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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
Only Murders in the Building Official Podcast is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. Join host Michael Cyril Creighton behind the scenes to talk all things Arconia with Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez and more. Actors, writers and crew from season five. Watch and listen to the new podcast series Only Murders in the Building Official podcast now streaming with new episodes Tuesdays. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss Only Murders in the Building streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
- [00:36]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
From the New York Times this is the interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. In a pretty house on a quiet street in Nashville last month I met an adorable French bulldog named Minnie Pearl.
- [00:48]
Reese Witherspoon
Yes.
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Lulu Garcia Navarro
Are you getting nice scrub? Yes.
- [00:51]
Reese Witherspoon
You're lucky I got long nails. Today.
- [00:53]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I met Minnie's mom too, also known as Reese Witherspoon, who sadly took Minnie away before she sat down to talk.
- [01:00]
Reese Witherspoon
Do you want me to put her in the other room? And if she will snore and snore.
- [01:04]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
And there is a lot to talk about. Witherspoon is in her creative prime right now. There's a new season of the morning show on Apple tv, which she stars in and also co executive produces. She's also written a new book with Harlan Coben, a thriller about a surgeon who gets swept up in international intrigue publishing next month. But as she told me, her true passion these days is hello Sunshine, the production company she founded. The company, which focuses on stories by and for women, has been a producer for shows like Big Little Lies and Daisy Jones and the Six. Witherspoon sold it for almost a billion dollars back in 2021, but she's still deeply involved in its day to day operations. And she's the face of its massively popular book club too. In our wide ranging and candid conversation, she reminisced about her early days in Hollywood as a young mother, the professional slump she faced after winning an Oscar, becoming a boss, and how she's navigating the turbulent environment in Hollywood these days. Here's my conversation with Reese Witherspoon. I want to start by asking you about your most recent projects. You have just co authored a thriller.
- [02:27]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah.
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Lulu Garcia Navarro
And I've seen you talk about collaboration before.
- [02:32]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah.
- [02:32]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
There was an interview that you gave where you said, you know, if you don't want to collaborate, if you're an actor, then you should go write a book. But you actually wrote a book in collaboration with someone, so talk me through that.
- [02:44]
Reese Witherspoon
Yes, you're right. Oh gosh. Okay. Well, this Idea came from so many different places. My parents are both in the medical field and I grew up as a military brat. My dad was stationed in Germany when I was a little girl. And so first five years of my life, I grew up on an army base, Air force base, actually.
- [03:05]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Do you remember that?
- [03:05]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah, I do. I went to German school and it was a great upbringing in terms of exposure to other languages and other cultures, but also to all these medical service people like that were working in the hospitals. My mother was a nurse, my dad was a doct. I always thought, why aren't there not more stories about surgeons?
- [03:28]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
We should say at this point, the main character is a plastic surgeon.
- [03:32]
Reese Witherspoon
Yes.
- [03:32]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Who.
- [03:33]
Reese Witherspoon
She's a reconstructive surgeon.
- [03:34]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Reconstructive surgeon.
- [03:35]
Reese Witherspoon
She's a military trained doctor. She's sort of down on her luck. She's lost her medical license, her husband has kind of disappeared and she gets.
- [03:44]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Pulled into this world that you're sort of describing where she ends up with oligarchs and in very shady CIA. Yeah, the CIA gets involved and there's this whole hidden world.
- [03:59]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah. So this idea kind of came up through that thinking about my parents. And then I started thinking, well, who would I want to write at? Well, I've got to have a thriller co author with me because I'm too invested here to just give this idea away. So I had met Harlan nine years ago at a conference and I called him and I said, I have an idea for a thriller. And I was so nervous because I have such high regard for authors and their process and how difficult it is to create characters and story. And I went through a whole litany of insecurities. But part of my. The way I process things is I'm. Even if there's risk there, I kind of jump into the risk and sometimes I fail, but I'd rather take the risk. So I was like, okay, Reece, you've read more books. You know how to plot a movie. So take your knowledge of building character and understanding narrative structure and just keep imparting it.
- [05:05]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I think the through thread between this character in your book and the morning show is that they are both sort of helmed by very complicated women. The morning show is now back for its fourth season and. And the women are finally in charge now at ubn. And one of the themes definitely this season is that putting women at the top doesn't necessarily solve everyone's problems. As someone who sort of prides themself in working with women, is that something that resonated from your own Experience this idea that somehow just putting women in charge isn't gonna be the panacea that maybe everyone thinks it's gonna be.
- [05:48]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I've never advocated for a matriarchy. I've always thought the world needs gender balance. We've gotten out of balance. Things swing too far one way or the other. And I don't think that. I don't think that trying to portray a. I don't know what I'm trying to say every, every time I have the chance to talk about culture inside of hello sunshine. I never want to create a monoculture, you know, and I'm also raising two boys.
