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- [00:01]
Dylan Mulvaney
Hi, is this an okay time? It's your girl, Dylan Mulvaney, and I am inviting you to my weekly cocktail party and my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour, brought to you by Lemonada Media. Life is stressful and there is so much darkness in the world. I think we could all use a little bit of trans joy. So join me every week as I interview some of my favorite A list, celebrity friends and gurus, and of course, the dolls. While we sip and split, spill the scalding hot tea. So put your worries aside and join me at the Dylan Hour. Listen to the Dylan Hour, making its debut March 19. You can listen on Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Love ya.
- [00:41]
Ione Skye
Lemonade One of the most iconic images from 1980 Cinema is John Cusack standing with a boombox held over his head blasting in youn Eyes by Peter Gabriel. It's been shown so many times as a clip, as a meme, that it's almost divorced from its original context. In the film say Anything, not to mention who's on the other side of that iconic image. You don't see them while the camera is focused on John and his boombox. The answer to that question is actress Ione Skye playing brainy beauty Diane Court. And Skye has quite a story of her own, even if she will most likely go down in history for that scene and that movie. In her new memoir, cleverly titled say Everything, she peels back the curtain on her upbringing, her marriages, her career, and it turns out there is a very interesting woman with a ton of stories on the other end of that famous scene. The book loosely follows a few key eras in Skye's life. First, we learn about her famous dad, the prominent 1960s folk singer Donovan, who didn't stick around for very long after getting her mom pregnant. As she grew up having never met her dad, her family was anything but conventional, with a revolving door of father figures and all sorts of adventures led by her mom, a fashion model and 60s it girl who dated some of the biggest musicians of the era, like Jim Morrison and Keith Richards. Then we get into Skai's career. She became an actress young, with some of her biggest roles coming in her teen years. She was only 16 when she was cast in say Anything. In the final section, Skai dives into her love life. As it turns out, she followed in her mom's footsteps in one important way, a weakness for dating musicians. She had a torrid relationship with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers before diving into a marriage with Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys. Ultimately, the marriage fell apart as sky followed her heart into relationships, women, and then a more lasting marriage with Australian singer songwriter Ben Lee. It's a lot. Oh, and then also throw in there a reconciliation with her father and a burgeoning painting side Hustle and a lot of fascinating stories from film sets. Like I said, it's a big life for someone who isn't always the most remembered of the 1980s Hollywood starlets. But throughout the journey, sky, who narrates the audiobook herself, is candid and vulnerable about her insecurities, ambitions, and her fears. Today we'll be sharing the first chapter of the book, focusing on her early life and experiences growing up.
- [03:15]
Part 1 Girlhood 1 the Bastard 1973-1979 I was three years old and my brother six when Carl, our first stepdad, blasted into our lives. Within weeks of their first date, mom had accepted his marriage proposal and the three of us left sunny LA for the east coast with a man we hardly knew. Carl was really from Florida but moved around a lot. We didn't yet know why. He was rich and had recently purchased a brand new modern house in Lush Green Ridgefield, Connecticut. It was 10 times the size of our snug West Hollywood apartment, with sky high ceilings and wall to wall windows, like living in a big box set down next to a forest. Mom had let her friends talk her into marrying Carl. Let someone look after you for a change, they'd said. A nice Jewish girl at heart. Mom did want looking after, and Ridgefield was only an hour and a half train ride from my Grandpa Benny and Grandma Tilly in Queens. The comfort of having her parents nearby was the deciding factor. For mom, this partnership wasn't about love. It was, she hoped and believed, about security. I was too young to remember the wedding in our new backyard, but old enough that moments from that day, brought back to life by photos and long talks with mom and Donno, are clear enough to touch. Like following my big brother away from the noisy party and down the sloping lawns and into the quiet woods. Smoke, the white German shepherd puppy Carl had given us, bounded ahead as we disappeared into the pines, leaving the wedding and all that it meant for us behind. It was Carl who finally came looking for us. We heard his big booming laugh when we appeared from the trees. Dono in his mini suit, me picking pine needles from my hair. Carl still had his dark Florida tan, which was set off by his bright white three piece suit and matching bright white teeth. His hair was long and blond and gold rings shaped like suns and moons flashed on his fingers. Look at your mother, he said, leading us back to the party. Isn't she the most beautiful woman in the world? In pictures of the reception, Enid stands