← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Zosia Mamet Reflects on Her Life in Hollywood
00:29:48
Zosia Mamet is now reflecting on her years growing up in Hollywood with her new book of essays, Does This Make Me Funny?.
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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, photographer Edward Burtynsky documents humanity's impact upon nature. Dozens of his images are currently being shown at the icp, and he joins us to talk about the exhibition. Russ and Daughters has spent decades, many decades, providing New Yorkers with the platonic ideal of Jewish comfort food. Nikki, Russ Fetterman and Joss Russ Tupper share some of that family history and recipes in their new cookbook, Russ and 100 years of appetizing. And they will join us to discuss. And the new film Lurker details the dark side of parasocial relationships. The New York Times calls it, quote, a tight and wicked little film. The director and stars will be my guest. That's the plan. So let's get this started with Zasha Stunt Memmott. One of the most memorable episodes in the comedy series Girls was called welcome to Bushwick, AKA the Crackcident. When Sushana Shapiro, a naive NYU student played by Zasha Mamet, she accidentally smokes crack at a party and hilarity ensues. Turns out, as you'll read in Zasha's new essay collection, she has her own cracksident as a teenager in Malibu. There's an essay called 100 pounds about her weight. Bad dates are in there, as well as some really brave writing about abuse on sets. Still, the book has a whole lot of humor. Zasha's book is called does this Make Me Funny? She's known for Girls Laid, Mad Men and the Decameron. She was quite great in that. And she's with me now in studio. It's nice to meet you.
- [02:01]
B
Thank you so much. It's good to be here.
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A
I also want to say that she will be in conversation with Sophie Brooks about the book tonight at Greenlight bookstores at 7:30pm and at the 92nd Street Y with her Girls Co star Andrew Reynolds on September 11th at 8:00pm okay, so the first person to read these essays before they were in a book you write it was Sally Ware.
- [02:23]
B
Yes.
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A
Okay. Who is Sally Ware and why was she your first reader?
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B
Sally Ware is my incredible manager and basically my partner in crime for all things Creative. And she read everything before my editor, Meg Letter, even read them. She was, she was really my litmus test in terms of what was good, what was too vulnerable, what wasn't vulnerable enough. She's just. Yeah, she is really? My creative North Star.
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A
How did you decide? Because there are parts of this book which are really vulnerable. How did you decide how much you wanted to let readers in and also fans in your life? How much did you want them to know?
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B
You know, it's interesting. I've been asked this question a lot, and I have this thing that I didn't consciously inflict this in myself or in my life, but it's this protective function that I have when I'm working as an actor where I forget that people can consume what I'm creating. It just doesn't cross my mind, you know, when I'm on set, I'm not thinking.
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A
Happens to me on the radio sometimes.
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B
Really? Yeah. Like, it's kind of like a fugue state. I think it's really a protective function of our brains so that we can do what we need to do at this sort of innately vulnerable job, sharing of ourselves in this public way, and not think about how someone's gonna receive it or how many people can consume it. And it happened to me when I was writing, so it really wasn't a conscious choice. And I very much left that up to Sally and to my editor to tell me if something felt like it was too much or if it felt like something maybe was not enough. But I wasn't sitting there writing, being like, oh, I shouldn't put that in, or, I'm gonna hold this back, or, like, that's okay to share. I just was. My husband always says I shoot from the hip creatively. And I think, yeah, I don't really know how to do it otherwise.
- [04:33]
A
So when you got the book of boxes and you opened it up and you looked at it and you said, oh, this is real, and you read. Did you read through it?
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B
I had to read it. I haven't read through a hard copy. I had to read it on an iPad when I did the audio book. And that was the first time I read through it from beginning to end without being able to change anything.
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A
Did you have any clarity on things when you read through it?
