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00:00 (whooshing)
00:02 - I was just talking to Brian Cranston
00:04 'cause you mentioned the movie that we did
00:06 and he was doing a show on Broadway
00:08 the last time I was as well
00:10 and he actually got them to give him one show off per week.
00:15 I don't know, I think they just didn't do the show.
00:17 I don't think they had an understudy go on
00:19 so he had seven shows a week
00:20 because normally you do eight shows a week
00:22 and for people doing musicals,
00:24 I don't even know how they do that.
00:26 Oh my God, I mean, I've never done a musical.
00:29 - I thought you started as a sound of music.
00:32 - I was in musicals before I was a professional.
00:35 (laughing)
00:36 That's all better left unexplored.
00:39 - Unsung.
00:40 (laughing)
00:41 - Yes.
00:42 (upbeat music)
00:44 - I need you to look at me.
00:48 - No.
00:49 - Look at me.
00:50 - It's over.
00:51 - No.
00:52 - No, did we drift?
00:53 I can make it up.
00:55 - No, no.
00:55 - Honey, I'm not getting up.
00:58 - Diana, stop, stop.
00:59 Look over there.
01:00 - I can make it up.
01:01 - Look over there, you see that?
01:02 - I'm not getting out of.
01:03 - You see that, the horizon?
01:04 Look at the horizon.
01:05 You see it?
01:06 - Is it the sun?
01:10 - No, that's not the sun, babe.
01:13 Those are the lights of Key West.
01:17 Diana, what I'm telling you is
01:19 it's not gonna be another night.
01:21 Just one big push, if you can really bring it,
01:24 if you can really, really bring it,
01:25 then you're gonna reach Florida today.
01:27 But there's still a long way to go.
01:30 All right, at least 12 more hours.
01:31 Babe, you gotta, you need to dig deep.
01:34 You can dig deep, all right?
01:38 - Welcome to the actor's side.
01:44 Today, you all know her from so many movies,
01:47 stage performances, television, you name it.
01:50 Four-time Academy Award nominee,
01:52 and now currently knocking it dead in NIAID
01:56 as Diana NIAID.
01:57 Please welcome Annette Bening.
01:59 Welcome, Annette.
02:00 - Hi, Pete.
02:01 - And it's so good to have you here.
02:03 - Thank you.
02:03 Good to be here. - Strike's over.
02:04 We can now talk.
02:05 - Amazing.
02:06 - So NIAID, you know, it's like so brutal
02:14 to watch some of the stuff that she went through
02:16 and the water there and everything.
02:17 Why did you wanna take it on
02:19 in terms of the physicality of it?
02:22 Looks really imposing to me.
02:24 - You know, it was imposing.
02:25 I loved the script so much when I read it,
02:28 and I just knew immediately,
02:30 oh my God, this is an amazing story.
02:32 So I just sort of said yes without thinking.
02:36 Seriously, which sounds bizarre,
02:40 but I guess it's because I was just so swept up
02:43 in the story, but I didn't really sit down
02:46 and think through what that meant
02:48 in terms of the swimming and the physical stuff,
02:50 and whether I could do it and all of that.
02:53 So I just said yes, and then I,
02:57 'cause I was in the water a lot as a kid.
02:59 I was a diver.
03:01 I worked on a boat.
03:02 I grew up--
03:02 - You worked on a charter boat, right?
03:04 - I worked on a scuba diving boat.
03:05 - A scuba diving boat, yeah.
03:06 - Yeah, so I mean, a small 60-foot,
03:09 we had two different boats that we ran.
03:11 Two, one, two, and sometimes five-day trips
03:15 out of San Diego, out of the harbor there.
03:16 So I was in the water a lot,
03:18 and I felt very comfortable in the water,
03:20 but I had never been a swimmer swimmer.
03:23 So I just kind of jumped in the pool
03:25 and started swimming and thought,
03:28 whoa, this is so much harder than I realized,
03:32 and it was my own naivete,
03:33 and so then it was really,
03:36 I had that moment of like, whoa, can I do this?
03:40 I hope I can.
03:41 I thought, I'm in good shape.
03:44 So anyway, I had a good dose--
03:46 - Well, they cast it age-appropriate
03:48 because she was 60 when you did this.