unsmiling under a yellow and white striped tent, surrounded by guests in their embroidered prairie dresses and velvet suits and over the knee, suede boots and capes and fedoras. She's undeniably beautiful and wispy as a daffodil in her white silk wedding suit. Before we left Los Angeles, she'd had her long strawberry waves cropped into a pixie cut that made her a dead ringer for the actress Mia Farrow. With almost no makeup, her skin glows, but her eyes are dull and far away. I already understood at that young age that beauty mattered. When mom read to me from Grimm's Fairy Tales, the words jumped from practically every page. In the pink, the maiden was more beautiful than any artist could portray with paint. In Snow White, the evil queen's sole desire was to be the most beautiful in the land. In Sleeping Beauty. Beauty was one of the gifts the fairies gave Princess Aurora. From the way Carl spoke, it seemed that beauty might be the most valuable gift of all because beautiful girls would always be taken care of. For a time, we coasted on the adventure side of the wave. Carl bounded around the house like a jittery giant who'd consumed too much sugar. But our stoic nanny, Cosette, kept the peace and made us feel safe. She was from Haiti and spoke to us in English and French. And she carried us around, one on each hip. Cosette, put them down. Mom would say, they're too heavy. Fortunately for us, Cosette didn't seem to mind. We needed her warmth and attention. Mom's once powerful maternal instincts weren't what they'd been before Carl. Her thoughts seemed a million miles away. She'd stopped cooking and got paper thin. I thought Carl was exciting in a dangerous kind of way. I loved discovering the random treasures he brought back from his mysterious travels to South America. Tucked into drawers and bookshelves like Easter eggs. When I admired a heavy pewter seal that materialized one day, Carl said proudly, you like that? I stole that for your mother. I'd nod along when he explained that stealing wasn't wrong. Getting caught was. Back then, I still had my father's last name, Leech. Sky was my middle name, which Carl liked best. One day, sky, he liked to say, I'm going to buy you a purple jet because Ione means purple jewel. Did you know that? I didn't believe everything he said, but pretended to. With each of my fathers, I would try to be easy and sweet, wanting them to love me more than anyone else, even more than my mom, as I always wanted to be somebody's favorite. Sometimes Carl's promises did come true. I'll bring you back an emerald, he said as he and mom headed off on a business trip to Colombia, and sure enough, they'd returned with a bag of sparkling emeralds. I got to pick one to have made into a ring. On my fourth birthday, Carl presented me with my emerald set in gold prongs on a delicate band. It was very fancy and too grown up for a little girl, which made it even better. He told me I was special because I was deep and beautiful like mom and an older soul than my big brother. Carl was fond of Donno, but I got all the compliments. He also told me often that I was the reincarnated soul of a baby mom almost had once but didn't, which I would later learn was an abortion. I'd really wanted to be here, so I came back, and that's why you are so special, he'd explain. I had no understanding of exactly what he was talking about, but often fantasized about a ghost baby flying around a fairy tale English cottage waiting to be born as me. It was a funny image, but also strange and unsettling. Carl did not share his reincarnation theory with mom, only me. There was something melancholy about it, and mom didn't like to talk about sad things. She was sad enough already. Anyone could see mom wasn't thriving in her role as Carl's beautiful wife. She'd grown distant and closed off, retreating more every day into a shell that looked like our mom but wasn't her. She was surely suffering from worry, stress, and depression, but as kids we didn't know that term. The best word we had for mom in Ridgefield was frozen. Mom wasn't just isolating and missing her old friends. She'd been tricked. We all had, it turned out, the excitable big kid version of Carl we all liked at first was just one side of him. The other side had a terrible temper, possibly fueled by cocaine. In retrospect, before Ridgefield, Carl had hidden his bad side from us, but now that he had us, he didn't need to do that anymore. The scariest thing about Carl's temper was how unpredictable it was. All of us were bracing for an explosion, the time mom accidentally threw away $10,000 in cash he'd hidden in a wastebasket as the Two of them vainly scoured the local dump for the money. Mom remembers thinking, if he hits me, I'll have a reason to leave. But Carl just laughed and delivered a philosophical speech about how his material stuff the BMWs, the boat, the gold watches and custom suits didn't matter to him. Only love mattered. Carl gave this speech often and genuinely seemed to mean it every time. But then maybe the next day, he'd find a half eaten bowl of chicken soup Donna left under his bed. Carl was a health nut, so we were supposed to be vegetarians or a wet bathing suit on the Eames chair in the living room, and the windows would vibrate from his rage. We'd all grown to fear Carl, but Donno did the most. My brother especially hated to be picked up from school by