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B
You know, I think reading it out loud unexpectedly affected me much more intensely than I thought. I came home after the first session reading the audiobook, which I didn't want to read. I've done one other audiobook in my life, and it's so tedious. It's really takes a long time. I mean, I'm sure you know what it's like being alone with headphones, with your own voice all day is. It's sort of. It can be Kind of grating. And it was my husband when I came home that night and I was, I was like, I'm really emotional. He was sort of surprised. He was like, yeah. You know, when you read a script on the page versus when you say it out loud, it obviously comes to life in a different way. And it just hadn't crossed my mind. And so I think it forced me to process it in a different way than I had anticipated or really wanted to. It was sort of like a therapy session that I didn't want to have.
- [05:59]
A
Well, what was your typical writing day like?
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B
It kind of depended, you know. This book took me a lot longer to write than expected because it kept getting interrupted with acting jobs. I'd be like, oh, I gotta go do my day job now. Cause I'm not really someone I don't do a great job with. I kind of need to write an essay all in one go. At least the first draft. I'm not someone who does great with writing and coming back to something. It sort of bubbles to the surface and I have to get it out and I can come back and futz with it. So I would sort of have to wait until I had a chunk of time. And then, yeah, it was just really finding time to write whenever I could in blocks like that. So there wasn't really like, oh, I wake up. I don't have rituals as a writer, I guess I should say.
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A
Did you keep journals?
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B
No.
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A
So this was all from memory?
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B
Yes.
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A
Wow. So that's interesting. Did you have anybody to be your fact checker or is this just your, I guess your memoir? Essays?
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B
Oh my God, I hate that word so much. Not for other people, just for myself. It feels so like self aggrandizing to be like, I wrote a memoir. But I guess, for lack of a better word. Yes. Did you? Yeah, I didn't. No, I didn't really have people to fact check. This is my recollection. But you know, a lot of that. I. Sure, we'll go with that. We'll go with that. You said it, not me. I, you know, I've said this before. I think, I do hope that this book does make people laugh and that it isn't, you know, all doom and gloom. But there is a. I write about a lot of traumatic experiences and I think one of the reasons that they were so vivid in my memory is because they were very traumatic and they'd almost sort of fossilized in my brain. I think that they were experiences that I hadn't processed or worked through or really Relived. They'd sort of been laying dormant in a closet in my mind. And so when I put them under the microscope to write about them, they felt very fully formed. You know, this wasn't a photo album that I would flip through every Christmas or something. This was something that was kind of left in a basement and forgotten until I called upon it again.
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A
Yeah. These weren't party stories that you pulled out.
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B
No, no.
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A
You write about wanting to. That public radio listeners will love. David Sedaris.
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B
Yes.
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A
And how you almost canceled while hiding in a bathroom because you were so nervous.
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B
True.
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A
First of all, what is it about his writing?
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B
Oh, man.
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A
That means something to you?
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B
You know, I think he was one of the first authors that I read that made me feel like there wasn't a certain way that I had to tell a story, that I could tell a story however I wanted to. And I write very much how I talk. And I think, you know, I had a very, very hard time in school, and I had a particularly hard time in English class, which was a real. It was very sad to me because I've loved writing, I've loved reading since I was a very small child. And I had this teacher over a couple of years in high school who really beat the love of reading and writing out of me because she was so prescriptive. And I felt like I could never hit the mark of what she wanted. And that every way that I would interpret something or try to tell a story seemed wrong. And so I think I came to believe that I just didn't do it right and that there was a right way to do it. And I remember the first time I read one of David Sedaris books. It just. It was. That's the right way to describe. Just felt like discovering a new world. I was like, oh, my God. Well, okay, he does it different, so maybe I can do it different, too. And the way he told stories with so much heart and vulnerability, but also that were so funny, I felt like he really understood this. I felt so seen by the way he did that and how I felt like I could tell something that was really traumatic, but hopefully also make someone laugh while telling the story. I just felt very. I felt sort of a kinship to his experience.
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A
Were you able to act normal when you met him?
