Summer Read: Playworld, by Former Child Actor Adam Ross

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It with Alison Stewart - "Summer Read: Playworld"

Episode Details:

• Title: Summer Read: Playworld, by Former Child Actor Adam Ross
• Host: Alison Stewart
• Guest: Adam Ross
• Release Date: May 26, 2025
• Podcast: All Of It by WNYC

---

Introduction to "Playworld"

At the outset of the episode, Alison Stewart introduces Adam Ross and his novel, Playworld. Set against the vibrant backdrop of 1980s New York City, the story revolves around Griffin, a 14-year-old child actor navigating the complexities of adolescence amidst fame and personal turmoil.

Alison Stewart [00:29]:

"The novel Play World is set in 1980s New York City. At just 14 years old, Griffin is a successful child actor starring on a TV show... Play World is also just a great novel about our city in the '80s and it would make for a great summer read."

Autobiographical Influences

Adam Ross delves into how his personal experiences as a child actor influence the narrative of Playworld. While the novel mirrors aspects of his own life, Ross emphasizes the distinction between fiction and autobiographical storytelling.

Adam Ross [01:39]:

"I like to say that Play World rhymes with my life... But when you're writing fiction... you have to bend things, you have to change things... it's the differences in fiction that make it fiction."

Ross highlights that unlike his character Griffin, he didn't achieve the same level of success or face the same choices, allowing him to craft a distinct fictional narrative.

Setting the Scene: 1980s New York

The discussion transitions to the significance of setting the novel in Manhattan during a transformative era. Ross underscores how the political and cultural shifts of the time shape Griffin's environment and personal development.

Adam Ross [05:02]:

"...the Reagan era's main message was deregulated small government... we moved from the Carter administration with all of its malaise into the 'get money now' era of the Reagan administration... it's deregulated parenting."

He connects the political landscape to the parenting styles depicted in the novel, illustrating how broader societal changes impact the protagonist's upbringing.

Coming of Age in Playworld

Playworld is characterized as a coming-of-age story, exploring Griffin's journey from innocence to self-awareness. Ross discusses his influences and the novel's commitment to capturing the essence of 1980s Manhattan.

Adam Ross [03:13]:

"The coming of age story... The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow... Playworld... fully commit to creating the sights, sounds, the slant of light, the griminess..."

Ross aims to immerse readers in the city's enduring magic, drawing parallels between his work and Bellow's detailed renderings.

Character Dynamics: Griffin and Naomi

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the complex relationship between Griffin and Naomi, a family friend much older than him. Ross explores the psychological and emotional dimensions of their interactions.

Adam Ross [09:18]:

"She gives him attention, which he desperately needs, and he kind of gives her back a kind of innocence and a kind of passion... she recognizes that he's vulnerable, but she develops feelings for him."

Ross addresses the controversial nature of their relationship, emphasizing the predatory dynamics while acknowledging Naomi's genuine emotional struggles within her marriage.

Griffin's Personal Trauma

The narrative highlights a pivotal event from Griffin's past—a childhood accident that resulted in the destruction of his family's belongings and the death of a cat. This event profoundly impacts his teenage years.

Adam Ross [12:53]:

"Griffin has an enormous sense of guilt and responsibility... his father... peels Griffin away from himself. He disengages as a defensive reaction from his own feelings."

Ross explains how this trauma leads Griffin to detach from his emotions, using acting as a means to navigate his internal struggles. This detachment becomes a central theme in his journey toward self-reconnection.

The Role of Wrestling in Griffin's Life

Wrestling serves as both a literal and metaphorical arena for Griffin's development. Ross, drawing from his own experience as a high school wrestling champion, illustrates how the sport provides Griffin with a space devoid of pretense.

Adam Ross [15:23]:

"Wrestling is the place where there is no acting, there is no dissembling... it's the gladiatorial pit where nobody can pretend to be anything other than they are."

For Griffin, wrestling is a sanctuary where he can confront his vulnerabilities and combat the "monsters" in his life, both literal and metaphorical.

Conclusion and Final Insights

As the episode wraps up, Ross touches upon the overarching themes of Playworld, emphasizing the protagonist's journey towards identity and self-worth amidst external pressures and internal conflicts.

Adam Ross [14:56]:

"He learns how to feel his feelings without fear of retribution."

Ross underscores the novel's focus on emotional resilience and the importance of overcoming past traumas to forge a genuine sense of self.

