A Comprehensive Guide to Prince on the Anniversary of ‘1999’

Though it was his fifth album, “1999” put Prince on the map. Shondaland celebrates the legend he became — and always will be — with a retrospective of his incredible career.

What becomes a music legend? A multitude of awards? The ability and agility to play all your own instruments? A commanding stage presence? A career of sold-out tours and a generation of fans? Masterful and infectious writing, for himself and other artists? Hundreds of songs that explore everything from sex and love to the end days to even the complicated music business, with an intense magnetism? Prince had all of this and more — indeed, a legend who sold more than 100 million albums during his lifetime and who, even after he passed in April 2016, sold more music than any other artist that year.

Prince used his formidable talent to etch his work into the zeitgeist, forever to be savored as a celebration of love, horniness, spirituality, equality, and his unique ideas of exalted living. A tireless virtuoso who could do splits in heels while executing a flawlessly innovative 20-minute guitar solo, he released 42 studio albums during his too-short life and fought relentlessly for his rights as an artist along the way. His accolades, of course, are endless: He won something like 32 awards, including seven Grammys (with more than 42 nominations), an Oscar (for Best Original Song Score for Purple Rain), four MTV Video Music Awards, and a Golden Globe. And lest we forget, Prince also garnered countless American Music Awards and nominations, 11 ASCAP Pop Music Awards, inductions into various Halls of Fame — the man was basically the Mozart of our time.

Prince’s trajectory may have seemed predetermined, but his eventual ascension to becoming a musical icon had to start somewhere. One moment that arguably served as the springboard to what would become his breathtaking career occurred 40 years ago today on October 27, 1982, when his fifth studio album, 1999, was released. Though Prince already boasted hits like “Controversy” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” 1999 ushered Prince’s special brand of racy funk out of the R&B charts and into the mainstream. It was his first top 10 album, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200, and came in at No. 5 in its year-end roundup of albums. The success of singles like “1999” (No. 12 on the Billboard chart) and “Little Red Corvette” (No. 4 on the Billboard chart) changed the momentum of his career, setting Prince on a course toward the stratosphere. Even after Prince tragically passed away on April 21, 2016, 1999 recharted on Billboard and made it to No. 7, a higher position than when the album first charted.

To celebrate the man and the catalog of music he left behind, we bring you a brief overview of his brilliant and sadly truncated career.

Precocious beginnings

A proud Gemini born on June 7, 1958, Prince Rogers Nelson (yes, that was his actual first name) was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a hometown he cherished until his passing — he once said, “The cold keeps the bad people out.” At only 5 feet 1 inch, a young Nelson loved basketball and played in high school. It’s said his musical ability was preternatural, and he eventually learned to master 18 different instruments. As aspiring musicians are wont to do, he made demos, scored a manager, and shopped his sound around to labels. At just 19, Prince signed with Warner Brothers, beginning what would be a tumultuous relationship he’d struggle with for the next 18 years. For his first album, Prince refused an assigned producer and insisted he do it himself.

The birth of the artist known as Prince

His debut record, For You, was released in 1978 and featured nine tracks that Prince produced, arranged, composed, and performed — as impressive as it gets for a debut artist. His namesake record, Prince, followed, with the hit single “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and the original version of “I Feel for You,” later covered by Chaka Khan. Glancing across these record covers — all portraits of him — the evolution of Prince’s relationship with provocation begins to take shape.

While For You and Prince only hinted at a sultry, sexualized artist, the cover of his next album, 1980’s Dirty Mind, featured Prince in nothing but a blazer, thigh-high heeled boots, and black underwear. Every track oozed sex, with six songs marked “E” for explicit except for, ironically, “Head,” which is a celebratory anthem about the act.

Prince, Performing in Detroit, Michigan in 1980.

Leni Sinclair//Getty Images

Controversy, the record that followed, integrated deeper questioning not only about sex but also sexuality and identity. On the album’s title track, Prince pontificates, “I just can’t believe all the things people say/Am I Black or white?/Am I straight or gay?/Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?” He concludes by reciting the Lord’s Prayer over his unique brand of funk, new wave, and synth-pop, calling for a nonjudgmental society: “People call me rude/I wish we all were nude/I wish there was no Black and white/I wish there were no rules.” Libidinous jams like “Sexuality,” “Private Joy,” and “Jack U Off” keep the party going, but “Ronnie, Talk to Russia” reflects an almost punk, snarling, guitar-driven awareness of impending nuclear war — reflecting a cognizance of the times that would pervade Prince’s next few albums.

1999 and becoming a household name

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you/I only want you to have some fun,” Prince coos over an electronic voice modulator as the beat kicks into the title track of 1999, his fifth studio album. “1999” is a hopped-up funk jam, but it’s also an exuberant anti-nuclear protest song: “I was dreaming when I wrote this/Forgive me if it goes astray/But when I woke up this morning, could’ve sworn it was judgment day/The sky was all purple/There were people running everywhere, trying to run from destruction/You know I didn’t even care.” Written in 1982 at the height of the Cold War, the track proved to be a pivotal record that inspired us all to dance and cut up, just in case, you know, we were all blown to smithereens. Nearly 20 years later, the song found a new, if obvious, resonance when the entire world was fixated on what would happen when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, ushering in a new millennium — and all those Y2K fears.

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But back in 1982, the message penetrated Gen X anxiety and ethos so much that the album sold more than 4 million copies, with both critics and fans devouring a pounding, percussive sensibility driven by synths and drum machines, which would become the blueprint of a groove-heavy Minneapolis sound that would prevail over the airwaves for the next decade. Prince also became an MTV mainstay, with the all-music, all-the-time channel (remember those days?) playing “1999” and what would become Prince’s first top 10 hit, “Little Red Corvette,” on loop. From November 1982 to April 1983, Prince took the album on what was then his longest-running tour, the 1999 Tour, which stopped in almost 80 cities across the United States.

Purple Rain and Prince’s parade of hits

If 1999 brough Prince into the mainstream, it was Purple Rain — both his sixth studio album and the accompanying feature film — that affirmed Prince as an icon when it was released in 1984. The album would eventually sell a staggering 25 million copies worldwide and become the best-selling feature film soundtrack of all time. The film is said to be a somewhat autobiographical dramatization of his life, and every track is etched into the annals of pop culture, including “Let’s Get Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” and of course, “Purple Rain.” His band, the Revolution, also jelled during this time, but every success comes with at least a little setback: the subject matter of the Purple Rain track “Darling Nikki”— a song about a girl Prince met in a hotel lobby “masturbating with a magazine” — ticked off Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore, so much that her ire and campaign against the song is what eventually led to Parental Advisory stickers being placed on albums with explicit lyrics.

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For all his flamboyant self-expression, however, Prince was notoriously shy. In 1985, it’s said he was invited to join the recording of “We Are the World” — the massively successful fundraising track recorded by a who’s who of celebs who made up the supergroup U.S.A. for Africa — but he declined. Still, he remained prolifically productive, driven to release roughly an album a year until his passing. After Purple Rain, Prince turned around and gave us another No. 1 album, Around the World in a Day, which veered away from his heavy funk and moved more toward blatant pop psychedelia. The album spawned hits like “Raspberry Beret” and “Pop Life,” and it was also the first record released under Prince’s own label, Paisley Park, which was distributed by Warner Brothers.

But fans loved the sexier side of Prince, so the following year, he released the critically acclaimed Parade, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard chart and featured the huge, high-octave hit “Kiss.” The track served as part of the soundtrack to Prince’s second film, Under the Cherry Moon, a romantic film about a couple of gigolos that was panned by critics — though it did feature the debut of eventual Oscar-nominated actress Kristin Scott Thomas.

Soundtracking the times

Despite obvious commercial success as a musician and artist, throughout his career, Prince was undoubtedly dedicated to making the music he felt like making when he wanted to make it, and was always unpredictable in his topical explorations. Following Parade, Prince released Sign o’ the Times, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard chart in 1987. The title track was a time capsule of a hit that addressed man’s propensity for self-destruction via societal pain points like the AIDS crisis, gun laws, mass murder, and pervasive crack addiction, and mentions the space shuttle Challenger explosion. It also gave us hits like “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “U Got the Look” (with Sheena Easton), and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” He pared down his instrumentation on the album, often favoring a simple drum machine, and at this point, he’d dissolved the Revolution, though he continued to work with guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman, who both appeared on the album and still work together to this day.

Prince plays his Sign o The Times concert at the Palais Omnisports in Paris on June 13, 1987.

