey and want to be with her best
friend again in the version of her daughter, and so
she has to really like separate herself from that. And
I think it's also fun to play someone who's battling with,
you know, to opposing ideas in her head, like protecting
her family, wanting to connect with Bailey, wanting Hannah to
(27:50):
just go away.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Rita, your character is new to season two. You play
Carol excuse me, which is Hannah's mom. What excited you about.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Carol, Well, it was a character who made choices when
she was a young woman to.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Can I say all this okay? To give up her daughter?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And I was eager to explore that and also that
there wasn't a that the Carol character understood that there
may not be reconciliation and that she couldn't claim anything
(28:38):
to that reconciliation. But I think she had a reason
for doing it, which people can judge or not judge.
But I think if it's a matter of life or death,
you probably will choose life, even if the choice to
(28:59):
do that might be very expensive in what you give up,
what is it like.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
To prepare for a role that sort of doesn't exist
in the book.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You trust the writer, You trust the amazing producers that
you have, And it was those discussions with Laura and
with Josh Singer and Jennifer that we were able to
understand her in a more realistic way.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, Reese, people so often talk about feeling seen by
the material that you champion and bring to life. I
see it on award show stages. I hear about it
all the time. When you were reading a book, are
there three things you could point to that say, yeah,
this is going to translate to screen really well?
Speaker 4 (29:47):
I think the main thing, the main other than being
written by a woman, Because I felt like when I
started the company it was really important to champion female authors.
Also that a woman at the center of it is
the hero of her own story, because I truly believe
women save themselves every single day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
And we need to see more of that on film.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But the most important metric for me is do I
want to share this book with somebody? Because sometimes you
read a book and it makes you seem smarty pants
at a dinner party, but you don't necessarily want to
share it.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So I think that's a really important part of it.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
And that's what creates community, and that's sort of the
main thesis of our book club and why we started
it was just to connect people together.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I was so not expecting that that's a very cool
way of looking at it. It seems like it would
be so much more complicated, and you're saying, no, I
just yeh, that's pretty easy.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
It's pretty simple.
Speaker 10 (30:44):
It's like, oh, I love this book.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I want to share with somebody.
Speaker 8 (30:47):
I read one last night.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I was like, oh, I can't wait to talk about
this with somebody.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
And there's so few things that you get to connect
over now because things are streaming and you don't know
when they're watching it, and there's not like you know,
must see TV on one night of the week. So
books can be like that, especially if you have a
monthly cadence where you get together with a group of people.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's really nice. There's so much history and so many
connections on this stage that doesn't always happen. I'm really curious,
from an after producer perspective, what goes right when you
have this shorthand with people. I've never been on a set,
so if you could like bring me in and just
sort of explain it, I would love to understand.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I'll come to set anytime you want to.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Danielle, thank you read you need to come. It's magical
to be on a.
Speaker 10 (31:34):
Set, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I mean.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
I've been sitting up here reflecting on the very specific,
very intimate relationships I have with all of the women
up here and you, including you, and they are very
Each one of these women play a role in my
life outside of this particular show, and there's a depth that.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
Comes in, an.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Ease and a knowing and a fun mischief that comes
in when when you know someone and you get to
do a scene with them.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I love that word mischief.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
I really see that between you two Jage, something that
happened that I just also think speaks to the magic
of the woman playing Hannah Hall. Here is my very
first day on set, because everyone up here has been
on set a lot more than me. But my very
first day of season one on set, I was late
because I was me, and so I got confused and
(32:34):
a little lost, and so I drove onto set past
two police officers who I thought were real police officers.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I waived at them. They were extras, which.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
I was about to find out because the very first
thing I did was drive into the scene that Jennifer
was shooting. Now, another actress might have reacted badly. Jennifer
very kindly turned to me and said, you're gonna want
to park over there. And that is who she is,
and that is no one would be grumpy with you.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
I don't know a single actress who would get grumpy
with you.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That's who she is, always always.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
That is so funny, you, Alura.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
We actually have it on TA Can you please release
that on social media for us?
Speaker 8 (33:18):
She was like Hi, Hi, and we're like, okay, hang on.
No one overreacts. Don't scare her. She's an author.
Speaker 10 (33:27):
I can speak for myself.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I feel like with mother daughter relationships, if I'm very
honest about my mom. I feel like it's a betrayal,
and if I withhold, it feels like it's incomplete. And
that is something that this show I think portrays so
very uniquely, the good and the bad, the soft and
(34:02):
the hard, and Gary, I know you're so close with
your mom. I got to interview the two of you together.
Did this show in any way change your relationship with
her or the way you even think about her?
Speaker 7 (34:19):
I don't know if it changed my relationship specifically with
my mom. But something an interesting parallel is that while
filming season two, you know, Bailey is going on this
journey to discover more about her mother, and she's asking
people about her mother, And while filming season two, I
decided to interview some of my own family members about
(34:40):
my two grandmothers because I never knew them, and so
I kind of was going on this parallel journey with Bailey.
And it's very interesting, and I think this is reflected
in the show as well, that there's quite a kind
of skirting around talking about people who are no longer
(35:00):
here with us and how do we want to represent
those people? And Bailey is trying to kind of create
this collage of her mother and who she thought she was,
and she's hearing lots of different things and piecing that
together and trying to find the truth of who her
mother was is a challenge for her because everybody has
(35:22):
a different idea, so that I think playing this character
inspired me to kind of, yeah, go on this journey
in my personal life as well. And I just love
that we see that with Bailey, that her kind of
investigation into who her mother was doesn't negate her relationship
(35:44):
with Hannah, it doesn't negate her relationship with her father
or her grandfather. It's like they all exist at the
same time, which I love.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Jane and Laura, we have so many eagle eyed readers
and viewers here so close to the material. Is there
anything that we should all be looking out for as
season two approaches? Can you share anything special with us
that we should really pay attention to?
Speaker 5 (36:12):
To me, because the book and the scripts were written
by different people at the same time, with the same
kind of arcs beginning, middle, and end, but the middle
is the middle. There are diversions, and I love the
way one fills out the story of the other, and
(36:33):
I really hope you find that as satisfying as I do.
The first we hewed really extremely closely to Laura's book,
and I love doing that because you know, I read
the book every morning up to wherever we were shooting
that day and hair and makeup. I read it every
single day, know that book like the back of my hand.
