To The Contrary

Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

Patricia Arquette, currently starring in a new comedy series, High Desert.

I think we all know somebody like Peggy who who's kind of a Tasmanian devil and a human cyclone.

And I love this character.

{MUSIC } Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome to to the contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, actor and women's rights advocate Patricia Arquette.

Arquette has won two Emmys and when she accepted her Oscar for best Supporting Actress in the film "Boyhood" in 2015, she used the occasion to call for equal pay and equal rights for women.

She received a standing ovation.

Arquette is currently starring in a new Apple TV comedy series, High Desert, where she plays a woman, Peggy, who's down on her luck.

She's a recovering addict whose mother recently died.

Her husband, played by Matt Dillon, is in jail and she finds a job as a private investigator.

It's actually an unpaid internship.

So, welcome, Patricia Arquette.

Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So I watched the first episode of High Desert.

And why did you why this role?

Why now?

This role came to me about six or now, about seven years ago.

It was slightly different, but I thought that the writers were really talented.

It was three women who work together, and they had a very original voice for comedy.

And it was based on one of their sisters.

Her name was Marjorie, and she was a drug addict who struggled and went in and out of her addiction.

And one day she said to her, You know what?

I'm going to be a P.I.. And she was like, Well, that's crazy.

But it's also kind of you would be a great P.I..

So it was based on this moment.

Of course, Marjorie subsequently lost her battle with addiction.

But this is sort of a celebration of Marjorie's wild spirit and her love of fashion and opera and people and craziness and the drama that she created around her and her wild, colorful worlds.

Peggy, you need a job.

Mm hmm.

I have a job.

Look around you.

And don't.

Don't disrespect me because we cool tips.

Well, you work as a fictional barmaid.

That's acting.

It's my job.

Oh, Chris Cooley, Gallantry.

How are you?

This is Chris.

We're not selling Cooley.

How?

You like your car and go.

Let's at least get it appraised.

Go, go, go.

Get out!

Get out!

Okay.

Stuart and I will call you.

Okay.

You.

Nice to meet you.

Don't wait for the call.

So far, the right time.

Never.

I think we all know somebody like Peggy, who's kind of a Tasmanian devil kind of human cyclone.

And I love this character, especially after doing Severance on Apple, which is a very structured world.

Looks a certain way, and I felt like it was time to have a counterculture comedy.

Then what's harder for you to do as an actor?

Comedy or drama?

I haven't done a lot of comedy, so it's not so much in my wheelhouse.

It's kind of new territory for me.

But honestly, after coming out of the pandemic, I felt desperate to laugh, and I felt like we all needed to laugh.

And it was such a joy and a gift to shoot this because we were all laughing all the time.

And I feel like that's such a healing thing in life.

LAUGHTER.

Yes, very much so.

And how was it working with Bernadette Peters and Matt Dillon?

Yeah, it was incredible.

Bernadette Peters is an icon, we all know.

I mean, from stage and screen and incredible singer.

And she has this girlish quality that my mom definitely had.

My mom passed away several years ago, but she had this kind of girlish quality.

And also, Nancy, one of our writers who mom had passed away, she reminded her of her in some kind of ways.

And even though Peggy, my character, is very irresponsible, the one thing she did do is take care of her mom.

And she did that since she was a teenager.

And her mom always saw the bright side in Peggy and never really saw her for all of her foibles and sort of forgave her everything.

And when she loses her mom, she kind of loses her biggest champion.

And even though she is a drug addict and she really struggles with that a lot, I mean, she's some she goes to a clinic and, you know, the check in for her methadone and outside and some guy is comforting her and offers her if she wants to cop some drugs.

She said, no, I'm on methadone.

Well, maybe give me your number just in case.

How did you play that person who was highly functioning?

I mean, really functioning at a high level, not all doing good, but also a drug addict.

I have known several drug addicts in my life, and some of them were incredibly high functioning.

And then one day they were dead.

It's like especially these days with fentanyl, it is just one addicts or one moment away, you know, from from death.