- [06:25]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Right.
- [06:25]
Reese Witherspoon
It's really important that we include men in these conversations and young men. And I do think a lot of language and a lot of media during from 2017 to 2020 did not include their consciousness and ask them in and help them feel like they belonged in the emergence of the power of women. And so I think we're seeing them look for other sources of empowerment. And maybe those are empty sources, maybe they don't have, maybe they aren't substantive, but they're speaking the right language to young men. So I think we have to invite an idea of gender balance. That's what feels like what's right in the world to me. I think I pushed really hard to get women in seats of power all around me because they weren't getting the opportunities at all. And I was trying to show it more women in charge. Women as directors, women as screenwriters, women as the author of that best selling book. So, yeah, it's interesting that we're exploring on Morning show the dynamics of having all these women in charge. And that that isn't always the final answer.
- [07:36]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
One of the things though, when I was looking at the show is this question of do women deal with power differently? And it made me wonder about, as someone who was in charge of her own company, do you think that there is a different way in which women actually exercise power? Or do you think that's just like a myth?
- [07:57]
Reese Witherspoon
No, I do think it's different. I have a very troubled relationship with the word power because it's got so much weight on it.
- [08:06]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Explain. What do you mean?
- [08:08]
Reese Witherspoon
It doesn't feel like something I wanted to achieve or grab at or grasp for. It feels like it could corrupt you, corrode you from the inside. Your desire for power in some sort of Lord of the Rings X way like greed and power. No, I love leadership. And learning to be a good leader is something I've had to do over the past eight years, because I did not. I'm not the person to raise my hand and say, oh, I want to be in charge. It feels like it would be my personality. It's not.
- [08:47]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What have you learned about leadership?
- [08:49]
Reese Witherspoon
That I got to step up and do it. You know, I had a really pivotal conversation in my life with Shonda Rhimes, and we were sitting in a forum with a lot of women, and it was in 2017, and it was about, you know, helping people in our business come forward with their stories of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. And I said, if we could just get people to show up at this one event, then that would be great. And so somebody's going to have to get them there. And she goes, you're going to do it. And I said, what? She goes, patted my leg. And she goes, you're going to do it. They're gonna listen to you. And when you tell them to show up on Thursday at 5pm at your office, they're gonna come because you're the leader and you don't know it. And that was a big moment for me. Cause it was scary too. It's a responsibility that you don't always want to put that hat on. But I was like, okay. I kind of thought in my mind, okay, if I don't do this, who's gonna do it?
- [09:51]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
That story also says something to me about mentorship and the need for someone to look at you.
- [09:56]
Reese Witherspoon
Oh my God. And see that I needed her to because I would not have seen it. I do lack some self awareness. So the fact that she said it to me made it true in my mind.
- [10:09]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I wanted to go back a little bit to your history and your career. Where did you sort of first start to get in front of an audience and enjoy that? What was that moment?
- [10:23]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I did a commercial for my neighbor down the street when I was seven. And then, I don't know, I went up to my mom and I said, I want to do acting classes when I was seven. So she took me. She couldn't find any acting classes for kids, so she enrolled me in Belmont College, had a nighttime acting class for students. And so I was going with, you know, 20 year olds to acting for television and commercials. And then I didn't do much for. Until I was about 12. Another girl had told me at school, she goes, oh, I'm doing these acting classes every Saturday morning. And I said, oh, okay, well, I'm gonna ask my mom if I can go. So I went home, told my mom, and she Was like, sure. So every Saturday for probably three years, I was dropped off for three hours of acting training every Saturday morning. And you loved it? I loved it. We'd act. They taught us how to do our hair and makeup. It was Nashville, so we had to learn how to put on, you know, our fake eyelashes. And I was 12. But also they taught professionalism, like, how do you show up, how do you go for an audition, how do you do a job interview? And it was the only professional training I've ever had as an actor. But it was very good and very comprehensive because I got a job when I was 14 starring in a movie.
- [11:42]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Yeah, you went to an open casting call for the man in the Moon?
- [11:46]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah, Right over like three blocks away in the back of a bar. In the back of a bar in Nashville. Yeah. My dad drove me down, let me get out and stand in line. It was 1990 and I stood in line waiting because it was an ad in the paper said, do you want to be in a movie? And there was a woman at the acting school had said, hey, they're casting for this movie, you should go stand in line. So I did. And it turned out they were looking for a 14 year old Southern girl. So right place, right time, at around.
- [12:20]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
18, you then put your acting career on pause and you go to college for a year. And this is actually something that I wanted to understand a little bit about because you end up going to Stanford. Why did you end up stopping what was a promising acting career and decide I need to go to college?
