Mara Wilson: My Diagnosis Saved Me

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I'm very excited to speak to someone who people have kind of told me for much of my adult life that I should connect with um it's someone who's 12 years younger than me but had a really really interesting career um as a child actor and wrote a book really talking about the transition from childhood to teen hood and kind of being out of the industry her name is Mara Wilson and her book is where am I now true stories of girlhood and accidental Fame and I don't know if you can see maybe our editor can zoom in um this very very iconic face is the child who I first learned about she was in Mrs Doubtfire she was the adorable little daughter in Mrs Doubtfire she also is Matilda and has done many many other things but really was known for this iconic cuteness and has a lot to say about that now that she is a grown woman and we talk about OCD we talk about anxiety we talk about the early presentation of that she also talks about loss she suffered a huge loss when she was eight her her mother passed and shocks a lot about how kind of grief evolves over time and um I really hope that um you will take a good listen and there's so much to reflect on here it's really really a pleasure to welcome Mara Wilson to the breakdown break it down where am I finding you uh I'm I'm in La I'm back oh back where I grew up uh well not technically back where I grew up because I'm not in Burbank but I did move back to LA uh a couple years ago which uh surprised a lot of people but uh compared to New York I feel happier here but I also feel way more bored yeah uh well let's let's go back you were one of the people that um I've always known about and didn't know a lot about um and you have this um this beautiful book uh where am I now true stories of girlhood and accidental fame um and you know the picture on the front yeah is um you know very iconic for for many of us of a certain age and what's really cool is when you turn it over um it's you it's you now and now ish your hair is longer here than it is as I'm looking at you yeah a couple years ago there's so many aspects of your childhood that I really relate to um and also I I started acting uh I was a late bloomer I started acting when I was in junior high I was 11 so going into seventh grade and um you know people people always kind of like you know snort at me when I say I I don't relate to a lot of things of child actors who let's say had been in the industry since they were toddlers or since they were you know the ones that didn't have a choice well and so I guess that's sort of um you know there's certain aspects of course of my existence that definitely felt like there were not as many choices however you know I like to say I had I had 11 and a half crazy years of just being in my family yeah that was enough to set me up for who knows what yeah um you know the industry was sort of another layer and I'm not saying that you didn't also have that you had your own family life and then the industry on top of it um but you did you started acting at an age when a lot of children don't have a lot of agency about most things in their life um you you had a very a very joyful presence you know and so in so many films I mean it's true um you know when when I think of you know you and Mrs Doubtfire Matilda you know you you embodied an aspect I'm just I'm being completely honest you embodied an aspect of childhood that didn't feel overly kind of saccharine and precocious but still was just Out Of Reach from what I think what a lot of young girls and a lot of young kids felt that they could be and I think that's what I always thought of you when I would see you in things I was like that girl's the girl that I wish I was you know like and and I don't mean you I mean the characters that you play because you were like a little spunky but sweet and you know can you talk a little bit about sort of that image yeah I mean I think it was definitely the girl that I wanted to be too and I I think that a lot of times people would meet me at you know at camp or things like that and they would kind of expect me to be that girl and then they found out that I was you know I was awkward and I I had my neuroses and I was kind of nerdy and they were like oh she's not as cool as she's not the badass that we were expecting her to be uh so so I think that that did happen a lot I also feel like I I did feel at least at the beginning like primatilda I would say that uh they they did try to push me into more of a you know saccharin kind of kind of thing I think particularly in Miracle on 34th Street there was a lot of like oh this is cute let's let's just just have her do this because it's cute and that drove me up the wall because that was not you know being being cute was not that was not a value in my family it was it was my mom's my mom's values were you need to be strong and you need to be smart and uh and so those were really what she emphasized and that was why she lived for Matilda because Matilda was both of those things and I do think that yeah that was an image for a while and and but I also think it was a bit frustrating because I could never live up to it and in a way it sort of echoed me having three older siblings me having three older brothers who uh were very smart very cool and everybody knew them and you know it was it was uh you know it's Joel Wilson's sister it's it's uh John Wilson's sister it's Danny Wilson's sister it's not it's not Mara and so that's how I felt for a long time that Matilda was kind of this older sibling that I had to live up to in a way sort of this thing that always had a shadow over me tell us a little bit about when you did start acting and how that came about I recently spoke to Seth Green and you know he talks about that like he basically came out of the womb like Let Me Entertain You you know and he was like very cute okay so tell me because I was I was not like that but tell me what that was like for you what did it look like I mean I was I was a born extrovert I really was like I've seen I've seen pictures and videos of myself where I'm just like mugging for the camera at like three years old and there's there's uh like all the Home Movies in all the Home Movies I'm jumping in front of the camera and smiling and insisting that they take videos of me and and I like I think it was like three years ago one of my brothers found an old video of like one of his little league games and after when there when they're talking to all the kids about you know how the game went and everything uh I'm just running around and I'm going up to every other kid and I'm going hi hi hi and then I'm you know running up and and talking to uh you know running over to like my dad and he'll play with me a little bit and then I'll leave him and go over to the other kids and go hi hi do you think it was also being kind of like the first girl in the family because that has its own you know that's that's glorious right yeah I I do think it was like I I was sort of celebrated for being the first the first daughter they were very excited to finally have a daughter and then uh and and and so I I think because of that that made me that that gave me uh confidence and I was also a very from what I've heard I was a pretty well behaved little kid like I liked to be good I I liked to listen I liked to do what I was told and I I was I was good at that I also think that uh I I was I was you know pretty sensitive I I would cry about things that made me feel very sad like my mother had a pamphlet about a girl who'd been killed by a drunk driver and I I sobbed and sobbed when she told me what it was about I sobbed all day so I I was very and and I think I also had a good ear for dialogue because I could hear something and I could and this is something that I feel like we should talk about more at at some point because I I know you you are into the the Neuroscience of everything and I think that and I remember you you did a project on Perfect Pitch right yeah when I was in uh grad school that was actually what I wanted to do my thesis on so I did some study on the genetic basis of Perfect Pitch yeah because I remember reading it in the newspaper and being like oh that's cool and that was also like oh this means that there are there are child actors who grow up and get to do cool things like this well and also but yeah but what you're talking about also is you you had an ear for something not just emotionally but kind of auditorial auditorially yeah I mean I don't think that I was you know I'm not I I obviously wasn't Meryl Streep or like even Dakota Fanning but I was I I think that I was I had a good ear for dialogue and a lot of times if somebody said something to me in a certain way I could say it back to them the exact way or if I said something in one way I could remember how it was said and say it the exact same way uh sort of pitch memory I I actually it's funny because I have very little emotional not emotional I have very