Paul Giamatti Is Good With Words 44:19

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Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Paul Giamatti, a favorite to win Best Actor for his role in The Holdovers at this year's Oscars. In the movie, which is set at a New England boarding school circa 1970, Paul plays a cranky history teacher who stuck babysitting students left behind at the school over the holidays, developing a surprising bond with one of his charges along the way.

Together with the school cook, played by fellow Oscar nominee Davine Joy Randolph, the three form an unlikely trio. I loved it, and I didn't even go to boarding school. I think of Paul Giamatti as a classic journeyman actor who really understands how to embody a character, such as in Sideways, where he also plays a teacher, this time on a trip through California wine country.

or the boxing biopic Cinderella Man, where he played Russell Crowe's fast-talking manager and picked up his first Oscar nomination, or in films like American Splendor, 12 Years a Slave, and Saving Private Ryan, just to name a few. He's been in a lot of movies.

You may also know him as the hard-ass district attorney Chuck Rhodes on Showtime's Billions, which wrapped last fall after seven seasons. I was a big fan. And speaking of Billions, our question today comes from former New York DA Preet Bharara, who was allegedly the inspiration for Rhodes.

I want to talk to Paul about The Holdovers, his process from script to set, and how the business of making movies is changing. Plus, his esoteric podcast where he talks to people like Tom Hanks about things like time travel. We'll hear from Paul on that and more after the break. ♪♪♪

Paul, thanks for talking. How are you doing? I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you. Thank you for talking to me. I'm excited to talk to a fellow podcaster, really. I heard this Oscars thing, but I could care less. I want to talk about podcasts. Yeah, let's talk podcasts. We are. We're going to. We're going to. You have a podcast. I'm intrigued and fascinated by it. I do have one, yes. Okay. Yeah. Well, a lot of celebrities do, but I think this is very different.

Anyway, I don't know if you consider yourself a celebrity. I do. Yeah, that's an interesting question in itself. So I do want to start with The Holdovers, which I loved. I really did. It's by writer and director Alexander Payne, who is one of my favorites in every one of his movies. You worked with him on Sideways as well. And he said he wrote the part of Paul Hunnam for you specifically. Yes.

Why is it you specifically? The thing I keep thinking, it's funny, I don't think we ever really discussed it, he and I, why. I think part of it was...

with the world and the background of it, sort of the prep school thing and the academic thing and that kind of world. I think that maybe is the baseline foundation of why he says he wrote it for me. You had gone to a prep school, correct? I did. I went to Choate. I didn't board there, so I didn't have that special experience. So I don't know exactly what that would be like, but I went to Choate, yeah. To Choate. That is the prep school, just at boarding school, just so you know. It's the one? It's one of them. It's right up there. Okay.

If you had said Exeter, I would have said yes. That's even more. But did it feel like you were back in school, even if you were a day boy? Yes. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was all familiar to me, sure. And we were shooting in actual locations, actual schools, and the sort of costuming and the hair and makeup was uncanny. So it all felt very present again, yeah. Traumatically so at times.

Yeah, you were in the 80s. This was set in the 70s. Yeah, but it was only about 10 years afterwards. And a lot of those guys, I mean, there were girls there. But other than that, a lot of those guys were still there. Those teachers were still there. Yeah, I definitely had that feeling, especially, I want to get into what he's done there with the weather and the school itself, because the school itself is a character in a weird way. Yes, indeed. Ouch!

How different was it from your perspective from Miles, the wine-obsessed struggling writer and teacher you played in Sideways? Well, it's a similar guy at a different point in his life, later in his life. I actually like this character a lot more. I think he's got a lot more grit and kind of sand. He's got a lot more backbone. Okay. He's a little bit more... I think he's tougher. He's less... He's not self-pitying in the same way that the other guy is. I just think that he...

You know, he's at a different point in his life. So he's sort of settled into his resignation in some ways. Miles is sort of... What he is. His fish smell, everything. Well, he's got his fish smell in his eye and things like that. He has all these sorts of conditions that sort of set him apart and make him even more... He's also, I think he's actually more of a misfit and a bit more of an outsider than the Miles character. Right. He exists on the margins more than the Miles character.

He kind of enjoys it. I don't think he feels, Miles feels left out a lot of ways. Yes, exactly. That's a very good point. Yes, yes. Particularly that scene in Sideways where your ex-girlfriend tells you she's pregnant. That look was...

