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- [00:01]
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Tilda Swinton
Easy.
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- [00:46]
Dave Davies
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is FRESH AIR WEEKEND. I'm Dave Davies. Today, Tilda Swinton, she stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film as a woman who has suffered from cancer and therapies haven't worked and now intends to end her life within a month. She asks a friend played by Julianne Moore to stay with her during that time. And we hear from Oscar and now Golden Globe Award winning actor Adrien Brody. He stars in the film the Brutalist, which just won the Golden Globe for best Motion picture Drama. Brody Brody plays a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post war America. Brody drew from his mother and grandfather's experience as Hungarian immigrants for the role. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new Mike Lee film Hard Truths that's coming up on FRESH AIR weekend.
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- [03:01]
Dave Davies
This is FRESH AIR weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Terry has our first interview. I'll let her introduce it.
- [03:09]
Terry Gross
My guest, Tilda Swinton, stars in a new beautiful movie called the Room Next Door. She plays a war correspondent who has dodged death several times. Now she has cancer for which she's received harsh treatments, including in clinical trials, but the cancer progresses. She's rejecting more treatment, refusing to continue suffering, and has decided it's time to end her life. The film is about suffering and death and choice, but it's a beautiful film because of the sometimes poetic dialogue, the emotional depth, the relationship between the two main characters and the contrast between Swinton's ghostly presence in the film and the vibrant, color saturated world around her, including the clothes, the walls and the furniture and the woods. It's a form of beauty and contrast I've come to expect from the film's writer and director, Pedro Almodovar. He's Spanish, and this is his first English language feature film. Tilda Swinton started off in the film avant garde. She made several films with the director Derek Jarman, including her first film, Caravaggio and Never Expected or maybe never even sought commercial success. But she got it anyway. Many filmgoers were introduced to her in the title role of the 1992 film Orlando, adapted from a 1928 Virginia Woolf novel in which a young nobleman, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's, inexplicably wakes up as a woman. Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in the popular 2007 legal thriller Michael Clayton. She's been in several Wes Anderson films, the Joanna Hogg films, the Souvenir and the Eternal Daughter, and the Luca Guadagnino films I Am Suspirior and A Bigger Splash, the Julio Torres film Problemista and the Coen Brothers Hail Caesar and Byrne after reading. Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One. Her new film, the Room Next Door, is Adapted from the 2020 novel what are youe Going Through? By Sigrid Nunes. Swinton's character, Martha, is planning to end her life. She doesn't want to die in her Manhattan home, surrounded by things she loves. She thinks it will be easier to die in a house in the woods that has no personal connection, so she rents a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the month is up. She wants solitude, but she also wants a friend to accompany her. After several friends decline, she asks an old friend whom Martha had lost touch with. The friend, Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, is a novelist who has found out Martha is sick and has been visiting her. Ingrid's latest novel draws on her own fear of death. Here's Tilda Swinton as Martha, explaining the situation to Ingrid.
- [05:54]
Tilda Swinton
I will not go out in mortifying anguish. I've gotten hold of a euthanasia pill. Don't ask me how. On the dark web you can find almost anything. I also have an abundance of opioids for the moments of pain. And don't look at me like that. I'm not asking you to convince me otherwise. I don't know what to say. I'm hoping you'll say yes.
- [06:16]
DSW
Yes to what?
- [06:17]
Tilda Swinton
To my asking you to help me.
- [06:20]
Terry Gross
Help you what?
- [06:23]
Tilda Swinton
I faced death several times, but I've always been accompanied. We reporters phoned a Hanifi mobile family. This is another war. I'm not afraid of it. But like the other times, I faced death. I don't want to be alone. Ingrid, I'm asking you to be in the next room.
- [06:54]
Terry Gross
Tilda Swinton, welcome to FRESH air. I love this movie. I love your performance in it. And I want to congratulate you for making something that is so moving with such a great performance.
- [07:04]
Tilda Swinton
Thank you so much, Terry. It's such a pleasure to be here. And Happy New Year to everybody.
- [07:09]
Terry Gross
Yes, and Happy New Year to you. I know you had friends, including your close friend Derek Jarman, who made the first films you were in, who died during the AIDS epidemic and your parents died. Are there ways. I know you have a lot of people in your life who have died. Are there ways in which the screenplay and your character connect with you on a very personal level?