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B
I think as far as. As far as I know, because no one, like, made a weird face or, you know, I wasn't thrown out of the restaurant. I think I did. I was in a sort of half fugue state for the whole experience. So I'm not entirely sure, but I think I pulled off semi normal person for that breakfast.
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A
I'm speaking with actor and writer Sasha Mamet. Her new book of personal essays is called does this Make Me Funny? It is out today. You write in the book you were born on stage. Not literally, but your mom was pregnant with you when she was acting in the Cherry Orchard. She would often say, you were born on stage. You were part of this all. What did that origin story mean to you growing up?
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B
I think I didn't realize it until later, but I think it always meant to me, at least subconsciously, when I was younger, that I. That I had a place that I fit. That I had maybe almost a place to go back to when I was in high school and I was so miserable, I remember just thinking, I just have to get out of here. Almost like it was prison and. And then I can start my real life. And I think, to me, my real life felt like running away to join the circus, which in this case was the entertainment industry, which is absolutely the circus in all of the ways. But, yeah, I think that's what it meant. It meant that there was a place for me in this world waiting for me. Cause at the. Growing up, I didn't really feel like I fit anywhere.
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A
It's interesting in the book, and I applaud you for it. You jump right into the idea of being born to a family of artists. You're like, we won't hold this off till chapter four or five. I'm gonna jump right in right at the beginning. Did that give you a feeling of being able to fit in in the industry you chose, or did it create some sort of barrier around you?
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B
I mean, it's. There isn't really a straightforward answer to that. Also writing that way, my husband gets all the credit for he.
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A
Oh, really?
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B
He was the person. He didn't read any of the book until actually very recently, because I wouldn't let him read it until it was finished. But I kept talking to him about all my anxieties about what people would think or say or feel about the book, about me, you know, I was like, I'm worried they're gonna call me a nepo hack. And he was like, well, why don't you just beat them to it? Like, just talk about it, you know, don't leave yourself vulnerable. Just, like, put it out there. Just put it out there. And I was like, that's. You know, I like you. You can stay. All right. You can stay. Yeah, he's all right. But you Know, I think, and I talk about this in the book, on the one hand, one of the things growing up in the industry definitely gave me was knowledge. I started out in this industry with a lot of information of what it's actually like. You know, I got to, like, literally see behind the curtain. So it's. It wasn't as if I showed up with, like, starry eyes thinking it was going to be smooth sailing and super glamorous. Like, I knew what a day on set was like, and I knew how harsh the industry could be, and I think that certainly helped me. But in many ways, coming from a family of artists whose names were known to the industry actually made it a lot harder because I think people either had a preconceived notion of who I was gonna be and what I was gonna be like because of the people I came from. And I'm very different from both of my parents. And so that made it tough. Starting out as a young actress, trying to kind of walking into rooms, having detangled what people had already decided about me. And oftentimes because they'd made a decision if I was something else, it wasn't even that they didn't like what I was doing, but maybe they just were like, oh, but that's not what we expected. And so often that would lead to me not getting a job because they didn't have the time to sort of rejigger their idea of me, or they had some sort of, I don't know, spite or something for the fact that I was born to a famous family and they maybe thought that I was getting a leg up from them, which I wasn't. And so they went harder on me. And I think especially because of my dad and my grandfather, it was like they sort of expected something really grand. And I say this in the book, that when I was starting out, like, you're not necessarily reading for these super rich, meaty, well written parts. You know, I was reading for, like, Disney Channel movies of the week.
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A
Not David Mamet plays.
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B
Not David Mamet plays. So it's kind of hard to, like, really show your chops when you're reading for, like, a WB sitcom. So it was. Yeah, it was. It was tricky ground.
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A
I do want to say, I think it's interesting, though, one would expect you to have a certain talent based on hereditary. I mean, if someone in my family was a doctor and I wanted to be a doctor, that makes sense. I might have a predilection for it.