Yes, he wants a kid. He wants a kid. This guy's kind of decided, well, he's decided in some ways that he never wanted a kid. He never cared. He didn't care about any of that. Whether he really does or not, I don't know. I mean, it's buried, whatever his feelings are. Yeah, they're pretty buried. Try not to take this the wrong way, but what is it about these depressive, hyper-educated loner guys that you're able to translate so well? So well.

I really don't know. I seem to be the go-to guy for a lot of these things. I mean, you know, it's an interesting question with an actor, how much of it, is it something they bring to it, or is it just something that begins to be brought to them because of something they've done before? You know, so it becomes a tricky question. I don't know. I do, you know, I play these kind of hyper-articulate people. I do a lot of talking.

And so I think early on, people identified me as a guy that was good with the words. The words. So that, I think, happens a lot. I would love to play a character sometimes doesn't talk as much. I would love it. I've only done it a few times, and I really enjoy it.

especially on film because it's all, you know. Where did you not talk too much? I just saw, you know, oddly enough, I saw you in the eyes of March the other day. I was like, what is he doing here? I chatter a lot in that. And no, I did a movie once. I think the one movie where I didn't talk a heck of a lot is a very little known movie I did with Paul Rudd called All is Bright, I think. And

In which he plays the chattery guy and I play the sort of silent and articulate guy. And I really enjoyed it. You did because you don't get paid by the word. So it's fine. It's not just that it's that film acting is so much of it is the inarticulate stuff. You know what I mean? So much of it is just the face and the body.

being used to convey emotion without the words. You have perfected the stare, you know, the look, the sad-eyed look. The glare? Oh, the sad-eyed look, yes. The sad-eyed look. Yeah, but it's like, there's something great about containing all of it and not sort of the energy not going into your words, but into everything else. I want to play a clip from The Holdovers from early on, and Mr. Hunnam is having dinner with the kids he's babysitting over the two-week holiday break. They're being served by the

School's head cook, Mary Lam, who's black and whose son recently died in Vietnam. Davon Joy Randolph, who is also up for an Oscar. Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's play a clip. Mary, maybe you would care to join us? I'm all right. Thank you. I mean, I know she's sad about her son and everything, but still, she's getting paid to do a job. And she should do it well, right? Yeah.

But I guess no matter how bad a cook she is, now they can never fire her. Will you shut up! You have no idea what that woman has been through! You know, Mr. Koontz, for most people, life is like a henhouse ladder. Shitty and short. You were born lucky. Maybe someday you entitled little degenerates will appreciate that. If you don't, I feel sorry for you. And we will have failed to do our jobs. Now, eat!

So I'm going to use that line on the tech people I have to cover. Shitty and short. Shitty and short. You're born lucky. Entitled little degenerates was hard to say. Yeah, I like it, though. I like it. Yeah, it's great. Tell me about that scene, how you were thinking about it. Well, it's interesting. I mean, the whole relationship between him and –

Mary is an interesting one. It's never really stated particularly, but there's some sort of simpatico between the two of them that blossoms through the movie that, you know, they don't even necessarily even know it's there, but...

But, you know, I think she sees him and recognizes an outsider and he sees her and recognizes an outsider for different reasons. But, you know, they both feel marginal in the place. And I think he's the only person who probably, we talked about this, Davon and I, briefly, he's probably about the only one who even acknowledges her and knows her name. And likewise, she treats him, you know, I mean, she's funny with him and makes fun of him and stuff, but there's a kind of rapport. And I think the guy just has, you know, he's got a sort of,

complicated background. He's a scholarship student. He's from presumably kind of working class background. He's not the same class as these kids either. So it's like, you know, he's got a lot of built up resentment towards them for that. And I think he feels terrible for the woman about her son. Um,

you know, lots of things. I think he's a good man. He's not a nice man, but he's a good man underneath it, which was the interesting thing to play. Which you saw in those scenes when watching television and things like that, which was interesting, which is always a bonding experience, even though people don't think of it that way. Like you said, you went to Choate. Was that true to life for you? I went to a private school. There were a lot of entitled degenerates. Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. You know, I come from a background where there's a lot of elite people, but

I had not met sort of like really wealthy kids from New York. Like, I'd never really been around kids like that. So I was even sort of taken aback by a lot of it. But the school itself was a character too, as I said, as was the weather, which I thought the seeping coldness was really well done. You know, you could feel it. How much time did you spend there? How did that work out? I was super curious about, because you looked cold. It was cold. And we were there for about two months or so, two and a half months shooting maybe. Yeah.