In this one, it's more of a woven story between
(36:55):
these two written. You know, one acted out and one
is written, but they go back and forth and I
think they are yeah, it.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
Is that's it's in the hole that you get the picture.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And I think that for me, I was.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
It was really the way that readers embraced the first
book and then the first season. It was so I
was nervous about writing the second book, and I only
really wanted to do it if I felt like I
could get it right. And I feel a lot of
relief now that readers are responding, at least to me,
(37:37):
in a way that suggests that they're happy with Hannah's
second chapter. But something else that was I think really
unique to this experience, and I think it has to
do with working with women and women who really care.
Is I was given the freedom and the space to
write that book.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You know, my partners are partners at Hello.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Sunshine, at twentieth at Apple, I said, guys, I think
to do justice to the second season, I need to
sit down and I need the time. And not one
of these wonderful women I work with was like, well,
you can't have it. They all wanted me to have it.
Speaker 8 (38:12):
Additionally, we had Josh and Aaron.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Josh Singer and Aaron Zelman are showrunners, and they're such
beautiful writers that you could trust your husband and we
could trust him as well that our.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
Story was in good hands, the best of.
Speaker 6 (38:27):
Hands, definitely, and they did like such a beautiful job.
I mean there are moments. Can I give like two spoilers?
I mean they won't be bad, they'll just be lucash spoilers, Laura, please, Well,
there's so much that I love in the show, like
as the author that I got to sort of watch
(38:47):
and enjoy. But like, the thing is that, and Reese
use this word, the fact that it's such a thrill ride,
Like you want to sit down, you want to watch
all of them. And I think my experience watching it
is they get better and better as they go, And
like that is really saying something because often show like
you watch the first one and then it sort of
(39:09):
falls off, and for me, every episode had like easter
eggs that then down the road. One thing I was
just thinking about is things that are set up in
episode three among these three wonderful actresses come to Fruition
and episode eight in a way that brought me to
tears and I couldn't believe it. And then watching these
(39:30):
three in episode eight on those scenes that I alluded to,
which are some of my favorite scenes in the series,
like when you get there, you both breathe a sigh
of relief and you're terrified, and that is sort of
what you really want or what I really want when
I'm watching a show, which is that feeling of I
really want to know what happens next. And also that's
sort of the bright lines for the readers and the
(39:51):
viewers I think are going to be they really speak
to each other in these really beautiful ways.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
To be brought to tears by words that you know
so well must be an unbelievable feeling.
Speaker 6 (40:03):
It's it's it's really it's a it's a lot of
pinch me moments.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
How do you guys feel about playing a game with everybody? Yeah? Okay,
So to send us out on a high note, I
want to create a thriller together. So Laura, I'm going
to start with you. Where are we starting? Where's the mystery?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I always pick a mystery because I always get
you research. So I picked.
Speaker 6 (40:32):
I never like pick like you know, we're not going
to Siberia. So for this mystery, I would like to
go to a town called Ravello in the Amalfi Coast.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Oh, yeah, I know it's good when I've never heard
of it.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
A hillside town above post Atano and Gauri.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Uh, tell me what our mystery is.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Someone someone discovers, someone discovers a dead buddy and they
don't know who it is.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Jennifer, what time period are we in tomorrow?
Speaker 8 (41:06):
Watch the news.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
We're in the future. Okay, Rita. What does the main
character do for work?
Speaker 3 (41:17):
She's the owner of an Airbnb Italian villa known to
be haunted.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
With a sketchy caretaker.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh that was so good, Judy, what's our twist?
Speaker 10 (41:42):
Yes, the twist is so good.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
The twist of the twist is.
Speaker 12 (41:51):
That that that the airbnb is fully booked by a
wedding party from Florida, because Floridians in Revello is I'm watching.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You make my cheek hurts cheese shirt. You make me
laugh hard. Okay, Reese, what's our button? Do we get
a happily ever after? What?
Speaker 8 (42:26):
Howe we we have to.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Okay, Okay, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Okay.
Speaker 11 (42:34):
I think to add on to this Florida party, somebody
left an Apple Watch at the crime scene, and we
track it back to.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The dog.
Speaker 8 (42:51):
Whether it be an animal, Yeah, it's gotta be the jog.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hunting dogs.
Speaker 10 (42:56):
It's a tule hunting dog.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Yes, it's behind a jog who came from Florida to Rebella,
Italy to stay in an Airbnb.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And murdered his owner.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Darn it.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
Yeah, in a fit of rage, animal canine rage.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That was truly not the twist I was expecting, and
good to know that not everything needs halfay ever after.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Yeah, I know this one's gonna have a sequel because
we didn't figure out the.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Person said like a true business woman.
Speaker 8 (43:30):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Thank you all so much. Thank you, thank.
Speaker 10 (43:38):
You everybody for being here.
Speaker 8 (43:40):
Thank you guys, thank you too for readers.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Okay, friends, before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly comfort segment from Cotton called the Book Nook.
This is where we explore the rituals that make reading
feel just right. And as you know, cotton is at
the heart of so many of those everyday comforts. Whether
(44:08):
it's your softest worn in tea, the cozy throw you
curl up with, are the crisp cotton sheets you sink
into after a long day. Cotton can ground us in comfort,
which makes it the perfect companion for a good book.
Let's hear from another Bookmark listener sharing their ideal reading
setup High Bookmark.
Speaker 13 (44:26):
Hi, Danielle, this is Carmen calling in from New York City.
I've always been a lifetime nighttime reader. So as a kid,
I was the one with the flashlight under the blanket
after bedtime. Today, reading is still my favorite ritual before bed.
I'm not really a morning person, so it's like a
little pocket of time that's just for me in between
(44:48):
coming home from work and sort of finishing all my
chores at home and then starting the next day. And
my setup is super simple, but it's got to be
like really quality, so comfy pajamas, usually a sweater as well,
and I'm all tucked up under the blanket and I'm
propped up on a small fortress of pillows, which is
(45:08):
really important. And it's also an added plus if my
tiny terror of a dog calms down enough to curl
up by my side, because he's like a personal heater. Sometimes,
if I'm really moved by a part of the book,
or if I'm really confused and I need to say
it out loud, I'll read it out to him. He
doesn't tend to have very strong opinions, but it's like
(45:29):
a little mental bookmark for me. And yes, very often
I will not off to sleep while reading, but that
just means that I get to do a close reading
of the same page a second time when I wake
back up.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Carvin, I love this, that flashlight under the blanket. Energy
never really leaves us, does it. That quiet moment at
the end of the day, tucked into quality pajamas, layered
in soft cotton and pillows just for you, feels like
such a sacred little pause before the world starts up again.
