On the Podcast: A Conversation With Winter 2024 Cover Star Sienna Miller

Vogue

Sienna and Chloe discuss the new baby (stay tuned for the gender reveal!), how the actress divides her time between London and the countryside, and avoiding the paparazzi.   Director: Nina Ljeti Director of Photography: Andrew Maso Editor: Evan Allan Senior Producer: Jordin Rocchi Associate Director, Creative Development: Alexandra Gurvitch Camera Operator: Bernardo Garcia Elguezabal Assistant Camera: Jack Kelly Gaffer: Julia Gowesky Grip: Megan Miller Audio: Lily van Leeuwen Set Designer: Taylor Horne Set Design Assistant: Javier Scalley Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg Production Assistant: Noah Bierbrier Hairstylist: Gonn Kinoshita Makeup Artist: Sil Bruinsma Groomer Tracy: Alfajora Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons Stylist Assistant: Kaia Carioli Sienna Miller wears a Khaite dress and Gucci heels Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors Line Producer: Romeeka Powell Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier Assistant Editor: Andy Morell Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James Supervising Editor: Kameron Key Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor Assocate Director, Post Production: Nicholas Ascanio Entertainment Director: Sergio Kletnoy Director of Content, Production: Rahel Gebreyes Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin VP, Digital Video English: Thespena Guatieri

Transcript

00:00 This is The Runthrough, I'm Chloe Mao, and today we're here with Sienna Miller.

00:05 All right. Hi, Sienna. Happy Sunday.

00:08 Thank you.

00:09 We're in the Vogue closet. This is a big moment for many people,

00:12 but we're just casually on this pink velvet sofa.

00:16 And then the Vogue, so that closes and there are more clothes when we're not in here.

00:20 Yeah.

00:21 And everyone can just help themselves to the shoes.

00:24 Well, these are available for shoots, but the Manolas have to be approved,

00:28 like a Manola library.

00:30 In a temperature controlled.

00:31 You just not let anyone get their mitts on Manolas.

00:34 Right.

00:35 What is it like fitting for a Vogue cover when you're quite a few months pregnant?

00:40 Pretty heavily pregnant now.

00:41 How many weeks are you feeling now?

00:43 I am 31 weeks.

00:45 Oh my God.

00:46 31 and a bit weeks. It's fun doing a fitting,

00:48 although in the last two weeks I've woken up and I'm like pregnant in my head and face.

00:53 What is the exact change that you feel?

00:56 There's a slight waddle.

00:58 Okay.

00:59 You know, there's a, "Whoa," when you stand up and sit down,

01:02 which I'm really trying to get a lid on and peeing like 18 times a night,

01:06 which is too much information, but welcome to the real world, people.

01:09 And I walked around with my daughter yesterday in Soho and I was like,

01:14 "We're going to be in New York. Let's go shopping."

01:16 And after an hour I was, you know, the lady that was sitting down in a free shop.

01:20 What are you loving to wear right now?

01:21 Big baggy knitted.

01:24 Yeah. What is Sienna maternity wear?

01:26 I've tried to avoid buying maternity wear.

01:30 Me too. It's very hard.

01:31 It's very hard. I feel like I'm probably at the stage where I need

01:34 some maternity leggings. That would be nice.

01:37 I've found clothes in my wardrobe that will stretch

01:40 and I have borrowed Olly's jeans for the first four months. I have now outgrown them.

01:44 Oh, wow.

01:45 I think that the timing of this pregnancy is great.

01:48 I got to be sort of floaty in the summer and, you know,

01:51 in the good stage of pregnancy was in easy clothes and now I can just, like, jumper it up.

01:56 Well, I was obsessed with your Vogue World Schiaparelli moment.

02:00 It was a good thing.

02:01 How would you describe it?

02:02 I would have said kind of couture meringue.

02:06 Yes, it was a couture meringue with your bumps.

02:08 With my bumps. Every area that you would want disguised as a woman was disguised beautifully,

02:14 artfully by this incredibly created, like, masterpiece of art.

02:19 Harry Lambert was styling everybody who was taking part in the show and I was doing a little skit.

02:24 Oh, yes, you were in Usher.

02:26 I was in Usher, yes. And Harry Lambert, for those who don't know, is a brilliant,

02:30 very avant-garde creative stylist and he had sent some options of clothes that he thought

02:35 would be good and that was the most exciting/scary.

02:39 I didn't know I was a kind of bump-out pregnant person, but it felt incredibly empowering.

02:44 Is this pregnancy style different than with Marlowe?

02:47 Do you remember what you wore when you were pregnant with her?

02:48 I think with Marlowe I really tried to stay in my own clothes and it just didn't work.

02:53 I think I have, I think I'm just much more conscious now than I was then.

02:57 How is this pregnancy different from 10 years ago with Marlowe?

02:59 It's honestly been so much easier. I have sailed through this pregnancy.

03:05 Yeah, I don't know whether you're just so perpetually tired being a parent already

03:08 that you can just manage better with a second baby, but I felt great.

03:13 Well, I'm thrilled to hear that.

