Claire Danes Couldn’t Stand The Social Politics Of Junior High | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

reading about your life which fascinates me because I know at a very early age you come from a very artistic family and you come from a family that was very and feels like open I mean you're living in the are you living in a village where are you living in SoHo kind of Loft yeah my parents were were visual artists and they moved to the Bowery in the late 60s and then um bought a loft building on Crosby Street with another couple for literally like negative like I mean just a shocking stuff that makes people angry today serious yes um I bought this house for eleven hundred dollars murderous yeah yeah um yeah but uh so yeah and I I mean the factories were were shutting down all around me and being transformed into these artists Studios and you had to actually legally prove that you were an artist to live there at the time it was um but anyway so yes it was a funny way to live and um and very permissive uh in a lot of in a lot of ways but nobody you know nobody around me was involved with the perform forming arts and actually it was only until I did that show Finding Your Roots When I learned that my paternal grandmother who I never knew and actually died when my dad was 10 and her name is Claire James um named after like she apparently got a masters in the role of dance and Shakespearean drama and had acted and directed and plays and um and I was kind of stunned by that because there was no indication of of this being anywhere in the gene pool yeah I don't I don't come from I come from uh dad's a research scientist my mom was a lawyer and then I go back before that and my grandfather's a policeman and my you know just you're I look around and I keep thinking is there where if I go back 200 years is there a ventriloquist dummy must be a picture somewhere of a guy with like puffy hair who's making an asset himself and being chased by angry people um but I heard that you early on you were interested in mimicking is that true yeah so my first memory of acting was when I was in pre-nursary school and I was must have been like three or four yeah and slow was my teacher she was Indian and I loved her and it was nap time and I I was a terrible Napper I am still a terrible Napper but I'm also you know I was also like a totally obsequious like people pleasing person which I you know still on so anyway so I wanted to convince her that I was sleeping and I was doing my best impression of a sleeping uh tiny child and I I'd I'd remembered that my mom had twitched in her sleep and so I was doing this I was trying to do this twitch and I thought oh yeah yeah that's good that's really subtle that's super nuanced she's never gonna know that I am but that was the that was the feeling that I was really working on the verisamilitude you know um and I do think that that's just an innate impulse that we have and I I don't know I think I was just always really really curious about the human experience and wanting to you know kind of make the most sense of it that I could and just reflect on it yeah that's uh it's it's interesting too that you mentioned your parents and I would think not even knowing them or knowing about them I would give them credit for the fact that you have your head on your shoulders you've made such good decisions and I think being famous when you're 13 14 and I know even at the time I've read quotes of yours from the time 14 15 you're very thoughtful about it and you're trying to parse it and figure it out you're not saying get me a stretch limo right uh let's go three times around the park and I I wanna no it was it was a very intense transition into the world of entertainment and we were all so naive um you know I got this show myself I mean I I knew that I wanted to explore this acting thing my parents kind of thought okay it's another after school activity like piano or dance or whatever it was and um and I just started kind of hustling like I found this junior Arts uh junior um junior high school for performing arts program and I went to Lee Strasbourg and I went to HB Studios but this was all my own um uh uh my by my own making and they didn't interfere but you know and but and they were generally supportive but I would just rollerblade from audition to audition you know I would like get some jobs in that eventually materialized into a career to all of our total astonishment yeah and then we were on a plane my brother is seven years older so he was at College at this point and we kind of had the the latitude to do that uh my dad's business was he was a contractor that was naturally ending and um we were available to this experience thank goodness like together as a unit um but we were deposited in La it was like the day after that massive earthquake in 94. and so there were actual aftershocks like the ground was shaking which is just an absurd absurdly apt metaphor and they were preparing for you exactly at the time there were a lot of seismologists at the time that said a major Talent has landed in LA and we think that's responsible it was a bizarre correlation um and yeah it took we were you know uh bewildered and just kind of attempting to not look like total idiots you know for a few years um but no I totally credit them with um whatever kind of orientation I ended up maintaining yeah and my mom was always with me on set and you know they were not stage parents in any way we didn't even know how to like pretend you know that that was well I was around it because I was around stage parents because we were routinely booking kids to play you know we never used real people