little visual imagination like I don't hold on to images in my head very well at all it's like uh it's it's almost like a very somebody's moving through a PowerPoint very quickly in my head uh and and I can't really imagine something that isn't based on my own experience like every time I read a book the people in the book live in the same house which is like either my house growing up or a house that somebody I knew when I was young right or or uh yeah I I say it's like a power pointer or like a slide projection thing or I tell people that my my mind is like a community theater with limited backdrops they just keep cycling through that but I think in some ways that meant that I had to be more dependent upon auditory signals upon auditory cues and so I I developed a good ear for dialogue and I also spent a lot of time I was in a family that talked a lot you know we were we were a a big Jewish family we talked a lot so uh there was going to be you know I was going to be listening to my mom and my mom on the phone and my mom with my brothers and my mom was very you know erudite erudite she was a very smart woman so she I would listen to the way that she talked and I would listen to the way that my brothers talked and I just spent so much time listening in on conversations that uh that I think I kind of had an idea of how people talked and how adults talked and I had a big vocabulary and I was a big talker so I think that all of these things kind of converge to make something that is good you know their qualities that you want to have in a child actor [Music] my biologist breakdown is supported by better help this holiday season why don't you do something really special for a special person in your life do something special for you give yourself a gift that will raise your spirits but not just for the day the holidays can be a really tough time between managing family Dynamics racing from one thing to another braving the cold weather the dark weather it can be normal 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saw I mean we grew up in Burbank where it was it was as normal to be a child actor as it was to be a you know to to be in Little League like there were so many or maybe not in Little League maybe something a little less common but it was pretty common there were your parents from Southern California like I don't know anyone who grew up in Burbank I'll just be honest and I live in LA and have always lived there were your parents from Southern California no they weren't I mean that's kind of the thing about Burbank too is that Burbank is very much a place where people from other part of the countries come to live so uh from and from other countries too uh but it's it's kind of like a at the time it was it was a place where you could go that was sort of lower middle class but it was pretty safe and so a lot of uh a lot of people there were a lot of people there who had been there since like World War II uh but it was basically a company Town it was it was one you know Lockheed and like the military industrial complex moved out of there it was all industry so my dad worked for NBC and then he worked for KTLA so the the local news station Affiliates and you know my mom had had different jobs around there as well and my like like my mom's I was just thinking the other day that my mom had two best friends and they worked for uh they worked for their Partners worked for um uh NBC or Disney I think and so it was just very common where where and it's also why to this day it annoys me when people say oh we're going to Disney and they mean Disneyland or Disney World because to me Disney just means Office Buildings right so uh so it was very common and I think I found out later that my family was in a toothpaste commercial I think like Crest was looking for uh was looking for like real families and so my family was in one and and that was actually my first commercial I didn't realize that I was a baby on my mom's hip wow but one of my brothers I guess kind of got bitten by the bug and he wanted to do it so he started doing commercials he was in like a Sizzler commercial he was in uh a couple different things and then he he was in some movies he was in the movie Turner and Hooch uh I'm trying to think of some other ones this movie called wait until spring bendini uh he was in a couple different movies my mom used to say he had small parts in big movies and big parts and small movies and then I saw what he did and I went to my mom and I said that I wanted to do what he did because I kind of put it together that it was I mean I always loved telling stories and Performing stories to to my family and uh to the point where my stories would last forever so I would be like I have a Story Once Upon a Time and my brothers were clapping a good story good story to cut me off because uh otherwise it would have turned into the Odyssey so yeah it was uh it that's what I did I told my mom that I wanted to act and she immediately said no you don't and set me up on a mock audition to try to uh dissuade me and it it didn't work I was like that's okay I can just go on another one and it felt kind of easy comedies ago it felt like fun and so I did a bunch of commercials and they were fun and then I got called for a movie which is Mrs Doubtfire so that was okay so that was soon after yeah it was probably within six months wow yeah I mean I say wow because you know that was a a major motion picture with Robin Williams who was a major major movie star which I thought was cool but I wasn't really phased and I think that might also be because like I said I grew up going to visit my dad at work and at work you would see the people who uh the people who worked at uh at KTLA I think actually Blossom was on that lot yeah then we we moved to we started at renmar Studios which was the old desilu Studios then we were at KTLA for a transition year and then we went over to Sunset Gower where most of our years were yeah because I do remember I do remember uh being like like walking by and being like oh is that is that Blossom because you know Blossom was funny Blossom was the cool older show [Laughter] um and what year were you born just so I can see our difference maybe 87. oh okay got it so yeah yeah I um I was I'm 12 years older than you yeah yeah so it was yeah so like so like you you would have been like older sister or a babysitter age like just the age that you think like somebody is cooler than you right little did you know um so the Mrs Doubtfire um experience a year after I started acting I was cast in beaches which was a very you know a very um large you know movie we were actually produced by Disney and you know I was working with Bette Midler and like I knew who she was and you know like Barbara Hershey and like Gary Marshall directed and I remember you know it came out the week of my bat mitzvah actually um and I remember you know even at that age right at 13. I didn't really understand yeah I didn't understand either what was your understanding like I didn't even realize like oh my gosh this is going to be in movie theaters like all over like my family in Israel got to see me on television before they even and met me you know like I had never even met family that around the world could see me what did that feel like you know to be that young did you even was it even on your radar like this is a movie going out into the world with a very famous person starring in it I I did not understand the magnitude I really didn't uh and I think that my parents sort of felt like this was going to be my one and only this was going to be something that they could put in scrapbooks that they could do I mean I think about how my uh my college boyfriend had a friend who was in episode one uh the of of Star Wars he was in The Phantom Menace and it was kind of something that he had he had done for fun and also like kids made fun of him for it because kids are terrible uh but it was it was just sort of a like oh hey he did this thing when he was young and then he completely moved on didn't do anything else and I think that's kind of what they thought it would be like for me like like we even took we even like had a little scrapbook going it was uh it was a really fun experience for me and uh and so I think that we were just kind of like oh yeah this is a fun thing and I really didn't understand the magnitude of it all I had to be told several times you know you need to you need to behave you need to be better behaved on set you need to do these things like I remember asking why people didn't clap at the end of the day because you know when you're in the Purim play in in preschool you know and you're playing Queen Esther like everybody clapsed for you at the end and my mom was like that is not acceptable that is so rude these people work so hard uh and she was pretty tough on me but uh but I I think I kind of needed that when I went in I remember I went in to audition for we did screen tests and we went up to San Francisco and my mom was you know eight and a