03:50 - Right, she had been a marathon swimmer
03:53 as a young woman.
03:53 She was a competitive swimmer,
03:54 then she became a marathon swimmer.
03:56 These people fly, who knew?
03:58 I didn't know.
03:59 They fly over the world.
04:00 They swim these long five, six, seven, eight,
04:03 nine, 10, 12-hour swims.
04:06 So she retired when she was 30.
04:08 She tried to do the Cuba to Florida swim.
04:10 She failed.
04:12 And quit, and was a broadcaster,
04:15 and did all kinds of interesting things.
04:16 She was on NPR.
04:17 I used to hear her on NPR.
04:19 She was a commentator.
04:20 So anyway, she, at 60, then changed her mind
04:24 and said, "Okay, I'm gonna do the swim now."
04:26 And everyone said, "You're insane.
04:28 "You're too old.
04:29 "Like, you cannot do that.
04:30 "You couldn't do it when you were 29.
04:32 "What makes you think you could do it now?"
04:34 So anyway, I did.
04:35 I got a trainer.
04:35 I had a wonderful Olympian swimmer named Rada Owen,
04:40 who was my coach, who really,
04:43 you know, she really instilled in me
04:45 that it was possible for me to do.
04:47 And I showed her my swim.
04:50 When she came over, which, I don't know,
04:52 I watched YouTube or something.
04:54 I was like, "Okay, yeah, swim."
04:56 (laughing)
04:57 And she said-- - I love YouTube.
04:58 It's so great for actors now, right?
05:00 - Yeah, no, it's true.
05:01 I thought, oh, freestyle, how hard can it be?
05:04 Anyway, so I had a big dose of humility that I took.
05:09 And I just started going through it,
05:13 learning the technique, and starting to swim a lot.
05:17 And she was fabulous and really helped me.
05:21 And I had to really build myself up, my confidence,
05:25 you know, because, but then I just got super invested in it.
05:29 And it's wonderful to have a new challenge, you know?
05:31 It's like what we do.
05:32 That's what we love, right?
05:34 I think most of us want something like that.
05:36 - Take a risk, something you haven't done.
05:37 - Yeah, exactly.
05:39 And Diana's such a fascinating woman
05:41 and so full of contradictions and everything.
05:44 So I just kind of plunged in, started with that,
05:46 and just really worked hard at it.
05:49 - It's interesting, I just recently interviewed
05:51 Juliette Binoche.
05:52 - Oh.
05:53 - And I said, what do you, you know, look for?
05:55 And she says, I know what I don't look for.
05:58 And she doesn't look for anything
06:00 that doesn't provide a risk for her
06:02 at this point in her career.
06:03 She says she wants to be challenged.
06:05 - Well, a risk is a way of surrendering.
06:08 If you really commit to something,
06:11 not just in this work, but in any work or anything you do.
06:15 I was just reading about this
06:16 and about how risk is really freeing.
06:19 Because if you've taken a risk,
06:20 that means you've actually said,
06:22 okay, I'm gonna do that thing.
06:23 Whatever happens, however it turns out, I'm gonna do it.
06:28 And that there's a certain freedom psychologically in that.
06:31 Then it's like, well, what's the worst that can happen?
06:34 Well, you're not very good in my case.
06:36 You're fail, you're not believable, you know, whatever.
06:38 Those fears that all come up.
06:40 They all come up, of course.
06:42 - Even now, for you.
06:43 - Oh, oh, absolutely.
06:45 No, I was nervous last night
06:48 'cause I knew I had to do a lot of press.
06:49 Once I'm doing it, I'm fine.
06:51 But thinking about stuff is different than doing it.
06:54 And sometimes it's the thinking about
06:56 that is the trickiest part.
06:58 So Diana, in this endeavor, she just decided that was it.
07:02 She was gonna do this thing.
07:04 And she kept failing,
07:06 which is really what the movie's about.
07:07 It's failing and then just trying again.
07:10 - And friendship, too, because--
07:12 - Very much so.
07:13 - Bonnie is played by Jodie Foster.
07:15 You two are just fabulous together here.
07:17 - Thank you.
07:18 - You know, are really great friends.