- [07:30]
Tilda Swinton
Absolutely. It's an incredibly personal and resonant film for me. And when Pedro showed me the screenplay, I was so grateful to him, not only because it reflects so many conversations that he and I have had over the time that we've been friends, but also very much my experience of the last 15 years supporting and bearing witness to loved ones who have been dismounting, as I like to think of it. It's a. It's a great opportunity to place that witness up on a big screen for people and with a kind of clear eyedness which I think is always emblematic of Almodovar's work. He's so determined always not to look away. And that's absolutely what this film is about.
- [08:20]
Terry Gross
So many of Alma Dovar's movies are about death or pain or hospitalization, and they're all so beautiful.
- [08:30]
Tilda Swinton
And also about surviving things of all kinds, surviving tortuous relationships with our parents or surviving, you know, a long absence from a loved lover. It's always about overcoming and somehow, you know, scaring away the things that frighten us ourselves. And what they say, you know, embrace the tiger, return to the mountain. That's very much his attitude to life. He is pretty fearless, I would say.
- [09:01]
Terry Gross
So what was it like for you after having, you know, borne witness to and helped people who were close to you and were dying? What's it like for you to be on the other side in this role as the person who is dying and wants to terminate her life?
- [09:18]
Tilda Swinton
It was a profound blessing, Terry, because when he first sent me the script, I did have to double check with him who he was asking me to play and when he. Because, as I say, I've been in what I call the ingress position so often in my life and thankfully, so it is a great privilege to occupy that seat.
- [09:37]
Terry Gross
But, and just in case people get the characters names confused, Ingrid is the person who's helping your character. Your character is dying. She is accompanying you.
- [09:48]
Tilda Swinton
Ingrid is the witness. Ingrid is the name of the person who Julianne Moore plays. And when he told me that he wanted me to play Martha, I remember this sense of relief because it was the snow that I didn't know because it was a ghost to be a new track. But it was a snow that I'd wondered about for so long, having sat on the other side of the chasm, as I kind of think of it. And I'd heard so many loved ones and friends saying to me, it's so much worse for you than me. I'm in the hot seat, I'm going down. But you're having to bear this. And so to test. That was a very interesting project and it did bear out, I have to say there is something. I'm not suggesting that. And I'm not. I'm not, you know, don't want to be too grandiose about this. I mean, I. This was a drama that we were figuring out. It wasn't actual experience, but I got a tiny bit closer to imagining myself in that position. And it's not a fearful place to be. I don't.
- [10:54]
Terry Gross
I didn't find the friends and family whose deaths you witnessed and whose end of life you witnessed. Were they fearful of death?
- [11:05]
Tilda Swinton
Some of them. And yet, with a couple of exceptions, that fear dissipated and was replaced with something really inspiring, which was the essential acceptance of the inevitable. I mean, this is the thing that this film is really about. You say with accuracy that it's about suffering, and of course, technically, it is about dying, but it's really more than anything, Terry, about living. It's about someone who has made the decision to live right up to the wire, go on living, and for that to be the banner that she's carrying. And it's about the interest of life and an interest in life and about someone who, by the way, sets her cap at investing her last months, her last weeks, in the three things that I've always thought were the things that we'll always see us through. Friendship, art and nature. And so it is so full of. Packed with energy. And you reference the colors which are always there in Pedro's work. The colors also bring it energy. The way in which someone who is mortally ill is choosing the brightest and most beautiful jerseys she can find to go out in and end up in a kind of Mishima pose in the most beautiful yellow suit and bright red lipstick. There's that feeling of an investment in energy, which I think is really, really profound and worth reflecting on. I think, you know, a life spent considering how we're going to spend our end is not wasted time. You know, it's a really important thing to think about. She says, I think I deserve a good death. I think she's right. I think we all do.
- [12:59]
Terry Gross
Your character is kind of ghostly in it, and, you know, you're very pale because you're dying, and it's such a contrast to the world of saturated color that surrounds you. And I'm wondering, did you do anything to make yourself appear more ghostly?