FG/Bauer-Griffin//Getty Images

While Sign o’ the Times would go on to be Prince’s most critically acclaimed record — a film of his tour supporting it was also heavily praised — toward the end of the decade, Prince put out Lovesexy, which, in its contemporary R&B explorations of themes of good versus evil, vacillated between incredibly bright and optimistic to slightly dense and obtuse. It was largely met with mixed reviews, with only a single commercially successful track, “Alphabet St.” Follow-up singles “Glam Slam” and “I Wish U Heaven” didn’t even chart.

Even so, Prince pounced on an unexpected opportunity. As a kid, he used to play the Batman theme on the piano, a tale that reportedly led to Prince being tapped to write the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film. It was Prince's 11th studio album and his first foray into soundtracking for a film he didn’t make — and fans ate it up. The album was No. 1 on the chart for six weeks, and “Batdance,” composed of film dialogue samples set to trademark Prince grooves, was his first No. 1 single since “Kiss.” Though Prince’s music continued to be featured in many films throughout the decades, including Risky Business, Happy Feet, and Pretty Woman, he’d go on to compose only one more soundtrack for a non-Prince film, Girl 6, a 1996 Spike Lee film about a phone sex operator.

The ’90s

The ’90s were something of a transitional period for Prince, both businesswise and personally. 1990’s Graffiti Bridge found Prince assembling a new band, the New Power Generation, or NPG, who also recorded the soundtrack for the Graffiti Bridge film that he released the same year. Though critics loved the album, it didn’t spawn a huge single. Prince had better luck with 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls, whose hits — like “Gett Off” and “Cream” — led to Prince signing, at the time, the biggest record contract ever, with Warner Brothers, allowing him to release an album a year for six years, with a $10 million advance per record, a whopping 25 percent of the royalties, and the establishment of his Paisley Park as a joint venture instead of an imprint. However, things quickly soured with the label. According to Billboard, Prince wanted to put out records whenever the urge struck him, even if they were only three songs long. Warner Brothers pushed back, setting up frequent tête-à-têtes between Prince and the label about who ultimately controlled his music.

As a result of the tension with Warner Brothers, Prince, on his next album, Love Symbol, changed his name, though not to another moniker but rather a Mercury-meets-Venus-meets-Mars-esque glyph symbol that befitted his long-established explorations with binaries in sexuality. In a statement, Prince said, “It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency,” but in reality, he just wanted to stick it to the label. Hard to market and write about in the press, “the artist formerly known as Prince,” as he was called, saw slumping record sales and plenty of backlash. Love Symbol and his following albums, 1994’s Come and The Black Album, marked both the height of Prince’s dispute with Warner Brothers and a continued lack of interest from fans as Prince tried to fulfill the terms of his contract with less-than-enthused label albums.

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But by 1996, Prince ended his distribution deal with Warner Brothers and won the rights to all of his master recordings, and in 1996 released a record called Emancipation to celebrate. He also resumed the use of his name, which led to the launch of his own label NPG. During this time, Prince became notoriously reclusive, recording at his home studio Paisley Park in Minneapolis and refusing to be interviewed. But he was writing and recording on his own terms, and, with NPG, Prince would go on to release 22 more albums, most devoid of singles or hits, given that he spent the first 10 years of the 2000s releasing some of his own music online to subscribers instead of opting for a record deal. Nevertheless, Prince would still collaborate with established artists like Q-Tip and Kate Bush, as well as continue to experiment with his sound, implementing horns, smooth R&B, and heavier guitars into songs that were still undeniably Prince.

Ever the musicologist

The early 2000s saw Prince take experimentation to places he hadn’t quite gone before, with 2001’s The Rainbow Children getting lost in some jumbled jazz, and 2003’s N.E.W.S. leaning far too deep into instrumental meanderings. But in 2004, Prince returned in true Prince fashion. He opened the Grammys with Beyoncé, performing a medley of hits. He was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and, later in the year, at his induction, delivered a searing guitar solo in tribute to George Harrison on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Prince, ever the one to buck industry rules, also released Musicology in a one-off NPG deal with Columbia Records (he would go on to release one-off records with EMI, Arista, Universal, and even Warner Brothers). He reverted to his old-school tastes, and the record reestablished what we always loved about Prince — the funk, the psych-pop, as well as the pointed references to society, the Bible, war, and corruption in a post-9/11 world — and eventually reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 2000, becoming his most successful album since Diamonds and Pearls.

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Musicology would go on to earn five Grammy nominations and two wins, for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for “Musicology,” and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for “Call My Name.” He toured extensively, playing for a grand total of 1.47 million fans, which was the highest-grossing tour that year. The momentum of the album would last for years, with Prince performing the halftime show at the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami, putting on one of the most memorable performances ever in heels. In 2010, Time named Prince one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

The final days

While things slowed down for Prince after Musicology, in his final year Prince put out two albums, Hit n Run Phase One and Hit n Run Phase Two, which were available to stream on Tidal before being released on CD. Ever the collaborative guru, he also dedicated himself to cultivating young artists, like one of his backup singers, Judith Hill, and a young Lizzo at Paisley Park.

In support of Hit n Run, Prince began to tour in early 2016 but stopped after a couple of months due to bouts with the flu and walking pneumonia. It is said he lost consciousness on a private flight to Minneapolis on April 15, 2016, after which the plane had to make an emergency landing. A week later, Prince died due to an accidental fentanyl overdose at 57. Friends have said Prince suffered from chronic back and hip pain and often took prescription painkillers, and it was reported that the pills he took on April 21, 2016, were laced with the deadly drug.

Today, Prince’s home recording studio, Paisley Park, has been transformed into a museum that houses his archives. Though we mourn the loss of Prince to this day, he left behind a body of work so extensive and unique, we will certainly continue to discover and celebrate the music he gave us for decades to come.

Kristen Schaal’s Voice Carries

The talented actress speaks with Shondaland about starring in “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” how much there is to learn from comedy, and the kind of role she dreams of playing.

Kristen Schaal has, undoubtedly, made you laugh. Maybe you’ve watched her as the hilarious cuckolding groupie on Flight of the Conchords, as the Guide in What We Do in the Shadows, opposite Will Forte as the last woman on Earth in The Last Man on Earth, or on 30 Rock as Hazel Wassername. Or perhaps you’ve heard her voice in The Bob’s Burgers Movie (as Louise Belcher), Gravity Falls (as Mabel), BoJack Horseman (as Sarah Lynn and Sabrina), or in the Toy Story films (she was Trixie). However you’ve found your way to her, her irreverent delivery and impeccable timing remain unmatched in the comedy world.

The Colorado native fine-tuned her comedic timing in the Lower East Side clubs of New York before going on to, clearly, find success as an incessantly hilarious character actress, but in a more dramatic turn, Schaal now stars as Number Two in the Disney+ series The Mysterious Benedict Society, a role she says allows her to “show another side” of her range. The series, based on the books by Trenton Lee Stewart, follows a group of orphans who are accepted into a special school due to their aptitude and intelligence — only to find out that there’s some serious (and troubling) brainwashing going on. Schaal recently hopped on a Zoom with Shondaland to talk about working on Benedict, how much there is to learn from doing comedy, and the kind of role she dreams of playing.

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VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: You’re playing Number Two in The Mysterious Benedict Society. Congrats! Had you read the books before joining the cast?

KRISTEN SCHAAL: I auditioned for the part and got it, then I read the books. I read the pilot, and I got excited because the role just seemed like something fresh for me to play. She was efficient and capable, and not totally just goofy and weird. It just seemed like I could show another side, so I was excited to play Number Two.

VMS: My kids were telling me more about the books, and there seem to be some wildly relevant parallels to what’s going on now. Isn’t that crazy?

KS: So crazy! When Curtain was sending subliminal messages to the world about the big emergency coming out, at that time Trump was president and was saying everything was fake news — “You can only believe what I say” — it was so creepy. And those books were written in 2007, [and] the whole thing about how easy it is to manipulate information to a whole society is very relevant.

VMS: It’s so interesting how some art portends the future. You studied acting at Northwestern but began your career doing improv, alternative comedy, and stand-up. Did you always have a hankering for comedy? When you were a kid, did you always like to make people laugh? Or did it come to you a little later?

KS: I think I always knew I wanted to be performing. Comedy kind of found me a little bit later, probably in high school when I was trying to read a poem or something serious in a speech-debate class and people were kind of laughing. I realized that me being serious is actually funny — what a tool that I can use! So, I kind of leaned into comedy and discovered that comedy is something that not everyone can do, so that makes it really special. Comedy is always something that’s always evolving and changing as time marches forward, so it’s never going to get boring to me. It’s always going to be a new skill to keep refining and learning.

VMS: I loved you in Flight of the Conchords. What would you say was your big break? Every actor’s perception of it seems to be different.