07:19 You can tell to this day and all they went through.
07:22 But Diana Nyad, I gotta say,
07:26 you took on a character that isn't always that likable.
07:30 And people point that out.
07:31 And I don't know if they would have pointed that out
07:33 if it was a man in a similar situation.
07:35 - Why is that, do you think?
07:36 - You know, people are conditioned that way
07:39 about women still in this day and age.
07:42 Like, oh, she's not likable, she's not sympathetic,
07:45 she's self-centered.
07:46 You know, they're gonna find any negative.
07:47 What she did was incredible, win or lose, you know?
07:52 - Yeah, and we took some license.
07:55 I mean, Diana is an incredibly charismatic,
07:58 intelligent, worldly, sophisticated woman.
08:02 She's a big personality and all of that,
08:04 but she's very humble.
08:06 So, I mean, we did take some liberties
08:08 'cause I felt it was important
08:09 that she have an emotional arc.
08:11 So, you know, it's not just that she's not likable, I hope.
08:15 But that, you know, what does it take?
08:17 What kind of personality is it that takes that,
08:22 what does that take to want to swim 50, over 50 hours?
08:27 You know, they take breaks every 90 minutes.
08:30 She's hydrated, she gets food, no one can touch her,
08:33 but she's basically in the water, not sleeping,
08:36 not resting for that entire period of time.
08:40 - Right.
08:41 - What does that take?
08:42 What, does it have to be a nice woman?
08:45 (laughing)
08:45 - Exactly.
08:46 - Do you have to be a nice, likable woman?
08:47 Well, she happens to be very nice and likable.
08:50 But in the story, we did need to give her an edge
08:53 at the beginning, especially.
08:55 That she has a certain tenacity,
08:58 she has a certain blindness, but that is a virtue.
09:02 And if you think about great athletes that are men
09:05 that have a lot of bravado, well, we accept that.
09:09 We say, well, of course, he's like an extreme athlete.
09:13 So she's an extreme athlete, and so she,
09:15 and she's an interesting person.
09:17 She's not, you know, she's not a cookie cutter.
09:19 She's the real deal, and she's very complex.
09:22 - And you could tell she's never gotten quite over that,
09:25 not being able to do it when she was 30, came back.
09:28 And she remarkably got back into that level of shape
09:32 to even attempt this.
09:34 - Her log of just her training swims,
09:37 she wrote a very good book,
09:38 and it's based on the book.
09:39 I love the book.
09:40 It's called "Find a Way."
09:42 And at the end of the book is a list
09:44 of all of her training swims, which is like insane.
09:47 Oh, that day she swam six hours,
09:49 then 10, then 12, then 15, then eight, then nine.
09:53 I mean, this is just what she did for years.
09:56 - Unbelievable.
09:57 - Years and years and years.
09:58 Yeah, it's remarkable.
10:00 - Wow, and you trained for this
10:02 for about a year yourself, right?
10:03 - Yes, in fact, I need to look again
10:05 exactly how long it was,
10:06 'cause it might've been a little over a year,
10:07 but it was, yeah, it was at least a year.
10:10 But that was great.
10:11 And we got pushed at one point, which was great.
10:13 Then I got to swim more.
10:14 And I just was, you know, I got obsessed with it.
10:17 And I still swim.
10:18 I love to swim now.
10:19 - You do?
10:20 - Yeah, it's like a daily thing.
10:22 And I'm a better swimmer now than when I made the movie.
10:25 - I'm gonna bet you would be.
10:27 - I am.
10:27 I was just visiting my parents in San Diego,
10:29 and there's a neighborhood pool there
10:31 that's like a proper, really big pool.
10:33 And I was down there and I was swimming,
10:34 and I thought, oh yeah, man, this is even better now.
10:37 I thought, oh yeah, okay, that's how it works.
10:39 You know, you work at something,
10:40 and then eventually you begin,
10:42 maybe you get a little peek at having some flow.
10:45 - What I loved about this too is no makeup,
10:48 not Esther Williams popping out fully made up
10:50 or anything like that.
10:52 This was really, you know.
10:54 - Not Esther Williams, that's perfect.