And we were outside Boston and in Boston. And one of the things Alexander was pretty fixated on and why it was tricky to schedule it was he wanted weather. He wanted snow. And we got really good snow for this. And in this movie, there's no fake snow. It's all really snowing when you see it snowing. And I think it makes a difference. You can feel it. Like you said, the seeping cold, you can feel it. And then we were on actual locations, five different schools to create the one school. And

And lots of decrepit buildings and stuff we shot in where you would hear the clanking heaters when it turned on. So the atmosphere was great for acting in because it felt, it was cold and it was sort of old and it felt like that thing. And it captures the new, he's great at capturing regional things.

feel and atmosphere. Yes, he did it very well. He did it in Hawaii. He always does. Yeah. And it's like, and so he got the New England thing brilliantly, I thought. Yeah. Also the charmlessness of the schools, the lack of, you know what I mean? His room was the only interesting thing. Yeah. Well, there's a kind of attempt to build this kind of nostalgic sort of reference to these English schools, but it doesn't really go that far. They are kind of, they don't quite accomplish this sort of fanciness that they set out to be.

Right. Now, one of the things you did, you dedicated your Golden Globe that you won. Congratulations to teachers. Can you talk about that? Well, I come from a family of teachers. You do. Everybody's teachers. My parents were teachers. My grandparents were teachers. My brother's a teacher now. It's like everybody's teachers. So teaching is a big thing. And my dad, teaching and education and all of it was a big, big, big thing.

What happened to you? Why didn't you go into it? Because I wanted to be an actor. I mean, I would have, I thought about it sort of glancingly. I thought, well, maybe I'll go into the family business and become a teacher. But I don't think I would have a good one. Why not a good one? I don't think I would be good because I don't,

I think I would be the opposite of the guy in the movie. I don't think I'd have an ounce of discipline. I think I'd just be one of those guys who's like, everybody gets an A. This is great. Let's all go take a break today and go take a walk. I think I'd be one of those guys. And that's not good either. Probably not. No.

The question of who has access to education and who doesn't is front and center of the film. Yes. I thought it was an important thing. Talk about why that was. It's still a huge issue today. My podcast co-host, a professor at NYU, Scott Galloway, says top schools have become luxury brands now. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it is. And I think that...

You know, the movie, Alexander's movies have a lot to do with class. They do. It's interesting. And you don't necessarily see it in some of them. I mean, Sideways actually has a lot, even that movie has a lot about class in it, built into it. So I think he's very concerned and interested in it as an issue in America, as an American issue. And so it's a good sort of laboratory to study that as education. Yeah.

And it brings out the things about the characters, too. You know, this guy's resentments and bitterness. Status. The status and ranking. Yeah, and the kids sort of dealing with this family that doesn't really give a shit about him and then marries multiple dilemmas of existing in that world. Now, you've had some big hit movies, but you had a couple of co-stars who really are breaking out now. Talk

about that having so much screen time with them and how you think of yourself in that relationship well I mean they're both yeah they're having a wonderful moment both of them and and they're a different very different stages Dave Vine's been doing it for a while and she's fantastic and has always been good and I think she's having a wonderful moment where because she's mostly done comedy for the most part people are seeing what she's really capable of and

And it's just, you know, she's a great actress and she's a great person. And it's a wonderful thing. Dom. Dominic Sessa. Dominic Sessa, who plays Angus Tully, has never, this is the first thing he's ever done. It's astonishing. And so his moment is insane. I can't even imagine being him right now. He was found at a school, right? He was. He was at Deerfield, which is one of the schools we shot at. He still had a room at Deerfield. He was still living. He was still there and he was living there. So it's kind of crazy. But he's.

he's having an incredible moment in his life and you know, what he, I'm fascinated to see where he goes from here, but they were great. They're both great in different ways. I mean, they're both, Dom had this kind of natural professionalism about him, gravity and sort of seriousness. And so I never felt like I was working with somebody inexperienced and Devon and I work similarly and felt very similar and have a similar approach. So there was, that was just, that was one of those great things where we didn't even need to talk about anything. Well,

One of the things that I thought was interesting is it doesn't always happen. You let them shine quite a bit. I was thinking at the end, every single character in this movie got a minute or at least a minute. Absolutely. No, it has to be like that. I don't ever feel like I play the lead. I play the central character in an ensemble. And this just was this anyway. I mean, it's the three people make a hole in this thing. It has to be that. And I don't know, if I let them shine, they just do.

you know, so it was, and it was just a pleasure to, to do that with them. And it was like a play or something. A lot of the time, this thing, you know, it was just the three of us or the two of us a lot. So it was great.

