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- [00:01]
A
Hello, little devils. We are making new episodes which you will be able to hear very soon in our upcoming season. But in the meantime, we wanted to bring back one of our favorites of last season, our episode on Winona Ryder. This is some of the most remarkable research that Alyssa has ever done. And that is really saying something about a woman who can find any, any, any episode of a show about addiction on, like, a random video playback channel on a website from a country that you don't even know about.
- [00:31]
B
Where am I? In this episode, we're gonna talk about Nonie's childhood, her meteoric rise, and the cultural obsession surrounding her romantic relationships. This one is a real fan favorite. We love you, fans. It's very much a late 90s nostalgia episode, and we love it. We hope that you do, too.
- [00:50]
A
Yeah. In part two, we covered the infamous shoplifting incident. Addiction. And later, Nonie's turn on Stranger Things.
- [00:57]
B
And in our upcoming season, we will be back with episodes on Lindsay the Lo, Lil Kim, and more. Meanwhile, please Enjoy Winona Part 1.
- [01:07]
A
To listen to Part 2 of Winona Ryder, subscribe to the Luminary channel on Apple Podcasts or directly on Luminary. Oh, my God.
- [01:14]
B
Are you ready? This is like, the meanest reputation recap we've ever done. And that really is saying something.
- [01:20]
A
I mean, I think actually we should note, like, everyone get ready. This reputation recap could literally trigger you with how, like, high school cruel it is.
- [01:27]
B
Yeah, this is like, trigger warning. Reputation recap. By the way, that's what we call the list of names that people have called these people that we read at the top of every episode. This is reputation recap.
- [01:38]
A
This is a reputation recap. But this one's very triggering. Alyssa, I know you want to start this one off.
- [01:46]
B
Town bike bitch.
- [01:49]
A
Rude, crazy, borderline clingy, desperate and weird.
- [01:53]
B
Like listening to a piece of Kraft cheese talk.
- [01:56]
A
Either a compulsive liar or so deluded she doesn't realize it.
- [02:00]
B
First she stole our hearts, then she stole our stuff.
- [02:04]
A
Klepto.
- [02:07]
B
Rxrec.
- [02:09]
A
Pilled up Botox. Stupid slut.
- [02:11]
B
A second rate talent who behaved unprofessionally for years. And now her craziness and drug problems are written large on that scrawny little face.
- [02:23]
A
This week we're talking about Winona Ryder.
- [02:26]
B
Noni.
- [02:36]
A
You wanna know if I'll survive? Get along okay without you? I'll be fine. Y' all be all right. No, That's a lie. I will fucking die. Don't break. Welcome back to the C Word. A luminary Podcast production. Hi. This is a show where we discuss women whose society deemed mad, sad, or just plain bad. We attempt to untangle who they really were beyond their wild reputations.
- [03:02]
B
We are going to talk about women who've called crazy by sifting through the cultural trash heap of history one rumor at a time.
- [03:12]
A
I'm the biggest cunt in Hollywood, Lena Dunham.
- [03:15]
B
And I'm Alyssa Bennett, historian of bad behavior.
- [03:18]
A
And we will never call you crazy.
- [03:33]
B
Look, listen, before we get going here, we don't claim to know all the facts. We're just passionate students of these interesting women in history, and we are trying to focus a lens on how and why they achieved their bad notoriety.
- [03:46]
A
This is a discussion about what various people have said about these women over the years. We're not saying that every statement or account we'll be discussing is necessarily true. So if you hear something that piques your interest, we encourage you to do your own investigation.
- [03:58]
B
Our hearts are in the right place, and together we can try to get to the bottom of what has been said about these women over time.
- [04:07]
A
Now onto Winona.
- [04:09]
B
Actress Winona Ryder. Winona Ryder.
- [04:12]
A
People love Winona Ryder.
- [04:13]
B
She's a waif, yet she's strong, she's.
- [04:15]
A
Glamorous, but she's got footsteps. Then there was that tattoo. Winona Forever. Their love immortalized on Depp's arm.
- [04:21]
B
Johnny and Winona quickly became tabloid idols.
- [04:25]
A
But Winona's nonstop schedule would prove to be too much. You had the press pontificating about her sens life, her drug use, her disappointment that Angelina Jolie stole the spotlight.
- [04:37]
B
Suddenly, she was grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. Winona hits rock bottom. The Winona Rider shoplifting scandal, designer clothes and accessories that she had not paid for.
- [04:48]
A
And it was played everywhere, repeated on and on and on, was a media circus. Alyssa, what are five things we need to know?
- [04:58]
B
Number one. Winona Ryder was the it girl of the 90s. She was the chicest misfit ever, the face of Gen X nostalgia. Her relationship with Johnny Depp still excites our fantasies today. You probably don't need us to tell you how huge she was. But take it from me, an old person, she was fucking huge.
- [05:17]
A
And I'm a very young person, and I still find her huge.
- [05:20]
B
I'm a very young person. You're 35 now, bitch. Number two. Her meteoric rise in the 1990s led to a devastating decline in the early 2000s. We all watched her career go up in flames in 2001 when she was arrested for stealing $5,000 worth of designer clothes and accessory. 500, baby from a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. The tabloids mercilessly documented the trial that followed. Number three, the very public trial also revealed that Winona had been struggling with an addiction to painkillers. She had been prescribed 37 prescriptions filled by 20 different doctors over a year span.
- [06:02]
A
That's a lot.
- [06:03]
B
It's a lot. Number four, Winona pretty much disappeared after the incident. We saw her around a bit, but generally we were like, oh, Winona Ryder, that lady who robbed a luxury department store and had a pharmacy in her purse?
- [06:18]
A
Yep.
- [06:19]
B
Number five, she has actually had a bit of a resurgence within the last few years, starting with her role on Netflix's Stranger Things, a television program that I did not watch as research for this episode.
- [06:31]
A
I'm not going to watch a full show about aliens. In order to better understand the subject.
- [06:36]
B
I'll do almost anything else or so that you can. Like, look at the Walkman that you had in the 80s. That sucked. Yeah. Still, though, she was an absolute casualty of the 90s and the public's warped perception of youth and aging and eccentricity. Guess what? We're gonna get to it.
- [06:54]
A
We always do. But let's find out the real story, starting with this lady's true name.
- [07:02]
B
All right. I love a lady with a true name. Mary Sean Young. So Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz on October 29, 1971, in Winona, Minnesota, to a rare book dealer named Michael Horowitz and a writer named Cynthia Palmer. Her parents were described by noted psychologist and LSD enthusiastic Timothy Leary as, quote, hippie intellectuals and psychedelic scholars. Make of that what you will.
- [07:31]
A
Obviously she was named after that town. It must have been weird to be in a town that you have the same name as. But we'll get into that later. They called her Noni, and she was the third of four children.
- [07:41]
B
I bet that at the height of her fame, high school girls in Minnesota used to drive through that town and, like, try to feel her energies.
- [07:51]
A
Of course they did, like little goths, like girls from the craft. So this family moves to San Francisco when Winona was an infant, so she didn't have to live as Winona of Winona for too long. And then they moved to what's been described as a commune in California called Rainbow. Winona has often said, like, I did not grow up on a commune, but whatever. Rainbow has the energy of a commune. Let's just say if a person who wasn't familiar with distinguishing communes walked onto Rainbow. They'd be like, this is a commune.
- [08:18]
B
And let's just say that I wouldn't survive at Rainbow for more than one day. They lived on 380 acres with six other families. They had no running water. They had no electricity. They had no television. And they read their books by kerosene lamp. It's some fucking Little House on the Prairie shit.