10:57 - Not the way Hollywood might've done it in another era,
11:00 but this was like, you could see it on your face
11:04 and everything and what you went through on this.
11:07 It's there, warts and all, and anything you wanna do,
11:10 you didn't seem to be at all shy about showing that,
11:13 which is great.
11:14 - Oh no, no, that's the joy of it.
11:16 It's to try to strip it all away, you know?
11:19 That's part of the joy of the work.
11:23 And it also works on you as a person in that way.
11:26 I know for me, it's like a kind of gift
11:29 to be able to reveal oneself.
11:32 It's what you try to do in acting.
11:34 We don't always get there because the psyche,
11:37 you know, there's a lot of reasons to not reveal oneself.
11:41 But, and I don't mean my own personal life.
11:44 I just mean myself, you know, my own humanness.
11:49 And in a way, I guess we have to kind of let that out there
11:52 in our work for it to feel real.
11:55 So it's an opportunity to do that as a person too.
11:59 - Yeah.
11:59 And you had co-directors here, Jimmy,
12:02 and Shai who are documentary documentarians,
12:06 have done pre-solo, won Oscars,
12:08 and all kinds of things like that,
12:10 had never done a narrative movie before.
12:13 And I was wondering from your point of view,
12:15 having them direct this, what that was like?
12:18 Was it different?
12:19 And you know.
12:20 - It was really, it was really interesting
12:23 because Jodi is such a consummate professional
12:27 and she's a director and she's a writer
12:29 and she can basically, she's been in the business,
12:33 I asked her today, 57 years.
12:35 Like almost as long as my husband, who's 86.
12:38 - Yeah.
12:39 - So she's a real pro and they were,
12:42 it was their first time as narrative filmmakers,
12:45 as you said.
12:46 They're a married couple, that's hard.
12:49 I've actually worked with a number of married couples,
12:51 but they figured it out.
12:52 And they also love the fact that they weren't like,
12:57 as documentarians often have to do,
12:59 sort of wait for somebody to say the thing
13:01 that they kind of are dying for them to say, the subject.
13:04 Or to have an emotional moment or whatever.
13:08 That they don't wanna design the facts
13:12 because they're trying to just record.
13:14 But in this case, they had us that they could actually say,
13:17 okay, now this is when you need to do this.
13:19 And then this is, so they sort of enjoyed that.
13:21 And we, you know, we're used to that.
13:23 That's what everybody does.
13:25 So yeah, they were, at beginning they told us
13:29 they were kind of intimidated by directing us,
13:32 which of course, neither of us, that didn't occur to us.
13:35 That would be like, oh yeah, no,
13:36 you gotta say what you wanna say.
13:38 And they did and they each had their own style,
13:41 but they very much tried to have a unified voice.
13:44 Jimmy is an extreme athlete himself.
13:47 He's a great alpinist and a great climber.
13:50 And so he had a kind of emotional connection to Diana
13:55 because Diana has that same athletic mentality
13:59 that Jimmy has.
14:00 And then Chai has this incredible overall picture.
14:06 They both do actually.
14:08 And they're both highly motivated, highly intelligent,
14:12 you know, sensitive people.
14:14 And we all got on very well.
14:17 It was physically very demanding for everyone.
14:19 So there's a lot of logistics with boats and water
14:22 and you know, wow, that's a lot.
14:24 - You shot this in a tank, a lot of it.
14:26 - We did, most of it.
14:27 Although at the end, Jimmy and I did go,
14:30 did get to go out with our underwater cameraman,
14:32 Pete Zuccherini.
14:34 We went out on a boat and we jumped off the boat
14:36 and shot some stuff out in the open sea,
14:39 which we were all dying to do.
14:40 But you know, logistically, it's like, no one does that
14:43 because it's so difficult with cameras and stuff
14:46 and equipment and crews.
14:47 And that's why water movies are notoriously a nightmare.
14:51 But we didn't have a nightmare.
14:52 We had a lot of challenges,
14:55 but we did have that one day
14:56 where we got to jump off the boat
14:58 and I got to do some stuff with fish and swim around.
15:01 I loved it.
15:02 It was really a kick.
15:03 - Well, with your background as scuba,
15:05 - Yeah, it feels very normal to jump.