KS: Oh, Flight of the Conchords was it! I was doing stand-up comedy and improv in New York City. The HBO Comedy Festival was still happening back then in Aspen, Colorado, and I got a slot to perform there, and that led to their show. Having done hardly anything else, it really opened the doors for me to continue to work. It didn’t open the doors to me being an A-lister, which is for the best [laughs]. I got seen for stuff more and got my foot in.

VMS: That part showed you could commit to anything! Of all the roles you’ve played, which experience would you say was most pivotal, or helped you realize yourself, in a way? Think about your voice work too.

KS: I guess Conchords was great because I was allowed to play, and on a stage, with the big boys. So then, I realized, “Oh, you can do this!” So, that was huge. Last Man on Earth was my first lead thing. That one — every day I would walk onto that stage and just be like, “Thank you, thank you, that I’m here.” Everything for me is always just such a gift, and I can’t believe I get to do it. I take every job as “What can I learn doing this role and make myself better? And what can I pick up for the next role?”

VMS: If you could cast yourself in anything, what role would you play?

KS: I guess I would love to play … I don’t know what it is yet. If I did, I’d be writing and pitching it right now. I’d love to play someone who’s un-self-aware. Usually, a lot of my characters have that; someone who thinks they’re good at being a pop star was an idea that I had … the shenanigans! The best comedy roles are like Veep. Julia Louis-Dreyfus got to play a character who was very un-self-aware, but the writing let her be a virtuoso. She got to do things we’d never seen before to make us laugh. Even though they were over the top, they were still grounded because the writing was just so good, and she’s so good.

VMS: I know what you mean! She was able to show subtlety and then also slapstick.

KS: Exactly! Exactly. That’s a role of a lifetime; that’s a role of a generation! So, that would be what I’d love to see myself in someday. I don’t know if it’ll happen.

VMS: Listen, we’re manifesting! What’s next for you?

KS: Next for me right now is I’m in Toronto working on What We Do in the Shadows, which is a show on FX. It’s such a fun show.

VMS: Which artists inspire you? It could be music, visual art, anything.

KS: I’m so happy you asked me that! I was reading Ani DiFranco’s autobiography. I saw her in person in Pasadena a few years ago and never got a chance to read it. Finally, now I’m digging into it. Her journey and why I was attracted to her in college — and Björk, and Tori Amos, and those women — is they were just doing their own thing. They were like, “I don’t have a song in me, I don’t think the music industry is into it, and I’m going to make my own album.” Just reading about her process and her journey to get there is so inspiring. I just love remembering that doing art and being in this business comes from a drive inside of you where you can’t do anything else. To really honor that recklessness — that’s the clown! That’s the idiot in you that says you can’t do anything else, so I’m going to do this ridiculous artist’s path.

With Her Debut Novel, ‘The Whalebone Theatre,’ Joanna Quinn Explores the Endurance of Chosen Family

The U.K. native chats with Shondaland about her writing process and creating art from the ruins of aristocracy and war.

Debut novelist Joanna Quinn was already fluent in the art of writing stories when she decided to take on a novel. The London-born, Dorset-raised scribe had already earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of South Wales. She then took on a job in “comms,” or PR, to fund her Ph.D. in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she tackled what would become her first novel, The Whalebone Theatre, submitting chapter after chapter each month in order to earn her degree.

In a recent New York Times review, writer Alexandra Jacobs deftly referred to The Whalebone Theatre as a “generous slab of historical fiction cut from the same crumbling stone as Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited,” and it’s a fairly accurate assessment, save for the very current, saucy adult bits Quinn weaves in with dexterity. The book is a natural page-turner as it delves into the complexities of the Seagrave family residing in Chilcombe, one of those great aristocratic houses, set in early-to-mid-20th-century Dorset, England.

In the novel’s early pages, we learn that 4-year-old Cristabel’s mother died in childbirth. Her still-mourning father brings home a stepmom, Rosalind, who will go on to have Cristabel’s half-sister, Flossie, as well as Cristabel’s cousin Digby, once Rosalind is widowed and marries her husband’s brother Willoughby. These adults like to party, so the neglected Cristabel, Flossie, and Digby take refuge in their creativity, imagining a theater out of — of all things — the bones of a whale beached on the shores of the English Channel. Despite the unorthodox location, the children coerce the adult creatives in their orbit to play along and make it legit. As they accelerate toward adulthood, however, World War II forces them to try to tether to one another and their fleeting inspirations as literal and metaphorical bombs drop all around them.

From her home in Dorset, Quinn recently Zoomed with Shondaland to discuss the process of writing The Whalebone Theatre, what inspired the whale, and how we use art as a means of escaping dire circumstances.

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VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: To begin, let’s dig into the simplest question: What inspired The Whalebone Theatre?

JOANNA QUINN: Many things! I live in Dorset, where the book is set. It’s still quite a traditional place in a lot of ways; there are still small cottages and traditional manor houses, so they’re kind of a familiar part of the scenery. I always wanted to write a novel, but I couldn’t think of a subject. I read a social history book, actually, which was about a small village in Dorset, and I just said, “Why didn’t I think about writing about my home county?” even though I never thought about it before. It kind of quickly went from there, really. I sort of instantly wanted to put it in a big house; I instantly wanted to put it in the beginning of the 20th century because it’s just an interesting time. I always like reading about the wars and the time between the wars. I wanted to write about women primarily. There are so many big house stories about men and boys, and the whole interior and exterior of the big house are designed to celebrate and promote men. I thought I’d like to write a big house story that has women in it.

VMS: Cristabel is such an inspired character. You do such a thorough job of setting her up and giving a real glimpse into the inner workings of who she is and what made her that way. The early chapters, like “Things,” explore the whole concept of patriarchy through a 4-year-old’s eyes. Did you always know you wanted to write historical fiction?

JQ: Before writing this, I wrote short stories, and those have jumped around all over the place. I’ve gone into the future, the present, and the past. In my head, I never differentiate between fiction and historical fiction — that doesn’t make any sense to me. Around 1900 until after the first World War is just a period of time that fascinates me. If you are going to look at a big house, that period of time is really the end of the aristocracy. It’s the end of those upper classes, from beginning to end, that 50 years. It’s just an obvious choice to me, really. As to whether I thought it was going to be feminist, I don’t think I made a conscious decision, but I think it was more of a natural instinct. I’m not the kind of person who would ever live in a big house, and my family isn’t that kind of family. I’m never going to write [a novel] that’s sort of in praise of it, so I’m always going to come in on the side of the underdog. In the case of that particular family, that’s always going to be a girl.

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VMS: What were some of the challenges involved in researching this era? You must’ve put a ton of time into it.

JQ: I do read social history for fun — that’s the kind of Friday night I have! I had a broad outline. The challenges were kind of twofold, really: One was the more specific details to do with things like the Special Operations Executive, which was a real thing and women really were those agents, so I didn’t want to get that wrong in any way because I admired those women so much. I didn’t want to overpraise them or underpraise them or anything, but I wanted it to be as close to a factual representation as I could. Theater in Paris is really interesting. I found a tiny, little footnote in a book I was reading that was called And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris. It was a tiny, little thing that mentioned the theaters were still open, and this particular play, Antigone, was on. Then, I really had to go quite deep during lockdown, trying to find pictures of this theater on Google Earth. I ended up being very grateful for some Ph.D. students who’d actually done studies of theater in Paris and then published their dissertations on the internet. They had nice details about things like the fact that there was no light in the theaters because of so many power cuts and rationing and all that sort of stuff. So, they had a skylight that light fell through, and they moved all their shows earlier so it wasn’t too dark and they still had light coming through. So, you can describe the scene. What you actually want is what was it actually like to walk into that theater.

VMS: One of the underlying themes of this book is how people escape dire circumstances and find joy through art. Was that something you always intended on?

JQ: Yeah, I think so. It kind of evolved with the kids because I always knew they were going to be neglected, and that they would put on plays and read books as a way of comforting themselves and a way of escaping into an imaginary world, particularly for Cristabel, and Digby when he’s younger. It’s something lots of kids do, but it’s also sort of quite telling of the environment they’re in that they have no other outlet, or comfort, or anything, really — despite being materially well off, they’re pretty much on their own. As it went on, it just became such a nice thread to pull through when they make their own theater when the whale arrives. Then, there’s the opportunity to bring in the theater during wartime and the theater at the end of it. I always think of Cristabel’s journey as someone trying to prove herself — not misguided — but she’s trying so hard to prove that she’s up to being a soldier and something that will be praised in that militaristic environment. Her return to the theater in the end and her acceptance of childhood imagination really is kind of the arc of the story in my mind. A nice full circle.