- [08:36]
A
Leary was her godfather. Allen Ginsberg was hanging around. Her mother wrote a book alleging that Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women while stoned on opium. And everything was so far out that probably even the feral cats wore berets and smoked cigarettes. Alyssa made that up.
- [08:52]
B
I made that up. Cause cats can't smoke.
- [08:55]
A
Everyone who's listening to the podcast, we wanna make it super clear. Cats can't smoke.
- [08:59]
B
Do you think that Winona Ryder's mom, after every line she wrote alleging that Louisa May Alcott was taking drugs when she wrote that book, do you think every other line was, I don't know. I wasn't there. Like, we have to do like us.
- [09:14]
A
I think that the people of Rainbow weren't that worried about getting sued because they didn't even have a fax machine. So at age 7, Winona developed an interest in acting after watching old films her mother would play in the family's barn. How they did that without electricity, we don't know.
- [09:32]
B
Right. But remember these details that come directly from, you know, like a series of interviews that she did both as a young actress and as, like a mature actress. There are going to be a lot of inconsistencies and this sort of comes up in the future. We're going to get there anyway.
- [09:48]
A
We're gonna get there.
- [09:49]
B
She said later that one of her favorite actresses growing up was Ruth Gordon from Harold and Maude. So it's the sort of iconic weirdo shit that she is attaching to herself very early on in her life.
- [10:00]
A
Well, it's very proto manic Pixie Dream Girl. Like, it's very like, but. But with a side of necrophilia.
- [10:08]
B
Yes. So anyway, she's watching old movies on the projector that runs without electricity by day, but at night she can't fucking sleep because she has an overactive imagination and she has two bad fantasies that keep her up all night. So bad fantasy number one, she says that as a kid she was obsessed with stories that she'd been told about her father's family being rounded up by Nazis during the Holocaust and then murdered in concentration camps. She says that she would often have to sleep in the doorway of her Parents bedroom because she was terrified that someone was going to round them all up and drag them out to be killed. I believe this. This is like an adolescent girl bad fantasy. Mm. So another bad fantasy that has been reported was that she was really obsessed with the idea of being kidnapped. So she's an insomniac. As a kid, she said that the only thing that shut those big lamp lit eyes was staring at an algebra book because math is so boring. She didn't say math is so boring. It was implied. I'm saying it. I still have nightmares about math.
- [11:13]
A
Me too. I literally have nightmares that I have to go back to school and.
- [11:17]
B
Yes, and you haven't done any of the coursework for like the whole semester and you don't know where your class is. Me too.
- [11:23]
A
Oh. I mean, I have a recurring dream every single week that with all the jobs I have, I also have to go back to college and study glaciers.
- [11:30]
B
Maybe you should. Okay.
- [11:33]
A
She's reading her math book to conk out, but she's a voracious reader for pleasure. Obsessed with J.D. salinger. Catcher in the Rye. More iconic weirdo shit.
- [11:41]
B
Yeah. So as an adult, this also comes up in. It's like a recurrent motif in a lot of her interviews. She will say that she's collected every edition of this book ever printed. She says that she's filled a room in her Beverly Hills house with them. There are these certain motifs that come up again and again and again, and it's sort of why they need to be mentioned, because they go into the construction of this identity as like a product.
- [12:07]
A
And she later said of her early relationship to fictional characters like Holden Caulfield and Jo from Little Women, they kept me from being lonely.
- [12:16]
B
So she has, for the duration of her career, kind of been situated in this glamorous outsiderness. Her biography and personal interests are crucial in the development and commodification of her public identity. She is like the perfect embodiment of the incredibly hot Gen X cool loser. Take it from me, I was probably, like, incredibly jealous of her and I just can't remember. But she comes to us already formed with this identity at a very young age.
- [12:43]
A
Let's just say that she was exactly who Kim Gordon wanted, wearing X Girl. And if you get that reference.
- [12:48]
B
Yes, it's so true. It's so true.
- [12:51]
A
Or do you remember when Sofia Coppola had a line of clothing called Milk Fed?
- [12:56]
B
Yes, I can still see the T shirts for Milk Fed. Yes, this is.
- [13:00]
A
Yes, I just looked up pictures of Milk Fed. Sofia Coppola and.
- [13:04]
B
Oh, it's such a particular moment that she's like the nucleus of. It's such a particular moment.
- [13:11]
A
Oh, like she made a T shirt that said heavy metal kids. You know, things like that.
- [13:15]
B
Yes.
- [13:16]
A
Or shirts that say we.
- [13:18]
B
Yes. But back to Winona. We're not at the point in Winona's life where she is like the coolest teenage girl in history. It's still 1981, she's 10 years old and her family leaves the maybe, maybe not commune. We don't know. We weren't there.
- [13:35]
A
We certainly weren't there.
- [13:37]
B
That was literally called Rainbow for Petaluma, California. Did I say that right?
- [13:43]
A
Yeah. Petaluma, Another great name for a baby.
- [13:47]
B
So she enrolls in the local middle school where it is extremely not cool that she has cut off all of her hair, that she dresses in boys clothing, and that she knows more about Lauren Bacall movies than she does about MTV's the Grind. There's an antique reference. She's teased relentlessly. So on the third day of seventh grade at the school, Winona is wearing a thrifted three piece suit when a group of kids attack her. They call her a gay slur. That we won't say on this program because we're people of quality.
- [14:19]
A
We're people of quality. But it's also, I just want to know, were they calling her the boy gay slur or the girl gay slur?
- [14:25]
B
The boy gay slur because they thought that she was an effeminate boy. So she is screaming the words, I am a girl. She claims to have been beat up to the point that she had to get stitches. She's also said in an alternate version of the story because there are alternate versions to many of these biographical stories. As you will see, in this other version, she says that she had a fractured rib. We don't know. We weren't there. We weren't her doctors. On top of all of this, to make matters worse, Winona later says that the school decided to deal with the whole thing by expelling her.
- [15:01]
A
Which does feel very right for that era. Like, they're like, let's just get rid of the problem. And the problem is the girl who dresses weird.
- [15:09]
B
Well, you know, this. It really reminds me a lot of things that happened to me when I was in high school. They would like break into my locker and throw all of my textbooks down sewers. They. Someone stole my motorcycle jacket. Like it was. When I hear this story, a lot of people are like, they sort of doubt the, the. That this the story is confined by the truth, but a lot of it rings pretty clear to me for this particular time.
- [15:34]
A
I mean, I went to a liberal school and I went to liberal New York schools, and I was mercilessly made fun of for my clothing excluded intensely. At summer camp, they used to play a game where they would push me down on the ground and then count how many seconds it took me to get up. I mean, that's like these things, we think somehow that, like, especially growing, the.
- [15:54]
B
Cruelty seem so outsized, but it happens totally.
- [15:59]
A
And now that we live in a culture that's like anti bullying and aware of difference, it's hard to remember that there was this funny time between the total disregard of the 50s and 60s and the, let's say, wokeness of the 2000s, where there was this kind of no man's land, where it was kind of excusable to just fucking brutalize a girl for being a weirdo, but in.
- [16:23]
B
This very quiet way, yes, because it's the sort of sense of outsiderness that people old and young usually don't like. So I think this particular kind of outsiderness, as you said earlier, has been commodified by this point. So we think about who she was as a kid, and we think it doesn't quite jive with what we think would be like, so appallingly outsider ish that it would be recognized and she'd be punished for it. But it reads kind of true.
- [16:52]
A
Liking Catcher in the Rye now seems like really basic to me. But it wasn't basic back then, right? Later, this incident was obviously very intense for her and really helped form her identity. And she would later kind of put a bit of a spin on it. She would say, years later, I went to a coffee shop in Petaluma and I ran into one of the girls who'd kicked me. And she said, winona, Winona, can I have your autograph? And I said, do you remember me? I went to Kenilworth. Remember how in seventh grade you beat up that kid? And she said, kind of. And I said, that was me. Go fuck yourself.