So let's talk a little bit about the craft and sort of your moment, too, because most people think you're going to win the Oscar. I know you're not supposed to say anything. No. Whatever. In any case, seems like it. And then you could have some more In-N-Out Burger, which will be great for you. Yeah, I love In-N-Out Burger. Yeah, you've got to play that trope that they like to do after the end of award shows. Anyway, you've been, but you look great, by the way, in that.

in the actual In-N-Out Burger. Thanks. I feel comfortable there. You've been working in film and television on the stage for more than 30 years. You just wrapped up Seventh Season of Billions, terrific character, DA Chuck Rhodes. It was inspired in part by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. I have a question from the former DA himself. We add these in to every interview we do. Hi, I'm Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The big question I want to ask is this.

Uh-huh. First of all, he was forcing—I didn't—I was sick and I didn't want a drink, and he kept insisting I have a drink. Okay. Okay.

Good to know. First of all. I believe you overpreed any day of the week and twice as much. Yeah, that's true. Trust me. I don't know anything about wine. I know nothing about wine. And he's a very, you know, Preed's a very sophisticated erudite man. So I thought he should pick it because I know zero about wine. I know nothing about wine. He probably drank the one. Yeah, all right. Well, let's ignore the wine. I was just getting, but I do want to talk about how you developed your character of Chuck Rhodes. Obviously, he's a little bit, he doesn't,

He doesn't like S&M as far as I know. Oh, Preet? You mean he doesn't like S&M? Yeah. It seemed very loosely based on Preet. Yes, I know. He thinks it is, and we'll give it to him. Listen, I mean, sure, we'll let him live with that illusion. But it was various things. I know I can tell you that one thing that was interesting that...

the look of the character. I remember thinking, I don't want to just look like everybody always looks when they play these guys. So I went and I scrolled through and I looked at all these different attorney, these district attorney guys all over the country. And I came across this guy, John Durham, who,

who is the guy who nailed Whitey Bulger, and he was the Connecticut state, but he was also the guy who just did the whole investigation of the Russia investigation thing, the bearded guy with the glasses and a vest. And I thought, he's unusual looking.

there's a guy who looks like that, so I borrowed his look. I can tell you that much. Oh, wow. And when I read about him, I thought he sounded like this kind of very intense crusader kind of guy, and I thought, oh, he's interesting. So if I based it on anything, on anybody, it was more him than Preet. And then, you know, as with anything that's well-written,

The holdovers or billions, I take everything out of the language because it's going to be there. And the more I run over the language in my head and digest the words, the more my imagination gets fired off. How do you build that kind of character? It's nothing like you, of course. Of course, you're an actor. That's called acting. Yes, indeed. I mean, a character, I'd never done a TV show, so that's part of what's happening is that they're building the character as you're doing.

it. Well, you are. Well, you are and they are. It's a sort of interesting dance you're doing as it goes along. And they're sort of seeing what you're doing with it and building off of that and you're seeing what they're doing. And so it's a curious process building a character over a TV show, the length of a TV show. And they took a lot of twists and turns and curveballs and changed the characters and did these kind of hairpin turns a lot, which was kind of

part of the nature of the show. Yeah, it was part of the idea of the show that there were these sudden turnarounds, but that was interesting to play. It was, yeah, it was a fun character to build, but they did a lot of the driving. You know, you just went where they wanted you to go. Right. And right now we have a real life Axe in Bill Ackman. By the way, every Hedge Fund person I know thinks the character is based on him. I've gotten that from all of them. They aren't, none of them. Brian Cobham was like, no. But besides the obvious drama of it, I think

the show is about having power for power's sake no matter who the betrayer is involved talk a little bit about what you think the show did because it really did burst on the scene and it was way before its time because now it feels like much more pertinent no it does doesn't it

I don't. That's a really good question. It was an interesting thing because I didn't inhabit the money part of the world of that show. So I didn't experience a lot of what I think the guys who played the money guys did. I mean, I think it was always a question for me, like, are we glamorizing this stuff too much or are we, like, critiquing it? And I think we were doing both, actually, in an interesting way. So rich people porn? A little, yes, it was. But I think also they did a pretty good job of...

still getting in there and sort of critiquing these guys and not lionizing them all the time. I don't know. I guess you're right that in a way it almost feels more relevant now than it did then. You're right. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think it did for the cultural moment?