15:06 - These are your friends in the sea.
15:07 - Yeah, yeah.
15:08 And it's normal to jump off a boat.
15:11 - What I thought was interesting
15:12 that they brought to it too was,
15:14 they used footage of the real Diana.
15:17 So you see her on "The Tonight Show" and things.
15:18 They didn't try to CGI you into that.
15:23 - We thought about it.
15:24 - Yeah, did you?
15:25 - There was a lot of thought about that.
15:27 And we had a lot of support
15:29 about exploring different ways of,
15:31 how much do we use original footage?
15:33 How much do we use Diana?
15:34 How much do we use me?
15:36 How much do we put me on Diana's face?
15:38 - Right.
15:39 - All of those things which are now possible to do.
15:41 And they really, in the editing process,
15:46 I give them so much credit
15:48 because they really crafted the movie in post
15:53 and figured out what they needed from the real Diana.
15:56 When to put it in, when to take it out
16:00 and how to weave it all together in a cinematic way.
16:04 That I thought they did a remarkable job
16:06 at making those choices.
16:09 - Yeah, and it's a tribute to your performance
16:11 that you never think about it.
16:12 You are seamlessly believable as her.
16:16 And that's a challenge I would think for an actor
16:18 when you've got a movie like this,
16:20 which is very rare that they're using the actual footage
16:23 side by side in some way.
16:24 - I studied her a lot.
16:26 And of course there's a documentary about her.
16:28 And a lot of the stuff is in the documentary.
16:31 So I took a lot of time to look at,
16:34 it was very, very obviously super helpful
16:37 just to look at what happened to her physically,
16:40 where she was emotionally,
16:42 where she was in her levels of duress and pain
16:47 and all of the stuff that she went through
16:50 with the jellyfish and the storms
16:52 and all the stuff that she went through
16:54 to try to achieve it.
16:56 - It's amazing.
16:57 This is not your first rodeo and play in a real life person.
17:01 And I think it's an interesting thing for an actor,
17:03 a sense of responsibility sometimes,
17:05 especially if they're alive like she is.
17:07 But I mean, you were so good as Gloria Graham,
17:10 the great actress in film stars don't die in Liverpool.
17:15 Jerry and Marge go large.
17:17 This is a real person, Marge.
17:18 The 20th Century Women was based largely on Mike Mills,
17:24 the director's mother.
17:26 So you have that dynamic going.
17:29 Mrs. Harris, Emmy nomination is Jean Harris
17:32 and Dianne Feinstein, who just died
17:36 and you played her in the report.
17:39 What is it like playing somebody?
17:40 And she was very much alive
17:42 when you did that movie, for instance.
17:44 - Well, you're their advocate
17:47 and it is a pleasure to take on someone
17:50 because you are completely subjective.
17:53 You are, and I love that about the profession.
17:56 Like I don't have to judge a person.
17:59 It's quite the opposite.
18:00 How do I get behind their eyes and really see the world
18:04 and feel the world, more importantly,
18:05 feel the world and sense the world as best I can,
18:09 as in this case, Dianne would.
18:11 I fell in love with Dianne.
18:14 She's an incredibly interesting person.
18:17 She's a big personality.
18:19 If she walks in the room, she kind of lights it up
18:22 and she's the one that's telling the stories
18:24 and curious about everybody there.
18:27 And there's just a kind of aliveness about her.
18:30 But what I also found in getting to know her more deeply
18:34 and she allowed me in,
18:36 she trusted me after she got to know me, I think.
18:39 - Did you play Scrabble with her?
18:41 - You know what?
18:41 I did not, but I would like to.
18:43 - I bet.
18:44 - I would like to beat her at Scrabble.
18:46 I bet she's tough.
18:48 - Yeah.
18:49 - I don't think we ever played Scrabble, no.
18:50 - Oh, no, you played it with Joey.
18:52 - We played some games, but yeah.
18:54 - I like that.
18:55 You could see the, you know, the competitiveness.
18:56 - Oh no, yeah, absolutely.
18:58 They are highly competitive.
18:59 They still play tennis every day, Dianne and Bonnie.
19:01 Now, they play tennis all the time.
19:04 - That's amazing.