---

Key Takeaways:

• Playworld intertwines Adam Ross's personal experiences with a fictional narrative set in 1980s New York City.
• The novel explores complex themes of adolescence, trauma, and the quest for identity against a backdrop of significant political and cultural shifts.
• Wrestling symbolizes Griffin's struggle for authenticity and control in a world filled with both external expectations and internal turmoil.
• The relationship between Griffin and Naomi serves as a critical examination of power dynamics and emotional dependency.

Notable Quotes:

• Adam Ross [01:39]: "It's the differences in fiction that make it fiction."
• Adam Ross [05:02]: "It's deregulated parenting... which is what Gen Xers experienced."
• Adam Ross [15:23]: "Wrestling is the place where there is no acting, there is no dissembling."

---

“ALL OF IT” continues to serve as a rich exploration of culture and context, bringing forward nuanced discussions that reflect the diverse tapestry of New York City.

Transcript

[Progressive Insurance]

All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Alison Stewart]

You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. The novel Play World is set in 1980s New York City. At just 14 years old, Griffin is a successful child actor starring on a TV show. He has two loving parents and a devoted younger brother. But between acting school and wrestling, Griffin can't seem to keep up or find anyone to listen to him. That is until Griffin meets Naomi, a friend of his parents and the wife of a very wealthy man. Even though Naomi is 36, she becomes obsessed with Griffin and Griffin likes that she's a good listener. Soon they are having weekly meetups in Naomi's car. As Griffin navigates New York and his adolescence, he learns all sorts of mixed messages about what it means to be an adult. Play World is also just a great novel about our city in the 80s and it would make for a great summer read. Adam joined me around the release of his book and I started by asking him about how autobiographical he wanted to make this book given that many of the story's details mirror his own life.

[Adam Ross]

I like to say that Play World rhymes with my life. You know, I was, you know, I was a, I was a child actor. My parents were in the, in the arts in Manhattan. My mother was a former professional dancer. My father was on musical Broadway and was a voiceover guy. So these were settings, these were experiences that I knew well. But you know, when you're writing fiction and I would make a distinction between, you know, fiction and autofiction in the sense that you're not, you're not doing something that is so, so porous or so transparently your life. You have to bend things, you have to change things. And so that was one of the reasons why I labored over the novel so long. I mean, short answer really is it's the differences in fiction that make it fiction. Right? I mean it's, you know, I was in no way shape or form as successful as Griffin is. I was in no way, shape or form faced with the kind of choices Griffin was.

[Alison Stewart]

But you were a 14 year old New York.

[Adam Ross]

But I was 14 year old New York at a very unique time Manhattan. And I was a New York child actor starting around the age of 11. So, you know, you were adjacent to certain kinds of greatness and adjacent to a very particular species of creative in Manhattan. Right.

[Alison Stewart]

This is a coming of age story.

[Adam Ross]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

Do you have a favorite coming of age story?

[Adam Ross]

Oh, wow, that's such a great question. You know, I'll say this. The coming of age story, if it is even really considered a buildings Roman in the strict sense of the word, and a book that was on my mind a lot, not in terms of structure, but in terms of, shall we say, energy. And just a torrential amount of specificity and content was the Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, who just kind of, in his third book, just kind of poured all of his talent into rendering Chicago both as a boy and later in his life. I mean, it was. And that's part of what Play world. That's part of what I set out to do in Playworld. I was just like, you know, I'm going to fully commit to creating the sight sounds, the slant of light, the griminess, as I thought it was, like, pointed out so beautifully in the Jacobs review. Enduring magic of Manhattan that keeps getting reiterated generation to generation.

[Unnamed Participant]

There are parts of this book that have made me laugh, I have to admit.

[Alison Stewart]

It's in two parts.

[Unnamed Participant]

It's in a Carter administration and the Reagan.

[Adam Ross]

I've only.

[Unnamed Participant]

I'm up to Carter.

[Adam Ross]

Yes.

[Unnamed Participant]

Don't tell me more. Well, you can tell me a little bit more.

[Alison Stewart]

Why did you want to define the.

[Unnamed Participant]

Book between the Carter administration and the Reagan administration?

[Adam Ross]

Oh, it's such a good question. You know, the. Well, first of all, because it was such a consequential moment in American history, which, on a spooky action level, with Carter dying and us having an entertainer president, which of course I didn't plan.

[Alison Stewart]

For.

[Adam Ross]

Has these odd echoes. But here's what I came to realize as I was writing a book about that distinction. You know, so much of. Well, it's kind of like what was the Reagan era's main message more and more and more? Well, it was more and more and more, but it was deregulated small government. Right. And so we moved from the Carter administration with all of its malaise, into the get mine now era of the go go 80s, the Reagan administration, where, you know, in the Reagan administration, just like we were parented at that time, we Gen Xers, we were deregulated. We were kids parented by deregulated. We had deregulated parenting.