I thought there was a lot of rich people porn, but I don't mind it, right? I get that. And having spent a lot of time covering tech, I'm used to it. I'm used to their cars and their ridiculous behaviors and their childishness. Yeah, which they captured, I thought, very well in the show. Yes, they did. They did. I think they had a lot of stuff that was real to life in a lot of ways, which I thought was, that's how they behave. In my experience with hedge fund people who suddenly got involved in tech at the end,

I was more interested in the Chuck Rhodes character, actually, because I know those guys. You found him interesting. I did. Yeah, and I think there is that sort of sense of power for power's sake and a guy who sort of is abusing his power and stuff. I always thought of the character as very sort of like the Javert character in Les Miserables, this kind of— Oh, that's interesting. Well, because it's this kind of—he's so driven, he's lost sight of any sort of—he's lost perspective of—

And it's this kind of moral scourge that he's sort of set himself up as is kind of an interesting character. Yeah, I didn't know why he was doing anything. You know what I mean? Well, in a good way or in a bad way? In a good way. Yeah, that's good. I think he was motivated by a lot of kind of personal animus and things like that.

You know, and then sort of damage and trauma from the father and things like that. So I think it was a whole mess of things. It was a very messy character. He is, yeah. In a lot of ways. A very messy character. Very isolated, lonely character, too, I would say. It was an odd character to play because he was very closed off from everybody. I mean, nobody liked him. He didn't like himself. And so it was a very, it was a really interesting character to play. Did that have any impact on you, yourself, playing this sort of, he was hateful, really, in a lot of ways. Yeah.

I mean, that's a tricky thing. I've played a lot of sort of bad guys. But you learn to just, it's not you. You let it go and it's like, you don't really feel it. Some people feel it. It's interesting. But a multi-year TV show is different from a film. Building a character on a TV show like Billions differs from what you did in The Holdovers. It does. And you begin to feel very comfortable, sometimes almost alarmingly so in a TV show. You're like, am I getting too comfortable? Am I sort of losing the sort of

the sharpness of the character because I'm getting kind of a little too relaxed.

So that's an interesting thing. But these guys kept it pretty varied and lively, and the language was always a challenge. Fantastic, yeah. Yeah, and that was, I mean, not having really done any other TV shows, most people would say to me, my God, the gift you have of that language is really great. Yeah, and apparently you're good with words, I understand. Uh-huh. Anyway, uh-huh, see, that's how I circled back. A little podcast trick there. Nice. Oh, is this how you do a podcast? Is this the proper way of doing a podcast? Very good, very good. I'll take notes.

We'll be back in a minute. You recently said that you stopped saying yes to everything after you did Billions. Why is that? I said yes too much. I just worked too much. And I did a lot of stuff where I just was like...

I mean, I enjoyed everything I did. I just worked too much. And I liked to work. And I'm a bit of a workaholic. And I just thought I can take it easy now, too. You know, I did this show. And I have some money I can rest on now. And I can take it easy a little bit. So I just thought I would. Do you regret saying yes to anything? No, I don't regret saying yes to anything. I just did a lot, you know. And it just was –

sometimes wish that I had just taken more of a break and, you know. And sometimes I don't think my work was great because I was going to have a friend who, well, you know, and it's like I have a friend who, an actor who said he and I, we chain smoked jobs, really. You know what I mean? And it was like, it's a good way of putting it because it's like you get a little bit. So I don't, you know, I thought the work suffered a little bit. Well, actors always feel that they aren't going to get another job, right? Yeah. All my friends were actors. So that was also part of it.

Yeah, I had the same feeling. So for people who don't know, you won an Emmy as John Adams. You've been Teddy Roosevelt, Santa Claus, French novelist Balzac, former Fed chairman. Icons. Icons. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Icon. Yeah, icon. And even yourself in Cold Souls. Is there anyone you'd really like to play? Any person I'd really like to play? Any character. It'd be interesting to play Teddy Roosevelt on Fox.

I did Teddy Roosevelt as a voiceover. Right. I'd love to play Teddy Roosevelt on camera. That could be pretty interesting. I don't know that there's any particular living or historical person or figure like that anymore. I've done a lot of those kinds of things. There's kinds of movies I'd like to be in. I wouldn't mind being in a Western sometime. I wouldn't mind being in a more spy movie type of thing and more sort of –

horror stuff, genre stuff I really like. I wouldn't mind doing some more of that. A Western would be great. I don't know what I'd play in a Western. Why a Western? I like Westerns. You like Westerns. Yes, I do. A villain or hero? What would you pick? Well, I don't know. I mean, I imagine I'd play the horrible railroad baron. That's probably what I would... That's where they'd go first. Yeah. Exactly. That or maybe... Yeah, with the stash and the pocket watch and the sort of... Fussy, yeah. Yeah, just kind of... Well, just doesn't carry. That railroad's going to go through your farm whether you like it or not. Yeah.