half months pregnant at the time and we were doing the screen tests and I remember going there and met a lot of really great kids but I think we all kind of zeroed in on each other it was me Matt and Lisa and we felt like we were a family immediately we felt like family and I don't know what it was but but we just immediately connected with each other and I remember thinking I really want this but I really want Matt and Lisa to be there too and and they got it too and it was Matt Lawrence who you know obviously his brother yes I've known him since well I've known him since he was very young yeah you've known you've known Matt since he was super young yeah and you know and and he's a total sweetheart and Lisa is Lisa is still my big sister to this day we still text each other all the time uh I I love her and Robin Robin was great with kids he really was he was he was he he was a wonderful he was sort of a father figure sort of a fun Uncle Father Figure to us and you know as as like rude and as his material might be he was never inappropriate with kids and Sally was of course very lovely and she would help me run my lines and she would she would uh she was so kind and sweet and she had a son who was a little bit younger than me who I recently met again and it was so funny because it was like it was like meeting somebody who went to preschool with so I really couldn't have asked and Chris Columbus was great with kids too I mean he was just coming off of you know Home Alone on adventures and babysitting and so so he he knew and he and he was a father himself so he knew uh exactly how to talk to Children it looked like a lot of fun it was I can tell when you know when actors are acting like they're laughing and there were many times when it really felt like you were genuinely tickled like it it really seemed like a lot of fun I mean I remember because I remember being on a show after that and have being on a sitcom after that and being told that I couldn't laugh so I think some of the humor went over my head but but it was really fun it was just it was always fun I remember remember probably the first scene that we did we were outside and we were we were doing like a montage scene where Mrs Doubtfire is riding a bike and uh Robin asked me what kind of music I liked and nerd that I was I said that I was a big fan of musical theater which I still am and he asked me what musicals I liked and I named some Rogers and Hammerstein ones and he started singing there is nothing like a Dame which my mom thought was amazing because it was a man dressed as a woman singing there but but yeah he was and and just everybody there it was such a warm kind set it was it was just a really it felt like it it was just a good time and it was just a good experience and and it felt like it did feel very familial I mean I you can see me with like my childhood teddy bear in one of the scenes and in other scenes you can see uh I think when they're playing soccer in the park you can see my brother's flying kites in the background wow yeah it really did feel like uh it it just felt like we were we were all in on something wonderful together it was a very fun time and I think a lot of a lot of times when people ask about you know um kids turning out bad um which is a terrible phrase yeah nobody turns out anything nobody gets to a point in their life where they're just like well I'm this for the rest of my life well but I think what you're talking about is um a lot of what you know I I had experience with which was if you're on a set that is also healthy um and where the people in charge um have Consciousness not just about children but about how women are treated how how much drug and alcohol you see for example those things make a big difference you know well that's something I feel very strongly about like I think children should be children I don't think children should be around you know smoking and alcohol and drugs I mean like okay yeah they're probably gonna see their parents you know have a drink once in a while but like that's they they need to they need to they need time to be children sure well and I think on a set in particular um that's it's it's it makes a big difference and you know when you hear a lot of stories of you know kids who grew up in the industry and ended up having problems a lot of it was that there were problems on the set meaning in terms of how people treated kids and what they expect of them so you also you know you were raised even in a different time from you know that kind of generation I was I think it was a little bit safer when I was there it still wasn't totally safe I and I I mean I saw that happen with you know some kids who were a little bit older who'd who'd had you know much other older girlfriends or boy boyfriends who'd you know had had parents who didn't really care if they had fake IDs and and things and and parents I think were also are also incredibly important and and the kid has to want to do it and you can tell when the kid doesn't want to do it so there's a lot of factors I think I do think that being like I I've I've said this before and I don't really know how we could prevent this but I think that you can be you know one of my controversial opinions is that you can be a child actor who is fine who is well adjusted you can't really be a child star right who is totally well adjusted it's going to be at the very least it's going to be like uh you know like what everybody talked was talking about a couple years ago with the gifted child when a child is told they're gifted that sometimes creates this undue pressure on them and and makes them feel like uh their self-concept is threatened every time they make a mistake right and I think that child stardom is a bit like that too because you have to contend with it and it's like having it's like having another set of parents or teachers or something to to uh you know having having fans can feel like having another set of parents that you need to please or another you know teacher that you need to please but unlike parents and teachers they don't have any vested interest in you they could dump you at any time and especially if you're somebody like I was who was in a lot of uh kids movies they're going to see you as an object of ridicule because it's the same way that as as as little girls grow up they might like mutilate their Barbie dolls they cut off their hair they don't they cast them aside when they're a little too old for them and they don't care about them anymore and and honestly that's how I felt like I I had once I got to middle school I had people making fun of the children's movies that I was in and Burbank is such a strange place to live in because there were all kinds of child doctors and child models at my school and there it was so much so that there was a hierarchy like the coolest kids were in gap ads right because it was the 90s and GAP ads were the coolest and I was sort of on the bottom of the totem pole with like it was like me and Michelle Trachtenberg because we were in kids movies so it was you know making fun of Matilda and making fun of Harry at the Spy but like Julius was in a gap bad look at this how cool is that sure I want to get into sort of more about your personality sort of separate from your work um but I I do want to mention you know you had a very significant loss kind of in the midst of all of this and um you know your your mother of blessed memory um you know she she passed in the middle of a very active life that you were having that had been very connected to her yeah I guess I am curious if you know if when you think of life with your mom you know and then you think of life without your mom I'm I'm curious if that felt like a particular defining moment because you were also living so publicly um yeah or if it just you know felt like a tremendous loss for a a child it was I mean it was it was and it Remains the probably the single most defining moment of my life because my mother was larger than life you know she was she was the the biggest Authority that I could picture like other than God she was the she was like you know there was her and there was Hashem and I I you know which my last one was to say but but she was just she was larger than life she was such a presence in our life and and uh I I knew that I was a lot like her too I I knew that that I was a lot like her and it's it's still funny to to know like me and my sister even though we never really got to know her as an adult we still hold a lot of her same values and a lot of her same beliefs and it's uh but she was she was a very strong woman and so Not only was it this huge loss in my life but it was also sort of you know World Turning because it it it taught me that somebody that I thought was Immortal could die so it really shook my foundations it was you know it was it was like this Grand Canyon opened up in my life how old were you when your mother passed I was eight years old and my mother was very young she was 42 43 42 I think how old was your sister at that time she had just drink three so it was rough it was very rough and we had three older brothers and I mean we all kind of took care of each other but uh and my dad was was very sweet but very passive you know he'd always let my mom do the disciplining and he could kind of be the fun one and so suddenly he had to do the disciplining and he was just kind of like oh this is this is hard and I mean I can't fathom being a single father with a full-time job managing managing A daughter's career and raising five children and also having a toddler yes and a toddler and and while going through the worst loss of your life I I can't I can't even fathom that so I have a lot of empathy for that [Music] Miami Alex breakdown is supported by ZocDoc no one knows 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breakdown zoc.com dot com slash breakdown Miami Alex breakdown is supported by Everly well this year how about you prioritize what matters most when you share the gift of Health from Everly well this is such a great idea for a holiday gift here's how it works everleigh well ships products straight to you or your loved one with everything needed in one package and I know a lot of companies say that but it comes and you're like where's the thing I don't get it with Everly well it literally comes in one package and if you ordered an at-home lab test the sample can simply be collected at home that's how Jonathan and I did it and shipped back to a certified lab in a prepaid envelope that is included with the test then digital physician reviewed results are sent straight to your preferred device in just days that is such an exciting day when you get that message that your results are in I took the food sensitivity test it was so informative it confirmed a lot of things that I already thought and gave me the confidence to move forward with a plan that has resulted absolutely in better health for me and I can say the same for Jonathan The Gift of Health has never been so easy to share than it is this holiday for listeners of our show everleigh is offering a discount this is a very big deal 20 off an at-home lab test at everlywell.com break that's everlywell.com break for 20 off your next at home lab test everleighwell.com break [Music] but I think that also acting in movies in some ways was good for me because it helped me be distracted I think it was kind of a distraction uh although I do think that a lot of the movies that I made after that kind of went down in quality because my mother was a cinephile she she knew exactly what she liked in movies and what she didn't my dad was the type of person who fell asleep during movies and my dad is also my dad's an engineer he's very pragmatic and I always say that Engineers are born not made they're they're a type and if you've spent any time in the scientific world you know what I'm talking about and they he he's pragmatic and and I'm actually very pragmatic too as an adult as well uh which is which is my dad's influence my dad's genetics so uh for him it was just like yeah just be in whatever movie whatever movie that wants you who cares uh and so he's he still wanted to keep me they want to protect me by putting me in children's movies they didn't want anything that had uh any kind of sexualization any kind of violence uh they didn't want anything like that because they wanted to make movies that people my age could see so I started doing more of those but yeah some of them weren't the best and I I think that it that's also when I started to struggle with having fans and struggled with having these because I felt so exposed and I felt like I just wanted to be a normal kid and also you know when you start as young as you did that is what you know exactly and you know and I think you you absolutely are you know I I think I think you don't give yourself and your family you know enough credit um because the the fact is you know you and this is the distinction that I try and explain to people lovingly when they say like you spent your whole life in front of the camera and I was like no entering junior high like I had already I had had a very you know yeah different experience than if the only kind of socialization that you have with adults is literally people who either are asking something of you or or really you're in a you're in a relationship of Exchange in an adult World from a very young age and that's that that is familiar but I also would like to sort of you know flag just like for everybody listening um because it's not something that we are comfortable talking about especially loss of a parent for a young child yeah because when you think of an eight-year-old and you know my kids are 14 and 17. when you think of an eight-year-old their entire world is still really around having their needs be met you know it's you're you're you don't know when to get a snack you don't know like you'll sometimes still be like oh I forgot I had to pee right like that's that's what being eight is like being eight is you're still just transitioning to like a cognitive World from a fantasy world so I I also just want to kind of like acknowledge for again for anyone listening you know when you lose a parent really any time before I mean I would say anytime before 20 there's still a child in you that does not comprehend that the person who really is your higher power next to God right for for most kids that's not even really something I believe that an eight-year-old can even fully process like that's something you then take into your life and then becomes part of you right it probably took me 20 years to get to that point where I could finally read motherless daughters and I could finally think about what the loss was to me and for a while it was is almost like I was pretending my mother had never existed because it was too much to think about my life with her and my life without her and I missed her and I ached and I ached for her but it it didn't you know I couldn't visit her grave I couldn't do any of these things until probably my twenties so it was and I think yeah as a teenager I finally started to process the loss a little bit more and and I remember in college I would be wrecked every around the anniversary of her death which I I still I still do get every time her you know yard set rolls around I'm I'm a mess uh but it's it's something that it really is and I think that it is the the uh the concrete operational stage is a really hard time to lose a parent because you're also just figuring out then and that's you know like ages like seven to ten you're just figuring out what's real and what's not and that's when a lot of children start to have a lot of anxiety about the world and and because they're just realizing like oh I am not a more Turtle my parents can't protect me from everything there's Wars out there there's disease there's there's death and there's loss and there's pain in a very big way so they start to internalize that and so it it kind of warps them when they lose a parent at that age just so people can have a framework so when would you say you stopped acting and entered sort of you know more of a that was something I did and now I'm trying to be this person I would say probably about 12 or 13. okay yeah it was around Middle School I would say and I I mean middle school is a tough time for everybody but at that point I was lucky because I had friends I had a good a good uh friend group and I also had a lot of Performing activities that kind of reminded me why I got involved in film in the first place and unlike film where there is such a or TV even where there's still yeah well I mean with TV it's not that bad because it's a week or a couple of weeks before a show goes out but uh in although actually my parents kept me out of TV because they were worried that I think like you know we knew Jonathan Taylor Thomas and we saw what was happening to him and when you're coming into somebody's you know living room family room every week they're gonna feel like they know you and they're gonna feel like they own you sure so they saw what happened to other kids you know they would be grabbed in the mall people would feel like they owned them they were being you know put up on pedestals in a really like uncomfortable way and some of them I feel like could manage it pretty well like Joey didn't seem to mind when I knew him he was just like yeah whatever I'm a teen Idol uh that was my impression anyway but some people were like I mean I remember talking I talked to Devin Sawa about it and he was like oh it was so weird being a Teen Idol yeah well this is also before social media for us you know it was it was but and and so it was sort of like it was parasocial relationships before parasocial relationships and and my mom said is that what you want do you want to be on TV do you want to have everybody knowing your name and and I was like no I don't think so and and so I although I will say that every time I did a sitcom episode it was so much fun it's really fun it's like a little play I mean it's a little play it is and actually one of my favorite one of my favorite uh like absolute favorite acting experiences if I may go off on a tangent here and as you as you've learned I often go off on a tangent uh anybody who's talked to me for more than five minutes knows this but probably one of my most favorite acting experiences was in a show called Pearl which was a show that Rhea Perlman had oh yeah I yeah I think didn't Don Rio do Pearl I think so it was obviously yeah yeah he created Blossom yeah and I got to work with Rhea briefly um she's one really really fun yeah it's a very fun fun woman and it was a great set it was her and Malcolm McDowell and and Carol Kane and and just like an incredible group of people and uh John ratzenberger was directing our episode I remember that and uh and we had such a fun time and I had one of my first very big crushes which was on Lucy Liu which I mean how could you not have a crush on Lucy Liu and she was she was so kind and so smart like I I and she her character didn't like mine and so she she came up to me and she was like I know my character doesn't like you but I really like you and I was like I really like you too yeah Pearl was created by Don Rio and it was produced by Paul wood and Tony Thomas who produced Blossom yeah um so yeah we were that is so funny I haven't thought about that in years it was a funny show and I was in that a few months after my mom died and it was a very bright spot for me I mean I also filmed a movie called a simple wish that summer and I was working with Michael Ritchie who he was a very tall man with a white beard and and he was very gentle and soft-spoken but clearly very intelligent and every time I would like read a book and there was a wizard in it I imagined it was Michael Richie but between that and he had two wonderful daughters Lillian and Miriam who I played with and and that I think filming that with them and then filming Pearl were these bright spots in an otherwise incredibly dark year and I remember after Pearl wrapped I cried for days straight because it really just did feel like being being with these people that I really loved and being on this set that I really loved that is what happens you know it really is it's like it is you have to create a family that's how you get that work done I want to sort of now you know kind of go back and sort of through all these you know years that we've talked about let's say just like from birth until let's just call it high school and you know one of the one of the things that is highly prized in a young actor and even in an adult actor is precision and perfectionism and um there's a very there is a very naturally compulsive nature to Performance and to acting especially when you're a child and you know routine is obviously very helpful when you're learning any skill um and you know to think about it more clinically the topic of my thesis was obsessive-compulsive Disorder so just so you know this literally is um you know a thing that I like to talk about what a lot of people don't know about obsessive-compulsive disorder is it's not just about liking your shoes neat no I mean and if you could see if you could see where I live right now it is a mess and I mean I need to clean it I am I am a messy person right but the I think what a lot of people sort of mistake colloquially is like I like to have things this way I'm OCD and obsessive-compulsive disorder is a is a diagnosis that requires both obsessions and compulsions and the obsessions are the things that um we think about or ruminate on the compulsions are typically actions that are done to dispel the anxiety from the obsessions and I think in the popular culture at the time I would see people who wash their hands a lot but you never see the anxiety correct you never see the obsession because it's really hard to show that right so the obsession is is the internalizing aspect and the compulsion is the externalizing aspect and I'm I'm sort of curious um you know when you maybe started getting an indication that some of the things you were doing or thinking or ways that you were behaving weren't necessarily your actor part but your Mara Parts yeah I mean I think that I was a Warrior from a very young age and I I took everything very personally and I worried about everything and I I kind of personalized a lot of big experiences like like a a an astronomer came to our school and he did that he made that mistake that I think a lot of people make where they want to make something interesting for children and instead they just make it terrifying so he talked about solar flares and I thought that meant fire raining down from the sky right and he talked is also one of the plagues that we talk about at Passover so it's illogical yeah I mean that was another thing that was another thing is is you know I worried about I worried about the the things that I was told you know could happen during Passover and all all the power Hashem had I had yes that really uh you know that really scared me too yeah the Old Testament God can be very scary it can be very scary and when you're a kid and you don't know the context of it and you don't know that it's you know you don't know that it's it's because it's I'm a bunch of stories about a community and about different experiences then then you just think oh this is this is threatening and this is scary and this is real and I I was I was always very worried from a very young age uh I I worried about death I worried about sickness I was that kind of worrier and it was strange because I was either like I said a very sort of upbeat extroverted kid or I was you know having an anxiety attack and then I think I think as I got older probably I guess probably concrete operational stage again so probably when I was like when I was in third grade that was really when all the [ __ ] hit the fan third grade was when my mother was sick we I had just finished filming Matilda I started having panic attacks about things like my pet hamster escaping I started washing my hands all the time so much so that my hands were always red and chapped and raw and my mother would have to put you know salves and ointments and all these kinds of you know and and all of her home remedies on them to make sure that they wouldn't hurt so much anymore it was it was a really hard time for me and I knew that it was weird that was the thing I I knew that I was strange I knew that this was something that other people didn't have and I started having panic attacks at school and I I knew that these were I had a feeling that this was not something that that other kids had and also it wasn't really spoken about like this wasn't something that was like in the vernacular of like oh should we get her therapy she needs occupational therapy like this could be you know people didn't talk like that then it was I I remember hearing the word anxiety but also I think that my mother I think that my mother was probably afraid because she knew that mental illness ran in her family and she knew that I mean obviously there was a lot of trauma in that family they were all they were all people who'd escaped pogroms in in Ukraine and Lithuania and Belarus and so there was a lot of trauma in the family and there was a lot of mental illness in the family and I think that she was afraid of that happening to me so she would just be kind of like and she was also sort of just to like suck it up type mom anyway so she was just kind of like okay get over it you'll be fine deal with it uh and and she had cancer she was dealing with her own stuff at the time and I would you know I would go to the guidance counselor like every day but they didn't really seem to know know what to do with a child with anxiety a child with obsessions and compulsions and it's strange to me because I kept I think about it and the way that I talked about my symptoms and the way I described them if I heard a child describe them today I I would immediately be like even if I didn't have the extensive experience I think if anybody heard the way that I was talking they would immediately say oh that sounds like OCD I think we know a little bit more about OCD now because it's 25 years later and and uh but but at the time I guess people didn't really have the knowledge that it could even happen to children I mean a lot of my stuff even to this day people love to be like well it's because you're an actor like oh it's because of this or like if I have a complicated relationship or if my brother has a complicated relationship with me well it's because you're an actor it's like yeah it's never first of all it's never that simple and the the things about us like what we're talking about like the our chemical makeup intergenerational trauma like those things they can be exacerbated or even numbed by our presence as public people but when you get down to it if we strip away all of our professions and don't think about bank accounts and fame yeah we're all a bunch of chemicals just trying to navigate this universe yeah I mean I was like I was going to be a little messed up no matter what I mean my mother's family my mother had had you know a horrible abusive family and and you know there there's still a lot of the horrible abusive sick people in her family and the kind of sick that won't get help and refuses to get help and so I you know I had a lot of that and I mean am I on my other family side we were you know we were Irish and and uh you know escaped a lot of trauma there too like I've seen the pictures of my great-grandfather and he looks haunted in every single picture so there was a lot of there was a lot of intergenerational trauma on both sides and there was always going to be some kind of there was always going to be something there but I do think that I always say that there is no better or worse job for a perfectionist than film actor because they were rewarded for getting it right the first time correct and I think that that is that does lead to sort of a thing it is a bit like being a gifted child where it is like oh or I think it's children who were labeled gifted because I don't think that it's actually children who are gifted that have the problems I think it's children who were labeled gifted uh and I I think that label gives you a lot of pressure because it it makes you feel like you have to live up to something well and with all due respect and that that's a completely legitimate being an actor person though it's a completely like you're basically learning you're learning interpersonal relationships with people who essentially need something from you it's a transactional relationship where even you know manipulation in the nicest sense has to occur yeah I mean I think that well people it's funny because I had people ask me like David Letterman asked me uh do you know that you're acting and I was like yeah of course and I think that children actually are better at acting in some ways than adults are because children can step into a world of play time and then step away all the time well they haven't been hardened by the realities of the world like their veil has been the veil has been lifted you know in that sense of course we're going to be we're gonna be vulnerable with with people because we're we're fine with that and right we don't see any problem with crying in front of strangers and we don't see any problem with doing these things so and and you know what is what does a child do a child picks up a toy starts to play with it does imaginary airplane noises or imaginary Barbie talking or whatever you say it's time for dinner they put it down they drop the play they go and acting is a very sort of meditative make-believe and so you can drop in and out of that as a child I want to ask you also you know I remember the first time that I realized that like I had hips you know because I was this very like skinny like long-limmed string bean of a like track runner in you know in Middle School kind of kid and when I finally sort of became a woman um it was astounding and disturbing and I remember it it was like oh now I'm in a different realm of my existence and that's when you learn the difference between I don't like my body and body dysmorphia because because body dysmorphia is a clinical a clinical and diagnostic indicator of an inability to access you know the the true representation you know that you have but I'm curious as you sort of left you know the industry as it were um what what did sort of your internal and kind of psychological world do okay well yeah body dysmorphia is a big thing and it's something that I'm still dealing with to this day and honestly I think that this also has something maybe it's controversial but I think there's some anti-Semitism in there as well because I think that you don't you don't see a lot of there are a lot of Jewish actors out there but I think particularly with women you don't see as many Jewish women who look like Jewish women I mean this is something I've said before also when guys are like I love Jewish girls I love Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson well that's not not very helpful when you're like this girl in middle school and high school and you're like I'm my I don't have a waist but my breasts will reach my knees by the time I'm 50. like nobody's like I want that that always really surprised me and yeah it would be it was like Natalie Portman and and uh Scarlett Johansson who you know I'm stunning and talented and I love them and they're fantastic exactly but like a couple years ago I I read a list there was some listical thing going around on the internet and it was like uh top like beautiful actresses who are actually really ugly and I looked at it and it was all like Leah Michelle and Sarah Michelle Geller and I kept her or not Sarah Michelle Geller it was um Sarah Jessica Parker and although Sarah Michelle Geller might have been on there as well and I looked at it and I was like huh half these women on this list have something in common guys and if you did that about any other ethnicity and the rest were all like like Middle Eastern and I was at like Middle Eastern week and so I was just like guys this is just you're you're you know and if they did that about other ethnicities people would rightfully be like that's insanely racist you know that's insanely messed up but uh but they you know they just didn't they didn't do that so I think there was that was partly that but it's also very hard because when I was a teenager when I was you know 12 13 I was starting to think oh I'm ugly I'm hideous nobody look at me nobody look at me and I had people in newspapers adults in newspapers saying that I was ugly saying that I was quote odd looking saying that I was I was not cute anymore and I I knew that when you weren't cute anymore you were you were essentially useless and I would try to go in for parts because for a long time I'd always been very short for my age and I'd look younger than I was but I couldn't do that anymore because I was you know a C cup at age 13. and so it was just like this is is not this is not something that I can keep doing this is not something that I'm going to be able to do I can't play the younger roles and in a way I would almost rebel against it where they would say we want a flat-chested girl for this we want there'd be a line in the script saying like saying like there was a line where somebody said I don't have any boobs and uh so I went in wearing a push-up bra because I was like screw you this is what you're gonna get with me and what did that sort of and in terms of like other aspects of you know like OCD stuff like did that stuff escalate for you in your teens where you've kind of finding more of an equilibrium I guess I'm curious also like when when did you sort of quote get help meaning did you at some point say I need to go into therapy or I need help I did I did I and I went into therapy when I was I think like 12 or 13. uh and I started going into therapy and I got diagnosed officially with OCD around then and the thing was I knew that I had OCD because I'd done enough research on myself and I read a book written about a girl with OCD that I found out later was written by uh one of my friends on Matilda's mom just and which is an insane coincidence but I uh I looked up OCD and you know with the rudimentary internet that we had at the time and what I knew in the library and encyclopedia and such and I was like oh I have this and I went to my guidance counselors I said I think I know what's wrong with me I had a wonderful Studio teacher at the time Laurie who had been working on a film with me and she had told me that she had anxiety too like I confessed to her that I was weird and I didn't tell a lot of people about it but I told her I was like I'm really weird she's like I'm a little weird too and I was like no I get really anxious I get really scared she was like I have anxiety too it's okay and it made me think oh okay there are adults who have this not everybody is in control all the time and they deal with it find ways to deal with it so with her help I think it took my dad a long time to realize that there to accept that there was something wrong with me because I think parents want to blame themselves for it but uh and they don't want to damn their kids with a diagnosis but that diagnosis saved me did they put you on medication they did and it helped immensely were you put on an SSRI yeah ssris I think I was on Zoloft at the time I'm on Lexapro now and it it helps because I could not function without it and I was diagnosed with severe OCD and I couldn't I couldn't have functioned without it SSR eyes are prescribed for OCD not because OCD is caused by being depressed and needing more serotonin but that is a system that can impact that Loop and that interrupting Loop um of the obsessions again before we even get to the compulsions um did you stay in therapy through your teen years I did yeah and the thing was though that there were a lot of things that I couldn't really face in therapy at the time there was a lot of stuff that I couldn't really talk about I things were kind of tumultuous at home I had I was I was not at a good age to lose a parent I also wasn't at a good age to gain a parent my dad got married when I was 13 which I think it's a good thing because um because he he needed somebody to help raise the children and we wanted somebody who's going to love us and take care of us uh but there was also a big culture Clash because my stepmother was Catholic and and Judaism was very important to me and uh and I'd also had a lot of bad experiences I will say with like I knew a lot of like bigoted Orthodox Jews and Catholicism and I did not take and I think that when I was in college particularly I was like screw this I'm an atheist I don't believe in any religion I don't want to be part of any religion ever and I didn't know really that there were I didn't know that there were like liberal and leftist conservative Jews I didn't know that there was like this whole group of like agnostic Jews out there like I I uh my I think my college boyfriend went home and told his family he was like yeah she's they're like is she Jewish it's like yeah she's an agnostic Jew and his mom said oh honey what do you think we are um and just also for people who are like what is happening so Judaism besides being um an an ethnic line and by that um that means that we when you have a group of people that for example have diseases genetic diseases that only fall in that community that is evidence that this is a a distinct I don't mean special I don't mean better it is a distinct genetic population um that has a very strange status because for us we also do have a religion that goes with it however you do not need to believe in God to be Jewish yeah there are many cultural aspects and ethnic aspects to being Jewish that is part of a lot of people's identity I know it's confusing it sounds nuts and for example when you think of Israel um Israel is full of Jews who are religious not religious there are also Arabs who are Israeli citizens so when people sort of group like all of Israel and all of Jews it's very complicated and we know that it sounds crazy but you can be an identifying member of the Jewish community no one kicks you out no one changes your DNA and says you don't have to have all those diseases the Jews have which I also like to point out to people when people are like I was born Jewish but I'm not really Jewish and I was like you need to get tested for Tay Sachs and gauche's disease just like the rest of us whether you think you're Jewish or not well before my mother died she started getting into other spiritual practices as well she was doing a lot of yoga so there was a lot of books on Hinduism and Buddhism and Sufism and and all kinds of spiritual New Age stuff and I remember saying to her and and she would do some of these things with me and and I remember telling her that it worried me because I was worried that I was like do you think Hashem will be mad and she said to me you will always be Jewish she said to me you will always be Jewish no matter what you are Jewish you will always be and and it's interesting too because my my uh like my brother's wives aren't necessarily Jewish all of them and but all their kids are decidedly Jewish it's it's something that we we uh it is important to us and it's important to me and it's definitely gotten more important in the past more important to me in the past few years and it's something I was always like oh I want to raise my kids this way I want to to do this and the Traditions are important to me and being part of a community and being part of a history is very important to me so even if I don't believe in like every literal thing in the Torah and even though I've like never been to Israel and all of these things like this is all that's all like one aspect of being Jewish there's different aspects of being Jewish that are important I do want to talk about another aspect of you that maybe didn't feel safe to talk about and I think yeah um you know it's talking about sexuality and and gender is of course complicated and can be very loaded yeah but I also know that you know especially for people who are listening or watching us um you know the conversation around gender and sexuality now in our culture is so much more Rich so much more complicated hi Kitty yeah and I love everybody there I don't know what I was thinking naming her after I got us it went straight to her head but wow look at that hair she's she's beautiful yeah she she and I both shed a lot um I wonder sort of if you can talk about um you know in any way that's comfortable for you your first sort of acknowledgment of like oh maybe I'm not you know a cisgender uh you know heterosexual person um was it when you were young was it when you were older I mean there were signs for a very long time I mean I I pretty much only had crushes on boys who were very like baby-faced and sweet or kind of eccentric got it you know like it was I I look at it now and and and there was a lot of I think uh plausible deniability about that and in the 90s and late 2000s because there were a lot of very beautiful baby face boys I mean Kurt Cobain was like was what had the perfect baby face and like like you know if you think of like Boys to Men think of like how nerdy and sweet they all looked and think about uh I I mean like the guys from Silver Chair and like Rhett Miller from the old 97s and Glenn Phillips from uh you know toe the Wet Sprocket and like all of these guys were just like all of the musicians and stuff and Chris Cornell like they all they all were very pretty so I could kind of have you know I remember like Paul thinking Paul McCartney was cute when my mom showed me like help in A Hard Day's Night uh and and I so I liked boys when I was young I but with girls I kind of felt something different and deeper it was uh they were they were I mean I would compare it with like flirting with boys kind of felt like like uh playing ping pong like there was a lot of back and forth there was a lot of tea amazing it was it was uh it felt like like you know it was a joke but but when I was with a girl that I really uh as I put it in a friend of mine a good friend of mine who's gay put it uh when I was with somebody I really admired uh it was like jump jumping into a pool where I was just like this is I need to be around you all the time I love the way your hair smells I I you know I I noticed that I noticed things about girls that other people didn't like I noticed how when somebody was wearing like like a girl was wearing a tight shirt how there would be those like three little lines uh on the bust where it was a little too tight or like I would talk about but but people picked up on this and people knew that I was kind of a tomboy and I was you know definitely called some names and such and it was something that I think I always knew but I I didn't want to acknowledge because I felt like I already had too much going on I was like I was like I'm already a former child actor I'm already you know I already have OCD I'm already neurotic I already have some messed up family stuff I can't have this too which I remember when I came out to my friend Abe I told him I was like I just always figured I couldn't have this too and he said well that doesn't make any sense and I was like you're right it doesn't but and I also felt like I had a lot of I mean I've always said that if you look up imposter syndrome in the dictionary there's a picture of me but also don't look at it because I look like such a phony there right uh no that's that's my you know that's been my joke for a long time and so I had a lot of friends who were gay and a lot of friends who were bisexual and I would be like okay but I'm not really I'm not really like that I'm not really there and and but everybody who was close to me knew that I'd had crushes on girls they just knew that it was exceptions you know and I I wasn't a serious relationship with a man all through college but I realized that I liked boys when I was young to to a degree but I also was somebody who liked doing what I was told and and thought that and and liked to go a certain way and I thought okay well most girls like boys I'm not brave enough to be gay or bisexual and there was also a stigma I also heard of bisexual girls just want attention and people always told me I just wanted attention and I did I mean I was a little drama nerd extrovert theater kid uh actor from a young age I did want attention but that wasn't the kind of attention that I wanted and so finally you know I had crushes in high school that some of which ended very badly and uh and I I told a girl that I loved her in high school and she went oh I love you too and and then I was like I wanted to say no that's not what I mean but then I would have to have faced up to what I meant and after that she stopped talking to me really and or at least not in a nice way anymore she stopped being in my life and it was very hard