And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Please welcome marylouise parker to this program. We were chatting already. For the past two years youve been playing georgie in the broadway play heisenberg. The work by simon stevens. Currently running at the mark taper here in los angeles. If you cannot make it to l. A. To see her in the theater production, you can watch her next month in the new stephen king series, mr. Mercedes, on the audience network. I am honored to have may i call you mlp . Sure. Mlp on this program. Ive always wanted to say that, like im a friend of yours. Mlp. Yeah. I would say when you came on set, i havent seen the play yet. Im dying to see it. From what ive heard about it from friends who have seen it, they give you and your costar high marks because its hard to command, to hold command of an audience when theres just two people. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles and yeah. Whats that experience like . Well, i feel like the director of this production deserves so much credit because i think it for me it takes a lot of confidence as a director, and its a really risky move to produce a piece of theater where the direction is almost invisible. You dont see it. Theres no storms on stage. Theres no set. Im basically wearing my own clothes i am wearing my own clothes. Theres no artifice. Theres no as you said, no bells and whistles, smoke and mirrors. And its sort of allowed us to delve into the meaning of the text and what simon wrote and this relationship. I think he deserves a a lot of credit. I want to follow you in here. Since we dont have those factors by which to judge how great the direction is right how do we we have to be good. You got to be good. How do we judge the brilliance . What are we basing it . Right. Well, for me, theres no point in doing theater really unless you really give everything you have to that moment. And to try to give that evenings show. Because thats whats special about it. Its one of the last i was thinking about this the other day. Its one of the last experiences we have as a culture where were people sitting in a room having this sort of complicit, consensual experience where no ones looking at their phone, theyre not supposed to, and were listening. And thats really rare. You know, church i cant think of many other times where people arent at least expected to or allowed to interact with the device. You know, its a kind of ritual. Its what i love about it. And i feel it takes a lot out of you, and ive been doing it i realize ive been doing it for 32 years now professionally. And the last two weeks of the last production ive felt like i had a couple shows earlier where i was like, okay, that was what i meant. That was what i wanted to do. I think they were sloppy, but i felt when youre so alive that you feel a sound coming out of you, you feel words coming out of you, and you dont feel completely in control of that. You dont feel like the architect or the driver, if that makes any sense. Its it feels sprung, you know. I think thats exciting to watch. What im curious now. What did you do with that feeling . I got really talky. Im sorry. No, no. A talk show. What did you do with that feeling . I mean, i i think i know what youre feeling because there are times when im on stage as a presenter or giving a lecture or talk or some performance and you do feel that. Its a great feeling. To your point it doesnt happen all the time. What do you do with that when you thats amazing to me that youve felt that because i have never felt it as myself in front of people. I dont know that ive felt it in life even as much as i felt it on stage. But there are times in maybe youre being too too kind, but there are times i think for all of us when you walk off stage and you feel like you havent done your best. There are other times way too modest. There are other times that when dont you ever like sort of levitate off stage, when you feel like this thing really yeah really worked tonight. You sort of levitate off stage. Yeah. Im quite im really, really hard on myself. Im quite unforgiving. Thats why i think it probably drives some people crazy. I want to stay at rehearsal when everybody wants to go home. But i think thats whats allowed me to do it, its given me velocity to keep going back. It doesnt feel nice. A feeling in front of a roomful of people, if you feel like you havent done your best. Right. And often not that the actors always the final best judge of their own work, but oftentimes they arent. Yeah. But i think where i satisfied even last week there was something that i just felt i needed to look at the text, and i did. I realized there were two words that i was omitting that over time theyd sort of fallen away. And i thought about what that meant. And just being able to work on things you have to become if you werent infused with some kind of energy or passion really, just passion, to have that feeling because not only do you want to give that rightness, that kind of levity to the audience, as well, if you dont have the passion, the need to do it, i dont know why youd do live theater because its quite tiring, and people can be a bit brutal with you. Not that they arent lovely and general. Its for that experience and so humbling at times. Transcendent also. Now, i youve completely lost you . Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Heres why not because i wasnt following you but because im trying to understand what drives mlp. Which is to say, if you are that hard on yourself, and itened to be that way about myself, the difference between you and me is as hard as i am on myself, im not operating in a medium that is that unforgiving. You screw up on the stage, and there are tons of people wan watching you. Ostensibly if i made a mistake in the next five minutes, i could stop this and do it over again. The audience would never know i messed up. Mistakes and feeling that i havent done my best. I think mistakes are sometimes the greatest opportunity for i totally agree. What im getting at is if you are that hard on yourself, where is the joy in operating in a medium that is that difficult i think when i feel like ive done a good job, you go home, you feel wrung out in the best way. And at the same time, i dont want to be fully satisfied. I dont think thats who i am. I dont think thats what keeps me going, keeps me trying, keeps me looking. And looking to the other actor and making sure im really, really giving them all that i can and i dont know. I think i dont know that i worked with that many people who i thought were roundly satisfied with themselves artistically who i thought were that that grew necessarily over time. You know . Because i think that my performance is, if you as they often start off in one place. They keep working to the end. Theyre not finished. Its odd to me sometimes that critics come at the end. Feel like sometimes people feel like its over now, and its the beginning of the run. Getting started. A million things to i did this one play, and i i felt like i discovered the majority of the character of like six weeks in. And i think thats always true. Its so amazing, you know, just standing there in life. I mean, i imagine if youve been in rape a relationship g one, 20 years or something, sort of my parents, you know, who are 64 years. And then to turn around one day and see that person and an entirely new way and have some feeling wash over you that feels different, i imagine that must be a fort fewing and a really different way than just being in love with somebody for the first time and having the chemical, you know, the epinephrine or high of whatever. I think does that make any sense . It does. Instead of having the history behind it and having that be infused with something new, i think that would be your parents are still living . I mean my mother is. They were together for 64 years . Uhhuh. See, now you got me really fascinated. What did you learn not going to happen to me. What what did you learn watching your parents love on each other . Oh, god for 64 years . Oh, god. Tell me about that. Well, in fact, i wrote a book, and i write a lot about my mother and father throughout that book. My father especially. Its dedicated to my mother, the book. And one thing that i one moment that when you just said that actually, when you said what have you learned, i dont know, this moment stuck out that i do talk about in my book where my mother and father were with someone else and my mother said something. My father, he felt like he shut her down. And she walked by his door later. He was sitting there staring. She came and said, whats wrong, honey . He was kind of staring at the wall. He said, i feel like i hurt your feelings, and and i i just i know. Makes me want to kills me. He just that he examined that moment and came to it with humility and said im sorry, i was wrong, and that he was sitting there really thinking about that moment that he was willing to examine it, that she mattered so much to him that it it wasnt about his pride and i mean, i think thats what keeps you going over the course of decades, rather than to stop. Ill be crying. I think were all going to be crying. Such a beautiful story. I cant tell the story as well as i think i wrote it fairly well. To tell it, i think would mike me dissolve in a way that would be highly unattractive. But you just had a thoughtful way about him, my father, and just sitting there considering her, you know, after 5. 5 decades together. And apologized my father also was brilliant at apologizing. It wasnt he didnt expect something back, and he didnt expect to be absolved or anointed by you or something. It was as though he wanted to let you know that he was wrong, and he was going to try. I wish your father were alive. I would invite your father in a heartbeat to come on this program. If theres anything that annoys me to no end, it is the inability of us humans, this inability we have to apologize. I remember my mother one day sitting me down as a child and really explaining to me how you appropriate apologize. And even at the highest levels, people dont get it. I think of bill clinton, who i love and like bill clinton, friend of mine, we traveled the world together interviewing tons of times in the white house. You may recall this, and the audience does. He got caught up in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This guy could not say im sorry. Qualified apology i regret, i regret, i gre regret. He could not say i was wrong, i am sorry. The media beat him down so bad. It took him six tries. He finally got it right at a Prayer Breakfast where he got it right where he said im sorry in the way youre supposed to say im sorry. I remember going back in my childhood and my mother teaching me the appropriate way when you are wrong what did