- [12:37]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, my parents didn't think I was going to become an actor and they said they really encouraged me to go to college. They wouldn't let me work during the school year either. I was only allowed to work on movies in the summers while I was in high school. They wanted me to go to traditional high school and have a normal high school experience because I got calls after the first movie I did. I got offers to be on broadcast television shows and I turned them down. And I'm really glad my parents held the line with that because all those things I learned about being a kid were just formed by growing up in Nashville and going to prom and feeling awkward in the school cafeteria. But then they were, they wanted me to go to college and applied only to schools in California. And back then we didn't go on college tours or I didn't, no. So there was this giant thick book and they had little thumbnail prints of colleges and there was a picture of Stanford. And I was like, I guess I'll go there. It's in California. I think I was the only person from Tennessee in my entire freshman class. I always say. I think I got on geographic diversity.
- [13:47]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What did you think you were going to study? Like, what did you want to?
- [13:49]
Reese Witherspoon
Literature. I loved reading. I just read and read and read. I wanted literature.
- [13:54]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You only stayed for a year. How come?
- [13:57]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I couldn't afford it. I didn't have any money to go to college. My grandparents had given me $8,000, which was so generous, but it didn' cover my tuition. I remember it was $33,000 with room and board.
- [14:11]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Seems like a bargain now.
- [14:12]
Reese Witherspoon
I know. But I couldn't afford it, so I had to figure out how I'd get an acting job to pay for it. So I left to go get an acting job. I got one, and I did. I ended up doing three movies in a row. Pleasantville Election and Cruel Intentions. And then by the time I had finished those three films, it had been a year and a half.
- [14:35]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
And also, you were legit famous.
- [14:37]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I wouldn't say I was really famous until I did Legally Blonde, but.
- [14:41]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Those three movies were, you know, big movies. And you just decided at that point, like, maybe the college experience wasn't for you?
- [14:47]
Reese Witherspoon
No, I thought I was going back. I fully thought I was going back for probably five, six years.
- [14:55]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I wanted to ask you about a more difficult moment. I saw you in Oprah in 2018. Talk about leaving an abusive relationship when you were very young. And you said you had no self esteem back then and that leaving the relationship sort of changed you on a cellular level. The fact that you discovered that you were someone who could leave a situation like that. Mm. And I'm wondering if you could just talk me through what that lack of confidence felt like, because I guess looking at it, it didn't seem obvious.
- [15:25]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I think I was very good at being a professional and showing up and doing the right thing, but I wasn't emotionally mature when I was young. And you get in relationships that don't work for you, and sometimes you don't even see the dynamics that are happening. So when I got out of that, it took me a while to reconstitute myself. My spirit had been diminished because I thought all those awful things that person said about me were true, and I had to rewire my brain. But I was really insecure because I've talked to a lot of people who've been in abusive relationships, and they can't see it, you know, and I couldn't. I couldn't See, it took me a long time to be this woman that I am now.
- [16:21]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
When you say you had to reconstitute yourself, what does that look like when you're also having to sort of be a person out in the world?
- [16:29]
Reese Witherspoon
It's very hard to be a public figure. So I have a lot of compassion for people who live public lives and maintain privacy. It's nearly impossible at this point with everybody dehumanizing you in a certain way, like taking pictures of you like you're an animal in the zoo instead of a person with their children or having a private moment. It was hard. It was really hard. And being a mom. Being a mom and wanting to protect young people is hard, too, you know? Yeah.
- [17:01]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I wanted to actually come to what happened after this, because you end up in these big films that had a lot of initial success. You just mentioned them. Election, Cruel Intentions, and you end up getting married and having children. Ryan Phillippe, of course, was your husband back then. You had children.
- [17:24]
Reese Witherspoon
Great pronunciation.
- [17:26]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I had to look it up. What was it about having kids? Because it was unusual, I think, in Hollywood to have kids, you know, in your early 20s.
- [17:38]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah. I think, like, there's parts of it that are private and personal that I don't really want to talk about, but I will talk about having kids at a young age. There was so much I didn't know. And maybe that naive day was good because I was like, oh, well, I'll just do that and have a career. And I did have a few people say to me, this is going to be really hard on your career. And my mother was a pediatric nurse, and she said, I'm going to help you. But that was hard because she lived in Nashville and I lived in Los Angeles. So I went through everything that new moms go through, where sleepless nights and long days, endless bottle feedings and breastfeeding and trying to learn lines and go to do auditions, but organize childcare. And when I had my daughter, I didn't have nannies or help or anything. I had somebody would come watch her three hours, twice a week. It was really hard. There were roles I couldn't take. I wasn't just in service of my career. I had to sort of have this immediate balance of family and career, being a mom and being a working actress. That's why it was also scary when Legally Blonde became such a big hit. I wasn't going to beg for parts. Parts were coming to me. And that almost made it scarier because I wasn't picking and choosing what I would reach and strive for. It was more like, what will I not do? And so I had to put boundaries in at a very young age. It was really hard, but I figured it out. I figured it out.