And the idea of your dog is a personal heater
and a very patient audience is perfection. That kind of simple,
(46:06):
intentional comfort is exactly what makes bedtime reading feel like
a ritual you want to return to night after night.
So friends, keep your ideal reading setups coming, What are
you wearing? What's around you? Are you reading by sunlight
or lamplight, under a cotton throw or your coziest sweater?
Take me right into your perfect reading ritual. Leave me
a voicemail at five zero one two nine one three
(46:28):
three seven nine, or email a voice memo to bookmark
at Reese's book Club dot com. Thanks to Cotton for
bringing this segment to life and reminding us that comfort
and style can go hand in hand. Don't forget to
check the tag for Cotton. And if you want to
learn more, head to the Fabric of OurLives dot com.
(46:49):
Come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's book
Club on Instagram serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe Roba Y come
say hi and df me And if you want to
go nineties on us, call us. Okay, our phone line
is open, so call now at one five zero one
(47:09):
two nine one three three seven nine. That's one five
oh one two nine one three three seven nine. Share
your literary hot takes, book recommendations, questions about the monthly pick,
or let us know what you think about the episode
you just heard and who knows, you might just hear
yourself in our next episode, so don't be shy, give
(47:32):
us a ring, and of course, make sure to follow
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your shows until then via in
the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello Sunshine
and iHeart Podcast. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
me Danielle Robe. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
(47:57):
producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schleid, and Darby Masters.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftus. Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for a Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Kristin Perla and Ashley Rappaport are
(48:18):
associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry and Lauren
Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,
I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
So I'm going to tell you a short story and
it'll be brief, I promise. So a few days ago,
on a stage in Los Angeles, I had one of
the best nights of my life. Okay, here's what happened.
(00:21):
Apple Books, Apple TV, Reese's book Club, and Hello Sunshine.
Brought together an incredible group of women for a conversation,
and there was so much to celebrate. We had Laura
Dave's new novel the first time I saw him, which
was January's Reese's book Club Pick. Then we were celebrating
season two of The Last Thing He Told Me, which
(00:41):
is premiering on Apple TV on February twentieth. And beyond
the book and the show, we were also celebrating something
close to my heart and I know yours too, the
magic that happens when women take agency in their lives
and become the heroes of their own stories. That stage
was filled with actors and producers, writers, friends, mothers, daughters.
(01:06):
It was a room full of brilliant women and the vibes. Okay,
the vibes were immaculate. I'm not gonna lie. The energy
in the room was electric today. I am so excited
to share that conversation with you. You already know you
are in the right place. So let's turn the page
(01:27):
with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Laura Dave and Gowrie Rice,
Judy Greer, and Rita Wilson. Thank you so much for
the war and welcome. I'm looking at all of you
and I want to congratulate you on season two. But
(01:48):
also I feel like I'm with the Avengers of TV
and film right now. Everybody is so familiar with all
of your voices. But because there are seven of us here,
I'm wondering if you can help me out and share
your name, please share your role in bringing this story
to life. And then, thirdly, maybe just one word to
describe season two and how it felt creating it. Reese,
(02:13):
this is your book club. Can I start with you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Hi?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I'm Reese Witherspoon, I'm an executive producer, and one word
to describe this show is thrill ride.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Ooh.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Hi, I'm Jen Garner, I'm executive producer and I play
Hannah Hall and one word that is not one word
is intergenerational family trauma.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I like that. I'm Laura Dave.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
I'm the author of the last thing he told me
in the first time I saw him, and I'm lucky
enough to get to work on the show with these
wonderful people. My one word would be two words.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Second chances, you're the author, so you get two words.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (03:07):
I'm and Gary Rice. I play Bailey, and I think
one word to describe it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All is action packed.
Speaker 8 (03:17):
Judy Greer, I play Quinn. I'm new one word.
Speaker 9 (03:24):
I was thinking suspense. Ooh, but I want more words,
but I'm in the sick Listeste.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Are you a rule follower? Yes, so am I. I'm
Rita Wilson. I play Carol.
Speaker 8 (03:37):
Carol's my mom.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I play Hannah's mom, and I'd say the one
word would be super califragilistic, gigsbilidocious, great word.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Great, thank you for that. I got to interview Laura
a few weeks ago, and I learned that she's absolutely hilarious.
I also learned she's very humble, so she won't share
these stats. But I'm going to the last thing he
told me became a phenomenon. It sold over five million
copies after it was chosen as a Reese's Book Club hit. Well,
(04:13):
it became a New York Times number one bestseller. And
you're breaking records again because the First Time I Saw
Him was the first sequel that Reese's Book Club chose,
which was very exciting. What made you think that this
story needed another chapter?
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Well, I have to just start by saying that before
that first book even came out, I got an amazing
call from Reese Witherspoon and Laura Newstatter, which is a
call that as a writer you don't think you're going
to get, which is, we want to give this a
second life. And so from day one it has been
a pretty unbelievable experience. What's funny is I worked on
(04:53):
the first book for ten years, on and off, so
I kept putting it down. I wrote two other novels
in the pre but I couldn't let it go. And
the very first ending of the last Thing he told
me the first last chapter I wrote, was actually the
last chapter of the First Time I Saw Him. So
I think I was writing two books all along. I
(05:14):
just wasn't aware of it. When this whole journey began.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I just didn't know it. Reese, you read more books
than anybody I know, I think more than anybody. Anybody knows.