- [17:24]
B
So this is also like the absolute fantasy of the bullied kid, right? Like, you either have the funeral fantasy where everyone who was mean to you goes to your funeral, or you have the fame fantasy where everyone is like, can I have your autograph? And you're like, no.
- [17:39]
A
And I will say that, like, I was very mocked from, like seventh to 12th grade. And that was a real part of my reality. And two things that happened because some people have said, said on message boards that they think this Winona story is fake. But I will say two things that happened to me. One was I was like, you know, I wasn't thrown in lockers, but I was treated like a real freak. And I've talked a little bit in interviews, not much about, like, feeling bullied and like, a loser. And two things that happened here. One is some guy tweeted like, lena Dunham is such a liar. I went to high school with her and she was very well liked and everybody was kind to her, and she absolutely is making this up to seem cool. And I was like, that's really interesting because I didn't even know you. And when we did interact, you were pretty mean to me.
- [18:26]
B
And when was it ever cool to be like, a bullied kid in high school?
- [18:29]
A
I know, like, literally never. Why are you bragging about that? And then the second thing that happened is one of the people who I would say made me feel the most crazy and outsider y at school is like kind of a chic male person about town and will text me like, miss you, darling. Where in the world are you? So proud of you. And I'm like, you literally told me that I had the body of a pig in the face of a horse.
- [18:53]
B
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
- [18:56]
A
So I relate to Noni, but I know that the guy who wrote her unauthorized biography says the school could find no record of any of this ever having happened. And Winona truthers love that detail. But again, since when do schools keep records of who gets beaten up? Like, I don't really think public schools keep records of, like, a girl getting called the fk.
- [19:16]
B
No, because they don't give a fuck. They don't care about it.
- [19:19]
A
We're not litigating this. We're not questioning the account, but we will say that people often claim that Noni tells stories that are either exaggerated or the province of absolute fantasy. And we need to look at why people would want to scream the word liar at her, because it does happen a lot. People seem to really want to question her reality. And that's interesting because most celebrities accounts of their lives are taken at face value. No one's like, hey, Matthew McConaughey, did you really have this wild experience when you were abroad in Australia?
- [19:48]
B
But you know what I learned, and it's going to come up in the Linda Evangelista episode that we're recording, is that within sort of talent substructures, if you're an actor, if you're a model, if you're a musician, there's this kind of old fashioned thing that happens where whoever the studio is or the agency is that is supporting your career, they're often not against the idea of drafting a personality for you and drafting a personal history for you with the thought that it will help engage you with particular roles or that people casting directors or whoever, or fans will be like, oh, this person represents this thing. So, you know, I think we're gonna talk about Winona's relationship with fact and the many claims that she's made over the years about her childhood for precisely this reason. So, you know, she made claims that she attended the final Sex Pistols concert at age 7. Maybe, I don't know, I certainly wasn't there. She told someone that her first film was at age 12, which we know is not true. We weren't there. Maybe it's true. But we're gonna talk about these inconsistencies because there's something about her as a public figure that makes people want to dig these inconsistencies up and then punish her with them.
- [21:05]
A
Yep. And people seem to also. I think they were already circling around this. And then she did something later that affirmed their sense of her. You know, it's interesting because we'll talk about this, but kleptomania is not the same as lying. But it affirmed people's sense that her identity was in some way too good to be true or too particularly formed. So anyway.
- [21:27]
B
Or it affirmed this thought that we had about her culturally, where we thought she had too much. Right. Like she was too beautiful, she came across as very smart. She had the boyfriends that we wanted to have, we thought she had too much. And we will look kind of socially to find the things that we can take back from her. Because we're kleptomaniacs too.
- [21:49]
A
We're emotional kleptomaniacs. And don't you fucking forget it. So anyway, after the assault, her parents homeschooled her for a year. My childhood dream. But they eventually got nervous that she was getting weird. Oh, God, I wanted to be homeschooled so bad. I would just beg. And my parents were like, we have full time jobs. We do not have time to homeschool you. And I was like, but what if I homeschooled myself?
- [22:10]
B
I just wanted to go to Catholic school for a fresh start.
- [22:13]
A
I get it. I, by the way, I will tell you that I switched schools in seventh grade for a fresh start. And for like six months, it worked so well. I had new highlights. Everybody was impressed with me. I was getting asked out left and right. And then it's like there's a moment where you just. It's like being in a new relationship, you just can't keep up the charade anymore.
- [22:32]
B
No.
- [22:33]
A
And then it just became clear to everyone about the six months in that I was a fucking loser.
- [22:38]
B
But they were like, lena Dunham has shitty highlights.
- [22:41]
A
Literally.
- [22:42]
B
Anyway, back to Winona after the assault, like you said, her parents homeschooled her for a year, but they eventually got nervous that she was getting weird because she didn't want to leave the house. So they were like, you love movies so much. Why don't you go and meet some people who like them too, at the theater? So they put her in some classes at the American Conservatory Theater, and guess what? She loved it.
- [23:07]
A
She loved it. She liked it, though. She loved this Is me.
- [23:13]
B
So it's 1985, down the old American Conservatory Theater. Winona is doing shit like adapting monologues from Salinger's Franny and Zoe. And a visiting talent scout notices her and thinks that she might be nice for some movie that I'm sure you've never heard of called Desert Bloom.
- [23:33]
A
So she doesn't get the job, but her tape does get sent along to director David Seltzer, who is casting for the 1986 film Lucas. She's 14. She screen tests with one River Phoenix rip she gets the part. He does not. And when the people ask her how she wants to be credited, she's like, my name is Winona Ryder now.
- [23:52]
B
Oh, God. You could just. This is what's exciting for her is that she does grow up. I do believe that she was, like, not popular and she was a loser. And then she has this opportunity where it's like, guess what? You can start over. You can go to that Catholic school prout down the street and you can be somebody totally new, and no one can take it away from you.
- [24:12]
A
It's time to rebrand mamas.
- [24:14]
B
She's starting over. It's a really exciting moment.
- [24:17]
A
So the press kit for Lucas described her as fragile, with a certain poetic mystery. And to me, that is both elevating her to star status and a nail in the fucking coffin.
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, it's like her prison bars, but also her wings.
- [24:33]
A
Yeah.
- [24:33]
B
Can I say that the worst thing I've ever said is that it was her prison bars, but also her wings.
- [24:40]
A
I thought it was actually beautiful. I understand that it did sound like it was a seventh grade poetry slam, but at the same time, I found it really elegant.
- [24:50]
B
So Winona would later tell the LA Times in the year 1990. I remember it well. She said, quote, I never had to do the Hollywood thing to move to LA to do commercials or sitcoms. That probably pisses people off. But I've worked really hard and I'm not going to apologize for not struggling. Did you hear how I became her halfway through that?
- [25:09]
A
Yeah, it was amazing. You are an actor. I'm going to ask you.
- [25:12]
B
I'm an actor, but this is like. When she says this and it's like, committed to print. It's sort of this teen starlet shit that people don't like.
- [25:22]
A
Yeah.
- [25:22]
B
We want to identify exceptionalism in other people, and you can privately identify it in yourself, but you can't do. You can't have both. You can't tell the public that you're exceptional because they're gonna be like, I don't know.
- [25:34]
A
You really can't.
- [25:35]
B
I'm the best.
- [25:36]
A
Well, people hate when you say nice things about yourself. I was just writing about this this morning because I was writing a director statement for a film that I'm making. Because I don't know if you guys have heard, I'm a successful film director.