- [19:26]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I kept on thinking about that while I was sort of reflecting on this moment for you that, you know, you were this at the height of your success with Legally Blonde and this string of successes, and yet you were married and had kids and all your actress peers, that was not their reality.
- [19:46]
Reese Witherspoon
Right.
- [19:47]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Was it difficult to be in a different part of life than perhaps your peers were?
- [19:53]
Reese Witherspoon
You know what the most ironic part was? I was always being told by different people in the industry, don't play a mom. It'll make you seem old. And I was like, but I am a mom. I was like, but, hmm. I do think we've lost a lot of storytelling around mothers because there was so much about our business that it desexualized you. So you couldn't be a movie star if you played a mom, and thank goodness that's sort of going by the wayside. But that was a big part of when I was in my 20s and 30s. Don't play a mom. No men will desire you or nobody will want to go see that movie, because nobody wants to see a movie about a mom.
- [20:32]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Were there people that you could turn to to kind of help you with that balance that you were trying to achieve?
- [20:41]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I think as I got a little bit older, Jennifer Aniston was really helpful for me, navigating personal life and tabloid curiosity and also shutting out all the noise.
- [20:55]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You played her sister, obviously, in Friends.
- [20:56]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah.
- [20:57]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
And you're in the in the Morning show with her now.
- [21:00]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah, we played sisters on Friends and her and Courtney. I remember I brought my baby, Ava. Ava was only three months old when I was on Friends in 1999. And I remember Courtney and Jen coming to my dressing room door and knocking on the door and going, we heard you have a baby. I was like, I do. I have a baby. They were like, can we see it? I was like, yes, she's right there. They're like, oh, my God, this is so cool. And I just remember them being so kind about it. And that kindness opened a door for me to ask Jennifer a lot of questions when I went through breakups or really public divorce. And she was just really always very generous with advice and care.
- [21:49]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What advice was that? I mean, what are the lessons of having to protect yourself, essentially?
- [21:57]
Reese Witherspoon
Oh, my God, there's just hundreds of them. Well, actually, Jennifer Garner and I, too, are very close, and we would talk a lot about navigating public interest in our kids and how we could protect them from pictures and paparazzi because they would be everywhere, all over the schools and all over the cars. There was always a surprise, somebody jumping out of the bushes or. I remember at church once in la, a guy jumping on the hood of the car. And on east side, three people pushing against the window, banging on the door. When my kids were little, after I got a divorce, and chasing us like it was a police chase down the freeways. It was terrifying, and the fact that we survived that. But I do think. I think it was really hard on my kids. It was really hard, anxiety producing. And I really. I regret living in LA during that time. It was too hard on the kids. And I know it feels like they're just taking pictures, but it would be like 25 people on the side of the soccer field photographing me and Ryan to see if we got along or we didn't get along. And it was. And it was. There was a little boy and a little girl there, and it just. Yeah, I watched them chase Britney Spears and she had two little children, and I had two little children. And I felt like there was this really unfair portrayal of her as a bad girl. But I was a good girl. And she was a mother, a young mother trying to figure it out, away from home, being chased like an animal. And what that kicks up inside your body and what it does for you is very traumatic. I just have incredible compassion for people that went through that time period and were portrayed a certain way by the media because of if they went to a nightclub versus they went to the playground. You know, it was a very punishing time for women who were in the spotlight.
- [24:01]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
How did you explain that to your kids and did you see, like, the effects of that for them?
- [24:05]
Reese Witherspoon
Yes, my kids had anxiety, really bad anxiety. And it was all external. It was. You can only shield them from so much, but when they can go to the playgrounds and on the schoolyard, it feels like the world is chaos and there are no rules. And there was, like, this invisible barrier. They would never touch your body, but. But they would scream. They would yell things at the kids about their dad or me that were wildly inappropriate.
- [24:35]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
At the children's.
- [24:36]
Reese Witherspoon
Yes, these videos exist. And then they would only show the one part where I was screaming back at them going, get back in your cars. Leave us alone. I'm not trying to garner sympathy. It was my life. I just. I didn't know that that was what would come with wanting to be a, an actor or storyteller at that level. That's why when social media emerged, Jennifer and I got on the phone, we're like, oh my God. We can create our own storytelling. We can decide when people have pictures of our kids. Sign me up.
- [25:09]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You felt like this was a way for you to decide how much and when and in what way you were gonna open the door.