When you read the last thing, he told me, what
about it said to you, I want to bring this
to the screen.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
I think it's just the relatability of Hannah's character. The
minute I picked it up and started getting into it,
I immediately thought I could be this person, and this could
happen to me.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
This could happen to any of us, And it's that
kind of.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Every person experience in an extraordinary situation. We all thank
God if something terrible happened, I would know what to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But you really thought about that so clearly.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
So I think you just let people love Hannah first
in her complicated relationship with Bailey. Also, I thought, was
really the final chapter of that first novel is so
beautiful that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You just wanted more.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You mentioned loving Hannah, Jennifer. I heard you loved Hannah
from the get go. You actually emailed Reese to sort
of pitch yourself for this role. And I know that
there are so many scripts that come across your desk.
Why could you not let Hannah go?
Speaker 5 (06:29):
I hadn't read the script Actually, I had read the
book aloud to one of my kids and we kept
staying up way too late, just we couldn't stop reading reading,
and I loved it so much, and there was another
actress attached, and I just thought, I can never think
about this story again because I have an like a
heartache for this character. And then when that actress fell
(06:54):
out for scheduling reasons, and I heard that Reese wasn't
thinking that she would have time to play the role,
I mean, there's I entered into the conversation with a
lot of humility because we have been friends for twenty
five years and I did not want to be like, Hi,
can you put.
Speaker 8 (07:10):
Me in this show?
Speaker 5 (07:11):
But I just had to write to Reese and to
Zach and to Laura Newstatter is, Hello Sunshine, to everyone
and kind of say, I don't know why I feel
so compelled to do this, but I have to tell
you why I'm connected to Hannah, why I feel so
connected to Hannah Hall. And it really was her, you know, Laura,
(07:32):
and I always say Hannah is the grown up in
the room, and she doesn't necessarily want to be, but
she is. And I've had those moments that I just
understood that in her so deeply and how committed she
was to figuring out being a mom, which is such
a complicated thing.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
And I've had those moments.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I understand that in a really deep way. And then
the action element or the thriller element is something that
for some reason, this nice old gal connects to you.
I don't know why I like to run and fight
and you know, hit the men, but I do, and that's.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
Something I get.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
So anyway, Yeah, I stayed up all night, and then
then then they had the audacity to write me back
and I had to do it again the next night.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I was gonna say, it's so fun to see you
boxing and kicking and all of that again, because we
saw you on screen doing that for so long. I
know that we have a cast of book lovers, which
is really special. Judy, you were such a book lover.
Was there book recommendations happening on set? Were you guys
trading Rex? Yes?
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I mean, if I think, like, if I just go
down the line everyone here, I have read something that
everyone has recommended.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Laura, I'm reading right now The Cocktail Hour by T.
S Elliott.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
No.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I actually I finished that. Judy gave me The Alchemy.
Oh yeah, the Journal of Alchemy. Yes, you know the
Alchemy souleka. Yes, so I'm on number like fifty, have
numbered those?
Speaker 8 (09:05):
I know. I I did it myself, you did?
Speaker 5 (09:08):
And then Reese's book and everything that you recommend in
the world. Yeah, and Gallery wrote her book one coming
Out with her mother.
Speaker 7 (09:18):
Yes, yes, thanks, yes, yes, I wrote a book with
my mom which was so exciting and so like wonderful
and it was chosen as a Reese's Book Club pick,
which was just like the most exciting thing ever.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I found out on set.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
Jen called me into the trailer and they filmed my
reaction and my mom was on FaceTime. It was it
was so lovely. So yes, we've got a very bookish cast,
which is lovely.
Speaker 10 (09:44):
Rita.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Did you have any rex that people gave you, or
any recks that you gave them? In particular, the.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Ones that I loved recently were trust by her Nandiez,
which was fantastic. I read Anne Patrick's Bell Canto, which
I had never read because I went on a big
and Patchett fas this summer. I read Ethan Frome Edith
Wharton like I had never read that either. I mean,
there's just it's endless. A lot, there's a lot of
(10:12):
there's a lot of books.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
In our house.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
We say booky book books rule because my granddaughter said
it once.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
No, you can make it into a meme too, rid it? Laura,
you had this totally surreal experience as an author. Season
two of the last thing he told me was filming
at the same time that you were writing the sequel novel.
The first time I saw him, I've never interviewed anybody
who has done that. What elements did you feel were
so important to stay the same between the book and
(10:39):
the show.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
Well, you know, when I was working the book and
started with three words over my desk, and they were redemption, salvation,
and forgiveness. And I knew that everything in the book
was moving toward this idea of what are we willing
to do to be forgiving? And which is a very
different thing than do you believe in forgiveness?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Do you not? What are you?
Speaker 6 (11:00):
What is the effort say about how we love people
and what we need to do to get to a
better place. And so I sat down with the showrunners,
one of whom I'm married to, and said, this is
where the book is going These are the first hundred pages.
These are sort of my bright lines of what's really
really important.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It was a real exercise and trust.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
And one of the reasons that I felt so comfortable
is the people sitting on this stage all care so
deeply about these characters, and they all are bringing something new.
And the thing is that I think you can get
to those words, to those ideas in a variety of
(11:44):
different ways. But these beautiful things started to happen when
I finished the book, and then I got to start
reading the scripts and see everything. They were still on
episode six or seven, they were writing those at that moment.
And a line that I wrote in the book about
what a woman and is willing to do to protect
her family, someone had written a line of dialogue that
(12:05):
Quinn says that like matched it, and we hadn't even
shared that yet. So there were these like sort of spellbinding,
incredible moments.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And Gari, did you think about forgiveness in this season
because Bailey is a very different person?
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Yeah, she is.
Speaker 7 (12:22):
It's I mean, it's five years later, and so they've
really Hannah and Bailey have worked so hard to become
a team and a family, and those years from sixteen
to twenty one, So much happens in that time, and
to have one missing parent in that time I think
would have really been felt by Bailey. I think when
(12:44):
that family dynamic of one parent and one child suddenly
becomes a trio, as it did in season one with
Hannah coming in, that changes everything. And then in season
two that dynamic changes again. And I think I was
thinking a lot about forgiveness and and letting go, and
I think something Bailey struggles with in this season is
(13:06):
that she's surrounded by grown ups who have been unable
to forgive, and they're still holding on to old grudges
and old wounds and they cannot let that go. And
Bailey has to really think about, Okay, what is the
cost of that. It's affecting her life. She wasn't there
for any of this and it's changed everything for her.