VMS: It’s her validation as an artist and a creative. In the early part of the book, you capture formative thinking so well. Was it easy or hard to toggle back and forth to a 4-year-old’s way of thinking?

JQ: It does take a bit of work, but I don’t feel I’ve changed a big deal in my time on this planet. I think I’m still exactly the same person. In a way, it’s recognizing you’re still there in that kind of fundamental form — just your knowledge of the world is slightly different. You just know a little bit less, but you’re still the same. Cristabel is very logical, and I was very similar as a child, not understanding why things are like this when they are so clearly unfair.

VMS: There’s one line early on that kind of portends the whole story — when Christabel asks, “Why aren’t there interesting women in stories?” And then she becomes an incredibly interesting woman in your story. I feel like the book is also about family and the strength of chosen family, as Cristabel, Flossie, and Digby are related, but loosely. Was chosen family important for you to explore as well?

JQ: Yeah, I think so. Kids that are sometimes left to their own devices do form a kind of gang, not only with kids but with other adults who show an interest in them. That sense of when you’re self-raising, you kind of form these really close, interlinked partnerships with people because there isn’t anybody else. I always wanted them to be a gang that weren’t quite siblings, and as soon as I thought that was interesting, I knew their parentage was going to be super-interesting. One of the first things I did was draw a family tree. Once you cross lines on a family tree, that feels really fun to me because you’ve got all those complicated, emotional crosshairs. I just liked the idea of complications about family and how that would play out within those different kids and their respective parents.

VMS: When you sat down to write it, did you outline it? Or did you just let it flow, and kind of channel the book?

JQ: I’d never done it before, so I didn’t know what I was doing, which is probably a good thing in hindsight. I had the idea that I wanted to do a post-Victorian childhood, the post-World War — I knew I wanted that. I knew I wanted some stuff in the 1920s that would be bohemian-ish, and I knew that I wanted something in Paris. So, I had three markers in my head, and I was going to try and fit them together. But because when I started to write the book, I was working full-time, and I’d just had a baby and [had] no brain space, really. So, I was up late at night doing stuff. I was working in chapter chunks, which was as far as I’d see. I was just shaping a single object rather than thinking of something that was a long chain. The work at the end of the book was putting stuff through to make sure there were through lines as well.

VMS: World War II seems like such a mammoth undertaking to have characters deal with. In one line at the end of the book, Cristabel says to Flossie that she always goes back to Jane Austen because she “tidies things up” for her. Does she tidy things up for you as well? Who are your biggest influences as a writer?

JQ: I read Jane Austen when I was pregnant. I was really, really anxious when I was pregnant, but nothing bad is ever going to happen with Jane Austen. No one is ever going to die horribly or suddenly; it’s just perfectly formed lovely stories. There’s a comfort in that. For this book, I think — and I think it was unconscious, but I only realized after I’d written it — there were an awful lot of books I read as a child in there. I didn’t deliberately do it; I think they just came out. E. Nesbit, a little bit of probably some Little Women in there, as well. There’s a writer named Lucy M. Boston — I don’t know if she’s well known in the States — but she did a series called The Children of Green Knowe, which was about children growing up in a 17th-century house.

VMS: Was it hard to make the decisions that you made at the end of the book with respect to the characters?

JQ: I always knew who was going to make it to the end. One of them was going to have to go. It’s the nature of war: You can’t write a book about the Second World War and have everybody who starts it come out the other end. I was doing some research reading an autobiography of the painter Augustus John, and he had a great time during the war. He really, really enjoyed himself! And everybody else was drinking just as hard as he normally did. That felt quite [like] Rosalind, like she’d have a second wind.

VMS: I love how you sneak in sexuality throughout the book. It’s entertaining with the sensibilities of today.

JQ: There had to be that knowing quality in the book. If it was just children-y stuff, it would get tedious quite quickly. You needed to have sexuality and the darker stuff as well, from the get-go.

VMS: Finally, tell me what inspired the whale and making a theater out of a whale’s bones.

JQ: A lot of the things that came in the process of writing. I had a whale that washed up on a beach because I’d read this fact about whales and thought that works with Cristabel to be denied things, that she should claim something, but it’s not hers, and that fits. But I didn’t know what to do with it for ages and ages. It just sat there; my subconscious gave me a whale, but it took my brain an absolute age to think maybe I could make it into a theater.

VMS: What inspired that?

JQ: It was all about Kate Bush! I was doing an exercise with a writing teacher, and he said to me, “Write a scene that encapsulates what you want to talk about in your novel.” So, I read this fact about whales, which wash my whale up upon my beach, so I had that scene. I just had the whale sitting there, and I remember saying to my Ph.D. supervisor, “I have this whale, and it’s just rotting. I don’t know what to do with it.” I went to see the Kate Bush live tour in 2014 and was literally at the very, very, top. Nobody was allowed phones, so everyone was really, really engaged. In the second half — it was sort of acted and sort of music as well — there was this ongoing story about a boat being lost. On the [second] side of Hounds of Love, there’s all sorts of stuff about water and things. There was this stage set that looked like the ribs of a galleon or the ribs of a whale — it could’ve been either — under the sea. And I just went, “Ahh! I can make my whale into a theater!”

VMS: Very cool! Thanks, Kate!
JQ: I keep hoping she’ll read this somewhere and invite me ’round!

Judy Greer Steals the Scene

The actress talks with Shondaland about “Reboot,” her career, her latest business venture, and why she has trouble saying no.

You know Judy Greer from somewhere — we all do. Back in 2014, she even wrote a memoir about getting recognized called I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star. Greer’s ubiquity comes from a résumé that unfurls like a CVS receipt, her long, fruitful career built by stealing scenes in countless film and TV shows like 13 Going on 30, Jawbreaker, Arrested Development, Wilson, The Wedding Planner, The Descendants, and way too many more to list. Most recently, you’ve seen her in Showtime’s Emmy-nominated series The First Lady, as Leah Askey in The Thing About Pam with Renée Zellweger, and as Jamie Lee Curtis’ daughter in the latest Halloween film. And starting on September 20, you’re about to see her again, as Bree Marie Jensen in Reboot, an ensemble Hulu comedy in which Greer plays a leading actress in a reboot of a fictional ensemble Hulu comedy called Step Right Up — a concept so delightfully meta.

Despite the roll call of successes, Greer told Shondaland she sometimes worries the well will dry up, so in true Midwestern fashion (she’s from Detroit), she has a tendency to keep her foot on the gas when it comes to her career.

“I think sometimes my work ethic is a little too intense,” Greer says. “I think if I’m not shooting something or working on something, then I must be failing. That’s not how this business is meant to be, but for me, I’m like, ‘Why wouldn’t I work every day? Most people work every day.’ As a woman, we’re all aging, and these great roles are coming my way, so I’m like, ‘Yes, yes, yes! What if I don’t get this again?’ My career seems to keep going in this really exciting direction, but it does make me feel the pressure to say yes to projects instead of saying yes to myself. I should try to plan a trip, but that doesn’t come naturally to me. Sometimes, my friends think I need to take a break and not say yes to everybody. That’s something held over from the Midwest, definitely. Not to generalize, but let’s say I’m frugal and find it important to save my money. I definitely brought that with me to Hollywood. If you’re not good at managing your finances, this can be a very difficult business.”

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Greer says she was about 10 years into her career when she realized performing was it for her. “I was kind of always eyeballing grad school,” Greer admits. “I was always like, ‘The jig will be up sometime; this isn’t something I can do forever. One of these days, I’m going to stop getting jobs, and I’ll have to figure something else out.’ I’ve always wondered, ‘When are they going to find out?’ But they haven’t. I love what I do! This probably sounds like a silly thing to say, but it was well into it that I realized this was for good. This is my job. This is my life.”

Now more about that life: Reboot is a thorough and effective, dead-on send-up of streaming TV culture — from pitch meetings to writers’ rooms, to trailer antics, to power plays, and everything in between — right down to the workaday obsession with lunch. “To speak specifically to my character, she’s struggling with being out of the business for 15 years, with aging, being worried about her talent, and impostor syndrome that I and so many of my colleagues feel all the time,” says Greer. “That was all really interesting to me and things I feel are universally relatable.”

When asked what drew her to the role of Bree (a role she tackles with aplomb), a star stepping back on the set of her long-defunct, long-running sitcom after a stint as duchess of a fictional Nordic country, Greer immediately mentions the opportunity to work with showrunner Steven Levitan, who also mined sitcom gold with shows like Just Shoot Me, Modern Family, Frasier, and plenty more of note. “He is a genius. And he is a weirdo. He is so funny,” Greer says. “I knew he was a genius before I met him. But having spent so much time with him, it’s been really interesting to get to know what he’s really like. He’s quieter, more thoughtful, and more cerebral than I would’ve anticipated. He hears everything, so be careful what you say, or it will end up in an episode!”