- [13:21]
Tilda Swinton
We worked. I worked with my great friend and comrade, Morag Ross, who's the first makeup artist I ever worked with. I worked with her with Derek Jarman. Caravaggio was the first film we both made, and we worked very closely together on creating this feeling that Martha is both here and not here all the time. And, of course, there's a sort of graduation in her pallor. There's a graduation in her presence. So I take care of the spiritual presence, if you like. And she was very attendant with the way in which Martha moves through the spaces, as you say, in a slightly removed, phantom like way. But that's what the film is doing. If someone is. And I've been privileged to be alongside people who have planned to leave. They know that they're gonna go, and they've even set a date. And they are at that point in such an interesting state because they are half in, half out on a tightrope, which is so tangential and so delicate and actually really exquisite. And she's there. She's on that tightrope. So she isn't fully present. And her body is definitely on the decline. It's shutting down. And she talks about that very touchingly, I think, about how difficult and painful it is to feel your brain, which you've relied on, she has relied on all her life. She's had a very, very sharp brain all her life. And to feel it failing her, shutting down and struggling with her cognizance is super, super painful for her. And it's that, of course, that drives her further out into the ocean.
- [15:11]
Dave Davies
We're listening to Terry's interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film the Room Next Door. It's now showing in select theaters. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR Weekend.
- [15:26]
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- [16:15]
Jen Chavez
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- [16:36]
Terry Gross
You're from a military family. Seems to me you went in the opposite direction in your artistic life. You got your start in the avant garde. And the avant garde, it breaks the rules. It's unconventional. And in the military there are rules that are strictly followed. And it's hard to be unless you're thinking of like an unconventional, like war strategy and you're in a leadership position. It's hard to be unconventional in the military. Do you feel like you went in an opposite direction?
- [17:06]
Tilda Swinton
It's so funny, Terry, because the more and more I live, the more I think that I'm going right down the middle of the family tendency, actually, when I think of comradeship, when I think of, you know, the project, when I think of the kind of trench warfare of independent filmmaking, when I think of walkie talkies, when I think of, you know, kind of packed lunches in dark fields. I have a brother who was a soldier for many years, and we've always compared notes and I think we live very similar lives, in fact, and, you know, less perilous to make films, but for sure. But you're right, there is a chain of command that I know that soldiers live and die by that we don't necessarily. Certainly not. Maybe in studio filmmaking more. Maybe that's more the hard army. But, yeah, in the world of filmmaking that I sprung out of, it's a collective, and that's not necessarily what an army is. Yeah, I think in that sense, yes, I did branch out from the family trade. But having said that, you know, there is this very strange epiphany in my recent years that I was always told by my parents that I was a bit of a strange thing and that there were no artists in our family. But I've recently discovered, since they died, I may say that our family tree is littered with artists. And, yeah, I'm not, in fact, an apple falling that far from the tree at all.
- [18:48]
Terry Gross
Something that's similar and different is clothing. Like in the military, you have a uniform which is kind of a costume, but it's a uniform. Everybody has the uniform. And in movies, like, you've worn so many different kinds of costumes over the years. So do you feel like clothing, like your interest in clothing was that influenced for in the negative or positive by the uniforms of the military? And I don't know, even if you ever saw your father or any other of your relatives or even your brother in uniform and what that meant to you?
- [19:28]
Tilda Swinton
No, no, no, you are absolutely right. Singularly inspired and informed by the uniforms. In fact, I'm making a piece of work at that very thing. How central my response to my father and my grandfather's uniforms has been. I used to watch my parents getting dressed up to go out to grand parties, and my mother would wear some really nice silk dress and look beautiful. But my father had all the glamour. He had, you know, the gold frogging and the medals and those black trousers with the scarlet stripe down the sides Scarlet. I mean, it occurred to me the other day, here I am working with Pedro Almodovar who's, you know, works in scarlet. He is one of the great artists who work in scarlet. And Scarlet has always really meant some as a, as a child of a, you know, Scottish military family. Scarlet's an important thing for the British army and yeah, it's hugely important. And I have always been truly sincerely and seriously interested in clothes and what they do for us and to us. I was of four, but I have three brothers, no sisters, and I didn't have many dresses. I wore a lot of hand me downs as the third child often does. And they were boys clothes and you know, nothing's different. I still wear boys clothes. They are, you know, usually the most comfortable things to wear for me. But, but the fact that I can wear both, and I encourage everybody to wear both by the way, which is why it's so important for people to, to understand that the clothes are just choices and, and we, we can wear whatever we want and choose our identity every morning or every hour. That aspect of clothing has always been really important for me. I love it.