(13:27):
So what is she going to do to try, and
I don't know, help the grown ups around her kind
of break that cycle.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Absolutely, that was so well said. I think everyone on
stage was like, yeah, okay, So part of this season
was filmed in Paris, and I know that the fictional
reason is a bit tense, but in real life that
seems so much fun. I'm wondering if you have any
Parisian memories. I see JG and JG eyeing each other
(13:56):
because we were all sort of looking on Instagram at
your amazing fotos together. Can I start with you, Judy?
Do you have any Parisian memories you loved?
Speaker 9 (14:05):
Yes, we had so much fun. We had so much
fun on our one day off, but also at lunch,
we would sneak away, go to lunch, have an omelet
go back to set. It's very civilized. It was kind
of magical just being there and be there with my friend, Like,
(14:26):
when would we ever get to take a vacation like that?
Holy buckets. It was so fun. Yeah, I have a
million memories. I'm not going to keep talking, but it
was so fun. We got to do some very dramatic
scenes and acting. Yeah, we also acted there.
Speaker 8 (14:45):
We acted so hard in Paris.
Speaker 9 (14:50):
You guys are gonna die when you see how much
we acted.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
I can say this because I wasn't responsible for it
in any way.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
When you see.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Them acting in Paris. In episode eight, so everyone stick
around for episode eight. There is two scenes that are
just gonna If they don't blow your socks.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Off, they will blow your socks off?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
How was it for you, guys? Because you're such good
friends and all this history in real life, but your
characters are actually they have a lot of friction in
the show.
Speaker 8 (15:28):
What's that like, We're never gonna play friends? No, No,
nobody wants to see that. Yes we do.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
There were there were times where we had to be
separated because we would giggle. And then when we really
when things really got serious and our little Bailey was
at stake, all bets were off, we just we didn't
look at each other, we didn't deal with each other,
and then.
Speaker 9 (15:53):
Yeah, we had to be separated sometimes sometimes because we
were being awful and we weren't paying attention and we
were goofing, and sometimes because we just really needed to
like focus.
Speaker 10 (16:03):
I can fully see the dynamics.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
I guess it're all just coming to life for you.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I'm surprised the show even got mede. When I interviewed
Laura a few weeks ago, I learned that you love quotes,
and that's something that we share, and so usually every
week I ask our guests to share something that they've bookmarked,
and it can be a fun quote or something that
they've saved on social media. But this week, because of
(16:30):
your love of quotes, I'd love for everybody to share
a quote that they've bookmarked this week. And if it's
not this week, it could be maybe something that you
live by, something that sticks with you. Because she's laughing,
I'll start with you, Rita.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
There's a quote that I had on my bulletin board
for a really long time and it's from the sculptor Michelangelo.
And someone had asked him, how do you make these beauty, full,
beautiful sculptures? And he's from these massive blocks of marble,
and he said, I see the angel in the marble,
and I carve until I set him free. And for me,
(17:12):
that is a metaphor of what it's like to be
a woman. We start at a very young age and
we then develop these other identities that are either imposed
on us or we think we have to choose, and
at a certain point in your life, hopefully it starts
to shift and you start carving away and shipping away
at the things that are extraneous, that don't matter, so
(17:35):
that you can arrive at the essence of who you are.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
That was so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Thank you, Deep thoughts, Deep Thoughts.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Judy not going next? Hey, Gary, can I put you
on the spot. I'll come back.
Speaker 7 (17:53):
I want to say to Samuel Beckett quote and I
think I had it on a postcod. I think my
mom gave it to me on a postcod. That's something
like try again, fail again, fail better. It's something like
that about like it actually doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Matter if you fail and fail again.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
You're You're just gonna keep failing and you'll fail better
and you'll get better at not being good at something,
which I think is which, Yeah, there's value that.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Its value to fail in order to get Yes.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
Yes, So I kind of like that. And I had
that postcard up in my in my bedroom.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I like that too. We're also scared of failure and
it kind of takes that away.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
Yeah, it's we're all going to fail all the time,
and then sometimes we succeed and that's great too.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Judy, can I popcorn back? I?
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Uh, I don't remember an exact quote, but I was
at a memorial recently for Don Mischer. I don't know
if any of you know him.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
He was such a wonderful.
Speaker 9 (18:53):
Man and and I'm thinking about him a lot with
the Olympics on because he often produced Olympics opening ceremonies
and things like that, and and he in his memorial
there was a quote but I can't remember it exactly,
but it's about seeing the wonder and everything and and
and so I have that written on a post it
(19:15):
note above my desk, but I can't remember the exact quote,
but that I think of a lot, because you want
to see like the the special in the Kotidian, you know,
And that's kind of what we do, is we take
the every day and make it come alive. So that's
so something about seeing the wonder. So it's not really
(19:36):
a quote at all. Sorry, it's okay.
Speaker 10 (19:39):
It was still an idea.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
And also I know that you read so much because
you've just said the word quotidian, so thank you for that.
Speaker 8 (19:45):
I also love Pan Kotidian the restaurant.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
And there's one in my neighborhood, so.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Not taking credit for that big word.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And it's also French.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
And you went to Paris for the show and you
were like.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Pan quotean city play.
Speaker 10 (20:09):
Lauric, may I go to you?
Speaker 6 (20:11):
Well, I have two because the first one's not from
a book, which feels sacrileged to like not be quoting
from a book but Adam Grant talked about Lindsay Vaughan's
fall and he said something which I thought, well, first,
told everyone to shut up, which I appreciated if they
had a note about her choosing to take a risk
and be brave. But the last sentence of what he
(20:34):
wrote was success is about the distance from the start
that you're willing to go. And that really stuck with me.
It's not about the result, it's about the distance to
the distance to the start.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So that was something. And then Jennifer here knows.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
I reread Heartburn by Nora Ephron far too often. It's
my cozy book, even though it's about the end of
a marriage. And if you on a really great listen,
Meryl Streep does the audio book of it, so that's
pretty special too. On the idea of starting, uh, I
just got to the end of this read and one
(21:12):
of the things she says in the second to last
chapter when she's getting to a point of forgiveness, is
and she can't really get to anything wonderful yet, but
she's able to remember something that was magical between them,
and then she says, and this feels like the moment
where we start.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And I thought that was lovely.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
That is lovely, Thank you for that.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
I only have things my mom says in my mind,
like weeping may last through the night, but joy comes
in the morning. Or happiness is your own responsibility, or
don't marry a man thinking you can change him.