Kind of guy. Or like maybe the doctor. Maybe I play the sympathetic drunk doctor or something like that. That ends up killing someone, sure. Yeah, exactly. Redeems himself by healing somebody. Or the goofy prospector. I'm not sure which one, but one of those, you know? Yeah, I can see that. Okay, all right, a Western it is. But when you're deciding on him,

What do you decide on? You obviously get your pick of them compared. You're a real working actor. You really are. More so. Honestly, first and foremost, beyond the character or anything else, the story has to interest me. That sounds like a real platitude that you hear from actors. But I honestly have to be interested in the story. And that literally means I have to keep turning the pages of the script I get.

And if I am bored, if I get bored, I don't want to do it because I just want to do a story that's going to rip me. Have you written a script? I don't actually know this. I couldn't. No. Directed? No. Why not? Too much work.

I'm way too lazy. Okay, okay. Acceptable. Acceptable answer. Yes. But then sticking to actors, living or dead, who do you particularly admire or who you learn from? You remind me like Gene Hackman I would pick for you. Oh, wow, that's nice. Or Sidney Greenstreet. That's a very nice thing to say. Oh, I love Sidney Greenstreet. Wow, that's the best compliment you could have.

possibly given me. You're welcome. You have made my year saying Sydney. I love Sydney Green Street. Guys like that, I loved. I loved Peter Lorre. I loved Boris Karloff. I loved Alec Guinness. I really liked a lot. I liked guys like that. Now, I admire... Why do you like them? Tell me what the...

They're unusual. I find them very odd. They're unusual. They're fun. They do this kind of fun, colorful stuff. When I was a kid, I was always interested in those guys. As they'd cross the screen and leave, I'd go, but I want to watch that guy because he's sort of fascinating and strange. Yeah, forget this Clark Gable character. Forget Clark Gable. Forget this Humphrey Bogart guy. I want to watch Peter Lorre. And those kinds of guys. And they were creative and fun and they were sort of,

And Alec Guinness, wonderful. You know, guys now, I mean, people that I really love. I'm a great, great admirer of Robert Duvall. I mean, I think of those guys. He's my favorite of those guys. Gene Akman's amazing, too. I really admire Denzel Washington quite a bit. Why is that? Well, I think he's kind of remarkable. I think he's transformative. He does all kinds of things. He's remarkably powerful. He can be funny. He's fascinating to just sit and watch, drink a cup of coffee with.

You know, he's unbelievably compelling. I just think he's great. I think he's one of the great living film actors. Any young person you are watching? I'm terribly ignorant about young people. All right, that's okay. You can ignore them completely. It's fine by me. I'm old.

I'm old, so I don't look at young people at all. So I want to switch gears. You have a podcast, Chinwag. I do. Why did you call it Chinwag? It's just what my friend—I do it with a guy named Steven Asma, who's a philosophy professor out in Chicago at Columbia College in Chicago, an arts college—

And we would actually just, he and I used to just have Zooms together like this and talk about weird topics. And he would just say to me. Where did you meet him? I saw him give a talk online several years ago about consciousness and the imagination and stuff. And I thought, that guy's really interesting. I'm going to get in touch with that fellow.

And so I did, and we just started chatting online, you know, Zooming together. This was 2020. And so we were doing that, and at a certain point, he said, this is really funny. We should do something with this because we were talking for hours. And so he gave a chunk of stuff of us talking to a student of his who was an animator, a former student named Alex Sokol, and he animated it. And the idea originally was to do an animated show of us talking animated. Oh.

But that didn't happen. And so eventually we just made a, and he would call them chinwags. Let's have a chinwag, he'd say. What does it even mean? It's an old school British term that means like a chat. Sit around and have a chat. A chinwag. All right. Okay. Yeah. It's like flapping your meat flaps, right? Okay. Meat flaps is another. You can take it. It's all yours. You and Steven, uh,

Let me just say, this is not your typical celebrity podcast, I would say. You and Stephen discuss metaphysics, Nostradamus, UFOs. You have had celebrities as Tom Hanks, Natasha Lyonne, Neil Gaiman. But we have like Mary Beard, too, Roman historian and stuff like that. Yeah, wonderfully historian. What are you going for? How do you look at this medium and pick topics? I have no idea. I'm so ignorant about it that I just kind of blundered into it. I mean, it's generally what Steve and I find interesting.

And, you know, he's a philosopher, and so we do end up talking a lot. And he has a focus on sort of consciousness and the imagination and the function of imagination and things like that. He has a weird interest in cryptozoology, which means Bigfoot. I've had a lifelong interest in strange things like this.