- [21:23]
Terry Gross
I think you've just described your interest in androgynous style.
- [21:27]
Tilda Swinton
I don't even know that it's androgynous. I just feel that it's about being boundaryless. And you described, you know, with certain accuracy that Orlando, the Virginia Woolf novel and the film that we made in 1992 is about gender. I would say suggest it's not only about gender, it's sort of glancingly about gender, but it's really more about boundarylessness about, it's about classlessness, it's about internationalism, it's about someone who's immortal, by the way, and that feeling of endless possibility, that's something that really fuels my motor. And I've always had that sense that, you know, why limit yourself? Why say, yeah, I'm going to be this kind of woman, I'm gonna dress only like this. I'm gonna be this kind of man. I'm gonna dress and behave only like this. It's such a waste. You know, we don't feel that when we're children. I think maybe I had a very light filled childhood before I went to boarding school when I was 10. I think that during those first 10 years I must have felt, and I'm only guessing at this, but I must have had a sort of bedrock of, of possibility and I really loved it and I would like to keep it going in my life. And we all knew it when we were little. You know, we could dress up as anything. A dog or a dinosaur or an old lady. Just get a stick and bend over. You know, there's no great miracle to it. And we somehow, as we get older, we're encouraged to lose that sense of possibility and stick to our guns. And then if we want to change, it's some massive trauma to society. You know, the whole idea of transitioning being terribly, you know, much other people's business, which, of course it palpably is not. It is nobody's business than the person whose life is being informed by it.
- [23:25]
Terry Gross
You've described yourself as queer, but not in the LGBTQ spectrum. So when you use the word queer, what do you mean?
- [23:38]
Tilda Swinton
I was named queer by my queer colleagues when I lived amongst them. When I first became an artist in the 80s, we were all queer, meaning that we were living in a world that felt self determining for us and felt very much at odds with what we called the straight world, the square world, which was not necessarily to do with, you know, heterosexuality or homosexuality. It was to do with an attitude of mind and an attitude of living. And so I was named. It's not that I named myself particularly, but I was named as a queer female fish. We were queer fish. And I'm proud to continue to be a queer fish. And I've been in very happy and loving relationships with men for the last, whatever, 30 years. With my children's beloved father, John Byrne, who died last year.
- [24:32]
Terry Gross
Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that.
- [24:34]
Tilda Swinton
He's one of my Martha's, My teachers. Yeah, he went last year. But he and I had these miraculous children. And then I've been with Sandro for 20 years, and we're very happy, but we're all queer. We're all queer fish.
- [24:53]
Terry Gross
I know in boarding school you were bullied. What were you bullied for? Do you know?
- [24:57]
Tilda Swinton
Being queer, being odd, being quiet, being shy, being from Scotland. This was a very reductive English girls private boarding school. And of course, the terrible things which we now know if we are sentient ad. If you take a bunch of children and we were children, I was 10, I was the youngest. They were mostly 11. But if you take a bunch of children from 11 to 17 and you take them away from their families, you know, there's a lot of grief there. And so they act out. Some of them act out by bullying others, and some of them act out by just being quiet, which I did. I was just incredibly quiet, sitting in the corner the wonderful thing is there was somebody else sitting in the corner and that was Joanna Hogg. And she and I met on the first day of school. I was 10, she was 11. And she and I have been friends ever since and have become very close collaborators.
- [25:59]
Ron Rudson
Now.
- [25:59]
Tilda Swinton
She's a great filmmaker and she was the first filmmaker I I worked with in on her student film in 1986 and we made the Souvenir films together with my own daughter and and then the Eternal Daughter where I play both the mother and the daughter. So that was one blessing in the heart of that experience and that was Joanna.
- [26:19]
Terry Gross
Tilda Swinton, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much and thank you for making this movie. I just really love your new movie.
- [26:26]
Tilda Swinton
Thank you Terry and for everything you do. It's such a breath of fresh air.