She also mentions she couldn’t resist the opportunity to work with the formidable cast of the show, namely co-stars Keegan-Michael Key, Paul Reiser, Rachel Bloom, Johnny Knoxville, Calum Worthy, and Krista Marie Yu. “So many heavy hitters in comedy land! Everyone has acting chops. I fall in love with shows because of the people, and I root for the characters. We made a really funny show, but you do end up, at least the hope is, that you root for these people,” says Greer.

Even from the first episode, it’s clear Greer is having fun with Bree — a byproduct of the Reboot writers’ room, she says. “This was a really easy job — I mean easy in that it all came very naturally. It was hard work, but I was so excited to go to work every single day, I would show up early. It’s always fun to make people laugh, definitely. The scenes are so perfectly written. Our writers are so incredible, the way they’re able to get so much in and so succinctly in such a short amount of time. We always have Steve [Levitan] and another writer on set throwing out alt lines, so it’s almost like they’re improvising for us. What do I think I can do better?”

Greer’s tenacious work ethic also has roots in her pre-acting life, when she trained as a ballet dancer before attending Chicago’s prestigious Theatre School at DePaul University. Her formal training reinforced the basic tenets of the craft, but there are some things, she says, you can only learn on set. “I learned to be nice to everyone, all the time,” Greer says. “Not only can people keep getting promoted and become your boss or a director you want to work with someday, but also your crew takes care of you. They’re people, and they deserve to be treated well. Sometimes, I’d see people not being so nice to the crew, and I learned early on they could make your life a living hell.”

Though she makes acting easy, and she doesn’t have to audition for every role she’s cast in anymore, Greer admits to one aspect of her work that can be challenging. “A couple of times in my career, I just haven’t had great communication with the director. It’s really difficult to either decipher what it is that they want or talk to them about a character because they have one idea, and I have another,” she explains. “You can go into a project that you’ve been offered and have never really communicated with these people about what you’re bringing to the character. If I can’t figure out what my director wants, it makes the days on set really hard.”

Given that Greer is already a published memoirist, the question of whether she has another book in her is met with an enthusiastic “Yes! I do have another book in me! I love writing,” she says. “It was much more time-consuming [to write it] than I thought it would be. I wrote that book while I was shooting movie after movie and traveling a lot for work. I love my book; I’m really proud of it. If I was to do a book again, I would really want to take time off to focus on it. It’s hard enough to read a book while I’m shooting, but to actually be writing one, I don’t know. I used to do so much at once, and I’m trying really hard to get back to a one-thing-at-a-time kind of vibe.”

True to her need to keep going, going, going, she’s also recently managed to add a side hustle to her repertoire: Greer is co-founder of a company called Wile, which makes supplements, powders, and tinctures for “grown women” in midlife. When approached by close friend and former publicist Corey Scholibo, Greer couldn’t resist the opportunity to start an important conversation about menopause. “We have this twisted idea of the word ‘menopause’ — it’s a bad word, it means you’re old, society doesn’t want you, and you’re not valid anymore,” Greer says.

Her desire to get into the women’s health space was inspired by her own personal experience. “Menopause can happen any time in your 30s; it’s totally natural — it’s just a hormonal shift,” Greer explains. “The more we can manage those symptoms, the happier we’re going to be in our lives. It’s a space I was excited to talk about because I felt like no one was talking to me about it. I went to three gynecologists before I found one who would really talk to me about these symptoms. All the ones leading up to her were like, ‘Maybe you should go on antidepressants; maybe you should go back on the pill.’ I’m like, ‘Why are you putting me on antidepressants? You’re not addressing the issue.’ So, with Wile, in addition to providing a great product that I take myself, I’m just hoping to start this conversation so that women don’t find themselves in the position my friends and I found ourselves in.”

Acting-wise, up next for Greer is something decidedly unfunny: a dramatic film called Eric LaRue, Michael Shannon’s directorial debut. It’s based on a 2002 play by Brett Neveu, and Greer plays the mother of a boy who shot three of his classmates, depicting the aftermath of the trauma. This swing from something so light and funny to something so tragic is a true testament to Greer’s versatility, but there is one type of role she has yet to play — an action hero. “I’d love to be in an action movie — that’s something I’ve never done,” Greer says. “I want to jump out of a helicopter!” At this rate, it won’t be long before she does.

How Our Favorite Songs Can Save Us

Like Max on “Stranger Things,” we love music that provides a pressure valve for the unspoken emotions we carry.

Thanks to Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” was immortalized for a new generation of listeners to the tune of $2.3 million in streaming royalties, and topped the Billboard Global charts for weeks. It was used repeatedly and artfully throughout season four of the series, culminating in a powerful scene where Max, poised to be Vecna’s next victim, is saved from certain doom by slapping on her Walkman headphones and blasting the song on loop. During a crucial moment, the song reminds her who she is and of all the love in her life before the self-doubt inflicted by trauma could leave her open to the evil machinations of a soul-sucking entity.

The kids of Hawkins came to understand the power of music that moves us and harnessed it to empower their friend. It’s a global example of a song putting us in a certain sort of psychological and emotional state, says musicologist Nolan Gasser, a pianist, composer, and the author of Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste.

Similarly, the music we love can help fend off the scary monsters plaguing our minds.

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Almost 40 years ago, listening to artists like Bush certainly did that for weirdos like me. We weren’t cheerleaders who wore Reeboks, like Chrissy in Stranger Things. Like Max, we wore Vans before it was cool, tuned the world out by blaring what eventually became known as alternative music on our headphones, and used Ouija boards to reach out beyond our realities, demystify the scary unknown, and make sense of the “otherness” we were constantly reminded of by others.

When Kate Bush played on my Walkman, I didn’t care about my dysfunctional family dynamic, or that I made $3 per hour in a musty library shelving books for hours on end, or that I struggled to connect with like minds in my high school. Her music, and the music of other alternative artists, assured me there were others out there who questioned the world like I did, who could love like I did, who pondered and made art the way I did, using music and lyrics as a vehicle to express joy, or lust, or pain, or confusion in a way that resonated deeply with me.

Music was — and still is — the artistic language I use to process my emotions. It’s such a powerful art form because it resonates with us on many levels all at once, says Gasser.

“The soundtrack of our lives is forged by many different inputs, including the culture we grow up in and the kind of music we’re exposed to — the technical term is called enculturation,” he says. “That is the way that our brain understands that certain music is our language. Max from Stranger Things loved a song from the ’80s that was [released] at a time when she grew up. One reason it resonated with her is it was a part of her natural environment.”

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Gasser continues, “Another [thing to notice] is [that] we come to own the music we listen to in formative years, from 12 to 18, or 20. When we identify with a song or body of music during that time in our lives, it becomes a really great tool by which to claim our independence and identity. So, when Max listens to the Kate Bush song, it clearly spoke to her on almost a developmental level and how she defines herself.”

Of course, music doesn’t need to be from your formative years to provide you with a cathartic experience or, as Gasser says, “become yours.” Here’s another personal example, for instance: Seven years of intermittent, excruciating chronic pain left me in need of yet another spinal surgery — my fourth. Before doctors operate perilously close to your spinal cord, you have to sign many documents absolving them of responsibility if you, say, die or become disabled. It’s utterly terrifying.

To top it off, I literally had to put one foot in front of the other, walk into the operating theater, and plop myself down on the table, surrendering my throat to the surgeons. Luckily, they blasted music in that operating theater: “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence and the Machine rang out as I was put to sleep. I liked the song, but suddenly it hit differently, lyrically and musically. It became an anthem of strength and resilience I could cling to when I needed it the most. Years later, I can’t hear that song without really feeling it because it was the soundtrack to such a pivotal moment in my life.

Science has long supported the idea that music has a tremendous potential to heal us emotionally. “Going way back to the ancient Greeks, it was understood the power that music has [in terms of] healing and, today, what we call our subjective well-being,” Gasser explains. “A lot of it just has to do with the process of listening to music and being able to follow the music in real time. It sends off endorphins, dopamine, and positive neurotransmitters flood our brains and our systems.”

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He adds that it’s scientifically been proved that the music we love lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. “If somebody is dealing with a difficult personal issue, like a diagnosis of ill health, actively listening to music they love can be as powerful as 10 milligrams of morphine,” Gasser says. “That’s a pretty powerful pain reliever.”