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B
Yeah, that's very kind. I mean, you'd like to think so. I certainly would like to think I inherited my ability from my heritage. But I mean, we've also seen incredible artists birth people who aren't nearly as talented as they are. So I think it just depends.
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A
In your earlier years as sort of an unknown actor to people, what kind of told the audition process take on you as a person?
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B
What do you mean?
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A
Like, what was it like for you to go into an audition when you were a young actor trying out for the wb? What was the toll of it?
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B
Oh, what was the toll? I thought you said what told it. I was like, I don't know. I didn't write a story about that. Oh, man, your typical gig, it was really rough. It was a lot of work. I write about that in the book as well. You know, auditioning is a full time unpaid job, especially when you're first starting out because you're not saying no to anything. You're literally auditioning for any possible thing they are willing to see you for. So sometimes I would have five auditions in a day and everything in Los Angeles, especially if you're on a time crunch, is like at least an hour drive apart and probably with bad parking. So my entire day was filled with driving back and forth to auditions. And normally, like a lot of these auditions, I would have to learn, you know, five to ten pages of sides for each. So multiply that by five. And sometimes you'd get them the night before and I barely have time to get in between each of these. Like, I learned so unsafe. I learned how to drive with my knee and change my clothes while driving. Don't recommend, do not recommend. Please no one do that. So it was really exhausting. And obviously, you know, I say like, I was born into this industry, so I came in with knowledge. But even so, even when you know something's going to be hard, actually living it is a different experience. And anytime someone tells me they want to be an actor, I always say, if you could be happy doing absolutely anything else, do that instead. Because it is a brutal business. And even when you're successful, I've always said I don't think success makes things easier. I think it just makes them different. And yeah, it's like just imagine being like a teenager, spending your whole life working towards something. Spending your entire day driving around trying to do your absolute best, changing while driving down the 405 with your knee and just having people say, you're not good enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not sexy enough, you're too young, you're too old. You're. I mean, it's. It's a really tough challenge to not internalize that.
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A
It's really interesting in the book. And you're really brave for calling out a showrunner.
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B
Thank you.
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A
Wasn't Girls. For the. For the record, not Girls.
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B
I love you, Lena. I love you, Jenny Connor.
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A
Do not believe the Internet. But you're brave for calling out what was. I would consider very disrespectful of you on the set.
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B
That's very kind. Yeah.
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A
What advice would you give to yourself now, having been through it, that you would give the person who went through what you went through, and people have to read about that in your book.
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B
Oh, man, it's so tough because I want to say that I would give them the advice to tell that person, I can't swear on this show, but you know what I would say. Or to just step to that individual and, you know, or to, like, ask them who hurt them. But it's really tough. I had an experience earlier this year that was not nearly as severe, but was similar. And I was with a couple other actors and we all talked about it afterwards, and it's so tough. There can be this vibe on a set that because there is so much money at stake and time is money on a set that if you do not stay on schedule, if anything interrupts a schedule, it is the end of the world. You know, sometimes when things get really stressful, I try to say, I'm like, everybody just take a breath and remember, nobody's dying right now. We are not in an emergency room. Everything is okay. Let's just like, have a reality check. But it's easy to get swept away and forget that. And I think also sometimes when someone's acting out like that and the pressure is high, it can almost make it worse to step to them. So it's. It's tricky. It's not easy. I had. I had this happen in a very big way two years ago on a set. And I was about to do what I just said. I was about to basically, like, I got called out in a really horrible way in front of the entire crew. I got, like, basically verbally abused by this director. And I was about to really go at her, and my co star saw me and put his hand on my shoulder and just like, pulled me into a hug. And he was like, don't do it right now. It's not going to be good for anyone, including you. Like, she's so unhinged. It's actually just going to make it Harder for you. He was like, go take a walk. And so I did, and this director came and found me after and apologized to me, which I did not get from this showrunner. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I mean, I.