- [25:47]
B
You.
- [25:48]
A
No, just. Yes. Well, me.
- [25:50]
B
Can I be in Polly Pockets? Can I be a witch in Polly Pockets? Do you have a witch? I'd like to come out in Polly Pockets. I'd like to come out with, you know those, they're around at Christmas. It's like a plastic tube in the shape of a candy cane that's full of M and Ms. Yeah.
- [26:05]
A
Does that what you want to do?
- [26:06]
B
I'd like to come out dressed as a witch and shake one of those at the dolls.
- [26:10]
A
Sounds so good. I'm ready. And I also. I can't wait to give you the role of a lifetime. But I was saying today that, like, I read this quote by this writer, Melissa Febos. I'm reading this amazing book called Bodywork, which is about, like, it's basically like a defense of memoir.
- [26:27]
B
My body.
- [26:28]
A
My body. My work.
- [26:29]
B
My body. Work.
- [26:29]
A
I'm just going to read this quote to you because I think it's very much about what we're talking about. Slash. It's the most C word quote in the world. It is. I had already learned that there were few more damning presumptions than that of a young woman thinking her story might be meaningful.
- [26:44]
B
Oh, truer words have never been spoken before.
- [26:48]
A
Quite literally. Never. Never, never.
- [26:50]
B
Like, think about, like, Emma Gonzalez, Amanda Gorman. We don't. Like, like, a precocious young woman who knows that she's good at what she does. We don't like it.
- [27:01]
A
No. Nope, we really don't.
- [27:02]
B
Or thinks that she can tell adults how things are. So back to Winona. Suddenly she's received critical confirmation of her specialness. And let's just imagine that it confirms everything her parents raised her to believe about herself and everything kids her age made fun of her for. And it's suddenly bound up in newfound power and it's this weird mashup of low self esteem and well earned arrogance that can fuck a person up.
- [27:26]
A
Yep.
- [27:27]
B
So, you know, there's also this story that she tells about having been caught shoplifting a comic book as a kid and that when she was brought to her parents by the police officers that her parents tried to beat the police up. So, you know, there are all of these stories about like her, her early life running against the grain that go in to sort of supplement the identity that we've been presented with.
- [27:52]
A
So maybe she's kind of feeling good about herself, but at the same time she's being cast in roles where her characters are kind of geeky. So we've, we've seen this shit before 1 million times. This is Judy Garland's girl next door curse. This is Vanessa Marquez being relevated to playing naive sweetheart. It's a space that a teenage girl just doesn't want to occupy. She doesn't want to be forced to crystallize her identity before she's ready. And she also, like, even if you're the most interesting teenage girl, you don't want to be cast as a full.
- [28:18]
B
Time loser, like all the time.
- [28:21]
A
No. Even if you're really evolved, you don't want that job.
- [28:26]
B
No. So she tells a story from the beginning of her career. Well, she, she says that people told her that she wasn't pretty and that one apparently told her when she was 15 or 16, quote, Listen kid, you should not be an actress. You're not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from and you should go to school. You don't have it.
- [28:48]
A
You don't have it.
- [28:50]
B
So, you know, just sort of think about how hearing this might make a young girl want to show the world that she's exceptional.
- [28:57]
A
So in 1986, the year of our Lord, the year of my birth, she co stars in a movie called Square Dance alongside Rob Lowe. She's 15 years old. She's playing 13, a classic gap low is 23 and a huge tiger beat heartthrob. By the time the film is released in 1987, the press gets lathered up of rumors that they're having a full on romance. And this type of intense interest in her will plague her for the duration of her young adulthood.
- [29:23]
B
But you can go back and look at articles that came out around this time that are identifying these two as a couple. This 15 year old Winona Ryder and 23 year old Rob Lowe. They're saying this is a romance. And I think, do you think they.
- [29:38]
A
Were having a romance?
- [29:40]
B
I don't know, I wasn't there. Yeah, they might have. But you know, I think that the important thing in this story is not whether or not they were having a romance. It's like, remember that footage of the Britney Spears interview when some journalist is like, are you a virgin? And she's like a teenage girl and it's fucking horrible. You remember that?
- [30:00]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [30:02]
B
So Winona Ryder is the subject of exactly this kind of speculation. She's underaged. And the media immediately, from this point on, it just ramps up. They will begin speculating on what she's getting up to sexually. And no one is ever like, this is not appropriate. And it signals sort of to me how teenagers in Hollywood are subject to the same treatment as adults. And it fucks them up, it fucks their lives up. Because when we look at a teen star, I think often we see an adult because the professionalism gives them some kind of veneer of age that kind of skews the way that we relate to them.
- [30:37]
A
Right?
- [30:38]
B
So she's getting work at this point. Things are happening. People know she's in the movies and all of her aggrieved classmates are probably like, that's fucking really annoying that you're getting famous. Oh my God, we don't want it.
- [30:50]
A
Well, they're like, literally like, we thought you had the face of a tiny snail. Why are you on our big screen? Right? I mean, not to make it all about me, but I remember the experience of sort of like the people that I grew up with and, or the people who I went to school with having a response to me that was very much like to think it was this one of any of us. It was this one. And I feel like she got a lot of that. Like it's funny, like, you know, someone's voted most likely to be famous in their class and it's almost like there's someone else who's voted most likely to not be famous. And when that person gets the attention, it twists everybody up into a knot. And it's a really interesting thing because I didn't have the kind of early success that Winona Ryder had. But, like, I definitely was working in a public way while a lot of my classmates were still, you know, like, in an internship. And the kind of rage that. That lathers up in your. You can feel yourself.
- [31:47]
B
I never had an internship. I want one. Someone out there. Make me your intern. I'll be terrible at it.
- [31:53]
A
I was actually gonna ask you if you'd like to intern for me.
- [31:55]
B
I would love to. I hope you don't expect much.
- [32:01]
A
Anyway, back to Winnie. Yes, I think. Yeah. I think that the thing about. Basically the thing about rising amongst your peers when they're just trying to figure things out is that you become, no matter how nice you are to people. And, boy, did I try to be nice. And no matter how generous. And, boy, did I try to be generous until I had no internal organs left anymore. I gave so much that I didn't even have because I was so afraid of becoming a target. And I became a target anyway.
- [32:29]
B
I think that this attitude becomes really significant within this story. We're gonna get to it around 2001.
- [32:36]
A
And I think this thing of basically figuring out that you can try as hard as you can, but that you're still going to be an object of disdain puts you into this sort of, like, hamster wheel of impossibility that is quite painful.
- [32:53]
B
Preach. So Tim Burton sees her in Lucas and is excited about her. He's like, I have a role for you. It's Lydia Dietz in the film Beetlejuice. And this is a movie that would go on to be a gigantic, huge hit and like a sentimental flashpoint for misfits internationally, everywhere, for the rest of.
- [33:12]
A
The world, Misfits international.
- [33:14]
B
So she would say over and over in interviews that Lydia was basically just her, and that it was her haircut with those pointy bangs and that she wore her own clothes. Mark this space off as we go forward, because she wants us to know that she has a personality. She wants us to know that she's cool. And we want to believe that she is Lydia Deetz, both in the movie and real life. And then our nostalgia wants to freeze this actress in the roles we most identify her with, because when we re. Encounter them, we get to be the same age we were when we first experienced them.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah. So. And also, the thing about Winona's identity is that when you become famous for being, like, an iconically teenage person, no matter how well you age, you are always disappointing people by aging. So that's also something that's coming.
- [34:01]
B
Yeah.