Interestingly enough, sad or melancholy music can actually make us feel good even if we are unhappy and forlorn. “Going way back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, achieving a state of melancholia was almost a goal of music because it’s a safe space to experience sadness or to experience deep emotion,” Gasser says. “Sad music can be a safe place to feel deeply. Even chemically, when we listen to minor harmonies, or a slower tempo, or just a more lyrical, expressive melody, there’s a hormone called prolactin, which is released into the bloodstream. It’s the same hormone that is released during lactation, and it sends off all of these positive endorphins into the brain to release this hormone.”

The ability that music has to help us process our emotions is one of its greatest gifts, says Gasser. “When we feel deeply, not anger at the television or sadness at something that’s happening, this sort of warmth of emotion music brings on makes us feel good and actually is good for us,” he says. “And music is really one of those things that can trigger feelings deeply as much as anything else can.” Music has certainly been one of the biggest gifts of my life. The most beautiful thing? It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Michelle Monaghan Doubles Down

By Vivian Manning-Schaffel

This article was originally published at Shondaland.com in Aug 19, 2022

The actress speaks with Shondaland about what it was like to play twins in “Echoes,” what she’s up to next, and the type of role she dreams of playing.

Michelle Monaghan can’t resist a thrill. The Mission: Impossible franchise star and Golden Globe nominee for her supporting role on True Detective is often drawn to intriguing roles that have a physical challenge and an edge to them. And her latest starring role — nay, roles — as identical twins in the new Netflix limited series Echoes is no exception.

Monaghan plays Leni and Gina, twin sisters who pretend to be each other long after it’s considered cute, endlessly complicating their lives and the lives of everyone around them — especially when one of them disappears. “I loved the thriller aspect of the show,” Monaghan recently told Shondaland over Zoom. “I think I read four of the scripts when they pitched the series to me, and at the end of each, I couldn’t wait to read the next one! I couldn’t believe the twists and the turns.”

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With a warm smile, the actress says she deeply appreciated the opportunity to work on material created by Vanessa Gazy and written and produced by Gazy, Brian Yorkey (13 Reasons Why), Quinton Peeples (Runaways), and Imogen Banks (The Beautiful Lie, Offspring, Sisters). The challenge of playing two completely different personalities — and mastering the intricate nuances of each — was another aspect of Echoes she simply couldn’t resist.

“The sheer challenge of playing two different roles and two very different characters scared me initially,” says Monaghan. “It was so daunting, I can’t even tell you. I thought there’s no way I can do this. Then, of course, the answer I have in my head is always I have to do this. I have been doing this, acting, for 20 years and know enough about myself creatively that if it frightens the hell out of me, it’s absolutely something I have to embark on.”

In playing identical twins, Monaghan had to find ways to differentiate her portrayal of each woman, beginning with delving into Leni’s and Gina’s foundational psychology. “Both suffered a foundational trauma, but how they moved through that trauma was very different and manifested in different ways,” Monaghan explains. “I really leaned on that foundational trauma to inform their characteristics. That kind of technique was something I hadn’t done or utilized before, so I learned a lot professionally and personally. It was an incredible process. If you could’ve seen my script notes, my husband can attest to that! Ultimately, I’m so very proud of these two women.”

Next came the challenge of Monaghan appearing as both characters on-screen at once, to which she lauds the talents of the series’ special effects team. “Technically, shooting the scenes when the two ladies are together was far more complicated than I even could’ve imagined,” Monaghan says. “A lot of times, I was acting opposite a tennis ball. Other times, I was acting opposite a wonderful actress who stood in as not only my body double but also knew all the lines of the other character. I would then switch out of character and go into hair, makeup, and wardrobe for an hour and come back and do the other side of the performance. There was a lot of going back and forth between characters. I’ve always done stunts, and I’ve always loved them, but I’ve never had to learn both sides of stunts! So, it was learning choreography from Leni’s perspective, then from Gina’s perspective, then fighting myself, essentially.”

In researching roles that require as much nuanced insight as Leni and Gina in Echoes, Monaghan often finds that her formal education as a journalist can really come in handy. “My folks were huge current-event lovers who watched the news and read the paper,” Monaghan explains. “I grew up in a very small town of 700 people in Iowa. So, the idea of a larger world out there really did have an impact on me, because where I came from was so small and insular. I had the opportunity to study journalism at Columbia College in Chicago. I dropped out senior year to move to New York because something was going to happen for me there. And thankfully it did, but I walked out of school feeling terrible because I never finished, so I always said I’d go back to school. When I was prepping for Gone Baby Gone and I was writing, because I like to write, I realized as I was wondering who Angie Gennaro was that I was doing the who, what, when, where, why, and how! So, I took the journalism approach because I never went to acting school. I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘It wasn’t all for naught! It’s okay that I have all these college loans! It’s okay that I didn’t finish!’ So, I’m just going to keep using that technique because you really figure out the backstory for discovering a character.”

Next up for Monaghan is a Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning indie film she’s very proud of called Nanny, written and directed by Nikyatu Jusu. She describes her role as a privileged Upper East Side mom who hires an undocumented West African nanny, played by the film’s lead, Anna Diop, who, in trying to have her son immigrate to the U.S., is confronted by a dark, destructive force. “I’m so proud of this film — it’s honestly the little film that could,” Monaghan beams. “I shot it in the middle of the pandemic with a very, very low budget. Nikyatu had been working on the script for years. There’s such an intersection of genres — it’s very genre-bending actually, a psychological thriller — about the intersection of womanhood and the hierarchy of womanhood and parenthood. It really taps into a lot of things socially going on in the world right now.”

Monaghan will then shift gears a bit, appearing in the Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Cougar Town, Ted Lasso) comedy Bad Monkey. “I was coming off the heels of this project going, ‘I think it’s time I do a comedy,’ and Bill Lawrence called and offered me a great role,” she says, mentioning again how grateful she is to be able to be an actress. “I feel so lucky to be at this stage in my career to be able to do something as thrilling, intense, and creatively challenging as Echoes, and then to be able to tap into some comedic skills. It was the perfect antidote. I like to find the material that I haven’t tried before and will be totally challenged by.”

When asked what her dream role would be, Monaghan states she’d love to take on yet another type of challenge for an actor — a period piece. “I love the hair, the makeup, the ’50s, the ’70s, the 1800s — I’ve never done that! It’s just a whole other world that informs your character, so I’m putting that out there,” she says.

Julia Haart, Mother of Reinvention

Julia Haart chats with Shondaland about how her unorthodox approach to life makes for a great reality you can stream.

One of Netflix’s most fascinating hits of the summer, My Unorthodox Life is centered around the life of CEO Julia Haart and her four children, best friend and COO Robert, and her husband Silvio, and how she lovingly and actively “yentas” them all as they navigate life. Haart’s dramatic trajectory from ultra-Orthodox Jewish housewife in Monsey, New York, to luxury namesake shoe-brand founder (2013), to creative director of luxury lingerie brand La Perla (2016) and now the CEO, co-owner, and chief creative officer at Elite World Group modeling agency is a dream-realized success story even TV couldn’t make up.

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Indeed, as Haart supports each of her children on their quest to reconcile their interpretation of Judaism with the lives they choose to live, her devotion to them is palpable. Further, watching Haart’s own salvation and reinvention from a conservative Jewish life to where she is now is surely bingeable — but the step-by-step details of her remarkable trajectory remain something of a mystery, with viewers so far only given crumbs along the trail that keep you coming back to the series for more.

What we know from the outset of My Unorthodox Life is that Haart has a gift for the hustle. We know she taught herself to sew and design. We know that, despite the difficulty in getting a divorce in her sect, she left her husband (with whom she seemingly has a positive relationship) after selling life insurance in secret. She found investors she needed to launch her luxury shoe brand in restaurants and at the eye doctor. A board member at La Perla reached out to be the creative head of the brand after hearing raves about Haart’s shoes. Since joining Elite, she’s repositioned the company as more than a modeling-agency chain; now it helps models monetize their brands and businesses, and Haart is also the creative director of the Elite-owned luxury fashion brand e1972.

“If you really want to change your life, if you really want to be successful, you have to want it so badly that you feel it in every fiber and ounce of your being.”

But when asked specific questions about how an Orthodox Jewish woman freed herself to face the challenges of entering the fashion game without prior experience and a background in the industry, Haart remains mum, mentioning many of the answers will be detailed in the upcoming release (March 2022) of her book Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey From Long Sleeves to Lingerie.

She hints, though, that hers is a story too long for our 20-minute phone call, during which Haart’s energy and determination are infectious. “The things that happened to me when I walked out the door,” she starts, “because I was so naive, so clueless, so afraid, so alone, and so lost … On the other hand, I was outrageously determined and completely committed. I had a design gift, let’s say, and I was hungry and driven, but those two together are very strange bedfellows. I believe in God, and I am cognizant of the fact that there are many miracles that happened in my life. But I couldn’t fail.”