- [25:16]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah, it devalued that market. There was no longer a market to see pictures of my children because they were. People were getting it for free. And also it had great use. I mean, what I felt like, oh, I immediately saw this opportunity to build community online. It only took me a couple of years. And I ideated around this with Sarah Hardin, the CEO of hello Sunshine. She came on and I said, you know, how do we take the book club out of your grandma's living room and into the digital world and create a community that's far reaching and global? And that people come up to me about two things. Legally Blonde, of course, you think that, right? And they like to say, what? Like it's hard and can I show you the bend and snap? Or can you do the bend and snap?
- [26:05]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Did they actually ask you to do the bend and snap?
- [26:08]
Reese Witherspoon
Sometimes I do the bend and snap. If you see me do the bend and snap, you're very lucky because I think I've only done it a handful of times.
- [26:13]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I was about to say, am I.
- [26:15]
Reese Witherspoon
Going to be like an 85 year old lady sitting on a porch and like doing the bend and snap on Instagram? God, I hope not.
- [26:20]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
There are worse things in the world if you can still do the bend and snap at 80. I think actually that's true. You're in a good place.
- [26:26]
Reese Witherspoon
I might come out with a bend and snap workout. It could be a whole new business model. No, that people come up to me and ask me about Legally Blonde. And then the other thing is the book club.
- [26:37]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What's so interesting about you becoming the businesswoman that you are today is that preceding that moment, you were kind of in a professionally fallow period. You'd won an Oscar, you had, you know, kind of gone through all the heights that you can in a career, but you stopped for a little bit. And I wonder what that fallow period where you weren't creatively getting to do the things that you wanted to do, what that was like for you. What did you learn about yourself in that period?
- [27:12]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I learned that in order to be successful in any business, you have to understand every aspect of it. And it Forced me to get more macro about it back up and understand the business better and why they're not making more movies that I want to be in or more movies that I would let my daughter watch. And so it forced me to get analytical. And it started as a company called Pacific Standard, and that came from two years of just ideating and going, there's a missing lane here of developing film that has a woman at the center of it. And then I was like, okay, well, what if it's books too? And then the two came together where it was like, okay, I should option some books to make them into movies. And then it just grew because Instagram came around and I was like, oh, let's build an online community. And then I think the part of my brain that gets really turned on is how you connect community, the ip and all the social relationships. So I had all these friendships from working for 20 years in the movie business with other actors and actresses and filmmakers and how I put that to work. And so when those three things started coming together as media was changing, I was there to meet the moment. I already had IP and I had options and I had books and I had filmmakers. I had it ready to go for when streaming emerged and they needed content. I had the content to provide. It also took that shiny part of fame that was so difficult to deal with. And I got to pivot that light onto people who I felt like were very deserving and I could stand next to them and promote their book. And it was like, oh, this is such a great use of fame.
- [29:00]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I mean, it brings me back to something you said earlier, which was that first moment when someone said to you, you are a leader. You can lead. This seemed like a natural evolution to what you had kind of been working on.
- [29:11]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah. And I had to get really frustrated and angry in my existing career to hit the wall to want to take on a new aspect. It's an entirely different career. It's two totally different careers, and I jostle between the two of them at all times. Being a creator and being a person who understands the economics of creating, but the part about understanding the shifting economics of the entertainment industry, that's fun for me now I.
- [29:43]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Fun.
- [29:43]
Reese Witherspoon
It is. It actually is. I find it really fun. I like to forecast about it. I'm not always right, but I listen to other people's forecasting. I watch it, I write people who I think have a really good take on our business. And I've been inside it since I was 14 years old. I have a very clear eyed Opinion of it. I'm not starry eyed about any of it. And you have to be pragmatic when you have a company like mine because time is your biggest asset. You can't waste time on things you can't get made. So you have to be very, very thoughtful about what projects you take on, what books we option and then you have to throw all your energy at it. So if it doesn't work at any point, you have to be very comfortable with cutting bait and moving on.
- [30:34]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I mean, you're starting a business project focused on Gen Z women, your kids are Gen Z. When you're looking and you're forecasting, what are you seeing? I mean, I would love to know.
- [30:45]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, this is part of the great thing about being a young mom is my kids tell me everything that's going on. And so that helps me forecast what's happening in the media world because they tell me first I noticed my kids weren't going to the movies. I had teenage kids. I went to the movies every Friday and Saturday night. Kids don't go to the movies. Usually people are seeing one movie a year in the theaters with their kids. So you gotta go where the audience is not lament the fact that they didn't show up or have what I call old school itis, which is like well, in my day. Well, it just doesn't work that way. You gotta go to where the audience is. But we're, you know, attention spans are shifting. They just are. The way we make movies is going to change radically in the next two years to three years because of AI. Everybody knows it. It's like you just have to understand how it's going to happen because we still have to layer our consciousness on top of it and use it as tools because otherwise it's just a runaway train and it can't make you laugh. AI has never made me laugh. Not once.