our speed demon stepdad. Ask Carl to slow down, he'd whisper, gripping my wrist in the backseat. I liked to go fast and wanted to impress Carl by being tough and unafraid. But I knew the rules. If Dono asked Carl to slow down, he might swerve the car to scare him even more. It was shameful for a boy to be afraid, but charming for a girl. So I learned to play damsel in distress. Please slow down, Carl, I'd plead. I'm scared. I think we were always waiting for Carl to hurt Donna with more than his words. For the moment he'd finally raised his hand to my brother. The day it happened, Carl was supposed to be on a business trip, so Donna and I were in the living room wrestling with a leather Sako beanbag chair that was not a toy. I was pinned underneath, screaming and laughing, when I felt Donno's weight chirk away. There was a whack and a thud. The bean bag lifted from me and I saw Carl press it down on my fallen brother. Donno's screams grew muffled and he thrashed his skinny legs like a bug under a rock. How do you like it? Carl yelled, veins bulging. My brother stopped kicking, stopped screaming. Why couldn't I scream? Why couldn't I kick? I wanted to kick Carl right in the shins. I didn't ask to be saved like this, but I couldn't make myself move. Slowly, my brother sat up and Carl walked away. Donna wasn't crying, just staring ahead with a blankness that reminded me of Mom. He'd gone to that frozen place where it was easier to be. It would be years before we told mom about what happened that day. Worrying her would only make her worse, we thought. The longer we stayed in Ridgefield, the less she spoke or laughed or came out of her bedroom. In Los Angeles, Mom's doors had always been open to us. Every morning I'd climb out of my toddler bed, run to her room, and throw myself into her sleeping body. Mom would open her arms and pull me close, but I was more cautious now. I rarely knocked on the double bedroom doors when she was in there. Sometimes I'd stand outside, my cheek pressed to the heavy wood, until I heard her breathe or cough or rustle the covers. In wintertime, if it was too quiet, I'd pull on my coat and snow boots and run outside to check that her window was closed. I was worried mom might literally freeze like our pet parakeets had our first winter in Ridgefield. Ice Storm Felix had been a hell of a storm. The power lines came down in the middle of the night, and without heat the house got so cold that Carl carried us from our beds to sleep by the fire in the sunken living room. In the morning, our glass walled box looked out on a glistening white wonderland so beautiful that we gasped and saw our breath. Choo choo, went Donno, puffing clouds of white vapor. Choo choo. I mimicked, running after him to the kitchen. We both screamed at once. The little yellow birds we'd brought home from the pet store just a week earlier lay stiff and frozen on the bottom of their cage. I wouldn't have expected Carl to remember them, but mom loved the birds as much as we did. She'd loved them and still had forgotten about them. Mom wasn't strong enough to protect us, but the woods were. If the weather allowed, that's where we'd be. Atv. He could barely see over the wheel, and I'd wander, running my stick through the soft earth beneath me and stopping every few steps to crouch in the roots and leaves, communing with the gleaming crawling beetles. I loved to build fairy houses. A mushroom cap for a table, soft moss for a carpet. A fir branch roof. In my fairy houses, there were no sharp corners, no closed doors, and no fathers.
- [15:26]
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- [16:36]
Jackie Danziger
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- [17:34]
Ione Skye
H-E-L-P.com When I was five, Carl announced that we were moving back to the West Coast. He said he was craving a more happening scene and Topanga Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains was where it was at, really. I think he was just trying to hold on to mom, hoping Los Angeles would warm her up and bring her back to him. Donno and I wanted mom to come back too, but not back. To Carl, Topanga was most definitely a scene, a fringy hippie enclave where babies were bathed outdoors in tin buckets and pot plants grew in the window boxes. Artists, musicians and off the grid types had flocked there since the 60s. Some of the most famous townsfolk were members of the Eagles, the Beach Boys, and the Doors. Neil Young recorded After the Gold Rush in his house at the top of the canyon, though, Carl's new biker friends seemed to feed his bad side. He was less around, and life was good again. Donno and I went a little feral, running barefoot all year long, riding the neighbors ponies bareback and drinking fresh milk from their goats. In summertime, we went to a local day camp. Every morning a counselor in a beige Ford Pinto would come to pick us up, blasting our theme song, Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy, through the open windows. I'd always have to sit on a teenage boy camper's lap, which I came to realize I didn't mind one bit. Mom's eyes got their shine back in Topanga. She was cooking again, something she'd always loved to do before Ridgefield. And she'd even started a freewheeling annual party by the local creek. But the three of us knew, without even talking about it, that the restless canyon wasn't our