[Unnamed Participant]

Yes.

[Adam Ross]

Right. And so in some ways, the parents in the novel stand in for the political sphere and kind of manifest the voracious appetites that we just saw, you know, coming to. Coming to fruition in the Reagan era. I will say this one other thing, which is also that, you know, there's a way in which, you know, some of the major changes in tax policy began in. In 1981, when Reagan signs the Kemp Roth act, which. Which seems, like, wonky, maybe to listeners, but it was one of the biggest tax cuts in history. And so it's the beginning of. Of. Of. Of America cashing a check on the future and that they're not sure how they're going to pay back. And so in some ways, that's what the adults kind of do in Griffin's world. So, yeah, a deregulated parenting, which is, of course, like, you know, the things that Griffin does that. That I did in my childhood in America, I think are unimaginable to parent, to. To allowing parents. Parents allowing their kids to do.

[Unnamed Participant]

Now I'm wondering about the age of 14. Griffin's 14. I was 14 in 1980, I remember.

[Adam Ross]

Yes.

[Unnamed Participant]

I grew up in Jersey. Yes, you wish you could be a kid in New York when you were 14. What is it about being 14 in New York at this time?

[Adam Ross]

Well, that's such a great question because it is usually for most kids, such a pivotal year in terms of moving from simply taking the world as it is to beginning to question it, which if you look at the arc of Griffin's. I mean, I won't spoil it for you, Alison.

[Unnamed Participant]

Thank you.

[Adam Ross]

But if you look at the arc of Griffin's. Of his, you can spoil it.

[Unnamed Participant]

It's okay.

[Adam Ross]

It's my job. I mean, he begins to learn how to say no to certain things. And part of that is him beginning to have a critical posture toward these things that are happening to him that are terrible. And he begins to learn how to protect himself, which is why, I mean. I mean, what's his name? His name is Griffin. What's a Griffin? A Griffin in mythology is a protect. Is a monster that protects valuable things. And so part of what Griffin is learning to do in his sort of monstrous transformation is learning how to protect himself. And so to me, that's what 14 is. Because, you know, you see strange things, but you start to come up with a language for both, you know, your own experience and a language for your own boundaries and sense of self. You're just beginning. I mean, that's how we leave Griffin in the novel. He's just beginning to articulate who he is and what he values.

[Unnamed Participant]

We are talking about the novel Play World by Adam Ross Griffin makes a move on Naomi at a family party.

[Alison Stewart]

Why is he so bold in that moment?

[Adam Ross]

Because he has no idea what he's doing. Because I think Griffin's great talent is for cosplaying adulthood. Griffin's great talent is also cosplaying childhood. And he can toggle between those roles, but because he doesn't know what kind of deep waters he's in, he doesn't realize that in the heat of Naomi's initial attention at this party, because he's kind of an attention starved kid, as I think, again, a lot of Gen X kids were in weird ways. They weren't starved for friendship, but they were starved, I think, for a certain kind of parental attention. He performs himself and he knows that maybe this is what he should be doing, but he almost like forgets he's 14.

[Alison Stewart]

Is that because he's an actor? Is that why he's performing so much?

[Adam Ross]

Yeah, I mean, I think he's had success as an actor. By, I mean, what is a child actor? A child actor, generally speaking, does not have any kind of sense of technique. A child actor, generally speaking, is comfortable being him or herself in front of the camera.

[Alison Stewart]

And having some charisma, too.

[Adam Ross]

And having. Yeah, and having some charisma, which Griffin, which Griffin does have. But, but, but, but again, there's not any self consciousness. And so he unwittingly, he unwittingly steps into her line of sight in ways that he's not prepared for. And going back to your earlier question, Alison, you know, he's also becoming a young man. And he, you know, he, you know, he's described in the novel. I mean, he's a, he's a handsome young man. And so, and, and, and so being on the cusp of adulthood, I think he signals to her a certain kind of childhood that maybe she feels like she's lost because she's in an unhappy marriage. And so, boom, unwittingly, the attraction is established. You know, they give each other something. She gives him attention, which he desperately needs, and he kind of gives her back a kind of innocence and a kind of passion. If, you know, as gray, as gray an area as it is.

[Unnamed Participant]

He does, but Naomi really likes to listen to him.

[Adam Ross]

She does.

[Unnamed Participant]

What does she get out of listening to him?