- [31:47]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
No.
- [31:47]
Reese Witherspoon
I did a whole AI thing with Will Ferrell when we were standing on set of your cordially invited and our director Nick Stoller put in come up with movie ideas for Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon in romantic comedy and it spit out like 10 and three of them were actually not too bad. Will came up with 10 other ones that were so much better.
- [32:11]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You know, talking about the industry, there's this moment that you talked about after Big Little Lies comes out on HBO in 2017, which you starred in. It was this huge hit in terms of awards, in terms of just public reaction. But you said that the project barely.
- [32:30]
Reese Witherspoon
Broke even for my company.
- [32:32]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
For your company.
- [32:33]
Reese Witherspoon
My producing fees.
- [32:34]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
That's what I mean. And I just want to understand, like, what are the mechanics of that when we're looking at the industry and where it's at and what it takes to make quality work? Why didn't that work out? And what did you learn from that?
- [32:48]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I had set up my company fundamentally in a way that it could never be profitable because I was just working off producing fees. It's a little. It's too inside baseball and a little bit boring, but I don't know.
- [33:04]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I'm interested.
- [33:06]
Reese Witherspoon
I had set up the company and we had so much success with Gone Girl, Wild Big Little Lies, and that was a big financial success for hbo, but it wasn't for my production company because I was trying to keep five women employed with great health insurance in, you know, an office building. And we didn't know where our next producing job was going to come from. I was like, this isn't a sustainable business model. I need more predictable revenue. And that's when I got business partners backed up and built a business plan. And I raised capital from AT&T and Lorraine Powell jobs through Emerson Collective. And we only raised one Series A, and then we sold in 2021.
- [33:55]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
That was a big payday. You were acquired by Candle Media for almost a billion dollars. What was that like that day?
- [34:03]
Reese Witherspoon
Very emotional. And it was a big deal for me because I had really held out during those negotiations with different entities that wanted to buy the company. And I'd waited for the best valuation of the company because so many women had equity in the company. And it was really important to me that these women, who, a lot of them gave up corporate jobs to follow my dreams and my vision and help me execute, and they all got paid. And that was a big deal for me because I also thought, I gotta be really careful who this sells to and what the value is, because it's putting a value on women's storytelling and what are we saying to the world? I was like. And I also thought about my grandmother who loved stories and had. She went to Vanderbilt University and had a degree, a teaching degree, and she just couldn't really do anything with it. And I could tell she was a frustrated intellectual and that she didn't want to teach first grade. She loved first grade, but she wanted to write books and she wanted to travel the world, and she didn't get to do that. And so I thought, I'm living my grandmother's dream.
- [35:17]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What did you do to celebrate?
- [35:20]
Reese Witherspoon
I remember getting on it was Covid. So we were all in lockdown, and I get on a zoom with everybody in hello, Sunshine. I thought really long about what song I would play before we went on and told everybody. And I played Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. It makes me want to cry because it was like a hopeful moment that people actually cared about women's stories. Like, we weren't in the margins anymore. We were the main story. And it made me think, okay, if I can do this, I want to make sure other women can do it who are coming up after me. Because if I fail here, this is gonna tell. Every little girl has a dream of being a producer or director, that she's not gonna make it. So I pressured myself a lot. But it was a great day. It was a great day.
- [36:12]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I think one of the other things that it did is show that there's a market for it, right? That you can make these kinds of stories and they can make money because, you know, not everyone's in into it just for the higher purpose.
- [36:29]
Reese Witherspoon
No, it's a business. It's the movie business. It has to make money. It has to justify the cost. I understand that. And so when I was able to blend my ideology with that business model and it became successful, I felt like, wow, I think I've aligned for what I was meant to do here in this lifetime.
- [36:57]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
The CEO of Candle Media recently did an interview with Semaphore, and he said that you've been a great partner, but he also said that hello, Sunshine quote wasn't worth what we paid. How does that sit with you?
- [37:12]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, I think it's shortsighted, being honest. He and I've talked about it. I'm all about full candor and discussions. I think the world is shifting. And just because one aspect of our company didn't hit the numbers a certain year that anybody thought it was going to hit, that doesn't mean it's not valuable. And I think, gosh, don't try to bury something that's a seed. It's going to grow and grow and grow because it's a wonderful brand and it stands for something. It means something.
- [37:49]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I mean, I do think it speaks to the sort of changing media landscape, because in that interview, he talks about how the goal now with, quote, traditional media, so I guess he's talking about a TV show, is to, quote, retell and to extend those stories on social media. And he added that the goal hadn't worked out as well as he expected. I did not understand what he meant, and maybe that's Me, But I. Yeah.
- [38:12]
Reese Witherspoon
We can ask him. You wanna call him?
- [38:13]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
But do you understand what he means? I mean, can you explain. Explain what the goal is now?