03:15 Until about six days ago.

03:17 This pregnancy became publicly known when you were on a private vacation in Minnesota this summer.

03:26 What is it like having...

03:28 People take photos of you in a bikini pregnant. Do you know what? It's great.

03:33 It was so funny. I got through the entire summer and I'd had a very decadent summer

03:38 of traveling around and being on lots of beaches and I got away with it.

03:42 That was the last swim on the last day of the last holiday.

03:46 You almost did it.

03:47 Thank Christ it was like 5pm and not glaring sunlight.

03:51 Is Marlowe excited?

03:52 To have a sister?

03:54 Yeah.

03:54 A baby sister?

03:55 I was a little girl.

03:55 Gender reveal by accident.

03:57 I was going to ask, but there we go.

03:59 I'm having a baby girl. Is Marlowe excited? She is now excited.

04:06 She's like, this was great. Why would we change this?

04:09 We were the Gilmore girls and what if the babies cute her?

04:13 The normal feelings, which she's very honest about.

04:16 How do you hope her experience as a girl and eventually a woman will be different from yours?

04:21 How long have you got?

04:25 No, I think it's really hard to be a young woman in this day and age.

04:33 I think it's also a lot easier in many ways. So there are pros and cons to both versions.

04:37 She can self-advocate and she has the word no in her repertoire.

04:41 And I think in the 90s when I was a kid growing up,

04:47 you know, God forbid you offend a man's ego by disagreeing.

04:50 And I just don't think that exists at all. And that's wonderful.

04:54 Can you describe like Marlowe's family dinners where it's you, Tom, he's now with Alexa,

05:00 Ollie. Does Marlowe know that she has access to two of the great British wardrobes?

05:05 We tell her she doesn't. She's never going to give me that. I think it's might she might

05:10 be starting to cotton on to the fact that I have got an aesthetic and maybe it was appreciated,

05:15 but she's still like, no, Alexa, she is much more generous too, because she's

05:21 exquisitely dressed and not her actual mother. It's very genuinely, very loving and cozy and great.

05:28 How wonderful for her.

05:29 It's ideal. It's incredible. We're very lucky.

05:32 What's been your favorite role that you've played and why?

05:35 Sally Bowles in Cabaret on Broadway, because she is a nihilistic sort of tragedy

05:42 that sings and dances. And my guilty pleasure is singing and dancing.

05:47 What is the most challenging role?

05:49 I did a movie called American Woman that was very emotionally draining. And I loved that character,

05:56 probably more than any character. But it was very hard to imagine the loss of a child

06:01 as a parent, as anyone. I have tended to be drawn to very dark material. My formative youth was

06:09 intense, very, very intense. And to have an outlet for some of that intensity was

06:14 probably made me drawn to dark work.

06:17 Your formative youth while you when you were first starting to act or before that?

06:21 I think my 20s, my very public 20s.

06:24 You were covered so intensely from such a I was reading about the ages when you were first with

06:30 Jude Law. I mean, you were 21. It's just, do you ever look back now and think, oh, poor 21 year

06:36 old Sienna, I wish I could tell her this.

06:39 Yeah, of course. I mean, honestly, it feels like a different life and a different person's

06:44 experience. It was also surreal and chaotic. But it's sometimes it's hard to connect that

06:49 that's the same person. I do have sympathy, yes, for all the women at that moment.

06:55 It was this frenzy before phones and social media, before all of that. I think a lot of

07:01 people really derailed because of it.

07:03 I love Anatomy of a Scandal. And I then remember reading the article about how you could hear

07:09 your heartbeat in the scene when the infidelity is revealed. And it just made me wonder about

07:16 how personally and emotionally invested you get when you're doing a scene like that.

07:20 I think that in order to successfully achieve an emotional state, you probably have to connect

07:29 it to things that happened in your life. There was something incredibly familiar about that

07:34 particular scene and dynamic. And knowing that on the other side of that scene of him

07:41 revealing an affair was a huge amount of tabloid attention. And it was it was just very easy to

07:45 sense memory. I was surprised by the fact that my heart started to thump.

07:50 It's weird, but you really do store obviously you store trauma and memory in your body and

07:56 when you can access it for work, I think that's great versus it coming out in other relationships.

08:02 You have been very vocal about pay equity and earning the same or at least closer to the same

08:13 as your male counterparts. Has that been something that you felt has been successful? Has there been

08:19 progress made?

08:20 Definitely been progress made for sure. I mean, I think I'm in an industry where the disparity

08:27 was enormous, but I think it was more important to focus on how that translates across the world

08:32 in every industry. And I think that I was very fortunate and I worked with Chadwick Boseman,

08:38 who donated some of his salary to get me up to a number that I had asked for for a film that we did

08:42 together, which was astounding. And I've shared that story with many a male actor who has gone

08:48 very quiet in the aftermath. A lot of it comes down from being able to advocate for yourself,

08:54 which is something I've had to learn. I think I would have happily done any of the work that

08:57 I've done for free. And it's been a reckoning to try to realize your own value.

09:03 Did that come naturally or was that something?