What we end up talking about a lot and what the baseline idea often is, is why do people believe the things they believe is actually a lot of the time. How does the imagination function in people's lives and in consciousness? It often ends up being what we talk about.

But it's also just fun. And we have a good time. And we bring people on. I thought it'd be interesting to have people come on who don't know. And they're not going to talk about the movie they're on or the TV show or the book they wrote. We're going to ask them about ghosts. Do they believe in ghosts? Do they believe in UFOs? Are they interested? You know, what do they think about cults? We talked to Katherine Hahn about cults because I knew she'd be interested in that.

that and things like that. And I think Tom Hanks was time travel, right? Yeah, it was time travel. We ended up talking about a lot of things with him. I'm obsessed with time travel. Yeah, and he, because I thought his is a fellow who's fascinated with the past. So, and he was great and he was game for it too. Right, because it's probably different.

It turns out that a lot of people have a good time because they're not talking about the thing they usually have to talk about. Right. And so that's why... But then we'll get somebody on. We got a woman on named Deirdre Barrett who's a sleep and dream expert from Harvard to talk about dreaming and dream science and stuff. And we talked to a guy named Matthew Johnson about psychedelics. Right. And stuff like that. So it's kind of...

But yeah, so it's kind of whatever interests us. Is there one area you like, or is it UFOs? Because right now, UFOs are having a moment, right? UFOs are having a big moment. Because apparently they're correct. Apparently they're there. According to our government. We talked to one woman who works for MUFON, which is this sort of UFO network that collects

And she's more of a strict believer. We're going to be talking to a woman named Leslie Kane, who is really great. She's a journalist and a writer who's written a lot of stuff about all kinds of interesting topics. But we're going to talk to her about what's going on now with all the strangeness of it now.

Because it's very weird. I don't understand what's going on. It's strange and compelling. Well, they might have been keeping it from us. Maybe. A lot of these shows might be true. A person you should talk to is John Podesta, the big political guy. Sure. I interviewed him only about UFOs once. Yeah, that's a good idea, too. Very good. Thank you. And the other thing that I suspect you're leaving out is that we're in a simulation.

We've done a little bit of talking around that. We talked to Patton Oswalt, too, about the Mandela effect, which is this sort of mass delusion that people will have. It's based on the notion that when Nelson Mandela died, many people thought he'd already died. And there was a whole kind of internet phenomenon about that.

But that all leads into the living in a simulation thing, that there's a glitch in the simulation and you forget something and everybody has a mass misremembering of something. This is so interesting to me. Are you looking for a $100 million deal like SmartLess?

Whatever. I mean, not really. If that happens, that would be great. I mean, really, honestly, my friend and I, Steve and I, we have a good time doing it. And, you know, it's gathering an audience. Whatever. Sure. If that were to happen, that would be splendid. But if it doesn't, that's also fine. I'm just enjoying myself. All right. I have just two more areas. One, since Chinwag covers the esoteric and the metaphysical, I'd like to do a quick lightning round. Okay. A handful of life's great mysteries. UFOs, are you a believer or not?

I'm a believer, qualified believer, that there's something there, but I'm not sure what it is. Bigfoot? Uh,

No, not so much. Not so much on Bigfoot. God or just as real as Bigfoot? Technically, no. I'm not an atheist, but I don't know that I believe in a single creator God. This is not so lightning, is it? I'm not saying yes or no to anything. No, some people say an agnostic is an agnostic. I'm not an agnostic because I do believe I'm not a materialist. I'm not a strict materialist, so I can't say I'm an atheist because I believe in ghosts. So I can't claim. Oh, all right, ghosts. All right, then time travel?

Yes, I actually think it maybe is happening. Any place you'd like to go anytime? I think I'd go into the future because I'd be too interested to know what the hell's going to happen. Maybe even the near future would be really interesting. Oh, right, November 7th, right? Yeah. So if you could clear up one, you'll get there soon enough. If you would clear up one enduring conspiracy, JFK, Area 51, the moon landing, what would it be? Moon landing, I think I'd like to just put that to rest. Put that to rest. It's a little silly, though.

Yes. I like it. It's fun. It's entertaining, but it's not true. It's not true. No, 100%. Well, welcome to the internet. Anyway, last question. I want to talk about Hollywood, and we'll finish up on that. I believe in Hollywood. Do you? Good, because it's done you well. Miramax bought worldwide rights to the holdovers in 2021. You were already attached to the film at the time. Bill Block, the guy who bought the movie, was ousted last fall, reported because Miramax felt the studio would be mining existing IP assets.

instead of acquiring films and distribution rights. How do you think about the mentality will impact films in the future? And how much room is there for movies that land in between budget and blockbuster? And so you're saying sort of, is there room for original content and stuff like that? And will there be original content? Which you star in a lot.