- [34:02]
A
So after wrapping Beetlejuice, Winona's 15 years old, and she gets her hands on the script for a little film called Heathers. We can kind of imagine why that film appealed to her so immediately. Do you remember her getting beaten up in the schoolyard? It's about an outcast who somehow manages to pass as a popular girl. And in some way, Heather's is telling the sort of, like, meta narrative of Winona's teenage life.
- [34:24]
B
Yes.
- [34:25]
A
At this point, Winona's been making films in which she's kind of been playing men's visions of their teenage dream. And in this, she actually gets to occupy a position that she understands.
- [34:37]
B
So when she finds the script, she feels incredibly strongly about it. She goes to her agent about taking the part, and the agent tells her that it will be career suicide to do this movie. But Winona is so absolutely in love with this script that she gets a new agent. Like, she's so desperate to do this film. I think precisely for the reason that you just stated. I think it becomes the meta narrative of her life. It is about the weirdo who manages to pass.
- [35:06]
A
And this is kind of amazing. According to Winona, this was the first time a script described a character she played as, quote, unquote, attractive. And Jennifer Connelly and Justine Bateman were the first choices to play Veronica. But when the writer learned that Winona was after the part, he said, the girl from Lucas, she's just not attractive.
- [35:21]
B
So once filming finishes on Heather's, Christian Slater breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, who actually played the lead teen witch Heather Chandler. And reportedly, Christian Slater and Winona get something going together, but it only lasts a couple of weeks. Remember that she's still in high school during all of this. This is like, the mistake I think we make. It's like, you know, when kids are, like, taller than the other children in their class, you can't help but treat them like, by sixth grade, there are some kids that are as tall as an adult, and it makes you treat them like an adult subconsciously. Like it's just your animal brain functioning. And I think that happens with professional children also. So all throughout the story, you will see how ravenously the press unpacks Winona's love life when she is at times 15 years old. It's really crazy. It's really wild.
- [36:20]
A
Yeah.
- [36:20]
B
So like I said, remember that she's still in high school during all of this. She's doing a public home study program, and she manages to graduate early with a 4.0 GPA. Mine rate's like a 2.1 and I.
- [36:35]
A
Went to a unique school where we didn't have GPAs. That being said.
- [36:37]
B
Oh, look at you. God bless.
- [36:40]
A
So at 17, Winnie shoots the film Great Balls of Fire, a film in which she plays Jerry Lee Lewis child bride. She's reportedly absolutely paralyzed or figuring out how to do the film sex scene with her 34 year old CO star Dennis Quaid. By the way, I actually don't think that would fly today. You literally can't put a 17 year old in a sex scene with a 34 year old anymore.
- [36:59]
B
But it's, it's interesting also because this comes up in her work a lot like this. She will never, during the course of her career do nudity. She is so nervous about anything sexual, any sexual situation, she doesn't want to participate in it. So we have her at 17 doing this. She's a fucking teenager. And we're like, go do your best.
- [37:19]
A
And director Jim McBride would say, quote, she's just a kid, but she's been around the pool a couple of times. As we say out here. She's certainly not anywhere near as innocent as she seems. She was real nervous about the love scene for several days before shooting and indicated to me that she was very inexperienced in this area and I had to sort of fill her in on things verbally, that is, I took it all very gently and gingerly and tried to lead her there. But when we got to doing the scene, she leapt in with both feet and gave a very convincing performance. I'm not saying she sexually experience, I'm saying she's a good actress.
- [37:49]
B
That is so grotesque.
- [37:50]
A
I hate it so much.
- [37:53]
B
So this quote comes from a 1989 Rolling Stone article that was titled quote, hot actress after Heather's will stardom de virginize newcomer Winona Ryder. It's so gross. It's so gross.
- [38:08]
A
Barf. Also during production, Winona gets the flu. She's ill, she's homesick, she's exhausted and her insomnia comes roaring back into her life of insomnia. She will later say from that point on, because I knew it could happen, it did happen. Which is a very wise and self aware thing to say. Also, please start keeping a record of how many times she gets the flu during a production because it is a lot. And just, you know, things like this, people keeping track of like all Winona Ryder's production health mishaps.
- [38:37]
B
Yeah.
- [38:38]
A
Why I was always like, these are stories that travel. So as a young actress, like I remember the first time I got sick enough that I couldn't do what I needed to do on set. And it's not like calling in sick when you're the secretary at a legal office. You're calling in sick and 100 people are waiting on you.
- [38:55]
B
Right. And it's costing someone like $50,000 or something.
- [38:59]
A
Yeah. Or more. And you're like having to deal with insurance, doctors, and the whole thing.
- [39:04]
B
Well, this is Marilyn Monroe. Like, this is her losing her career in large part because of her health and that.
- [39:10]
A
And by the way, she had endometriosis just like me. And then the thing that's crazy is doctors start feeding you pills in order to keep you where you need to be. And then suddenly you become the thing that you were scared of seeming like.
- [39:22]
B
It'S really crazy how these stories are so pre molded, you know? Like, you think about, again, Judy Garland comes up a lot on the show. But you think about the career arc of Judy Garland, which is like starting young. The uppers, the downers, the health issues, the rumors. Like the cascade of, you know, like the fame is constantly pulled between this tension of, like, good fame and bad fame. And we as the public like both. But bad fame doesn't pay your bills. Like, I don't think you get paid a lot if you go on my second favorite television show in the history of America, Celebrity Rehab, you just don't get a lot.
- [40:00]
A
No, you don't. So when Great Balls of Fire is released, the press also releases rumors that she's having an affair with either Dennis Quaid, Jim McBride, or maybe both of them. Again, let's remember this girl is 17 years old. And a Premier magazine article, remember that magazine at the time wrote, whether she can't keep her hands off the guys or they can't keep theirs off her, she and her director and co star remain in pretty constant physical contact. When they're in the same room now, they're a human sandwich watching Myra and Jerry Lee on the screen. So this is pretty pointedly suggesting a three way with two adult men and a teenage girl who by all accounts is still a virgin. Imagine how traumatic this would be.
- [40:36]
B
It's crazy. It's really crazy that we expect that we can put young people whose brains are still developing through this kind of public rigor and think they're gonna come out the tube and be all right.
- [40:50]
A
I mean, it's so. It's like canning beans with poison inside of them and then being like, I didn't like to eat them. So on. Wasn't that a good metaphor? Do you like it?
- [41:02]
B
It's like the prison bar is the wings.
- [41:05]
A
Her prison bar was her wings. Do you think we should become poets?
- [41:09]
B
I would try it for a week.
- [41:11]
A
Let's do it till New Year's and see how it goes.
- [41:13]
B
Okay.
- [41:14]
A
What if we're good? Then we'll win the Pulitzer.
- [41:20]
B
Okay, let's try it. So on June 26, Winona probably wrote poetry. On June 26, 1989, Winona is at the New York premiere for Great Balls of Fire, exclamation mark, when she locks eyes with bad boy icon and noted grown adult man Johnny Depp. He's 27, she's 17, and he's 27. Do not forget this.
- [41:44]
A
Yep.
- [41:45]
B
So months later, a mutual friend introduces them for real. They go on their first date at a party that's being held at Timothy Leary's house. Depp will go on to proclaim, quote, I die for her. I love her so much. I don't know what I would do without her. She's going through a lot right now. I wish I could just kiss away the pain, make it go away. Stop it. Kill it. If she, you know, I don't know what I would do. I'd kill myself. I love that girl. I love her. I love her almost more than I love myself. And Winona would later say, when I met Johnny, I was pure virgin. He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss, my first real boyfriend, my first fiance, the first guy I had sex with.