- [38:17]
Reese Witherspoon
I can't explain what he was trying to say because I don't know. Right. I don't live inside his head. But what I think you gotta look at more macro is the predictable revenue structures. So we have a very successful conference every year that is all about leading with experts in different areas of women's interests, from health and wellness to entrepreneurship to banking to storytelling. That's been really successful. So we have live events, we have brand partnerships, we have the book club, and then we have scripted and then we have unscripted. So there's so many different components. If one component isn't working, you don't just say the whole thing isn't working. Like you pivot, you pivot your business model. And we're looking at all of that now, right? And going, how can we grow more to where the audience is? But it's shifting and that's where we're lucky enough to be able to shift, right? We're not some big behemoth media company. We can have a new business plan and be able to move and shape and grow with culture.
- [39:29]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
After the break, I talked to Reese again, and she has more to say about motherhood.
- [39:34]
Reese Witherspoon
I'm so tired. I've been. I've been parenting for 25 years.
- [39:50]
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- [40:50]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
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- [41:34]
Reese Witherspoon
Hi.
- [41:35]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Nice to see you.
- [41:36]
Reese Witherspoon
Hi, Lulu.
- [41:37]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
We covered so much ground in our last conversation. I was wondering if there was anything on your mind from our last talk.
- [41:46]
Reese Witherspoon
We talked about things I don't. I don't normally talk about. So I felt like I was kind of reflecting on people. There used to be this sort of feeling of, you're not supposed to ask. Well, let me try and think of how I want to say this. Well, I feel like there was a lot of preciousness around asking people about motherhood. Oh, and I've been really reflecting on how important it is for young women to hear women talk about the balance of motherhood and work. It used to be like, oh, it was offensive to ask people about motherhood, but I think it's so important. Like, it never offended me. People asked me how I juggled things, or I would ask other women the same things.
- [42:35]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You know, it's interesting. You've been. I've sort of been thinking about what it is to be a mom in different eras, because there's a pretty big age gap between your oldest two kids and your youngest who's still home with you. Are you different as a parent this time around?
- [42:51]
Reese Witherspoon
Oh, for sure. I'm exhausted. I am completely wrung out and tired. And whenever I lose my cool, I turn to my youngest and I go, you gotta call your brother and sister. They wore me out. I'm so tired. Like, eat the cookie. Go to bed late. Just do it, you know? But, like, think about how it's gonna make you feel. And then, like, beyond that, I'm so tired. I've been parenting for 25 years, and I also know. I also feel very comfortable that I know the little things that aren't as important. Like, I had a friend say I'm not there for pickup. And is that okay? Absolutely. You know, you can't be at every soccer game, you know, every morning, meeting, pick up, drop off, make the lunch, do the volunteer stuff. It's a lot of pressure on women to send the kids to school, have them fully prepared, but also do all the volunteering at the school, around the school. That's like unpaid labor, you know, And I am so grateful for the women who show up and do it and include me in it, you know, when I choose to show up. That's a whole other set of pressures on women constantly, you know, to show up and be the perfect mom.
- [44:11]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
As we talked about your I'm also wondering how you look at your oldest and what that looks like in terms of giving her guidance as she kind of makes her own way in the world. From your own perspective, as someone who also has had to navigate Hollywood at a young age, you know, what kind of advice do you give her?
- [44:33]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, it's interesting because last year she turned 25, and when I was 25, she was a year and a half old and I'd just done Legally Blonde. Oh, wow. And I was about to start Sweet Home Alabama. We just are living very different life existences, realities. And I'm so proud of her for not being anything but herself. Not trying to emulate me or be me, you know what I'm saying? Not trying to approximate my career or. Ava's just cool. She's just always been cool. You know, some people are just born cool. She was just born cool. Part of the challenge being a mother of a 26 year old woman is learning to back away, learning she doesn't need me in the same ways, and that's okay. And soothing my, my heart when I feel like, rejected a little bit. But it's not a rejection, it's actually her. People in my life remind me the alternative would be worse if she was just so needy. Needy? Needy. She's not needy like that. I'm just really proud of who she's become as an individual.
- [45:50]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
You know, I have an only child, she's 12. I can't imagine the moment when she's gonna leave and that's gonna be the end of that. And been watching a lot of sort of people sending their kids off to college and sending their kids off into the world. And you're talking about it feeling lonely and rejected. I'm just wondering how you have processed that and how you deal with letting your children go, Especially children, I have to say, Reese, who are gonna get a lot of scrutiny because they're the child of Reese Witherspin.
- [46:24]
Reese Witherspoon
Well, that, you know, we talk about a lot. But that's again, something I can't understand because I wasn't the child of famous parents. So I help, I encourage them to reach out to people who are in similar situations. And they certainly have friends there. And you know, the whole thing about how do people treat them as they pursue acting or music or entertainment? I mean, it's pretty natural that the child of two actors would want to try acting.