Speaker 8 (21:49):
So those are those are Pat garnerisms. They come from
the Bible or you know ma.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Ingles, but.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Yeah, same difference. They're all kind of mixed into one.
Pat Garner Bible ma Ingles truly.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Wise words for you stand a quote.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
You know what I read something this year I thought
was great at this author Percival Everett who read this
book James. He won the Booker Prize. It was last year,
but this quote really stuck with me, and it's, you know,
apropos of being in a room talking about books. He said,
the most subversive thing you can do nowadays is being
a book club.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And to me, that means.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Let's read books, let's discuss ideas.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We need to.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Stop listening to people's opinions and actually form our own
opinions and create community with each other where we're socializing ideas.
So every person in here who is an influencer, who
deals with books and reads voraciously You're part of the revolution.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Ooh, I love that. That got me excited. Yeah, so Jennifer.
In the second season and in the second book, we
reunite with Hannah five years later. As Andngari said, and
(23:10):
at the end of season one, you are in survival mode.
Where is Hannah season two?
Speaker 5 (23:18):
At the end of season one, there was no season two.
So shout out to Laura Newstatter and Ellison Shining to
Reach for calling Laura Dave and saying we may need
another book here, and to Laura for realizing that actually, yes,
the story did continue and there there was a there
was a ways to go in those five years. Hannah
(23:41):
wanted Bailey to grow up and have her space, to
become a young adult and go to college and feel safe.
So Hannah has tried to put a bubble around her
daughter while also preparing for the inevitable danger that was
that would follow them.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
And as the first episode.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Takes off, which is the only way to think of it,
kind of a blast off. You see Hannah like, you know,
this idea of competency, competency porn, like somebody who's so
good at what they do. She's this, I'm Mary Howard,
She's a step ahead of every single thing that could
possibly be happening, and she has it all planned out
(24:24):
and is like the locks are falling into place. Boom, Okay,
if this happens, then this has got to happen. Then
this has got to happen, and then this, and it's
so it was so satisfying to read, to shoot, to play,
to watch, I love, love, love Hannah's brain, and then
danger catches up with them.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And it gets really exciting at that point.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Yeah, and they're a team at this point, as at
Gowerie said, they've become a family, They've become a team,
and it only gets screwed up when you know when
Daddy comes back into the picture.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Do you feel that teamwork? Do you feel the shift
in your character here?
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (25:01):
Absolutely. I mean it's so great because I think both
Hannah and Bailey have committed to their relationship. And there
are moments in season two where they disagree and they
have a different idea about how to kind of solve
the next problem or go about the next adventure. But
(25:23):
their conversations are not arguments anymore. They're listening to each other.
They're having a discussion, and they know that they love
each other no matter what, and they're in it together.
So I loved I loved getting to play that, and
also that they're a stepmother and a step daughter and
that's kind of they've chosen each other as family as well.
(25:48):
And Bailey is on a mission to discover more about
her biological mother as well. But that is that's a
journey that Hannah has like respects, and she gives her
the space to kind of explore that.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
So it's just great.
Speaker 7 (26:03):
Seeing a mature relationship and a healthy one too. I
have a great relationship with my mom, and so getting
to play a really good mother daughter relationship is kind
of it's kind of a relief in a way. It
feels normal and natural.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I didn't realize until you just said that about the choosing.
That's part of what makes the relationship so exciting to watch.
I think, to see you two come together, it's a choice. Judy,
it is so fun to see your character in this show.
I've never really seen you play this type. You're kind
of this power broker.
Speaker 10 (26:37):
Oh yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
What made you want to sign on?
Speaker 9 (26:42):
Aside from your best reason, I I really I don't
get to I don't get offered roles like this very often.
I mean, just like looking at the rack of clothes
at my costume fitting, I'm like, I am in a
different league. I I loved the I mean Quinn, She's torn.
(27:05):
I think it's really I love the scene when I
see when quincyes Bailey for the first time, because she
sees her best friend for the first time and how
many years, and it is so overwhelming for her, and
all of this past comes back at her, and it
is so hard for Quinn to not just like, I think,
(27:27):
just crush Bailey and want to be with her best
friend again in the version of her daughter, and so
she has to really like separate herself from that. And
I think it's also fun to play someone who's battling with,
you know, to opposing ideas in her head, like protecting
her family, wanting to connect with Bailey, wanting Hannah to
(27:50):
just go away.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Rita, your character is new to season two. You play
Carol excuse me, which is Hannah's mom. What excited you about.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Carol, Well, it was a character who made choices when
she was a young woman to.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Can I say all this okay? To give up her daughter?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And I was eager to explore that and also that
there wasn't a that the Carol character understood that there
may not be reconciliation and that she couldn't claim anything
(28:38):
to that reconciliation. But I think she had a reason
for doing it, which people can judge or not judge.
But I think if it's a matter of life or death,
you probably will choose life, even if the choice to
(28:59):
do that might be very expensive in what you give up,
what is it like.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
To prepare for a role that sort of doesn't exist
in the book.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You trust the writer, You trust the amazing producers that
you have, And it was those discussions with Laura and
with Josh Singer and Jennifer that we were able to
understand her in a more realistic way.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, Reese, people so often talk about feeling seen by
the material that you champion and bring to life. I
see it on award show stages. I hear about it
all the time. When you were reading a book, are
there three things you could point to that say, yeah,
this is going to translate to screen really well?
Speaker 4 (29:47):
I think the main thing, the main other than being
written by a woman, Because I felt like when I
started the company it was really important to champion female authors.
Also that a woman at the center of it is
the hero of her own story, because I truly believe
women save themselves every single day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
And we need to see more of that on film.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But the most important metric for me is do I
want to share this book with somebody? Because sometimes you
read a book and it makes you seem smarty pants
at a dinner party, but you don't necessarily want to
share it.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So I think that's a really important part of it.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
And that's what creates community, and that's sort of the
main thesis of our book club and why we started
it was just to connect people together.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
I was so not expecting that that's a very cool
way of looking at it. It seems like it would
be so much more complicated, and you're saying, no, I
just yeh, that's pretty easy.
Speaker 8 (30:43):
It's pretty simple.