- [26:30]
Terry Gross
Thank you so much. Be well.
- [26:33]
Tilda Swinton
And you.
- [26:35]
Dave Davies
Tilda Swinton is starring in the new Pedro Almodovar film the Room Next Door, now showing in select theaters. She spoke with Terry Gross in 1997. Marianne Jean Baptiste became the first black British actress to receive an Oscar nomination for Mike Lee's drama Secrets and Lies. Now, nearly 30 years later, she and Lee have reunited on the comedic drama Hard Truths, in which she plays a profoundly unhappy woman living in North London. The performance has earned Jean Baptiste Best Actress prizes from several critics group. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
- [27:13]
Justin Chang
In the many beautifully observed working class dramedies he's made over the past five decades, the British writer and director Mike Lee has returned again and again to one simple yet endlessly resonant why are some people happy while others are not? Why does Nicola, the sullen 20something in Lee's 1990 film Life is Sweet, seem incapable of even a moment's peace or pleasure? By contrast, how does Poppy, the upbeat heroine of Lee's 2008 comedy Happy Go Lucky, manage to greet every misfortune with a smile? Lee's new movie, Hard Truths, could have been titled Unhappy Go Lucky. It follows a middle aged north London misanthrope named Pansy, whose play in the single greatest performance I've seen this year by Marianne Jean Baptiste. You might know Jean Baptiste from Lee's wonderful 1996 film Secrets and Lies, in which she played a shy, unassuming London optometrist seeking out her birth mother. But there's nothing unassuming about Pansy, who leads a life of seething, unrelenting misery. She spends most of her time indoors, barking orders and insults at her solemn husband Kirtley, and their unemployed 22 year old son, Moses. Pansy keeps a spotless home, but the blank walls and sparse furnishings are noticeably devoid of warmth, cheer or personality. When she isn't cleaning, she's trying to catch up on sleep, complaining about aches, pains and exhaustion. Sometimes she goes out to shop or run errands, only to wind up picking fights with the people she meets. A dentist, a salesperson, a stranger in a parking lot. Back at home, she unloads on Curtly and Moses about all the indignities she's been subjected to and the general idiocy of the world around her.
- [29:12]
Marianne Jean Baptiste
And him around the corner with that dog got it dressed up in a red coat and green booties. Why has the dog got on a car? It's got fur in it. Must be sweating under there, stinking. That's cruelty to animals, that is. Putting it under all that plastic. I've got a mind to report him to the NSPCG or whatever they call them. And her over there with that fat baby. Cold, cold, cold. And she's walking up and down the street with nothing but a big pink bow on its bald head so everybody can tell it's a girl. Like I care. Parading it around in the little outfit. Not dressed for the weather? Nah. With pockets. What's a baby got pockets for? What's it gonna keep in its pocket? A knife? It's ridiculous.
- [30:02]
Justin Chang
As you can hear from that virtuoso rant. Pansy has an insult comedian's ferocious wit and killer timing. While you wouldn't necessarily want to bump into her on the street, she makes for mesmerizing, even captivating. On screen company. Lee is often described as a Dickensian filmmaker and for good reason. He's a committed realist with a gift for comic exaggeration. Like nearly all Lee's films, hard truths emerge from a rigorous months long workshop process in which the director worked closely with his actors to create their characters from scratch. As a result, Jean Baptiste's performance, electrifying as it is, is also steeped in emotional complexity. The more time we spend with Pansy, the more we see that her rage against the world arises from deep loneliness and pain. Lee has little use for plot. He builds his stories from the details and detritus of everyday life, drifting from one character to the next. Twain Barrett is quietly heartbreaking as Pansy's son Moses, who isolates himself and spends his time either playing video games or going on long neighborhood walks. Pansy's husband Kurtley is harder to parse. He's played by the terrific David Weber, with a passivity that's both sympathetic and infuriating. The most significant supporting character is Pansy's younger sister, Chantel, played by the luminous Michelle Austin. Another Secrets and Lies alum. Chantel could scarcely be more different from her sister. She's a joyous, contented woman with two adult daughters of her own, and she does everything she can to break through to Pansy. In the movie's most affecting scene, Chantelle drags her sister to a cemetery to pay their respects to their mother, whose sudden death five years ago we sense is at the core of Pansy's unhappiness. At the same time, Lee doesn't fill in every blank. He's too honest a filmmaker to offer up easy explanations for why people feel the way they feel. His attitude toward Pansy and toward all the prickly, outspoken, altogether marvelous characters he's given us is best expressed in that graveside scene, when Chantel wraps her sister in a tight hug and tells her with equal parts exasperation and affection, I don't understand you, but I love you.