forever home, more like a stepping stone to a new life. In the bicentennial summer of 1976, mom took her first step toward independence from Carl. She didn't have the courage or money to just walk away, but somehow convinced him that they should try living apart for the sake of convenience. He would stay in Topanga, where it was easier to run his business. Exactly what that was, mom never told us. And the three of us would move back to Hollywood, closer to good schools and Mom's old friends. I would miss Topanga's creeks and tadpoles and goats and owls and wildflowers, the twisty wind whip drive to the beach. But I wouldn't miss Carl as much as I liked being his favorite. The story of how mom quietly, passively shook him for good by encouraging one of her easily persuadable girlfriends to steal him away is for another time. But know that she did. She divorced him, and we were free for a spell. It was us against the world. Mom found a cheap rental house, a 1917 Craftsman on Wilton Place in the Hollywood foothills, safely above Franklin Avenue, the gateway to Hollywood's gritty side. Dono and I adored our new home. It was so warm and cozy. We didn't mind the occasional raccoon in the attic, the skunks in the basement, or even the possible ghost of old Mrs. Plato, the previous tenant who'd died in Mom's room. The neighborhood was great, too. Instead of bikers watching over us, we now had a friendly community of working class families. Kids played ball in the street, and we all knew the mailman, just like on tv. How fun. Newly single Enid was back to her old magnetically maternal self. Everyone wanted to be near her and the porch door slammed non stop with friends coming and going. If Topanga was rhinestone cowboy, Wilton Place was Let him in by Paul McCartney to support us, mom found part time work catering and waitressing at Oscars Wine Bar on Sunset. On the side she started selling pot, which involved lots of hanging out at home and lots of smoking. Mom didn't like the feeling of alcohol or hard drugs, but she did like pot. Aside from be kind and her bedtime mantra wash your face and hands and brush your teeth, there were no rules anymore, no one to shame us or inhibit us. Donno and I were free to be him and me, raiding Mom's closet and running wild in her groovy 60s relics. Happiness was a messy house, steaming bowls of chicken soup and dozing off in Mom's bed to the taxi theme song on tv. I can't say I missed my dad. He'd never been there to miss. I don't remember questioning why. He wasn't a flesh and blood person who could hug me and teach me to ride a bike, but just a soothing voice flowing from the speakers. Only in my teens would Donovan's songs of love and togetherness start to really sting. In second grade I discovered I was something called a bastard. I learned it from a TV miniseries we were all talking about at school called the Bastard. Like all my classmates who were allowed to watch it, I loved the show, a period piece about the illegitimate son of an English duke. During one post episode recap in the schoolyard, I proudly announced to my circle of friends, I'm a bastard. This did not make me more popular. Surprisingly. Apparently some kids squares had to ask their parents if they were allowed to play with bastards. While this hurt my feelings, I knew plenty of kids outside of school who could relate to my non traditional family. I was beginning to develop what would be a lifelong intrigue with other kids of famous dads. I felt an easy familiarity with them and they weren't hard to find. A few of my mom's very best friends were Jenny Boyd, whose daughter with Mick Fleetwood was Amelia Fleetwood Naritte Wilde, who had Jason Nesmith with the Monkees, Michael Nesmith and Marcia Hunt, mother to Mick Jagger's daughter Carys. I'll never forget the first time I saw Karis. I came flying down the stairs from my bedroom in a disco tube top and terry cloth shorts, excited to meet the new girl in town, fresh from London. Mom was at the door hugging a chic black woman with red lips and full, glamorous hair. I'd learned all about Marcia, the singer and actress who starred in the London musical Hair and likely inspired the Rolling Stones song Brown Sugar. But it was Karis I wanted to see. She had a shy smile and shiny brown curls and looked uncomfortably hot in her prim wool skirt and knee socks. Hi, I said, already turning back up the stairs. Come on. Karis and I were inseparable from that day on. We made up dance routines to Michael Jackson's off the Wall, sang along to the Wiz soundtrack, watched every episode of the Love Boat on Fantasy island, and endlessly painted our nails, or preferably, our mother's. Marcia was always game to let us mess her fingers up, laughing her lovely throaty laugh. She'd complain the polish contained bits of carpet and fluff and let us do it all over again the next week. Karis was a private person by nature. She rarely talked about her dad, but I knew from mom that Mick had been absent for most of Karis's life. I also knew that thanks to some nudging from Mick's new fiance, Jerry hall, he'd been seeing more of Karis. I wanted to know what it was like to meet your famous dad. How are you supposed to act? Did Karis call him dad or Mick? Did she like him? Love him? Did he say he loved her? What I ended up asking when I finally got the nerve, wasn't any of those things. We were having a