09:05 No.

09:06 Okay. Because I mean, you famously you took on news of the world.

09:11 Yes, that did come naturally.

09:13 Interesting. Do you regret any part of that? Because it just felt like you had to do

09:18 it. For people who don't know, in 2019, you sued News of the World or Murdoch Organization.

09:22 Was it 2019? It must have been earlier.

09:24 The OG suing.

09:24 Infraction was in 2005.

09:27 I think I then, so then the News of the World shut down 2000 and something.

09:31 I mean, in great part due to your lawsuit, which is kind of amazing.

09:35 So I don't regret that. I'm very, very proud of that. I would love to have not had to do any of

09:40 it, you know, but it does feel like a reclaiming of a narrative or just taking something on a

09:47 Goliath.

09:48 What is the worst thing a tabloid has ever printed about you or the most painful?

09:52 Oh my God. Again.

09:53 I mean, not to make it-

09:55 It's really fun. Happy Sunday to you too. The worst thing a tabloid has ever printed about me.

10:00 I guess, you know, they hacked my medical records. They blagged them from my doctor

10:04 and printed that I was pregnant.

10:05 I know. I have to say researching this was the first time I'd ever heard about a blagger.

10:08 I wondered if when this new pregnancy was revealed, did it have any, not repercussions,

10:16 but re-reminders of that earlier breaking up your medical privacy?

10:22 I think in all honesty, they knew for months that I was pregnant. I remember they were emailing my

10:28 publicist saying, "We've heard rumors, but obviously we would never print anything that,

10:31 you know, and we just wouldn't respond." That did feel like a giant step because there was

10:38 no respect for that kind of sensitivity of information back then. For any woman,

10:43 it was a very different time.

10:45 Is there a way to sort of quiet the noise of the media and just sort of power on in your own

10:51 personal life? Can you sort of separate the two?

10:53 You don't look.

10:54 Really?

10:55 Yeah.

10:56 People say that and I just find it remarkable.

10:57 There are moments where you're aware of something like my pregnancy being

11:01 photographed on a beach when I was pregnant. I just was like, "I have to see what that is."

11:04 Wow.

11:05 But on the whole, you can turn down the noise by not engaging. And I think there can be a

11:09 tendency, especially on like a hangover, to like read the comments. And it's a form of self-harm

11:14 that's not healthy.

11:15 Sure.

11:16 But if you don't engage with it and you don't read it and you don't give it power,

11:20 it really becomes an irrelevant force.

11:23 I have to say, I found it quite shocking after the news of your pregnancy came out that there

11:27 was a lot of discussion online. "Wow, she's having a child at such an advanced age." And I thought,

11:33 "How old is Sienna Miller?" I thought she was in her late 30s. And I was like,

11:36 expecting they were talking about a 50-year-old. What do you think that culturally is about? Is

11:40 that people truly aren't familiar with that?

11:44 I think that people are comfortable with a way of living that has existed for many years, which is

11:51 very misogynistic and patriarchal. And like me being the older woman in a partnership with a

11:58 younger person or being pregnant over 40 and that that's irresponsible and a poor child, it's such

12:04 double standards. And I think it's so unquestioned in people's minds. It's just a trite, easy target.

12:11 But it's absurd. I mean, I was very fortunate. I wasn't necessarily trying to get pregnant. This

12:17 happened as a total surprise and biologically was something that my body was able to do. And

12:23 I just find that judgment, it's so one-sided and it's so sad.

12:28 Do you have different expectations of motherhood this time around? 10 years on, do you feel like

12:34 you're more realistic or are you?

12:36 I have expectations, whereas I had none before.

12:39 Oh, interesting.

12:40 I think. I feel much more prepared psychologically than I was before with Marlo.

12:44 And the reality was quite, it was quite a shock. I was 29 when I got pregnant and I had her at 30

12:49 and I just hadn't given it the thought that I guess you can't prepare for it. In my mind,

12:55 this is going to be the easiest, coziest, sweetest, because I've completely forgotten

12:59 the reality of having a newborn baby.

13:01 I loved reading that British Vogue last year described it as there's something of a

13:06 Ciena-Zonce afoot. Does it feel that way to you? Does this feel like a new chapter or new moment?

13:12 I feel like every decade there's a Ciena, you know, I ebb and flow.

13:16 My plan is to still be ebbing and flowing at 80.

13:21 I'm excited. I have some really great work next year that I can't talk about. And

13:27 I am having a baby and I'm so happy about that. And I do find myself happier and happier the

13:34 older I get. So in that sense, yes, I've never been particularly able to comprehend

13:41 whatever perspective people have of me. So if there is a Ciena-Zonce, I wouldn't

13:46 be able to connect to it, but I'm yes, it sounds like a nice thing.

13:50 Ciena, this has been such a pleasure. I'm so excited for your journey now to

13:54 the Hamptons for your big shoot. And many, many happy returns of the day with Annie LeWitt and

14:01 Tabitha tomorrow. I think it's going to be fantastic. And goodbye to everyone from the Vogue

14:07 closet.

14:19 [Music]

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