Before it dawned on Haart that she had to change her life, though, things got awfully dark. In her sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, gender parity does not exist. Boys and girls do not mix for fear of impure thoughts — religious ceremonies require men and women to sit on opposite sides of the room. Marriages for women are arranged to unknown men around the age of 19. Women can’t show their hair or their legs, or present to the world in any way that might deem them desirable. Hand-holding or -shaking with the opposite sex is only permitted with your spouse and your immediate family. Technology and travel are forbidden on the Sabbath (Saturday). Exposure to outside culture is extremely limited, if not forbidden. And there is no such thing as an LGBTQIA+ community.

Haart felt so oppressed and suppressed by her life, she nearly collapsed under the weight she felt it put on her. “Those were very, very dark days,” she says. “I just didn’t want to live anymore. The dichotomy between what I was supposed to be and who I actually was was too great.”

She continues, “But the crazy thing is, you could convince me that I was bad — I was fully convinced that I was a bad person, that I wasn’t enough. That I couldn’t obey my husband, that I wanted to learn the Talmud [the central religious text of Judaism], which governed my entire life, but I wasn’t allowed to study it because my ‘mind was too light.’”

Then, Haart’s 5-year-old daughter, Miriam, changed everything. “She’s really the beginning and end of my exodus. I was trying so hard to be what they wanted me to be, and then this little fireball at 5 years of age says, ‘Hmm, this doesn’t make any sense. I want to do this; why can’t I do this?’ ‘Because a guy might see you and have bad luck.’ She’d literally look at my ex and be like, ‘Why is that my problem?’ And I was like, wait a minute, why is that her problem? So, Miriam gave me permission. She’s the person who gave me the courage to question, and then she’s the person who, basically, not forced me to leave — but I was going to take the easier way out in the sense that I was purposefully trying to kill myself.”

Haart says what propelled her toward her independence was her biggest fear — that her children would be as miserable as she was. “Look at Miriam, for example,” Haart says. “Miriam [who is now 21] is a bisexual. She has a lesbian girlfriend. She is the youngest teacher in Stanford history. She’s going into her senior year, but, as a freshman, she started giving a course in augmented reality. This girl, had I stayed, never would have gone to Stanford. Certainly, she would never be allowed to date a woman. She would have gotten married, like me, like Batsheva [her eldest daughter, now 28], like all of my sisters at 19, like everyone I knew in the community who managed to get a match. She would have been married to some guy that she met for three hours. She would be pregnant with baby number three, and the world would be the worse for it.”

Batsheva Haart (right) and Miriam Haart (left)

Netflix

Haart was 42 when she finally left her former life. “The first step was acknowledging and giving myself permission to say I’m not a bad person,” she says. “That’s what was the most difficult thing, honestly, because I was trying with every ounce of strength I had in my body to conform and squeeze myself into this meek, mild, obedient, silent wife.”

When it came to facing the inevitable challenges involved in transitioning from running her own brand to making her mark on established legacy brands like La Perla and Elite World Group, Haart sticks by what she tells the countless women — of all faiths — who seek her out for advice. “If you really want to change your life, if you really want to be successful, you have to want it so badly that you feel it in every fiber and ounce of your being,” she says. “You have to sleep it, and eat it, and drink it, and dream it. I was so single-mindedly focused. I loved the word ‘no’ because no just meant that I would have to work a little harder to get it together.”

Further, she continues to buck tradition, even in her professional life. Haart says “established” isn’t a word in her dictionary. “I don’t actually see ‘established,’” she says. “I’m finished with institutions — I’ve had enough institutions to last me 700 lifetimes. I’ve had enough experts telling me what is accepted, or the norm, or how it’s done. I don’t give a flying f--k how it’s done. I’m only going to look at how I think it should be done. How I think I can make it better.”

This approach has worked well for her. Haart is an innovator; she partnered with an Italian ski-boot engineer and a German company that creates a gel used by NASA to create a line of comfortable, towering heels. Kendall Jenner made headlines by wearing a La Perla dress Haart designed made from crystals and a single string. And, like so many of us, she gets her best ideas in the bathtub. “Half of my drawings come out wet!” she says.

Jenner in Haart’s design.

Getty

When it comes to her own inspirations, Haart readily admires those who constantly transform and adapt. “Look at Picasso. Look at Madonna,” she says. “How many times have they transformed themselves? Change, transformation, and invention and innovation is what makes life interesting! Let’s attempt to challenge ourselves! Let’s always be students! Let’s always take pride in what we’re learning and not just what we know.”

She’s also inspired by Gertrude Stein. “She was this incredible lesbian pre-World War II, living an open life in Paris — I think she’s extraordinary. Impressionist artists weren’t being shown in the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris because they were doing things differently. They weren’t following the rules, and people like it when you follow the rules. She wrote this line when she was asked about people’s reaction to the first time that they experienced Impressionism in her home at this massive intellectual gathering. When she was asked what do people say when they first see it, and she said, ‘They come to mock, but they stay to pray.’”

I told Haart I was going to put that statement over my desk. “This, to me, is all it is,” she says emphatically. “Forget about the mockers! Forget about those voices — get them out of your head! Yeah, they’ll come to mock. But if you keep at it and don’t let anyone deter you, they will stay to pray, I promise you.”

If you’ve watched My Unorthodox Life, you’ve seen Haart work hard and play hard: She may be late for dinner with her husband due to investor calls, but her entire family (and extended family) stays in their own French chateau when traveling to Paris to watch the seasonal collections from enviable front-row seats. But for Haart, the hard work has only just begun. “I haven’t made it very far at all until I have my army of financially independent successful women who don’t have to ask permission when they buy something, and who can purchase a home on their own and live life on their own terms. I’m not even remotely patting myself on the back,” she says.

Her biggest unrealized dream? “You know, honestly, I’m a very goal-oriented person. I have this image in my head. Literally this picture. I see it so clearly; it’s in front of my eyes — I just got choked up for some reason. It’s in front of my eyes every second of every day, and it’s to create a massive army. I see thousands and thousands and thousands of women, standing together, standing up and saying, ‘It’s our turn.’ You had thousands of years to run the world, and look at the state it’s in — it’s our turn. Until I can feel that we’ve literally changed the conversation, and one day our daughters, or granddaughters, won’t even know that that conversation existed, then I’ll figure out what I’ll do next.”

Abbi Jacobson’s Grand Slam

With her new “A League of Their Own” series, Jacobson swings for the fences.

In the first scene of Amazon Prime’s new A League of Their Own series, Abbi Jacobson’s character, Carson Shaw, is seen breaking into a full sprint alongside a train. She’s just missed her ride, so Carson must hurl her bags on board before taking the leap onto the train herself — whether she has a ticket or not, and despite her disapproving husband who, along with most able-bodied, age-appropriate men of the early 1940s, is off fighting World War II. This leap of faith in herself is driven by Carson’s need to play ball, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t make it to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League tryouts to show her stuff.

Kind of similarly, A League of Their Own, premiering August 12, is Abbi Jacobson’s moment to hit a homer. She is the co-creator, co-writer, executive producer (with partner Will Graham, showrunner of Mozart in the Jungle), and star of the series, and you’ll see the former co-star and co-creator of Broad City take charge — both on the field and off-screen.

“We were having dinner one night in New York in 2017, and [Will] was like, do you want to do this with me?” Jacobson tells Shondaland, recalling the moment Graham first proposed teaming up to turn the well-loved, Geena Davis-starring 1992 Penny Marshall film into a series. “I was in the middle of season four of Broad City, and I could not say no, even though I was fully on another show and had no idea how I was going to do it.”

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Led by Carson and Max (Chanté Adams), the series takes a wider lens to Marshall’s film: It examines race and sexuality in the 1940s; depicts how the team transformed the lives of its players, both on and off the field; and throughout the first season, we see relationships of all varieties form and re-form as the women discover who they are while reckoning with their feelings about themselves, their families, and one another.

“Even from those beginning conversations of us talking about it, we knew we were not trying to remake the movie,” Jacobson says. “We love the movie! It was really about wanting to tell the stories that aren’t told in the movie, or that are hinted at or alluded to. That was really exciting to us, to shift the focus and open up the range of women that we’re talking about so it doesn’t just encompass the one lead that the film portrays. It’s about a generation of women playing baseball.”

The result — much like Jacobson and co-creator Ilana Glazer’s work in Broad City — is an honest exploration of female friendship that walks the line between drama and comedy. It’s also very much a queer show, and a show that addresses the overt racism of the time and place.