So for me, I did.

While I recognize that they created a lot of destruction and and pain in their wake.

They also had beautiful qualities and they were funny and they were sweet and they were endearing and they were clever and they were manipulative.

And they were many, many things, and... Peggy, you know, Ginger was a regular and Knight Rider?

Semi regular.

Oh, excuse me.

Does the talent go in and make paper dolls out of the ledgers?

And if she's on a horse, who's got their eyes on the books?

Anything could be happening right now.

Oh, excuse me.

No.

Now they're eating each other's faces.

That's not accurate to the period.

I kind of wanted to celebrate those people, too, that I have lost.

How does she develop what?

What goes on for her later in the series?

Does she become more responsible?

Does she, you know, succumb to her foibles?

What happens?

I think she has to deal with certain.

You know, they say that you have to live life on life's terms.

And there's certain things in her life that come back and get back in front of her face.

And she has to look at them and she doesn't want to.

And part of the reason her life is so chaotic and crazy is she is in avoidance of her pain.

I don't think she's proud when she slips and takes drugs.

But she also, like an addict, makes excuses for why these things are okay.

Oh, no.

This out.

This is acid.

This is a spiritual journey.

I'm going, Oh, no this.

This other thing.

You know, she always has a kind of excuse for it, but it's a very quick slippery slope for her.

And she's very high energy.

And talking to you now, you have you and I don't know, obviously, I don't know you personally, but you seem to be a moderated energy kind of person.

Was it hard to play somebody who was in 25 places in one second?

Our director, Jay Roach, who is a great comedy director and directed like Meet the Fockers and other really funny movies, he was like, She's like a rock and roll hummingbird.

And that's the thing.

She's constantly moving.

It's almost like those people that they're rushing through life, like living 20 lives at one time.

So I felt like that was definitely different than my own nature.

But the right choice for this character.

And you're you have a child in this series, too, right?

I mean, your actual child.

Yeah, so my daughter had gone with me to do research in Palm Springs before we started, and the writers and creators met her and they're like, We I want you to play Peg and And she was like, I have to audition first.

And she auditioned and obviously, like, you know, she really knows how to play me.

She she knows when I'm hurt, when I'm angry, when I'm.

And she did a great job.

She's also in this Anne Hathaway movie with Peter Dinklage that'll be coming out.

And she's really wonderful.

Actress.

Harlow Jane is her name.

Do you see?, you are a fourth generation actor.

Do you see parts of yourself or your parents or grandparents in her?

I mean, sometimes there's little faces or a lot of looks, and I really am sad that my mom and dad didn't get to meet her because she has interests.

She's very interested in psychology and psychiatry.

And I'm like, you know, your grandma was a therapist and she would have loved to talk to you about this.

She loves Greece like I love Greece and I love Greece because my mom taught mythology and brought us to Greece, backpacking Europe on $20 a day when we were kids.

And and then my dad and he would love her so much.

The smart, spunky, strong young woman who's really brilliant.

So, yeah, I see a lot of my parents in her, but not so much.

The way she looks has the depth of her and how much they would love her.

And I wish she could feel their love.

You know, a lot of parents tell their kids, I mean, obviously some kids, lots of kids take over the family business what have you or follow their parents into certain careers.

But there are also lots of parents who say, oh, don't become whatever it is that I am.

You don't see the inside of it.

You see the outside much more appealing than the insides.

Did your parents tell you that?

My mom really didn't want me to be an actor.

But having said that, I had seen the hard side of acting.

My dad had really worked so hard to feed five kids and his wife and him seven people on a character actor's, salary and lifestyle.

I would see him sometimes go weeks auditioning for things that he didn't get.

So my mom was really sad when I decided to be an actor, and I didn't.

I never thought I was going to be a star.

I didn't think that that was necessarily guaranteed.

I didn't have an unrealistic idea of show business because I saw how hard my dad struggled.

But it's sort of like saying to a bird, Don't sing.

You can't say that to a bird.