- [32:35]
Dave Davies
Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed Hard Truths. Coming up, we hear from Adrien Brody. His new film the Brutalist, just won the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR weekend.
- [32:51]
Ron Rudson
This is Eric Glass on this American life.
- [32:53]
Justin Chang
Sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders and see what happens.
- [32:57]
Ron Rudson
If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you gotta look yourself in the mirror and say, holy. What, are you kidding me?
- [33:04]
Justin Chang
This car dealership trying to sell its monthly quota of cars and it is not going well.
- [33:08]
Ron Rudson
I just don't want one balloon to.
- [33:09]
Justin Chang
A car balloon the whole freaking place.
- [33:11]
Terry Gross
So it looks like a circus.
- [33:13]
Ron Rudson
Real life stories every week.
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Ron Rudson
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Ron Rudson
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Ron Rudson
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- [33:39]
Jen Chavez
Do you make resolutions in January?
- [33:42]
Tilda Swinton
We do.
- [33:43]
Jen Chavez
Specifically, we make pop culture resolutions.
- [33:46]
Tilda Swinton
We also check in on what we resolved to do this last year. Did we catch up on all those.
- [33:51]
Jen Chavez
Classic movies or finally write that novel?
- [33:54]
Terry Gross
Find out on the Pop Culture Happy.
- [33:56]
Jen Chavez
Hour podcast from npr.
- [33:59]
Dave Davies
Tanya Mosley has our next interview. Here's Tanya.
- [34:02]
Jen Chavez
In a stunning new film, my guest Adrien Brody plays A Hungarian refugee who escapes post war Europe and arrives in the US with dreams of rebuilding his life. The Brutalist is a multi layered story that runs 3 hours and 35 minutes long with a 15 minute intermission. And for me, the time flew by. Directed by Brady Courbet, the film explores the harsh realities of the American dream and it's visually stunning. Shot on a format known as VistaVision, it's what Alfred Hitchcock used to film north by Northwest. In Vertigo, Brody portrays a fictional character named Laszlo Toth, who settles in Pennsylvania in 1947, where he meets a wealthy industrialist played by Guy Pearce, who recognizes his talent and hires him to create a community center in honor of his mother. However, the relationship between the two comes at a cost. The sweeping nature of the Brutalist is reminiscent of Brody's work in the Pianist, where he captivated audiences and the Academy in 2002 with his stirring performance as a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis. Adrien Brody has been in a slew of films and television shows. His breakout role was in Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam. In 2002, at 29, he became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. He's a regular staple in Wes Anderson films, Having starred in five of them, including the French Dispatch, Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Grand Budapest Hotel. The Brutalist just won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama. And Adrien Brody won for Best Actor in a Motion picture drama. Adrien Brody, welcome back to FRESH air.
- [35:51]
Ron Rudson
Thank you, Tanya. What a pleasure to be here.
- [35:54]
Jen Chavez
There are so many layers to this film, many of which are personal to you. Your mother is a Hungarian refugee who fled the revolution in 56 and started again here in the United States. Can you take me to that day that you first got the script? And was the connection immediate?
- [36:15]
Ron Rudson
Yes. It's a remarkable thing to find something that speaks to a struggle, a resiliency and a sense of something so intimate. Like my mother's journey of fleeing Hungary and my grandparents and having to leave everything behind and. And those hardships that not only speak to me personally, but to so many from many different backgrounds. And I just was in awe when I read the script and feeling how right I was for this role.
- [36:50]
Jen Chavez
What did your mother share with you about her experience immigrating here?