- [46:53]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
So, I mean, there's this whole discussion, right, about Nepo babies, et cetera, et cetera.
- [46:57]
Reese Witherspoon
Yeah, it just blows my mind. Like, is Laura Dern A Nepo baby. Like, really? She's an Oscar winning, incredible part of the fabric of filmmaking for 40 years, and so are her parents. And it's like, should we not have her be an actress? You know, I think it's also what you do with those opportunities, you know, I don't know. I think my kids have a really good, clear headspace about that. But back to the point of empty nesting in a certain way, because I have two kids who've left home. It's really sad. It's really hard to deal with. I grieved their going to college and I cried in their rooms. And oh, my gosh, one year, one of them didn't come home for Christmas, and I sat in their bed and just cried. It's a loss because you do everything for them. You take the food out of your mouth, the coat off your back. You don't sleep. You just don't. Let's just. You don't sleep because you're so. Either taking care of their physical needs when they're little or when they're older, you're just so worried all the time that they're gonna get in a car accident or they're gonna come home or there's gonna be drugs involved. You just. I have every worry the parents have, you know, and then one day it's kind of like, if you've done your job, you did the right things, they go and it's like, oh, it makes me teary right now. It's just really hard. But, you know, you did the right things, so. And then they become these incredible friends. Like, Ava will call me and just be like, a great friend. Deacon calls me all the time. We hang out in New York, and he'll tell me about cool restaurants, and I'll be like, great. Can you get a reservation? Because he has. He can get better reservations than I can now. But it's awesome to have your kids become adults.
- [48:51]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
We only have a few minutes left. Where do you see your career going in terms of your acting? Is TV more interesting to you now than movies?
- [49:01]
Reese Witherspoon
No, I kind of. I go back and forth. I love movies. It's, you know, how I started. And I love. I love that television has become this premium storytelling enterprise. I think a lot of building my company was around television, and the world of television producing was just so open. It was like the wild, wild west, and we could do whatever we wanted to. And I have to be so passionate at this point to be acting. I have to love it. Just love it, love it, love it. Because I really like my life. You know, my real life is really good. So I have to really feel like, oh, the story has to be told. And I do feel like that about some of our projects. But it's definitely a different feeling about acting. I've also been doing it since I was 14, so I've done a lot, I said a lot. I've played a lot of parts. I know what I have played and what I haven't played. I'm not interested in repeating myself.
- [50:02]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
What do you think people don't understand about you?
- [50:08]
Reese Witherspoon
So much. There's so much people don't know. I don't talk a lot about things I've been through. I will one day. I'm just not ready yet. One day I'll tell everything I think.
- [50:23]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Is there a Reese memoir coming out?
- [50:25]
Reese Witherspoon
No.
- [50:26]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
No.
- [50:27]
Reese Witherspoon
Maybe. I'll never write the book. My kids know. They know a lot of the things that happen behind the scenes that, you know. Some of my really good friends know. But I don't linger on things either. I feel like every day is a new opportunity to do something meaningful. I don't hold grudges. I don't dwell. And I think it's what serves me. It's what pushes me forward. I'm constantly looking to create and not dwell in the old or remember what I was or remember all the wrongs that happened to me. But I do think they would be very, very entertaining, to say the least.
- [51:15]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I'd read the hell out of that book.
- [51:19]
Reese Witherspoon
Oh, boy.
- [51:20]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
Reese Witherspoon, thank you so much. I appreciate your time.
- [51:23]
Reese Witherspoon
Thank you, Lulu. This was nice.
- [51:30]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
That's Reese Witherspoon. The fourth season of the morning show will be on Apple tv. The first episode is out now and her book Gone Before Goodbye will be published on October 14th. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel@YouTube.comblethe interview podcast this interview was produced by Seth Kelly. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon, mixing by Sonia Herrero, original music by Dan Powell, Sophia Landman and Marian Lozano, photography by Philip Montgomery. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew and Wyatt Orme is our producer. Our executive producer is Allison Benedikt. Video of this interview was produced by Paula Neudorf. Cinematography by Zach Caldwell with additional camera work by Caleb McLaughlin, audio by Tony Dancing. It was edited by Eddie Costas. Brooke Minters is the executive producer of podcast video. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Matty Masiello, Afim Shapiro, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman and Sam Dolnick. Next week, David talks to Sean Penn about acting, politics and what makes him tick.
- [52:36]
Reese Witherspoon
Incompetence drives me out of my mind. It triggers me on a level you can't imagine. I start to equate my soul with a volcano.
- [52:49]
Lulu Garcia Navarro
I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is the interview from the New York Times.
- [53:09]
Reese Witherspoon
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