- [42:29]
A
The relationship stokes. The flames are a fascination. It titillates. We all want to get inside the Depp Ryder love affair. It's everything. It's everything. I mean, to this day, There are Tumblrs, YouTubes, and Instagrams devoted to these two. They're basically the real version of the Corpse Bride. Everybody is going wild.
- [42:47]
B
Everyone's going wild. We're really into the way they look. It's like they have motorcycle jackets. He's got sad eyes. She's listening to the Replacements, and they are the embodiment of Gen X's collective fantasy. And this is. This becomes, I think, a really significant reason going forward for what happens in this career. It's important that she was so idolized and turned into this icon at this moment in her life as a teenager.
- [43:17]
A
By this point, the press is hounding them. When Nona will later say, at this time, every move I made here was being documented. If I drove down the street in my car, people stared. If I went out to eat, it was written about the next day. Everyone knew where I was going. Everyone knew where I had been. And an important thing to note is all this said throughout her early career, Ryder gave tons of very personal interviews where she seemed to be trying to show the world who she was. She would so often invite journalists into her home, go for drives with them, take them to the mall, play the music, tell them what Winona Ryder was about, that eventually her identity as a person overshadowed her mutability as an actress. We could no longer see her disappear into roles. And this is a deadly move. And by the way, I mean, I never had any mutability as an actress, but I did have a situation where my identity as a person overshadowed people's ability to like receive my art. And it's a large part of why I had to like take a four year nap.
- [44:09]
B
Yeah, I think it's this thing that I think initially they thought was going to work for her which was like identify her as a flashpoint of this particular moment for her generation. And it did work, like we did that, but then it's like we can't see her outside of that. So for me, you know, I think, you know, and I tweeted about it. Yeah, very vigorously. I watched like every single movie that she was in over the course of a weekend. I just fucking binged them. And it does get to a point where in the middle of the career when she's trying to do other things, you look at it and you're like, mm, no. And then later in the career it's a director or writer or producer trying to fit a middle aged woman back into the identity that she occupied when she was a teenage girl. And it was really interesting to me that in like four films other than Heather's, she there's like this in joke, like I think the first time it happens is in Reality Bites there's an in joke about like having a slurpee at a 7 11. So it's like the directors of these films are like, remember who you're looking at. Like remember who this is that you're looking at. And it doesn't work.
- [45:21]
A
And it's interesting because Reality Bites is like when her identity, it's like when her identity as Gen X, like Idol number one and her identity as Winona kind of like coalesce in the most clear and aggressive way.
- [45:36]
B
Yes. But nonetheless, Winona does not stop working. And by the end of 1989 she is 18 years old. She has just completed work on welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael playing a depressed 14 year old. And she is shooting Mermaids where she plays a depressed 15 year old alongside icon Cher.
- [45:57]
A
And I mean, I want to read a book about the shooting of mermaids. It was not an easy shoot. They went through three directors. Why they were so intent on making mermaids that they got three different directors, I don't know. Coldest winner on record in Boston, Cher described Winona as chewing her fingernails up to her elbow and suffering, you guessed it, from insomnia and some kind of infection. You know, Winona is. At this point, we don't think she's using any drugs. She's pale, she's fragile, she's tired. At one point, Winona was so exhausted, the production was postponed a week so she could recuperate, which I know as someone who's had to postpone production or to recuperate. You're not resting at all because you're so eaten up with guilt.
- [46:35]
B
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. You're like, everyone is talking about me.
- [46:39]
A
Yeah, I have that.
- [46:40]
B
When I. When I have to take a day off from my regular job, you're like, are they mad at me? Are they mad at me? So you can imagine when it's like, there's no one who can replace you, like, as Lena Dunham, a director on a movie, and you're sick. There's nobody who can take the reins for you. Like. And I think that.
- [46:58]
A
And it's one of the reasons my illness, coupled with my early success are the two reasons that I became the nation's most. I already had a tendency towards being the nation's most apologetic person because I have obsessive compulsive disorder.
- [47:11]
B
Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry.
- [47:13]
A
I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm so sorry for being sorry. But those two things really coalesced to make me apologize for my very existence in a way that was shocking.
- [47:22]
B
Literally.
- [47:23]
A
Like.
- [47:24]
B
Literally apologizing for your body. Literally, yeah. Which.
- [47:27]
A
It's like, I can't do anything about it. I was born with it, and it is both my prison and my wings. So in December of. In December of 1989, mermaids wraps and Winona and Depp head straight for Rome to her next role in the Godfather Part 3. But here we go. She never makes it to shooting because depending on whose account you choose to believe she was suffering from a respiratory infection or from what we call good old fashioned nervous collapse. I bet Depp wished he could kiss this away. She and Depp get on a plane as soon as they can, and they return to California. And Sofia Coppola famously takes the role in Godfather Part III and is Pilloried.
- [48:04]
B
People are like, boo.
- [48:06]
A
And I'm like, get me that milk fed bitch. Boo. In classic C word fashion, when it's reported that she's dropping out due to exhaustion, every everyone and their mother lines up to ask Winona what really happened.
- [48:16]
B
Oh yeah. Cause everyone in the world is like, I'm fucking tired all the time. Well, I'm tired all the time. And we're also like, how hard can it be to memorize some lines? That's what people get.
- [48:27]
A
What people don't get is being an actor. It's like this insane thing of like being awake in purgatory for 18 hours a day. And so you don't have to tell.
- [48:35]
B
Me, I'm an actress.
- [48:36]
A
I mean, I know you're an actress and you're tired. There was speculation widespread enough to be written about the New York Times that she actually pulled out because Johnny threw some kind of temper tantrum and threatened to leave her if she didn't return to California with him. But of course there's no evidence for this. And we really don't know because we really, most of the time when we say we don't know, we weren't there. We were there. But in this case, we weren't there.
- [48:56]
B
We were not there. So by this time, 17 year old Winona Ryder and 27 year old Johnny Depp are engaged to be married. Depp has one divorce under his belt.
- [49:09]
A
And he's been previously engaged to hotties Sherilyn Fenn and Jennifer Grey. So people are kind of like, yeah, whatever you say, Johnny. We'll believe it when we see it. And young ladies continue to lurk around in bikinis and hang posters of his face in their room and hope he will shine his sad eyes at them long enough to forget the huge diamond he has just put on a real live teenager's hand.
- [49:29]
B
Again, you can, if you get deep enough into your research, junior researchers and master detectives, you can read every detail, every gossip, detail that was sort of deployed culturally when these two were together. You can still find it and Rita. And it's incredible how detailed these accounts are from the outside without ever giving anything that's like verified real information.
- [49:55]
A
And now every word written about Winona highlights that ring on her hand and how weird it looks with her Levi's because she's a grown up woman or a teenager who hangs out with ghosts. Every single profile of either of them is also obligated to reference the legendary Winona Forever tattoo that Johnny has gotten. And I mean, let's just say I have so many stupid fucking tattoos and not one of them says a boyfriend's name because guess what? It's a bad idea. It's bad luck.
- [50:20]
B
It's bad luck.
- [50:22]
A
Even Winona's father referred to her and Johnny as the hottest couple in the United States.
- [50:29]
B
Okay, so right here, this is a person who as a young adult is violated from every single direction. Like, she has the press talking about what's going on in her vagina. She has the press talking about who she's been going out with. She has a parent who's like, oh, yeah, this is hot. These two are hot. It's a complete violation. So remember, I think this detail, because I think it, it goes on to sort of shape what happens in the future. Because I personally, if I think about, if this happened to me, I would feel as though maybe someone had stolen something from me. Namely like my fucking privacy, like my sexual privacy, my intellectual privacy, my domestic privacy. All of these things are taken from her.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah. So now Winona takes like a two minute break and she gets back to work. Everyone's very delighted to discuss the real world chemistry between her and Johnny when about six months into their relationship, they start opposite each other in une classique de cinema. Edward Scissorhands.