[Adam Ross]

Well, I mean, I think that what she gets out of it is openness. And actually, I think at some point in the novel, as I recall in part one, she says to him, you know, I really appreciate what an open book you are. And I think for Naomi, in Look, there's no worse thing to be, to suffer than loneliness in marriage. To me, it's one of the most acute forms of loneliness. Right? And that's what I think. She's suffering. And so she too is so available to that kind of intimacy of just. Of a young boy man, just sharing everything. And that's how they start to get into trouble. That's how she lures him in some ways, into forms of trouble. Because, you know, it, of course, it's predation. You know, I would never. I would never want the gray facts, the ambiguous facts of their relationship to muddle the fact that what she's doing is she's taking advantage of a situation. She's the adult. She recognizes that he's vulnerable, but she develops feelings for him.

[Unnamed Participant]

We learn early on in the book that when Griffin was little, he accidentally caused an apartment of fire that destroyed all the family belongings. Yes, he killed the cat.

[Adam Ross]

Yes, the cat.

[Unnamed Participant]

Spoiler, spoiler. How do you think this affects Griffin in his teenage years?

[Adam Ross]

Okay, I do just want to say there were certain people who read early versions of the novel and they were like, you killed the cat. How dare you kill the cat? So you definitely found, like, who are cat lovers and who are dog lovers. But how do I think it affects Griffin? I mean, what it does is Griffin has two things. He has an enormous sense of guilt and responsibility. But also the most important thing is that the way in which his father in particular handles Griffin understanding what he did in an age where maybe it's really too early for Griffin to understand what he did, or the way in which his father kind of foists responsibility for that event on him. What it does, and this is something that happens in a lot of trauma, is it kind of. It peels Griffin away from himself. He disengages as a kind of, I think, defensive reaction from his own feelings. And that detachment, that feeling of detachment from his own feelings is again, one of the novel's, I think, most important arcs, which is, is he going to, you know, reconnect with himself? Because his acting, his acting in real life, you know, when he plays himself in real life, that is a defensive strategy that is chameleonic, that is you in all the oceanic imagery that's in Playworld. He's like a cuttlefish. You know, he just can disappear into background. That's what he has. That's what his family of origin has taught him because of something he wasn't responsible for. I mean, if you leave out candles, lit candles, your kid is gonna Play, pretend and maybe do something unwittingly bad. But. But he, he learns how to. How to feel his feelings without. Without fear of retribution.

[Alison Stewart]

I want to get one more thing in before we run out of time. Is his wrestling coach. He's really involved with wrestling.

[Adam Ross]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

There's a lot that goes on there. You write about wrestling in such vivid detail. Did you wrestle?

[Adam Ross]

I'm gonna brag on myself. I was a New York state champion wrestler in high school. Yes. Yes. So I wrestled for six years in high school, and now I do jiu jitsu and I've been doing jiu jitsu for eight years.

[Alison Stewart]

What does wrestling mean to Griffin?

[Adam Ross]

Wrestling is the place where there is no acting, there is no dissembling. Wrestling is the. Is the gladiatorial pit where nobody can pretend to be anything other than they are. And so Griffin relishes this space where he's pitted against somebody. His weight. His.

[Alison Stewart]

Sometimes his weight.

[Adam Ross]

Well, sometimes his weight, you know, if he makes weight, but it's pitted against somebody where who he is is reveale to him in the contest. And so he is passionate about this. But it's also the place, if you think about his sort of, you know, original trauma, it's the place where he can possibly become adept enough to overpower these monsters that are all around him. But his. But. But you know, he does have an abusive wrestling coach. And that's. And. And that's another adult character in a book that also touches on D and.

[Alison Stewart]

D. Yes, it is an entire chapter.

[Adam Ross]

Called Dungeons and Dragons. That's right. He's gotta fight monsters. And so when you wrestle, you fight monsters, but sometimes in life, you fight other kinds of monsters.

[Alison Stewart]

That was author Adam Ross discussing his new novel Play World. It's about a child actor in 80s New York City. It isn't summer in New York without hearing some Bad Bunny. Coming up, we'll discuss his latest album and learn about how it's a love letter to Puerto Rican culture. I'll speak next to a historian who consulted with Bad Bunny.

[Dr. Horton]

For the record, your new beginning starts now. Dr. Horton has new construction homes available in Ellensburg and throughout the greater Seattle area. With spacious floor plans, flexible living spaces and home technology packages, you can enjoy more cozy moments and sweet memories in your beautiful new home. With new home communities opening in Ellensburg and throughout the Seattle area, Dr. Horton has the ideal home for you. Learn more@doctor Horton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder.

[Progressive Commercial Insurance]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive commercial insurance Business owners meet Progressive Insurance. They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business quote in as little as 7 [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third party insurers. Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations.