(audience cheering, clapping) - We're back with Hilary Swank, everybody. That was a look at her new
movie, "Ordinary Angel". It's in theaters Friday. So real quick, we just played the clip, like, what's like a quick synopsis? I love your accent, by the way. - Thank you, it was so fun. Well I play a real-life woman and she is just larger than life and
such a wonderful human being who finds her purpose
through helping someone else. And, I mean, I think we all
can do that in our lives. You know, we can be an ordinary
angel for somebody else. And it's a feel-good movie
that we really need right now. You laugh, you cry. - You're inspired.
- You're inspired. And I love this movie. I really like it. - Oh my gosh, it's also, medical debt is like, a big theme in it,
which is a huge crisis. - There's a huge crisis,
there's a lot of issues. It deals with organ transplants. It deals with, you know,
how they save lives which I'm very partial to, of course, because my father was a
recipient of a lung transplant. And it saved his life. And medical debt, which,
you know, if someone's life can be saved but then you live
under this debilitating debt and it's not really living. So your life is saved but then
you're like, crushed by this. - I know, I always say that, 'cause even things that
happen to my family like, people can't afford,
like, what it takes to like, help your kid or help. And it's like what, if
you don't have somebody in your family that can,
like, help you out, like. - What do you do? You have to make a choice. So how do you choose? Do you choose a life over like, if you can't pay for something. And it's so expensive.
- And a lot of times parents won't pay for themselves because they don't wanna leave that on the kids, as well. That happens a lot of times, too. - That's true.
- [Kelly] The debt. - That's right. And so the wonderful
thing about this movie is they partnered with R.I.P
which is an organization. For each 10, I think, every
$10 you give, they give 1,000. So if you donate $10 they'll donate 1,000 to help people pay their medical bills. - Which is incredible.
- It's incredible. So check it out, please.
- Yeah, absolutely. Is this right? Do you get nervous, like,
before shooting the first day? - Absolutely.
- Still? - Yes. If you, I mean but-
- You're like, incredible. - Well do you get nervous
when you get up to sing? - No. - [Hilary] Never?
(audience chuckles) - You know why? It's not ego, it not that I'm, I'm probably gonna screw it up somewhere. I probably-
- I love that. - I think it's the freedom of knowing like, you're gonna mess something up. Build a bridge, get over it. You know, it's not gonna be perfect. - But wait a minute, I know
I'm gonna mess something up and it's gonna be imperfect,
but I have an editor and I still get nervous. - I don't have an editor and
I go out there and I'm like, and you can tell, too, like,
Eva and I just a couple shows in Vegas and I was like,
you can tell when I mess up. My whole band will tell you this. I turn and I go, "Okay." Like, that does not the
note I was going for. And it was like, but I think
there's a freedom in that. Like, I feel like I was
so rigid with myself, like, when I was younger.
- Well, good for you for letting go. - That I didn't have fun with it. - [Hilary] You gotta have fun. - I wasn't nervous either
then, but I didn't have fun 'cause I was so, like, - [Hilary] Yeah, I get it.
- 'Cause I did classical, so you had to be so perfect. - I get that, I get that. - But once you let go, it's fun. - Yeah, and not to say
that I don't have fun. Like, I have so much fun
in my job and you have to. Because if you're not having
fun, what's the point, right? - Yeah. - [Hilary] And the joy.
- Bye, retire, yeah. - But, I do, I mean, I get nervous I think because I play a lot of real-life people and I see a lot of movies
that are, you know, that are, they have impact. And so you don't wanna mess it up. And I don't wanna, I take
this beautiful script that I've read and I'm like,
please don't let me mess it up. But it's not like it carries
throughout the whole time. It's just like a first
day of school jitters. - So when you're not filming, I hear that you love road trips, right? - I love road trips. - What's your favorite road trip? - Love road trips. I took a road trip-
- 'Cause you drive an RV it's not like you just hop in. - I drive an RV, yeah.
(audience sighing) Look at my dogs. Look at my dogs! I miss them so much. I would like to say I drive the RV. My husband is the RV driver. He's actually really good at it. He's not very good at driving other cars. The hubcap will come back missing. - It needs to be the size of a bus, okay. - It's gotta be big. But then he somehow, the hubcap is missing on our car, but then somehow
he doesn't hit the hubcap - There's not a scratch on that. - Nah, on this huge, long thing. But yeah, he's a great RV driver. And we have our RV and we love it. - [Kelly] What's y'all's favorite trip? Like, what's something that
was super special for y'all? - Driving through the south. We drove from LA to New York and it was one of the best road trips. - Do you stick to main
roads, or do you like to go? - No, highways and byways,
I'm glad you said that. You cannot take a
highway and see anything. All you see is, like- - Yeah, agreed. - Like, everything looks homogenized and the same going by on the freeway. If you get off the freeway,
you see real people. You see the mom and pop shops. You see these towns that
are becoming ghost towns. And you really experience the different typography and the beauty. But what I love about it is it's just like a meditation for me. Because everything slows
down like it used to be before phones and everything. It just slows down and
you see the road passing under your tires, and it's
kind of like a meditation. And like, the feel of
the road under your feet. And just like, and looking
and talking to people. Yes, I would think, I think
I wish I could be a musician. I wish I could sing because
that to me, getting in the bus and like-
- Yeah, different town. - Love it.
- And you get in your little coffin,
that's what we call them, the little bunks, the little coffins. But you sleep so well,
'cause the hum of the road. (audience cheering, clapping) Hilary's new film "Ordinary
Angels" explores a number of complicated issues, among
them the crushing medical debt too many patients face in this country. Our next guess is on a mission to wipe out as much of
that debt as he can. more than a hundred million so far which is the most incredible thing. (audience applauding) And it's all in memory
of his late wife, Casey. So everybody welcome Andrew. Hi, Andrew.
(audience applauding) Meet Hilary. - Hi.
- Hi. - As I said, Andrew lost
his wife Casey last year and he was her caretaker during treatment. So this is something you can relate to. We kind of talked about a little bit with your father, right, Hilary? - Yes, that's right. - You have to put your life on hold. - Yeah, you do, but you know,
I mean of course graciously. Like, it's what you do. That's what we do for loved ones. It's like we just do everything
we can to help ease the pain or whatever it may be,
elongate their life, right? - Yeah, there was a
moment in the last year taking care of Casey, where
I kind of just had a moment where I said to myself, like,
"This is all I'm doing now." Like, for now, this is why I'm on earth. - That's right. - Casey had a really last year. She was in home hospice
for the last six months. We were lucky it was that long. We didn't expect it to be that long. And we had some bonus time together. And it's really, really hard
to be someone's caregiver but I was glad I was able to do it. - I'm glad you were, too. I'm really sorry for your loss. - I know.
(audience clapping) I'm gonna get to the year,
actually 'cause you were actually told it was only
gonna be, like, weeks, right? - Yeah, when Casey went into home hospice, her doctor told her she
had weeks to months. And another doctor
pulled me aside and said, I just don't see how this could be months. I think this is weeks. Casey was so mad, I mean, for thinking about it in terms of weeks. And we had a funny moment
when she got to July. She'd come into home hospice
at the beginning of June. And she'd been mad at me so
many times when I was trying to plan things around this
really being the end of her life. We were planning her memorial together, we were writing her obituary together. And we were in our bathroom
brushing our teeth. I don't know if this is a me thing, or an everybody thing, but you have that moment
at the end of the night when you're brushing your teeth and you're kind of like, at this moment, of like, where you're a little
more honest with each other than you usually are. - That's kind of a whole
day for me, but yeah. - Okay, okay. And Casey looked at me and said, "You didn't think I'd
still be alive now, right?" And I was like, "No, did you?" And she's like, "Oh, definitely not." You know, she's holding both
these things in her head with this hope that she's gonna be here as long as she can for me
and Grace, our daughter. And she's also looking really
honestly at what's going on with her body and her life, and knows that she doesn't have a lot of time left. - I know we started at the end, but I do wanna go back
because what was Casey like? - She was extremely, extremely funny. When I met her I just thought to myself, like, "Man, I wish I could date a girl this smart and this funny." I met her through a mutual
friend at a coffee shop in the West Village. We were married in 2015 and it was in 2019 she was diagnosed with
late stage ovarian cancer, which just has a very, I mean. If you know much about ovarian cancer, it's a very, very cruel disease. And if you have late stage
ovarian cancer, you have about a somewhere between I think a ten to 20% chance of living for five years. - Can you tell us also how
you tackled the medical debt? 'Cause that's so inspiring
how much you've helped raise to help other people. I'm blown away by your
story and Casey's story. - So we had Grace in April
of 2022 through surrogacy. And it was a very difficult time 'cause Casey, the week Grace was born, Casey almost died and
had a lifesaving surgery. Which, again, is awful in that moment and then you look back and think I'm glad we had that time. - Yeah.
- [Kelly] Absolutely. - But it was around the time that Casey went into home hospice. Casey and I had seen a
video floating around like a viral video on
the internet of a church in western North Carolina
near where I grew up that was destroying, I think, 10 million, $30 million of medical debt
through R.I.P. Medical Debt. And Casey and I just thought
this video was so inspiring. There's confetti. They burned the debt, all the spreadsheets in an offering plate. And that was in March. And Casey and I just said you know what, that's gonna be one of
our monthly donations. Every month, we're gonna
set up a recurring payment 'cause it was so great. When you're, Casey and I just had an aura of protection around us during
Casey's cancer treatment. We didn't struggle with medical debt. Her insurance, we had our
insurance through her. It was so so good. She was a children's book
publisher at Penguin Random House. But you meet so many
families, so many people that are choosing whether
they're gonna be treated. They're saying, "Well,
I'm gonna get treated "but I might lose my house,
I'm losing the inheritance." - Which is not a choice that
anyone should have to make. - It's miserable, you're saying like- - Save your life, but
then you're homeless? - Well, how old am I? Should I get treatment if I'm 60 or what? - Right. - So, we were impacted by
so many of those people and so many of those
stories on people we met, people on cancer forums, people on cancer Instagram meme pages. So we were really inspired to
give to R.I.P. Medical Debt. And when Casey was going
into hospice, we had a talk. And we were planning her memorial and we said, what if your memorial, your memorial's gonna be extremely sad. We're not gonna present it as a. Is there some way we can
make it a little joyous? And we decided that we would
call it a debt jubilee. And a jubilee is an old word that, it's a year that your debts are forgiven. So we said we're gonna raise some money and at your memorial service,
we're gonna burn it up. And we hoped to raise $10,000. And Casey had written a
note that she wanted me to share with people she loved that I posted on Instagram
and Twitter when she died. I put some photos on it, I wrote a little bit more on the note. And kind of when I came up
for air after her cremation it had become a news story. It had really struck a chord
with people around the world. By that weekend it was a
"New York Times" story, it was a "Washington Post" story. We've raised more than
a million dollars now. - Incredible, thank you. (audience and Hilary applauding) - So Andrew, you're partnered
with R.I.P. Medical Debt. So how exactly does it work? 'Cause it's exponentially more
than the money that's raised. - So people who have medical
debt, what is happening, and this speaks to how crummy
medical debt is in our system that this can even happen
is your medical debt, eventually, your hospital gives
up on getting you to pay it. And they sell it to someone and say, like, "Well, do you wanna buy this
medical debt for ten cents?" And then maybe you can collect 15 cents on the dollar on it. So R.I.P. Medical Debt just were people that came out of that industry that said what if we bought up that debt but just didn't try to collect it? What if we bought up that
debt and just destroyed it? So they're buying up medical debt for about a penny on the dollar, about, you know, a dollar is $100. And, you know, we've
raised about $1.1 million. And depending on the debt
market, they've sent out letters for the first $300,000 we've raised. And it ended up being not $30 million for more like $45 million. So this could be 150,
$200 million for that. - So it's ever-changing. - But it's all about,
it's a market commodity which, like I said-
- But if people knew that. That's why I love this, being
on the show, and thank you. I know this is a hard
conversation and a hard thing to talk about probably,
but it's so important because so many people are suffering. And to know that, like, even me, like, I could donate so much money that would then exponentially help out, like, financially with people. Just to help destroy debt
for someone, I think a lot of people would want to help. - That's right.
- It's amazing. - You initially envisioned
burning people's medical debt like you'd seen at the church. But then you changed the plan. So explain how you celebrated
wiping out others' debt. - We actually had to move
Casey's memorial service. The funeral director talked to me and said this is gonna be a bigger memorial service than you thought it was gonna be. Casey had this amazing career, you have so many friends, she's young. So we moved the memorial service
to a Quaker meeting house on 15th Street here in New York City. And we got all the paperwork and just like in bold at the top of every
page was like, "No fires." Very, very strong and fast. - Oh, no. - So at first I saw it as a drawback. I was like, "Well, okay,
we need to do it here, "but we gotta." And I was really thinking about like, how are we gonna destroy this debt in a way that's fun and creative? And at the same time I was talking to my very good friend Kelly,
who was doing the memorial. And she was looking through everything that was gonna happen more all the poems that
Casey had chosen to be read, all the songs that Casey
had chosen to be sung that we'd chosen together. And one of the songs that
Casey and I found late in her life, we really found this in the last four weeks, five weeks of her life, while she was dying. She would be in bed and
I would just read to her because she couldn't read anymore. And we found this
beautiful book that talked about a Stevie Wonder
song we'd never heard. We're huge Stevie Wonder fans. It's a song called
"Come Back As A Flower". And the first time we heard that song, we'd never heard it, while
this song was playing, I just thought, "We gotta play
this at Casey's memorial." And the song was over
and Casey turned to me and just said, "We've gotta
play that at my memorial." And so we knew we were
gonna play that song. And Kelly said, "Andrew,
you need to stop thinking "about this as destroying debt "because this isn't about
debt, it's not about numbers "and spreadsheets, it's
about people's lives." And the people that are
buying debts are thinking about it as people's lives. But what you're doing is
you're not destroying debt you're creating opportunity. Casey's creating, someone
is going to be able to live in a neighborhood that
they weren't able to live in. Someone's gonna be able to pay rent that weren't gonna be able to pay. Someone is gonna be able
to get an accreditation or do another semester of
college or junior college that they weren't able to do. - They're gonna live their life. They're gonna be able to live their life. - You're creating something. So Kelly had this idea
to bring up hundreds and hundreds of flowers and lay them out on top of the altar at the
front of the Quaker meeting. And it was even better
than confetti in a fire in an offering plate. - Yeah, absolutely. It's an incredible thing and we want you to continue Casey's legacy by forgiving medical debt in her honor. So our friends at Urban Stems who love how you fused flowers to
represent the new beginnings her fund is creating, and
that's why they're gonna donate 5,000 to Casey's page
which should help wipe out another half million of
medical debt in Casey's memory. And I'm also gonna donate five, so we'll get to a million
(audience, Hilary applauding) because I think it's
the coolest thing ever what you're doing, yeah. People should not have to choose. Yeah, they shouldn't have to choose. - Thank you. (audience applauding) - We will be right back, everybody.