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A
In that case, you had somebody looking out for you. This fellow actor was interesting.
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B
I did. Although it would have felt better to get into it with this director. But, you know, I also think it's sort of like a couple fighting in front of a child or like when you're at a dinner party and there's another couple fighting in front of you, it's like, horrible for everyone else to witness. And sometimes I think too, it's disrespectful to the crew to, like, do that in front of them. Like, they don't want to be a part of that. Everyone just wants to make their day and go home to their families. So it's. I don't. There's not an easy answer.
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A
Why did you want to write about it?
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B
It's something I've never forgotten. Obviously. It's an experience that really, really stuck with me for a while, and I think it gave me. It really made me a little bit gun shy for a bit, and I think I wanted to write about it. Normalize is the wrong word, but I kind of wanted to just shine the light on it and be like, sadly, this happens. I mean, I've had many. I've mentioned two other ones in the last two years that I've had. And it's not necessarily that success makes that go away. And I think I was actually talking about this with a fellow actor on a recent job about how I think our industry, sadly, is one where bad behavior often goes totally unchecked. And you'll hear about people. Like, people will. Their names will precede them and they'll be like, oh, yeah, that person. They're really difficult. It's like, but, well, then why do they just get away with it? But I think success makes people forget or put up with things. And I honestly think the more we talk about this, maybe we can start to hopefully turn the tide. Because I do think, I firmly believe, and looking back on every abusive experience I've had on set, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that has come, that bad behavior has been born out of these people feeling inadequate or insecure. And I think if we can start to talk about this more and maybe look at it from a place of compassion, I don't know, maybe. Maybe we can. Maybe we can try and put a halt to people behaving badly and never seeing the consequences.
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A
Like I say, you see the sign over my shoulder.
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B
I know. Work hard and be nice to people. Truly, that's all I gotta do. It's not. That's the other thing that shocks me. I find it's so much easier to be nice.
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A
Much easier.
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It's so much easier. Just be nice.
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A
You guys, I'm speaking with Sasha Mamet. Her new book of personal essays is called does this Make Me Funny? Before we run out of time, because we are gonna run out of time. Girls has found like a whole new generation with Gen Z who weren't watching when the show originally aired.
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B
Uh huh.
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A
Why do you think that is? Why do you think about the lasting popularity of the show?
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B
Oh man. I mean, I love it so much that it has found a second life. It to me, like, nothing could be a higher compliment than, than the fact that it's hitting just as hard with the younger generation. We obviously it spoke to us when we were making it, but it feels really great. I mean, I used to say that was my favorite thing when the show was on the array of people that would stop me. Like I once got stopped. I was passing a fire station and this like huge, probably 45 year old fireman was like, yo, Shoshana. He was like, you guys come here. And his whole firehouse came out and like they apparently would watch it together at the firehouse. I was like, this is the greatest day of my life. And so the fact that it's having a second life is amazing. I had a girl stop me yesterday and who said she started it the day before and just makes me so happy. I mean, I think we. I thought about that a lot when I was writing my book, Just How I Feel. Like Lena and Jenny and Judd and all of our writers tried to tell the stories they were telling unabashedly. And I'd like to think that that's why it's hitting again so hard. Is like they always so deeply respected our audience. My dad says that a lot. He's like, you have to make movies where you give your audience credit that they're going to suspend their disbelief and follow along with you. You don't have to explain it to them. They're smart. And I think, I think Girls really did that. I think they were like, you're smart. So we're gonna tell this story in a way that we know you're gonna get. And I think it's hitting again because it makes people feel seen.
- [29:31]
A
Zasha Mamet will be at Greenlight bookstore tonight at 7:30 and she'll be with her Girls co star Andrew Rannells at the 92nd Street Y on September 11th at 8pm the new book is called does this Make Me Funny? Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it.
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B
Thank you so much having me okay.
- [29:49]
C
Back to back meetings Pick up the.
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A
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- [29:57]
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