You know, you have to follow your heart and I'm sure in our family now, my daughter's fifth generation, I'm sure when they figure out DNA, they're going to say, oh, look, you all have this acting DNA, OK yeah, I know, we know.

We know.

It's it's in our bodies.

I presume, as a staunch women's rights advocate and as a woman, I thank you for everything you do, not just acting wise, but politically as well for women that you wouldn't take a role that you thought might set women back in some way or other.

Is that true?

And if so, how do you see Peggy Newman in terms of women's progress in Hollywood?

Well, I certainly don't think women should have to play good girls, perfect people.

No, actually, I think that this is part of the celebration of women's freedom to be able to play a flawed character, a mess.

There was a time where really you couldn't do that.

And I just directed my first film, and I still feel this pushback of some of the choices my my lead character makes.

And it still this subconscious bias about how we want all girls to be good little girls and perfect girls.

And what does it mean for us to like a heroine?

What is she supposed to be like?

What's her sexuality supposed to be?

I mean, it's just all these layers of an onion of subconscious bias and, you know, it seems like it's never done with the onion peel.

You mentioned that you directed a movie that you've worked on, projects, etc..

I see from an outsider's perspective, all this voluminous of women, people of color, different perspectives, different countries starting their own production companies and being in charge, not just looking for roles, but creating roles for themselves as sort of the answer to will women ever reach equality and people of color in Hollywood?

Do you see it that way?

Well, I think that's part of it.

And I think that, you know, people definitely have.

I've had a production company for many, many years.

That doesn't mean this project, which I'm a producer of.

It's taken me seven years to get this made and I'm who I am.

I had won multiple Emmys, an Oscar, and still.

So I can't really I can't say that people need to work harder than they already are.

The movie that I directed, again, that's probably taken us five years to get done.

So, yes, I think that's part of the answer, but not all of it.

What how has winning, particularly the Oscar?

The Emmys are nice, but I supposedly Oscars changed careers.

Has it helped you?

Has you know, has it raised expectations too high?

What are the good and bad sides of winning an Oscar?

I don't know.

They say there's like some Oscar curse.

But after you win an Oscar, you don't work for a while.

And it kind of was wondering if that was true for a minute.

But then I started working again.

So, I mean, I never expected to win an Oscar, so it was a great surprise.

And in that moment I was like, you know, if I'm going to win this thing, I want everyone to win something.

So I'm going to talk about women's rights and women's pay.

I see how much it changed other people's perspective of me.

And it is a small community and it is a great honor and it is something that I'll always be able to say.

I had this incredible, bizarre experience and I think it made people that I work with.

listen to me a little bit more.

My ideas.

It did make them listen to you more.

Did it open more doors for you?

Yeah, I'm sure did.

I'm sure it did.

There's going to be a second season of Severance.

Is that being held up because of the writer's strike?

Well, right now, I don't really have an update exactly, but I think it you know, it's definitely a work in progress.

But I have to say, Severance always is a very beguiling, confusing process.

But I think it will be really wonderful.

I think I think the audiences will really like it and it will be really special when they when they do see it.

How is the writer's strike going to have an impact on High Desert, if at all?

I asked, for example, there there will be a period, I suppose, with with productions shut down or some of them, and there will be, you know, a narrowing of the pipeline of things moving on to the market and therefore maybe more viewing of of series that are already finished and out there.

So do you think it might have that impact on High Desert?

You know, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure exactly how it's going to pan out.

It will definitely slow some things down.

And if they do decide to pick up a season two of High Desert, it will slow that down, too.

I don't know how long the strike will go on for, but I think it's you know, there's a lot of important things that have to be ironed out with the strike.

So first of all, I mean, just the concept of AI writing movies.

- Right AI writing TV shows AI directing TV shows.

AI actors, AI lighting .

AI... Who needs makeup when you got an AI actor?

It really could displace this whole industry.

But I mean, there is there's still a formulaic aspect to AI writing and yet I personally don't believe I mean AI will have a lot of bad influences for sure and cut a lot of people out of work.