- [51:29]
B
Do you know what I learned that I thought was very insane? This is a side note?
- [51:34]
A
What?
- [51:34]
B
That Tom Cruise was originally slated to play Edward Scissorhands, but the producers thought it was too weird when he kind of auditioned for them and he asked how the character went to the bathroom.
- [51:47]
A
That's the most. So he basically was. They were like. They were basically like. If you wonder whether this guy is gonna slice his own dick off, you're not the right person for the part. Yeah, but here's the thing.
- [51:57]
B
Cause obviously he would just use like the. What's the area of the palm of his hands?
- [52:02]
A
You just hold your dick with the palm. I don't know how obvious that is though. I honestly. Here's what I think it's a good question. But they found it like, basic that he asked it. Do you know what I mean?
- [52:14]
B
It disrupted the verisimilitude of the character.
- [52:16]
A
Yeah. But that being said, it's not a bad question. Like, it sort of makes sense if you're really trying to get deep on your character. Yeah. How does he go to the bathroom? Guys? Dunel.
- [52:29]
B
He uses his palms, so it was hard to.
- [52:32]
A
I think I told you this. I worked in the bathroom.
- [52:33]
B
Do you have to do that with your nails? Your nails are not dissimilar from Edward Scissorhands hands at this point, they're very long.
- [52:40]
A
I know, But I use mine to suck cream cheese.
- [52:43]
B
So it was really hard for back to Winona. It was really hard for her to get into the role of Kim in Edward Scissorhands, who was a popular blonde girl and cheerleader and a notable non weirdo. And she said, quote, kim was like the girls in 8th grade who called me a weirdo and threw cheetos at me. End quote.
- [53:03]
A
So while we're trapping her in adolescent stasis like a beautiful bug in amber, we were also. I'm a poet now. We were also completely preoccupied with her love life. There were cheating rumors, impending breakup rumors, rumors they'd already broken up, rumors she was pregnant. She couldn't go anywhere without being surveilled, and obviously the relationship suffered for it.
- [53:22]
B
I imagine, like, when I think about these stories, I imagine that she would have felt hunted. She would have felt like everything she did was watched and assessed. She might have felt stolen from. She might have felt like we stole something from her primarily, like her privacy and her right to go be a teenager in the world.
- [53:42]
A
Like.
- [53:42]
B
Like we stole that part of her adolescence and we ate it.
- [53:46]
A
Yep. And it was tasted amazing. So it's 1992. My little sibling is just being born into my arms. And Winona stars as Mina in Frances Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. So Francis Ford Coppola liked her enough to bring her back, despite her exhaustion breakdown. It should maybe be called Winona Ryder's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. Because actually, Winona is the one who initially read the the script and loved it so much, she sent it to him, who wrangled it out of the hands of the TV production it was destined for and said, let's make a goth classic.
- [54:21]
B
Do you think that they made a mistake, or do you think it's great?
- [54:23]
A
I think it's great. I love it.
- [54:25]
B
I think it's great.
- [54:26]
A
Honestly, it's like my favorite Francis Ford Coppola movie. I'm not kidding. I think it's really great. I find it interesting and cozy, and it gets me off. I don't know what to say.
- [54:37]
B
So back to Winona. She's like, this maybe is gonna be the role that finally breaks me out of teen purgatory. But she was in for a letdown.
- [54:47]
A
Yes, she was.
- [54:48]
B
Okay, so relationships on the set don't sound like they were great. Her co star, Gary Oldman Method acted the fuck out of Dracula. And Winona said that she felt like there was, quote, a danger in the way that he chose to work. Of course, the tabloids then suggested that the breakdown in their relationship was caused by an affair between the two. People say that they were very good friends in pre production and everyone was like, oh, this is going to be great. The whole cast is there, everyone's getting along, it's fun. And then these two get on set and they're like, at each other's throats. So naturally, when word about this animosity gets kind of leaked to the press, gossip columns are like, they must have fucked up. So everything that happens with this woman is like, oh, they must have fucked.
- [55:34]
A
And tell us about this next moment, because it's shocking.
- [55:40]
B
So Premiere magazine, God bless. This is a quote from Premier. Quote, the cameras roll. Secretly instructed by Coppola, her friend and co star, Reeves insults her, shames her. Then also unexpected, unexpectedly, Coppola starts yelling at her. You whore. You fucking whore. He screams.
- [56:00]
A
You. Look at you.
- [56:01]
B
Look at yourself. Her red gown is soaked in blood and your own husband's looking at you. And it is just the push that rider needs. Wah. She shrieks, collapsing into the bed over and over again. Coppola makes her heave and sob, refusing to cut as she does this scene. Six, seven, eight times. Eight times a lady. So this is in print, contemporary to the filming, committed to paper.
- [56:30]
A
This is so dark. Two years later, Winona herself would tell Rolling Stone that Francis Ford Coppola's reported directorial technique of screaming whore at her again and again to get the desired emotional reaction in a take did not shockingly enough, work for her. She said, quote, I would never have badmouthed Dracula at the time.
- [56:49]
B
I wish she meant, like, the character.
- [56:52]
A
Me too. I'd never talk shit about Dracula. He's a good guy.
- [56:54]
B
He was hot.
- [56:55]
A
Luckily, now I don't need to be Francis Ford Coppola's favorite actress to have a good career. Now I know I can have my opinion and still be respected. But before, I was scared because he was just so intimidating. I thought if I spoke out, people would think I was insane. Guess what, bitch? They did.
- [57:09]
B
Yeah. So we will note that Coppola denies this kind of thing ever happened. And in 2020, Winona kind of walked her claim, saying through her spokesperson that Coppola's quote, recollection is correct. We weren't there.
- [57:25]
A
But in 2020, after everything she'd been through, maybe she was like, I do have to be his favorite actress to have a career. And I'm just gonna be quiet about this. So she's almost, like, scared back into the closet.
- [57:34]
B
And I think one thing to note about her interviews is that she is, like. She's very unguarded about which parts of herself she's gonna let you see. So it's really interesting if you go on YouTube and you watch the interviews that she did with Bobby Wigant. Sorry, if that's not how you say your name. Queen. We love you. She's, like, really not consciously trying to mold her responses to get the best possible response. Like, there are interviews with this woman because she did one for, like, every movie she made where she's kind of aggressive or disinterested or visibly very uncomfortable, and she will let things leak. Like, she's at a point where I think she's been so assailed by the media that she can't help but let things leak, and these leaks become cumulative. So, like, her saying this about Coppola gets added to the pile of things that she said about other directors or other productions, and she can't wash them off her body.
- [58:32]
A
Yep.
- [58:34]
B
For now, we're gonna return to the spring of 1993, when whispers begin to circulate that Winona and Johnny have broken up. This time for good. That summer is confirmed by Winona's reps. Yeah. And we can all kind of sit around and say what happened? Because this is an eternal. We don't know. We weren't there. Because these two, like, definitely refuse to talk shit about each other. Probably because they feel like so much gossip has circulated around their romance that they're gonna keep something for themselves. So the only thing we really do know is that they are publicly very sad, because this was all over everything that you could read. It was, like, in the phone book. It was at the menu at the Greek diner. It was, like, in every piece of written material circulating in 1993, Johnny and Winona have broken up.
- [59:25]
A
And I will say that this thing of having your breakup everywhere, like, the amount. Thank God there were no texts back then, because the amount of text texts you get, like, that aren't even saying, oh, that.
- [59:36]
B
You're like, I'm trying to play Parcheesi and forget for a minute. And everyone's like, no.