- [36:55]
Ron Rudson
Well, those stories are very intimate to me. You know, there's a very interesting parallel with the character that I play, Laszlo Toth, who is this Hungarian architect who really finds purpose and how his work, even how the Works of architects of that era were really informed by the traumas of post war of that time and how that influenced the architecture to come. And I feel like my mother, as an artist and her beautiful sensitivity and empathy for others, all of that is enhanced from her own struggles and her own consciousness of the struggles of others. But she shared so much along the years with me, both stories of my grandparents and her having to say goodbye to her friends without. She was only told she was having to flee the day before they left.
- [38:04]
Jen Chavez
How old was she?
- [38:05]
Ron Rudson
She was 13. And she had to say goodbye to her best friend and went to her house, and her friend said, okay, well, I'll see you later. And my mother didn't quite have a response and said hopefully, or something along those lines where she knew what was coming but wasn't able to tell her friend.
- [38:27]
Jen Chavez
Right.
- [38:28]
Ron Rudson
So those kind of moments are. Those are big ones in our lives.
- [38:31]
Jen Chavez
Right. You know, the other thing I'm hearing from you is because you say that like you were made for this role, that you were able to, through your life, just in your mom's way of being, understand that immigrant experience of coming here with nothing and trying to make a life out of it.
- [38:50]
Ron Rudson
Yeah, it was also. So she's done remarkably well, and she's a real incredible artist. Sylvia Plahy. I don't know if we've referenced her, but she is. I'll meet people quite often in New York who say, oh, yeah, yeah, I know who you are, but your mom, she's the artist, and she's done such great, great things and has devoted her life to that. But the struggles for my grandfather, I think, were more pronounced primarily with his. He had a very strong accent, not dissimilar to my characters. I think it's. It's hard to be an outsider. You know, it's hard to be a foreigner, even though you attempt to assimilate and to fit in. And that's very much a part of Laszlo's journey. And I got to. To honor that struggle of his. And also the dialect and specific sounds and rhythm that he had and personality traits that I was able to reflect upon were really quite wonderful. To give a layer of truth to.
- [40:07]
Jen Chavez
This character, you had to learn Hungarian, is that right?
- [40:11]
Ron Rudson
Yes. I mean, I knew all the curse words from my childhood. I definitely knew them. And I. There. There's some in the film that were not scripted that I've. I've added, so that. That was an added benefit. But even the. The English is such a specific sound and dialect that it Was very important to me that it rang true. We worked with a. A wonderful dialect coach, and we found men of the 50s, of that era, of when my grandfather had arrived. And it was a similar formality that was necessary. And I found some clues that were really very helpful to keying into that.
- [40:54]
Jen Chavez
Did you spend a lot of time with your grandpa?
- [40:57]
Ron Rudson
I did, I did. He passed when I was quite young, but I loved him, and he's a. My parents often see how similar I am to him and how he was to me and. And they point that out very close. Yes.
- [41:14]
Jen Chavez
What's the thing that they say to you that reminds?
- [41:17]
Ron Rudson
Well, he had a lot of similar aspirations. I mean, he wanted to be an actor at one point too, but he was passionate and emotional person, which I am.
- [41:32]
Jen Chavez
When did you find out he wanted to be an actor?
- [41:35]
Ron Rudson
Only later, I guess. I had started acting at quite a young age, but he had already passed. And we often would say how proud he would have been to see me along the way. I mean, it would be such a gift to be able to share this with my grandparents. I think it would just blow their mind. It has kind of given purpose to their sacrifice, and it's something that's not lost on me. My own good fortune and the firm footing that I've been given through their hardships along the way is definitely something I honor daily. So to do this film, I feel, really is quite wonderful.
- [42:22]
Jen Chavez
The film is set in Philadelphia, but am I right that it was shot in Hungary because of the environment in Budapest? It was like the closest thing to recreating that time period. That kind of minimalist, almost bleak, post World War II aesthetic. Had you spent a lot of time.
- [42:37]
Ron Rudson
There before I had visited. And actually we shot Hungary is. And Budapest is a film location destination. Part of the reasoning was that there are film labs there, and Brady was using film, and it's better than shipping it across borders from other locations. That may have been, you know, less able to process all that. The dailies regularly. But also, you know, yeah, there was a look and a feel. It was definitely helpful for me to be there also. Our wonderful crew are all Hungarians. And I had a responsibility to sound good. Not only to live up to their expectations, but to interact and hear them constantly was very, very helpful in keeping me grounded. And tonally, feeling connected to that era.