on the show so whenever I brought my mom out it was always a different actress whenever I brought like yes yes we always I made a point of making sure that we had this kind of SCTV fake Pee-wee's Playhouse version of reality but you know my son would come on the set when I didn't even have a son right right and he'd have a little red pompadour wig and so we were always doing things like that so kids were always around and I so often remember them coming up to me as if they'd been hit with cattle prods and they would say Mr O'Brien I wish to tell you that you have transformed late night and you have made a generational impact and had looked behind them and see the parents staring at them like we practiced this all night it's this you go say to code and I would feel comfortable yeah you feel terrible about it um they all went on to be very famous um that was Ben Affleck anyway uh no I'm kidding um that but but it was just incredible that uh I think it's the exception that proves the rule and I think the fact that you were very new you were thoughtful and your parents are thoughtful and then you decide I need to get an education yeah well my parents were always adamant that you know I be tutored on set I mean that was a very real priority and they didn't have to impose that on me either like that was something I wanted to um uh remain involved with and then yeah and I think I was I got a little I did get a little dizzy and overwhelmed at a certain point um and was being given a lot of opportunity and didn't quite know how to channel that focus it you know and um you know I didn't have a filter yet that I kind of needed to establish yeah um in a safer place like uh you know a campus um and I was a little lonely you know I I mean initially I was so relieved to be jettisoned out of the hell of junior high and in high school was it was it a hell yeah I think it was going to get less hellish um because I was I was moving through high school and I think kids just get increasingly more or less desperate and cruel you're getting bullied yeah I had a really hard time in Middle School um what do you think that bullying was about or do you remember there was a few things I I mean I went to a few different schools for funny reasons it's not like I was always living in the same place but you know I had a teacher that my mom wasn't that thrilled by or I I don't know there was there's always a reason to to try out a different school so I was often the new girl and sort of conspicuous and a little targeted for that reason but I also was just like very sensitive to the injustices that were often on display and and and couldn't help but I don't know um kind of take the beat right and and um I don't know it the the politics made me insane the social politics um and yeah so I think I had like I wasn't strictly bullied but I was I was vulnerable and I was also I really liked learning you know I was nerdy and kind of didn't get the memo that you're supposed to pretend that you're not so engaged and curious at a certain point as a girl right um right so my hand remained very like high in the air you know um uh and I yeah anyone but Claire anyway answer this question there was legit annoying too I mean I I think that was fair yeah um but I don't know and um yeah there was always like oh girl I changed three I went to three different junior high schools and there was the same prototype archetype our typical girl who was crazy smart and very troubled and decided that I was somebody that they were gonna you know make very unhappy yeah um yeah and they just kept like materializing I wish I had known there's so many things you wish that you knew uh you could go back in time and tell the younger you and I would just the one thing I would tell the younger me is when people are really mean to you or bullying you it's because they're miserable I think that would have helped me somewhere I think I kind of knew that but I didn't know that but it didn't I didn't know it wasn't much of a tonic yeah like you're still stuck and once that once that Dynamic is in play you're sort of screwed because you're just in a cage like there's nowhere to go right um and um yeah like it's funny I've my son now is 10 and so he's starting to enter that point and he is he's such a wonderful tender clever goofball like he's but and I see all of his kind of vulnerability and but it's funny because a mom from the school texted me about her son being aware of some bullying that was happening in his grade and but Cyrus is just sort of like oblivious or or just not very moved by it you know and and her son was you know and and I was like oh gosh I I was your son you know and I'm so grateful that my son isn't you know like it's a kind of amazing defense to just not really our kids the notion that someone would not be nice to them hurts more than anything else oh my God it's brutal although I my four-year-old son Rowan like he could be a he could go the bully route like I'm I'm always Got Talent he's got yeah no but it's like I'm terrified that my older son might be bullied and I'm terrified that my younger son might be the bully right and so it's um it's good to have one of each so people most people think that having one of each means a boy and a girl it's like no no I have a bully and I have someone who is bullied yeah I've done it both but I'm glad they were born in that order because it would be really problematic if it was reversed um and I think we just worry you know for what I you know it doesn't take much to yeah yeah

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Id: SrQEdhTos98

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023