- [59:40]
A
And everyone's like, no, no, we don't want you to do that. And it's like the craziest feeling, which is you kind of go, oh, this is some situation where everyone's, in some way, been waiting for something sad to happen to me, and you like me more than you ever liked me when happy things were happening to me. You are delighted that my life is falling apart in front of your eyes.
- [60:00]
B
Or when they're like, are you okay? With no other information, are you okay? I'm dead, bitch.
- [60:07]
A
Also, the amount of people who basically check in without saying what they're checking in about. So they're like, just wanted to say hi. And it's like, really 20 minutes after my breakup came out on the Internet. I'm sure you fucking did. Thinking of you.
- [60:20]
B
Thinking of you.
- [60:21]
A
Thinking of you. You with just a you. So what we do know is that they're both publicly very sad. They seem sad. And it was later revealed that Winona spiraled into a dark depression and was prescribed Klonopin for sleep. We know that the road to hell is paved with Klonopin after being diagnosed with anticipatory nostalgia.
- [60:42]
B
Anticipatory nostalgia.
- [60:44]
A
Talk to me about that.
- [60:45]
B
That's some 19th century shit.
- [60:47]
A
Talk to me about that.
- [60:47]
B
I looked this up because I was like, is this a real thing? So it is like a verified diagnosis, but. But what it's diagnosing is a feeling which is kind of like a deep sadness and sense of loss over shit that hasn't happened yet or hasn't ended yet. So, like, you're on vacation in Hawaii with your family and you're like, on the second day of vacation, it's a four day vacation and you're like, I'm so sad that this vacation is gonna be over by the time I wake up. Like, you feel the loss even though you still have the thing.
- [61:18]
A
So basically, until anticipatory nostalgia is like a really intense case of the Sunday sads.
- [61:24]
B
Oh, is that what the Sunday sads are?
- [61:26]
A
Kind of. Yeah.
- [61:27]
B
You're like a weekend is really only one day long actually.
- [61:30]
A
Yeah, it's like you're like, oh my God, I can't even enjoy Sunday night because Monday morning is coming.
- [61:35]
B
Oh, that's so real.
- [61:36]
A
Yeah.
- [61:37]
B
So when she was prescribed these pills for this disorder, the doctor allegedly told her that she could eat them, quote, like candy. Ladies and gentlemen, do not eat your benzodiazepines like candy cane. I mean, it doesn't go nice.
- [61:52]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, the road paved with.
- [61:54]
B
Klonopin is a road that leads you straight to like a fucking hospital bed.
- [61:58]
A
Well, I would love to let everybody know that if you do eat your Klonopin like candy, you're going to have to go to a facility to dry out. Because guess what, bitch, you can't just Stop or you will have a seizure.
- [62:08]
B
Okay, we're gonna get back into this because it's gonna come up again soon. So I want you to remember what this detox felt like.
- [62:15]
A
Oh. I mean, I can tell everybody what this detox feels like.
- [62:18]
B
Okay, so we're gonna get into it.
- [62:20]
A
So she was sad. She drank for a couple of weeks and listened to Tom Waits on an infinite loop until she supposedly almost lit herself on fire after falling asleep in her hotel room with a burning cigarette.
- [62:32]
B
So we have to remember how crazy the tabloids were about this couple. And then about their breakup. Winona told the New York Times, quote, now that I've had my first experience with the tabloids, if I'm in a limousine, I'm afraid to talk to the person I'm with because of the driver. Even in a restaurant, people eavesdrop on you. And do you know what the truth is? After I had an experience with a famous person named.
- [62:58]
A
You're not putting this on this show.
- [63:00]
B
You can beat that out. And I was in a restaurant talking about it with someone. I was like, you get this. This feeling suddenly where you're like, I can't talk about this because it's gonna end up in fucking Deuxmoi. Like, you can't talk about it.
- [63:12]
A
I mean, my entire life is trying to calculate where and when I can talk about things.
- [63:15]
B
I mean, it's kind of interesting. Cause I think a lot of bad celebrity stories end with paranoia. And maybe there's a reason why you cunts are paranoid. You know, like, maybe there's a reason why people get afraid that they're being surveilled. And it's because they are being surveilled. Because we're all hungry out here.
- [63:33]
A
Yep. Well, around this time, Winona also said, I used to say, I never read the tabloids. And I used to not read them, but I used to see them all the time. And I used to be bothered and say, I wasn't bothered. And now I'm really not bothered. It's just hard when you're having a problem and you have to read about it and deny it even though it's true. But please note also that she still tries to get ahead of this shit and gives 1 million interviews, often with very personal content, like the Rolling Stone piece where she let the writer read and reprint entries from her journal. She wants us to know who she is.
- [64:04]
B
Right. But then the public gets ahold of this, and once the sort of feeling has started to sour, we read these incredibly intimate accounts of her life. That she's consented to, you know, release to the public. And we're like, oh, that's not true. You know, so we already have this feeling when she's trying to be open and show us who she is. We're like, that's not who you are. We know who you are.
- [64:28]
A
So let's assess. Winona is the most successful 20 something in the universe. She gets to choose what she works in. She's adored by outcasts and people who think they're outcasts all over the world. But she's also in crisis. She's perpetually overworked. Her insomnia returns. She starts having panic attacks, and the breakup with Johnny has absolutely wrecked her.
- [64:47]
B
So she checks herself into a psychiatric hospital, and once she's there, she realizes that it's not helping at all. So she checks herself out after a week, and many years later, she will talk about this to Diane Sawyer. And now, looking back on the interview, she seems very smart and thoughtful and like she's being really vulnerable. But at the time that this interview aired, Winona's honesty about her depression was considered really shocking to people. Feeling incredibly alienated and alone. And this sort of piercing, piercing loneliness that was. Was just sort of heartbreaking. And it's strange because when you watch this thing, you're like, oh, yeah, famous people get depressed too. But at the time that it came out, we were like, oh, you're really fucked up.
- [65:39]
A
Yeah. So she checks out of the psychiatric hospital, and eventually she gets a regular psychiatrist, and things are looking a bit better. And as she's recovering, her father hands her a galley of a little book called Girl Interrupted. And Winona now has a mission. She wants to get this book made into a movie, and she wants to get her story told. And so, obviously, we've just given you juice. We've given you what my therapist, George, what my men, what my attachment theory mentor George would call the juice economy. There is so much more to discuss, but we're gonna stop here, because this is the end of part one of Winona Ryder's story.
- [66:22]
B
But for now, I am Alyssa Bennett.
- [66:26]
A
And I'm famed medication titrator Lena Dunham.
- [66:29]
B
We will never call you crazy. The C Word is a luminary podcast cast. It's produced by Pineapple Street Studios and Good Thing Going Productions. Our incredible producer is goddess Dina Kleiner. Our associate producers are Sophie Bridges and Zondra Ellen. Jenna Weiss Berman and Max Linsky are our executive producers. Our theme song is by Liz Fair. Other music is by Matthew McLaughlin and Andrew Miller. Special thanks to Michael Cohen and Blake Mars.
- [67:08]
A
To listen to part two of Winona Rider, subscribe to Luminary Channel on Apple Podcasts or directly on Luminary.
- [67:15]
B
Do you remember on Celebrity Rehab when the horse guy says to Mary Sean Young, so you lost a part to Kim Basinger? And how did that go for her? How's her career? She's not doing nothing special. How'd that go for you?
- [67:35]
A
How'd that go for her?
- [67:37]
B
I want to tell you that, you know, when we started this episode, I was having horrible problems with my sciatica, and the gossip has made my pain go away.
- [67:46]
A
But you know what? That's the power of what we do.
- [67:49]
B
It's the healing power of gossip.