“It was very interesting, coming at it from a historical lens,” Jacobson says. “On Broad City, we were as present as we could be, talking about pop culture and political events. Obviously, we were commenting on stuff, but we had the freedom to be fluid. [In A League of Their Own], we don’t just have one queer character in this show; there are a lot. When diving into these stories of queerness and the league in the film, it’s about white women and white-passing women who got to play baseball. But women of color also played baseball — what happens when that door is shut? We were learning more about players like Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan — who Max’s character is inspired by — and about the women who were in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and whose queerness was so kept in secret. Queer people didn’t just appear at Stonewall — we’ve been around forever. What were they talking about? What were they doing? Part of the Broad City-ness [of the show] is to create spaces where they could hang out and be themselves, but also the limitations of society and the world are ever-present. It’s kind of a push-pull. Max and Carson are so connected by baseball and queerness, but a Black woman and white woman being friends in 1943 would’ve been a very unique relationship, so how do we tell that? Where can we tell that? Where is a safe space for that? There are so many questions that go into every scene.”

With that, Jacobson hopes the series will inspire those who don’t feel represented. Just recently, Maybelle Blair, a former All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player and the inspiration for Jacobson’s Carson Shaw, came out at the age of 95 during a Q&A for A League of Their Own at the Tribeca Film Festival, which moved Jacobson deeply. “It’s simultaneously one of the most incredible things I’ve been able to be a part of and witness, and it makes me so sad because that’s a long life to not get to be who you are,” Jacobson recalls. “We’ve gotten to be friends with Maybelle over the years. There was a point in time, probably in 2018, when she came out to us. She’s shared so much about what it was like being queer from when she was in the league and what it was like to find it and feel less alone. To see the difference in her since she came out is incredible. She’s so much freer. I feel very lucky to be able to be openly queer and living my life now.”

While Jacobson hopes that the series succeeds in expanding this world both in a historical and fictional context, her attention to authenticity goes beyond the storytelling. A graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, Jacobson is a trained visual artist, which manifests in the look and feel of all her projects, including A League of Their Own. “I get very intense about the visual branding of the show,” says Jacobson, whose illustrations were featured on Broad City as well as in her books Carry This Book, published in 2016, and I Might Regret This, a book of essays about traveling across the country alone, published in 2018. “Even the title sequence, the patches — I think everything about the show is the show. I was very invested in that on Broad City as well. We hired incredible department heads who are steering these huge ships, whether it’s wardrobe or set design or props, but I really like being involved in all of those aspects, and they’re such a big part of it. Music is huge. Post [production] in general is one of my favorite parts of the process.”

When asked what’s next for her, Jacobson enthuses about writing and directing a film based on a story by Lorrie Moore she just optioned. But writing another book herself might have to wait a little bit. “The book [I Might Regret This] was so personal — I felt really satisfied with that experience,” says Jacobson. “I wrote that for me. I don’t think I’m someone who’s going to churn out a book of essays regularly, but doing that was so satisfying and challenging creatively. I would love to do that again! That book had such a trajectory — it was based on a very pivotal part of my life, which is so similar to Carson in a lot of ways. I’d have to figure out what I’m saying.”

Vanessa Bayer on the First Season of 'I Love That For You'

With her Showtime series, the Emmy-nominated Bayer weaves her love of home shopping into a poignant tale of seeking fame as a cancer survivor.

Vanessa Bayer knows, perhaps better than most, how to take challenging personal circumstances and spin them into comedy gold. The Emmy-nominated actor, writer, and Saturday Night Live alum mined her own experience as a childhood cancer survivor to co-create I Love That for You, the Showtime series she co-wrote, starred in, and produced, and which just celebrated its first-season finale.

Her protagonist, Joanna Gold, still weary of her “cancer kid” youth, is a grown woman living with her parents who scrounges up the guts to audition and become a host for SVN, the home-shopping network that brought her comfort when she was a teen in the throes of her illness. When she fumbles her big debut, Joanna fibs and leans back into her “cancer kid” label for a second chance at the gig. When things start to fall into place, she runs with it.

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When conceiving of the show with her friend Jeremy Beiler, a former SNL writer and I Love That for You’s co-creator, Bayer found relatable fodder in her own experience. “I’ve always loved home shopping and watched it a lot, so I wanted to do something about that world because I just find it to be so interesting and mesmerizing,” Bayer tells Shondaland. “Also, separately, as a teenager, I had childhood leukemia, and I always really wanted to do something about that. I used to exploit it for the perks I would get from it — going into school late, not having to go to gym class, the special treatment that I got. As someone who always loved attention, I got a lot of attention from it, which I thought was an interesting take on a difficult time, but also relatable because I think we all appreciate the special treatment we get, for whatever reason.”

Bayer funneled this inspiration into her character’s plot trajectory. “This character, Joanna, is trying to move past that label and have this new job in this new city and this new life, but ultimately she’s treated like a normal person, and no one’s making any special kind of concessions for her, and that’s sort of shocking to her. So, when she gets fired, she’s like, I know this thing that’s always worked for me and always gotten me special treatment. So, that’s why she lies about her cancer coming back. I always wanted to do something with those two things, so that’s sort of where this show kind of came from. Obviously, it’s very exaggerated, but it’s a relatable feeling a lot of people might have.”

Co-starring alongside comedic juggernauts Jenifer Lewis and Molly Shannon, Bayer proves adept at finding the comedy — and catharsis — in the aftermath of tragedy. “I was 15 when I was actually diagnosed, and now I’m 40, so it’s been 25 years. I really feel like I’ve had some distance, and I have some perspective on it now that I certainly didn’t always have,” she says. “In the pilot, in the hospital room for the [actress] who plays, like, young Joanna, we used actual ‘Get Well Soon’ cards from when I was in high school. Also, I would physically be going through things from when I was sick, revisiting some of the emotions. Joanna’s journey of arrested development, feeling kind of dependent on her parents and then having to break away from that, a lot of that stuff was real for me.”

Vanessa Bayer in I Love That For You.

Jill Greenberg

Of course, being constantly referred to as the “cancer person” at such a vulnerable stage in one’s life can affect one’s outlook profoundly. “It was an eye-opening and intense experience to have at a young age. It did give me a lot of perspective about what’s really important and what’s not important,” Bayer says, adding that on some level, she always knew she’d mine her experience for art. “This might sound insane, but I think I truly was like, ‘I have to do something with this someday. I have to write a book about this. I have to do something with it.’”

Though Bayer always knew she’d find a way to make art out of her experience, she didn’t aspire to be a comedic actor until she started doing sketch comedy at UPenn, though she always loved performing and making people laugh. “I was like one of those little kids who’s always performing for people,” Bayer says. “I did the after-school theater program in middle school and that kind of stuff. I didn’t really perform in high school, but my friends were really funny, and we would sort of do impressions of our teachers. When I was in college, I auditioned for this comedy group, and that’s when I first knew that I wanted to do comedy. But before that, I just really loved comedy, and I loved watching SNL.”

Her list of comedic heroes includes SNL all-stars Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Melanie Hutsell, and her current co-star Molly Shannon. “Working with her on this show was a complete dream come true,” Bayer says, adding that ultimately, I Love That for You is about the pivotal friendship between Joanna and Shannon’s character Jackie, the star host of SVN. “Joanna is learning about friendship and how to be a friend, how different kinds of adult relationships work, and how to nurture those relationships,” says Bayer.

With the sunset of the first season of the series, Bayer can’t wait to think up season two should she get the green light, referring to the experience of having a vehicle of her own as an incredible opportunity to learn and grow as a boss, writer, and performer. “Being in charge, I learned how to make decisions without necessarily knowing if they were right or wrong, but just knowing what I needed to do to make them. It was really incredible.”

In writing for Joanna, Bayer also learned how to draw a line between herself and her character. “This character, who is in many ways inspired by me, is not me. So, I learned how to differentiate between myself and Joanna and know that I might not do a lot of the things that Joanna would do,” she says. “As we wait to hear if we get a second season, we’re figuring out what exactly we would do, but I think we’ve always thought about the big competitor HSN, and what is that world? Would Joanna actually go there, or would she not?”

As for what Bayer is up to next, she lent her voice to DC League of Super-Pets, which comes out at the end of July. Co-starring with Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, and Natasha Lyonne, Bayer plays PB, a pig. “I find that the people who make animated movies, and this one in particular, they’re just so talented,” she says. “It’s just so fun to be a part of someone’s vision of an animated world because they just have such incredible imaginations.” She’s also collaborating with friends on a few different things that remain unmentioned. Her guilty pleasures during her downtime? Sleeping and the Real Housewives franchise. When asked what inspires her, Bayer says TV remains her favorite art form. “Every time I got to go to the Emmys, I’m like, Oh, my God, it’s this character! And that character! Of course, I know they’re real people, but it’s just really exciting for me.”