- [43:42]
Jen Chavez
I know you've been acting since you were very young. How old were you when you first started?
- [43:49]
Ron Rudson
I think my first professional job was 12 years old. You know, before acting, I started doing magic, and I was you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic, and I found that the storytelling that's involved, in addition to creating the illusion, was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance. But I found a love for acting at a very, very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years. I didn't have a big career for many years, but I was a working actor, and I have always been very grateful for that.
- [44:47]
Jen Chavez
12 years old is a remarkably young age to feel so directed and passionate in what you do. Were your parents leading you? Were you leading the charge? How did it come about that you. You took this on at that age?
- [45:04]
Ron Rudson
Yeah, I just. I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting, you know, beats working for a living. And. And it is very hard work, in all seriousness, but it is such a joy and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit. And that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time. I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to performing arts, and it was a public school, but it gave me wonderful foundation.
- [45:47]
Jen Chavez
It wasn't just a public school. You're talking about the school that the high school that the film Fame was based on. Right? That's where you went to high school.
- [45:54]
Ron Rudson
I mean, it's not. Yeah, it's not merely a public school, but it was a. It was. It's a remarkable school, but it was a public high school, meaning I was. By being selected and making it into the drama department. I was given four acting classes a day in. Within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train. And I learned so much about character along those. Watching people that train ride and this diverse city and, you know, some of those discoveries in those years, informed choices I made, even in the Pianist years later, of know, witnessing characteristics and watching people. You name it. Yes, watching people.
- [46:50]
Jen Chavez
What was that first role? What were your roles when you were first starting out?
- [46:54]
Ron Rudson
At 12, I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Suedos at BAM at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I'd gotten an off Broadway play in the Lower east side that I, you know, take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and Try not to get jumped in the East Village and then, you know, go to work each day. And, you know, I loved it. I really. I really loved it. And at just turning 14, just turned 14, I'd booked the lead role in a public television film. So I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie which might.
- [47:45]
Jen Chavez
Do you still have that movie? Yeah.
- [47:47]
Ron Rudson
Oh, yeah. You could probably find it. It's called Home At Last. I'm quite my boy in it. And it was wonderful. And that, too, it spoke to a time in history. I played an orphan in the 1800s, and at the time, many, many orphaned children were being adopted and shipped off to the Midwest by families on farms. And they were given a home and education and religion, but they were also, you know, cheap labor. And they were put to work. And it spoke to that struggle and that time in history. And so even at a very young age, I was gravitating towards and being selected for roles that spoke to things that were of some relevance, and I'm really happy about that.
- [48:42]
Jen Chavez
You talk quite a bit about your mother and your father's influence. Your mother, this noted photographer, she used to be a staff photographer for the Village Voice. You say, like people will say to you, oh, you are the son of Sylvia, because she's so well respected and your father is an educator. But I'm curious, growing up, like, how did your mother's work and seeing her in her creativity maybe influence your thoughts on the perceptions on what you could be? And had you thought about being anything else, was acting just like a foregone conclusion?
- [49:19]
Ron Rudson
You know, my parents are a unit. You know, they've always stood together, an embrace of me and nurturing me and my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's work has been so influential on me as an artist. First of all, in me, encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which preceded my education in performing arts, where I started as a very young boy, because she had seen an acting. They had acting classes for children that were. She saw in me what all these kids were doing, and she had that intuition. So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work. But then I am also the son, only son, of a photographer, so I am very much a focal point in front of the lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her immortalization of my city and the world through that very beautiful, specific lens since birth. And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home, negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother and film test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my bedroom. And so since I could crawl, I was seeing imagery everywhere and beautiful imagery. And I think that made art and its accessibility very tangible and and available.
- [51:45]
Jen Chavez
Adrienne Brody, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you about this latest work and your work overall. Thank you so much.
- [51:53]
Ron Rudson
Tanya. Thank you very much. I enjoyed this conversation.
- [51:57]
Dave Davies
Adrian Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley. He's currently starring in the film the Brutalist. It's now playing in select theaters, including IMAX, and opens nationwide on January 7th. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tonya Moseley, I'm Dave Davies.
- [52:22]
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