Speaker 10 (30:44):
It's like, oh, I love this book.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I want to share with somebody.
Speaker 8 (30:47):
I read one last night.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
I was like, oh, I can't wait to talk about
this with somebody.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
And there's so few things that you get to connect
over now because things are streaming and you don't know
when they're watching it, and there's not like you know,
must see TV on one night of the week. So
books can be like that, especially if you have a
monthly cadence where you get together with a group of people.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's really nice. There's so much history and so many
connections on this stage that doesn't always happen. I'm really curious,
from an after producer perspective, what goes right when you
have this shorthand with people. I've never been on a set,
so if you could like bring me in and just
sort of explain it, I would love to understand.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I'll come to set anytime you want to.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Danielle, thank you read you need to come. It's magical
to be on a.
Speaker 10 (31:34):
Set, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I mean.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
I've been sitting up here reflecting on the very specific,
very intimate relationships I have with all of the women
up here and you, including you, and they are very
Each one of these women play a role in my
life outside of this particular show, and there's a depth that.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
Comes in, an.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Ease and a knowing and a fun mischief that comes
in when when you know someone and you get to
do a scene with them.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I love that word mischief.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
I really see that between you two Jage, something that
happened that I just also think speaks to the magic
of the woman playing Hannah Hall. Here is my very
first day on set, because everyone up here has been
on set a lot more than me. But my very
first day of season one on set, I was late
because I was me, and so I got confused and
(32:34):
a little lost, and so I drove onto set past
two police officers who I thought were real police officers.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I waived at them. They were extras, which.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
I was about to find out because the very first
thing I did was drive into the scene that Jennifer
was shooting. Now, another actress might have reacted badly. Jennifer
very kindly turned to me and said, you're gonna want
to park over there. And that is who she is,
and that is no one would be grumpy with you.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
I don't know a single actress who would get grumpy
with you.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That's who she is, always always.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
That is so funny, you, Alura.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
We actually have it on TA Can you please release
that on social media for us?
Speaker 8 (33:18):
She was like Hi, Hi, and we're like, okay, hang on.
No one overreacts. Don't scare her. She's an author.
Speaker 10 (33:27):
I can speak for myself.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I feel like with mother daughter relationships, if I'm very
honest about my mom. I feel like it's a betrayal,
and if I withhold, it feels like it's incomplete. And
that is something that this show I think portrays so
very uniquely, the good and the bad, the soft and
(34:02):
the hard, and Gary, I know you're so close with
your mom. I got to interview the two of you together.
Did this show in any way change your relationship with
her or the way you even think about her?
Speaker 7 (34:19):
I don't know if it changed my relationship specifically with
my mom. But something an interesting parallel is that while
filming season two, you know, Bailey is going on this
journey to discover more about her mother, and she's asking
people about her mother, And while filming season two, I
decided to interview some of my own family members about
(34:40):
my two grandmothers because I never knew them, and so
I kind of was going on this parallel journey with Bailey.
And it's very interesting, and I think this is reflected
in the show as well, that there's quite a kind
of skirting around talking about people who are no longer
(35:00):
here with us and how do we want to represent
those people? And Bailey is trying to kind of create
this collage of her mother and who she thought she was,
and she's hearing lots of different things and piecing that
together and trying to find the truth of who her
mother was is a challenge for her because everybody has
(35:22):
a different idea, so that I think playing this character
inspired me to kind of, yeah, go on this journey
in my personal life as well. And I just love
that we see that with Bailey, that her kind of
investigation into who her mother was doesn't negate her relationship
(35:44):
with Hannah, it doesn't negate her relationship with her father
or her grandfather. It's like they all exist at the
same time, which I love.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Jane and Laura, we have so many eagle eyed readers
and viewers here so close to the material. Is there
anything that we should all be looking out for as
season two approaches? Can you share anything special with us
that we should really pay attention to?
Speaker 5 (36:12):
To me, because the book and the scripts were written
by different people at the same time, with the same
kind of arcs beginning, middle, and end, but the middle
is the middle. There are diversions, and I love the
way one fills out the story of the other, and
(36:33):
I really hope you find that as satisfying as I do.
The first we hewed really extremely closely to Laura's book,
and I love doing that because you know, I read
the book every morning up to wherever we were shooting
that day and hair and makeup. I read it every
single day, know that book like the back of my hand.
In this one, it's more of a woven story between
(36:55):
these two written. You know, one acted out and one
is written, but they go back and forth and I
think they are yeah, it.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
Is that's it's in the hole that you get the picture.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
And I think that for me, I was.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
It was really the way that readers embraced the first
book and then the first season. It was so I
was nervous about writing the second book, and I only
really wanted to do it if I felt like I
could get it right. And I feel a lot of
relief now that readers are responding, at least to me,
(37:37):
in a way that suggests that they're happy with Hannah's
second chapter. But something else that was I think really
unique to this experience, and I think it has to
do with working with women and women who really care.
Is I was given the freedom and the space to
write that book.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You know, my partners are partners at Hello.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Sunshine, at twentieth at Apple, I said, guys, I think
to do justice to the second season, I need to
sit down and I need the time. And not one
of these wonderful women I work with was like, well,
you can't have it. They all wanted me to have it.
Speaker 8 (38:12):
Additionally, we had Josh and Aaron.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
Josh Singer and Aaron Zelman are showrunners, and they're such
beautiful writers that you could trust your husband and we
could trust him as well that our.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
Story was in good hands, the best of.
Speaker 6 (38:27):
Hands, definitely, and they did like such a beautiful job.
I mean there are moments. Can I give like two spoilers?
I mean they won't be bad, they'll just be lucash spoilers, Laura, please, Well,
there's so much that I love in the show, like
as the author that I got to sort of watch
(38:47):
and enjoy. But like, the thing is that, and Reese
use this word, the fact that it's such a thrill ride,
Like you want to sit down, you want to watch
all of them. And I think my experience watching it
is they get better and better as they go, And
like that is really saying something because often show like
you watch the first one and then it sort of
(39:09):
falls off, and for me, every episode had like easter
eggs that then down the road. One thing I was
just thinking about is things that are set up in
episode three among these three wonderful actresses come to Fruition
and episode eight in a way that brought me to
tears and I couldn't believe it. And then watching these
(39:30):
three in episode eight on those scenes that I alluded to,
which are some of my favorite scenes in the series,
like when you get there, you both breathe a sigh
of relief and you're terrified, and that is sort of
what you really want or what I really want when
I'm watching a show, which is that feeling of I
really want to know what happens next. And also that's
sort of the bright lines for the readers and the
(39:51):
viewers I think are going to be they really speak
to each other in these really beautiful ways.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
To be brought to tears by words that you know
so well must be an unbelievable feeling.