But it it's not to the point yet where I can be creative and free associate the way human minds can.

I think it could very quickly write a lot of and shoot and make the whole thing.

A lot of superhero movies and make a lot of money or some horror movies.

All of these things.

But I said this before that humans have to tell the story of humans because what you're not going to be making is these little jewels of movies, these even groundbreaking small movies, or, you know, where's your Raging Bull going to come from?

Who is going to make Citizen Kane?

Now?

You're going to be making, you know, giant blockbuster movies.

And that's kind of it.

So we need human beings.

We need our flaws, we need our struggles, our survival mechanisms.

We need to work through these things ourselves.

But AI or no AI, I remember listening to an interview with the movie critic of The New York Times who just left or announced he was leaving a month or so ago, and he said he was leaving, quite frankly, because of the, you know, Hollywood addiction to the Marvel Comics, DC Comics, all these all these movies that are based largely on special effects, not so much on human creativity, not so much on being different, but finding a formula and copying it, copying it, reshaping it, redoing them a little bit here, a little bit there.

Do you think that the comic industry is having a bad impact on creativity in Hollywood?

I can't say a bad impact because I mean, when I was little, I had the Superman.

I mean, I had Wonder Woman.

I can't say that because it is turning some kid's minds on and their creativity and inspiring them in some kind of way.

So I can't I can't say that it's all bad.

Having said that, somehow this business model and the pandemic certainly didn't help with no one going to movie theaters, but it started squeezing out middle and smaller stories and productions, and the margins had to be so much higher.

Your profit margins had to be just, you know, astronomical.

So, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I guess it's greed.

But also we have to consciously consume.

We want great artists to work, then we have to consume their material because we're saying to the studios then we want this .... And I want to go out on the influence of the MeToo movement on Hollywood.

I know a guy who's medium sized agent in Hollywood and asked him several months ago how, what what has happened as a result of it.

And he said, nothing.

Nothing's changed.

Do you agree with that?

Or do you think that women rising up or all kinds of women directors, producers, writers, actors, the list goes on, has or has not had an impact on the so-called casting couch?

First of all, my sister Rosanna was one of the first people, you know, came out in that run Ronan Farrow article about Harvey Weinstein.

I do see myself the change on sets that people are just a little more cautious with what they say, what they do, how they treat someone a little.

You know, they really talk to love scenes more, slow things down a bit.

All of that kind of stuff.

Like, even I when I was directing this movie, there were things written that were supposed to be naked.

And when I talk to the actor, if they were not comfortable, is like, I don't care.

You don't have to take your shirt off.

You do whatever you feel like acting in the scene, you're not going to be disappointing me and no one's going to tell you.

You need to do the love scenes too, so you don't need to take your clothes off.

If you guys aren't comfortable, do whatever you feel comfortable in.

You must be one of the few directors in Hollywood who are comfortable with that,No?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I do think ...., telling actors you don't you don't have to be naked.

It just seems like every he's naked all the time now.

Well, some you know, listen, I'm very uncomfortable being naked myself.

And yet there were times where I felt like my character and their survival mechanism and how they felt about their sexuality and their body was totally different than how I feel about my body.

So I'm playing this person who is more confident or I'm playing this person who is more sexual, or I'm playing this person who feels like they have to get love through their sex sexuality, they're going to make a different choice than I personally would make.

But has Hollywood changed?

Look, I get shocked all the time when I hear these new stories, like, come on, how can you be doing this in 2023 knowing all you do?

I do think it's changed a bit in that, you know, a lot of things are now run by multinational corporations and they really have no patience for that.

So it's not a joke.

It sure do it.

Destroy your own career.

Nobody's going to hold your hand through it.

Fascinating.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

And just loads of success wth High Desert on Apple TV +.

We're really appreciate appreciative that you spent time with us.

And that's it for this edition of To the Contrary.

Please keep the conversation going on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

And visit our website, pbs.org.

Slash to the contrary.

And whether you agree or think to the contrary.

See you next time.

{MUSIC } Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.