sleepover, lying on Enid's rattan chaise longue and reading comics. I touched my friend's foot with mine. Karis, I said, trying to sound off the cuff. She didn't look up from her Archie comic. Yes, she said in her proper English accent. Are you ever mad at your dad now? She looked up. By the way she pursed her lips, I could tell she didn't want to go there. But she did for me. Oh, I don't know, she said. Once I showed him a picture of me from when I was little and he said, I remember that sweater. She crossed her arms, looking out the window, and I said, and I thought, no, you don't. You weren't there. Did you say that? I asked. No. She shook her head. That was all I got. It wasn't the big emotional conversation I was hoping for, but it was something. Watching Karis grow closer to her dad, I thought more and more about mine. Sometimes I imagined him doing normal dad things, like driving me to school or hugging me goodnight. Sometimes I pictured us taking a trip to India, where Donovan had gone with the Beatles to visit the Maharishi. I would wear purple tie dye and flowers in my hair like Cynthia Lennon in a magazine picture I'd seen of the group. My father would wear a canary yellow tunic and make up funny songs about me strumming his guitar, although I couldn't imagine what he'd write about not knowing me. When I was 7, I had my first opportunity to meet Donovan. He was opening for yes at the Forum, and Nurit offered to take us and her son Jason, who was Donno's age. My brother was so excited to see our dad after seven years. I can't believe he's at the Forum, he kept saying. The who just played there. I was too proud to go. If our father had wanted us there, he would have invited us. He would have sent tickets. The morning after the concert, my brother came bounding down to the breakfast table, manic, with stories about YES's light show and our dad's freestyle rendition of Cosmic Wheels and Chris Squire's triple neck bass and the epic solo riff on Roundabout and did you talk to Dawn? Mom finally interrupted. Yeah, said my brother through a mouthful of cereal. He was really nice. Hmm, mom replied opaquely. Did he ask about me? I had to know. Oh, no. But he sort of patted Jason's hair and said, you must be the girl. The girl? I said, confused. I didn't yet know that in his few and far between letters to mom, sent through lawyers and his monthly child support checks, Donovan had never once referred to me by my name. To my father, I was always only the girl. Lowercase. I think he thought Jason was you, dono clarified. I was horrified. Jason had long hair and big pretty eyes, but still my father thought a boy was me. Did you tell him it wasn't me? I demanded. I said Donna, scratching his head. Did you tell him? I screamed. I think Jason was about to, said Donna. But then Donovan just Mom set her mug down a little too hard, splashing coffee. He just what? Well, he was busy and there were people everywhere, and he just sort of My brother looked down at his lap, as if realizing he didn't have the answer we were looking for, walked away. It was hard to pinpoint what hurt most, that my father had thought a boy was me, or that he'd call me the girl, or that moments after meeting me for the first time in my life. So he thought Donovan had done it again, just walked away.
- [29:00]
Ready. To hear the rest of the story. Visit YourNextListen.com Copyright 2025 by Ione Skye Audio Excerpt courtesy of Simon and Schuster Audio. From the audiobook say Everything by Ione sky, read by the author. Published by Simon and Schuster Audio, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon and Schuster, Inc. Your next listen is a production of Lemonada Media in Simon and Schuster Audio. I'm your host, Jackie Danziger. I produce this series with Lizzie Breyer Bowman. Isara Aceves is our associate producer. Bobby Woody is our audio engineer. Music by APM Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Whittles Wax. Production support from Lara Blackman, Tom Spain, Sarah Lieberman and Lauren Pierce. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Does your office have an evil donut bringer?
- [30:04]
Jackie Danziger
Do you have a personal canary in a coal mine? Are you guilty of over apologizing? I'm Liz Craft. And I'm Sarah Fain. We're television writers and showrunners and the hosts of Happier in Hollywood, a podcast where we share all the juicy details of our career in television and offer tips and strategies that will help you and us have an even more successful, satisfying and fun career.
- [30:25]
Ione Skye
Whether you're in Hollywood, Dollywood, or somewhere in between.
- [30:28]
Jackie Danziger
Check out Happier in Hollywood every Thursday from Lemonada Media.
- [30:32]
Chris Guillabo
Hey there. I'm Chris Guillabo. I'm an author of books including Time anxiety and the $100 startup, and I'm also the host of side Hustle School, a daily podcast that's been running for more than 2,900 days and counting, with real stories of people creating new sources of income without going into debt and without quitting their job. Each episode is short, actionable, and designed to get you started today, whether you have an idea or you're just looking for inspiration. So if you're ready to create financial freedom and build something for yourself, or even if you're just curious, hit, follow or subscribe wherever you listen. New episodes every day.