for me so there was a lot of sort of trauma and there was a lot of sort of that and there were people who were like I had a lot of gay friends who were like no you're not you're straight and and not necessarily gay friends but a lot of people would be like no you're straight and I would joke about being the token straight girl and so it wasn't into my 20s that I finally felt you know I I was like upset about being ignored by a girl and I talked to my therapist and she's like okay what do you think this means what do you think this means like it was something that she'd known for years and finally I said well I guess I like girls I guess maybe I'm bisexual and I sobbed and sobbed and then I came out of that therapy session feeling lighter than I had in years hmm and I texted my brother saying I think I have something to tell you and he was like yeah that doesn't surprise me especially since he works in a field with a lot of a lot of lesbians and a lot of queer women so he he was like you know you talk a lot like them did you know at the time that you were bisexual did it occur to you maybe I'm just a lesbian I I mean I still sometimes go back and forth on that right I do think that I'm bisexual because I do still like men you like them to have sex with them or you just like them um no I'm still attracted to them sometimes okay what I say is that I'm attracted to I'm attracted to to and and and I don't consider it like men and women like I've definitely been attracted to people who you know don't consider themselves men or women like I've been attracted to non-binary people right uh but I do tend to be more attracted to femininity so I think it's femininity but I've even noticed like there's time there's like times of the month where I'm more attracted to masculinity in times where I'm more attracted to femininity like it depends on a lot of things and hashtag science I think that there's something I mean I think there's something there like hormones are hormones are weird and also less people say that what I'm implying is that men and women are the only people who should be attracted to each other that's not what I meant I meant this the science of hormones does change our creativity it changes our cognition it changes oh yeah it changes all sorts of things um yeah I wasn't implying that like at certain times of the month you should be straight no but I know for me I'm like I'm like oh this time I want somebody more like this this time I want somebody more like interesting I can I can actually pinpoint it and I found that strange pattern in my life uh but yeah I mean I do think I like women more but I wouldn't call myself a lesbian because to me being a lesbian sort of feels like you you that is like a commitment that is a life that is a thing and I don't want to be like a lesbian who likes still dates men and and that kind of thing sometimes because sometimes yeah sometimes it happens they're just words and labels it's just exactly exactly and it is a spectrum but I mean when I first came out I was like oh I only have crushes on girls sometimes and then I kind of did the math and I looked back on it and I I mean I remember there was a girl there was a child actress that I felt a really strong Affinity with and I always thought was really beautiful and really cool is it me she's married to a woman now I was like is this the moment where Mara tells me she loves me it's gonna happen not gonna say who it was not gonna say this this other actress was but I mean people can probably put it together but there was you know a strong guess but I'll save it for my brain I really liked her I mean I I really liked her when we when we hung out as kids and you know I I but I mean I told my family and I I told my my siblings and my uh you know my sister was just like yeah I know and my brothers I remember one of my brothers I told and uh and he he we were at a Mexican restaurant and he was sitting there eating his food and he's like are you dating any guys I was like no also I don't know if I really want to date guys for a while I think I might want to date women and he didn't look up from his enchilada like it was such a non-surprise for him and he just took it out right he's like oh so you think he might want to be dating women and I was like yeah he's like okay and just it was it was a non-surprise have you had a relationships with women that felt like oh this is the kind of relationship I can imagine I mean I've dated women relationships are a bit hard for me but yeah but I date women I like women more I haven't found one that I'm like oh I want you to be like my partner but uh but uh but yeah I laughed when I read so your name I actually never I never knew that you were Jewish I'm just gonna be honest and you know Mara I think of it always sounded like kind of an Irish name to me but I understand it's Hebrew correct was good for my family because you know my my father was a gentile and so uh but he he agreed to raise us Jewish and and Mara is uh Mar is bitter it is so Mara is bitter and I'm actually named for Mariam which is bitter C Miriam actually means bitter sea so my joke is always I was born bitter and when I saw when I saw that you said that I was like oh look that's adorable um so anyway I just uh everybody always laughs when I tell them that yeah but it's I never thought of the name Mara as Mara so yeah it's really um really incredible to get to talk to you and I I highly recommend where am I now true stories of girlhood and accidental fame um and you know I like to use the word brave and most people hate when I do but um that's a word that I think of like this is a really it's a very brave thing to be so incredibly open and um you know you're also very funny you know and it makes sense that no but it makes sense that um you know the the stand-up you know kind of community um you know has taken you in and that you have taken them in um you you are you're a great Storyteller and um you know just a tremendous amount of of really really great perspective um I get from just talking to you and and from your book so um thank you so so much and I hope our paths will cross again yeah I hope so too thank you so much for having me and for letting me ramble foreign it's kind of funny not having Jonathan here to um to reflect with but um I guess I can reflect on my own a little bit I definitely identified with so much of what she said I also don't know that I've ever heard someone raised in the industry speak so well about both sides of it because you know a lot of times you hear child actors talk and they're like it was amazing everybody was great and I love myself and everybody loved me and it was hard but I did okay or you hear people like I had a terrible experience and it led me down a path of depression and drugs um but she really held both and I think that's you know really a testament to the work that she's done on herself to be able to hold both those things and say these were the great things it was really fun I loved it it felt like a family and also I was completely being controlled by an adult industry that didn't necessarily allow for a lot of you know personal growth and development separate from that identity I actually I went to to Junior High School here in the valley and Allison Hannigan went to my school um and you know she definitely seemed and was much cooler than me and I remember she tried to kind of be friendly with me but I did not know how to do that I was like in chess club and Jazz Band so um I I really envied you know that kind of support group she had and I never could make that transition to drama school or to even drama classes I was terrified because I was teased so much but it makes me really happy that she she had that and had that kind of insulation as she was a teenager it's so hard you know to write about the the things that she writes about especially being this cute kid who really was she was held up as like the cutest kid ever and so talented and she really wasn't authentic authentic child performer um and then to sort of you know have to come to the Reckoning of like am I still cute am I still marketable you know am I still worth something um she really writes about it very beautifully and I would love to see her do stand up I want to be her friend so I will try and do that and make sure to follow us on at bialy breakdown check out our Instagram and you know check out Mara's book um even if you don't know anything about her as an actor or about the industry the transition from childhood to adulthood I think there's so much that that so many people can relate to um anyway that's it and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have see you next time Alex break down she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience PhD or two non-fiction [Music]

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 149,654

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news

Id: BJvtGOJvfxg

Length: 79min 23sec (4763 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022