Speaker 6 (40:03):
It's it's it's really it's a it's a lot of
pinch me moments.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
How do you guys feel about playing a game with everybody? Yeah? Okay,
So to send us out on a high note, I
want to create a thriller together. So Laura, I'm going
to start with you. Where are we starting? Where's the mystery?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I always pick a mystery because I always get
you research. So I picked.
Speaker 6 (40:32):
I never like pick like you know, we're not going
to Siberia. So for this mystery, I would like to
go to a town called Ravello in the Amalfi Coast.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Oh, yeah, I know it's good when I've never heard
of it.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
A hillside town above post Atano and Gauri.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Uh, tell me what our mystery is.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Someone someone discovers, someone discovers a dead buddy and they
don't know who it is.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Jennifer, what time period are we in tomorrow?
Speaker 8 (41:06):
Watch the news.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
We're in the future. Okay, Rita. What does the main
character do for work?
Speaker 3 (41:17):
She's the owner of an Airbnb Italian villa known to
be haunted.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
With a sketchy caretaker.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh that was so good, Judy, what's our twist?
Speaker 10 (41:42):
Yes, the twist is so good.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
The twist of the twist is.
Speaker 12 (41:51):
That that that the airbnb is fully booked by a
wedding party from Florida, because Floridians in Revello is I'm watching.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You make my cheek hurts cheese shirt. You make me
laugh hard. Okay, Reese, what's our button? Do we get
a happily ever after? What?
Speaker 8 (42:26):
Howe we we have to.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Okay, Okay, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Okay.
Speaker 11 (42:34):
I think to add on to this Florida party, somebody
left an Apple Watch at the crime scene, and we
track it back to.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The dog.
Speaker 8 (42:51):
Whether it be an animal, Yeah, it's gotta be the jog.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hunting dogs.
Speaker 10 (42:56):
It's a tule hunting dog.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Yes, it's behind a jog who came from Florida to Rebella,
Italy to stay in an Airbnb.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And murdered his owner.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Darn it.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
Yeah, in a fit of rage, animal canine rage.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That was truly not the twist I was expecting, and
good to know that not everything needs halfay ever after.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Yeah, I know this one's gonna have a sequel because
we didn't figure out the.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Person said like a true business woman.
Speaker 8 (43:30):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Thank you all so much. Thank you, thank.
Speaker 10 (43:38):
You everybody for being here.
Speaker 8 (43:40):
Thank you guys, thank you too for readers.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Okay, friends, before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly comfort segment from Cotton called the Book Nook.
This is where we explore the rituals that make reading
feel just right. And as you know, cotton is at
the heart of so many of those everyday comforts. Whether
(44:08):
it's your softest worn in tea, the cozy throw you
curl up with, are the crisp cotton sheets you sink
into after a long day. Cotton can ground us in comfort,
which makes it the perfect companion for a good book.
Let's hear from another Bookmark listener sharing their ideal reading
setup High Bookmark.
Speaker 13 (44:26):
Hi, Danielle, this is Carmen calling in from New York City.
I've always been a lifetime nighttime reader. So as a kid,
I was the one with the flashlight under the blanket
after bedtime. Today, reading is still my favorite ritual before bed.
I'm not really a morning person, so it's like a
little pocket of time that's just for me in between
(44:48):
coming home from work and sort of finishing all my
chores at home and then starting the next day. And
my setup is super simple, but it's got to be
like really quality, so comfy pajamas, usually a sweater as well,
and I'm all tucked up under the blanket and I'm
propped up on a small fortress of pillows, which is
(45:08):
really important. And it's also an added plus if my
tiny terror of a dog calms down enough to curl
up by my side, because he's like a personal heater. Sometimes,
if I'm really moved by a part of the book,
or if I'm really confused and I need to say
it out loud, I'll read it out to him. He
doesn't tend to have very strong opinions, but it's like
(45:29):
a little mental bookmark for me. And yes, very often
I will not off to sleep while reading, but that
just means that I get to do a close reading
of the same page a second time when I wake
back up.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Carvin, I love this, that flashlight under the blanket. Energy
never really leaves us, does it. That quiet moment at
the end of the day, tucked into quality pajamas, layered
in soft cotton and pillows just for you, feels like
such a sacred little pause before the world starts up again.
And the idea of your dog is a personal heater
and a very patient audience is perfection. That kind of simple,
(46:06):
intentional comfort is exactly what makes bedtime reading feel like
a ritual you want to return to night after night.
So friends, keep your ideal reading setups coming, What are
you wearing? What's around you? Are you reading by sunlight
or lamplight, under a cotton throw or your coziest sweater?
Take me right into your perfect reading ritual. Leave me
a voicemail at five zero one two nine one three
(46:28):
three seven nine, or email a voice memo to bookmark
at Reese's book Club dot com. Thanks to Cotton for
bringing this segment to life and reminding us that comfort
and style can go hand in hand. Don't forget to
check the tag for Cotton. And if you want to
learn more, head to the Fabric of OurLives dot com.
(46:49):
Come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's book
Club on Instagram serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe Roba Y come
say hi and df me And if you want to
go nineties on us, call us. Okay, our phone line
is open, so call now at one five zero one
(47:09):
two nine one three three seven nine. That's one five
oh one two nine one three three seven nine. Share
your literary hot takes, book recommendations, questions about the monthly pick,
or let us know what you think about the episode
you just heard and who knows, you might just hear
yourself in our next episode, so don't be shy, give
(47:32):
us a ring, and of course, make sure to follow
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your shows until then via in
the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello Sunshine
and iHeart Podcast. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
me Danielle Robe. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
(47:57):
producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schleid, and Darby Masters.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftus. Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for a Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Kristin Perla and Ashley Rappaport are
(48:18):
associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry and Lauren
Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
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