19:04 - And they're super competitive.
19:06 But Dianne, yeah, she's very,
19:08 she's got a very soft, vulnerable side.
19:10 - Right.
19:11 - And she went through a lot as a kid.
19:13 And we don't dwell on that in the movie,
19:15 but it is part of her story.
19:18 It's part of what she went through.
19:20 She doesn't ever speak in terms of self-pitying
19:23 or, you know, self-dramatizing about her past,
19:26 but she did have a challenging childhood
19:28 and a very complicated father
19:30 who ended up being her stepfather.
19:32 She didn't know it at the time.
19:34 And yeah, she wasn't told when she was in her 20s
19:37 that in fact her biological father was a different person.
19:40 - Yeah.
19:41 - Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff there, you know,
19:43 but she addresses it all rather matter-of-factly.
19:47 But of course, inside, and I can see in her eyes
19:51 when I talk to her, there's a kind of,
19:54 there's a kind of beautiful softness
19:56 and a vulnerability that I love about her, and a pain.
20:01 She's been through a lot.
20:03 So I wanted to try to, you know, get all that if I could.
20:06 - Yeah.
20:07 You do everything.
20:08 You're one of those actors
20:09 that always goes back to the stage.
20:10 - Yeah, I do. - As you play here,
20:12 locally in Westwood or Broadway.
20:14 You won a Tony in your first Broadway thing.
20:16 You know, I mean, you have--
20:17 - I didn't actually win, but I was nominated.
20:19 - You were nominated.
20:20 - Close enough.
20:21 - That is.
20:22 First time on Broadway, that's great.
20:23 Yeah, nominated. - Thank you.
20:25 - Is that a love, first love for you, stage?
20:29 - Well, it's what got me into the profession.
20:31 I just followed what I loved.
20:34 And I was in high school,
20:35 and then I went to community college, and I did it there.
20:38 And oh, they were casting me.
20:39 It was like, oh, I guess,
20:41 even though I have no idea
20:42 what "The Good Woman of Setswan" is about,
20:44 the Bertolt Brecht play,
20:46 I was suddenly playing the part.
20:48 So, you know, it kind of,
20:50 it just sort of organically continued.
20:53 And I found such a camaraderie,
20:57 and just the familial company experience
21:01 of working not just in the theater,
21:04 but certainly starting in the theater
21:05 was what I really fell in love with.
21:07 And the literature, dramatic literature,
21:10 the great playwrights.
21:12 I just love the fact that, you know,
21:15 we were working on these plays
21:17 that were intellectually incredibly rich and challenging,
21:21 but trying to get it across
21:23 in an emotionally impactful way.
21:26 I love that about the theater.
21:28 So that's kind of how I started, was in classical theater.
21:31 And that's what I really wanted to do.
21:33 So I did that, and I got to be in a rep company,
21:36 which was my dream.
21:37 - Is that ACT?
21:38 - Mm-hmm.
21:39 That's like almost every actor's dream.
21:41 You're playing different shows on different nights.
21:44 You get different amounts of responsibility in the shows.
21:47 And I just loved all of that.
21:48 But I did want to try to give it a shot
21:51 to see if I could get into other kinds of work.
21:53 But that wasn't until I was in my late 20s
21:56 that I even started in trying to do movies and TV.
21:59 - Yeah.
22:00 So yeah, you were a creature of the stage.
22:02 - Yeah.
22:03 - But I'm so happy that you still are,
22:05 'cause I've seen you play at the Geffen
22:06 and different places.
22:07 - Well, thanks.
22:08 Thank you.
22:09 - It's always great.
22:10 And when you mentioned classical,
22:11 you really take on the classics and all of that.
22:13 - You know, it's a kind of challenge.
22:16 You know, it's sort of Herculean, like Diana's swim.
22:20 - Well, it's always great to see you,
22:22 whether it's on screen or stage or television,
22:25 wherever you're acting.
22:27 And "Nyad" is one to see on Netflix.
22:31 And don't miss it.
22:32 And thank you so much, Annette Fenney.
22:34 - Thanks.
22:35 - Giving us the actor's side here.
22:36 - Thanks so much for having me.
22:38 (upbeat music)
22:40 (upbeat music)