Yeah. No, I think it will. I mean, people worry about it and there's often been for years, but I've been hearing this now for 30 years. It's over and then nobody's going to make movies like this. And yet they do keep making them. And actually there's a nice slate of them right now. Yeah, sure is American fiction. And up for awards, you know, and it's like, so I don't think that, I don't feel as worried and doom and gloomy about it.

I do think maybe not a lot of them will get made, but I don't think they're ever going to go away or anything like that. I don't think we're all going to get buried under superhero stuff, which also it seems to be waning a bit itself. Waning itself, right. That's true. So who knows what's going to happen? But I do think these things –

Always will. They do always seem to get made. So, you know. Yeah. Ted Sarandos, when I interviewed him a few years ago, said he didn't think they had a life. They would all be in streaming. There were major strikes in Hollywood in 2023. The streaming services are really in the crosshairs, as was the use of AI. Talk about the strikes. Has it shifted for you? You were obviously not working. I was not working. I had just finished. I mean, but I watched a lot of my friends suffer quite a bit. I mean, I think that, you know, they secured their vows.

the rightful payment is going to happen now for people. The AI thing is actually a thing that freaks me out. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Would you license your likeness?

Would anybody want to license my likeness? What are they going to use me for? I mean, but maybe. No, I don't think I would. No. Maybe if I'm very old and they want my likeness from the past or something maybe to retire on. There's plenty of material. Plenty of material. You're data rich, as they say in tech. I am data rich. There's a data landscape for you. That freaks me out. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that has shifted, and this may be getting too granular and too into the weeds, but the whole way that actors audition now has changed radically. And I don't think it's going to change back. And none of that was solved by the strike, which is that they all have to film themselves now and send their auditions in. And this idea of going in and face-to-face auditioning

auditioning for things has kind of gone, and I think it's actually a bad thing. I'm going to say it right here and now. And for actors who know what I'm talking about, it's like, it's not a good thing, and that concerns me. It's obviously a time of great change. What are you seeing now that you like? What kind of movies get you in the theater? Because that's the other trend, is people watching streaming. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big, like I just said, I'm a big genre fan. And there's a nice sort of, you know,

going on for horror movies and things like that gets me in the theater. I like to go see a really good...

Although I saw this on streaming. I'm saying that now when I saw this movie, Barbarian, which was really good. But I'll go and see a horror movie. I enjoyed, I'm a big genre guy. I enjoyed Godzilla Minus One, the Japanese Godzilla movie that just came out. I think there's a lot of really good genre stuff getting made, and that always gets me into it. Do you like that? Have you heard about Abigail? What is that? I have, and what is that? It's a vampire ballerina.

Oh, yeah, that sounds great. I feel like it's right up your alley. Yes, that sounds fantastic. And that kind of thing? Yeah. Boom, I'm there. I'm there. Uh-huh. So when you're looking at the rest of going to the Oscars, this is my very last question, most people think you are going to win. You don't have to say that. But how do you prepare? Do you like awards or do you think? Like.

You have to say you love them right now. Yeah. I mean, yes. I don't really know how I feel about it. It's all just a shitstorm of emotion going through this stuff. I don't know. In one second, it's the greatest thing ever. In the next second, you don't even want to think about it. So, I mean, I don't know. It's fun. You know, I'm finding the fun in it. You know, I'm old enough now that this is fun. And the parties. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, and I get to just, it's not like it's work. I get to talk to you. I get to talk to people like this. It's nice. So it's a good time. The award itself, who knows? I have no control over it, and we'll see what happens. And your next role? I'm just going to go have a good time. Your next role? I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't taken anything. Like I said, I'm actually taking it easy. Not chain smoking? Not chain smoking anymore. I did a Spanish-language horror show for HBO called 30 Coins.

That was really great. And I'm probably going to do another season of that at some point. But that's it. That's it. That's it. Yeah, podcasting is a great business. Podcasting. Right? It's a gold mine and it's just, you know. Don't believe that you can't make money at it. You know, you can do pretty well. I've been enjoying the hell out of it. So, yeah, I'm doing that. Well, keep doing it, Paul. Thank you so much. I do hope you win. You really deserve it. I love that movie. I appreciate it very much.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Nei Maraza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Kateri Yochum, Megan Cunane, Megan Burney, and Michael McDowell. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you're a railroad baron in Paul Giamatti's New Western. If not, you have to film yourself auditioning. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back on Monday with more.