she say . I mean, she made the point that in the conversation, the point was that if you are its a difference between regret and sorry. Theres a difference between i are regret and remorse. Just because you regret somethi something doesnt mean youre remorseful about it. Theres a language you wish you hadnt happened regret means i wish it hadnt happened. I wish i hadnt gotten caught. Wish it hadnt come out. I regret. Its very, very different than saying, i was wrong. I mistreated you, i maltreated you, i was selfish, i was whatever it is. And im sorry. Will you please forgive mooe. And we live in a world now where people let me get off my soapbox here. We live in a world where people think saying im sorry diminishes them. 100 important. Your father, he understood this. Yeah. He was he was an animal at it. He was amazing. And the thing that ive noticed i dont know if you noticed this in yourself, and i think do owe that gift to my father, is there are times when i do apologize, and theres this little thing in the back of you that wants to say but, because. I want to qualify, to explain. Youre hijacking the other persons you know, youre disallowing the ability to, you know, accept it youre justifying your behavior. Thats not a true apology. If you have to justify why you did what you did, youre not sorry did it. The word regret. I havent thought of it before. Sorrow is not implicit in the word. It basically is saying i wish that hadnt happened. Not necessarily i wouldnt do it again if no one watched me. If i was certain i wouldnt be caught. And ive thought a lot about that recently about things like i dont know, just things that have happened to me over the years or things that people have done to me or things i have done to other people. I think to myself, would i have done that if no one was watching me. Its a quite powerful thought to think, okay, if someone left a Million Dollars here and said no one will ever catch you, no one will ever know that you took it, would you take it . And i feel i feel really, really clear that i would not. I know that there are other things that i dont feel as clear about that im not as proud of that i might do if no one was watching. When you ask yourself those questions, its powerful. You have to admit yourself where your threshold is. Your moral those are character questions. Thats how we define who we are. Those are character questions. Im fascinated by the fact that posthumously your father has led us into a conversation about apologies. Proud of your father hes the most powerful person ive ever known, yeah. He really was. And he it was that ability to sort of he also is so curious about other people and had such an appetite for books and literature, and people. And there was only there were only like a couple of things that i would see him get shut down with people, people who sort of boasted about the wealth, to a certain degree made them uncomfortable, or people incredibly right wing. For the most part, he would accept anybody, came into the house. Going to this union, how did you find yourself way into arts, into the theater, into acting . Well, also recently, again, i thought about my father, is i remembered that when i called him and said, you know, dad, im i went to North Carolina school of the arts, and i dont actually have a proper bachelors degree. I have a diploma. If you took a certain amount of academic classes you would get a bachelors degree. It was not that hard. It was four classes or something. Only over the first year and a half. And i remember calling my father and saying, i think this is going to interfere with my arts classes, and i want to be an actor, and im going to write, and i dont need to take this class. They dont seem inspiring to me. Its a good decision. All right. He felt like if i made an informed decision, that was the right decision. And i think now if one of my kids came to me and said im going to spend four years at college and im not going to get a bachelors degree, would i have the courage to trust in them. Would i give them the courage to trust in themselves. So you knew early on that youre calling your vocation, your purpose that your calling, your vocation, your purpose was in the arts . I always hoped i would write. Yeah. And David Granger allowed me to write for esquire. I wrote for esquire for about ten years while david was there. I wrote for a few other magazines and wrote a book. As far as acting goes, yeah, i was very, very shy, and i didnt have confidence and stuttered a bit. I wanted to do that even before i knew what you really called it. I felt comfortable there. And aaron associatisorkin sa werent shy when you left a voicemail. I dont remember the voicemail, but i love the story so much that i want to take credit for it. Im going to say that its true. I dont fully remember. He says that i called him and sa said, josh lyman needs to get laid, and im the one to do it. I do remember that, but i thought i did it after i had done one episode. Im not sure. I deflt definitely remember saying he needed to get laid because he did. It worked out with west wing. I was lucky to be on that show. Great show. His writing was incredible. Every time i got a script, i couldnt wait to open it and see what he said. Let me talk about the play because my time is running out. I could do this for hours. And we jump so fast into deconstructing your methodology and your onstage your persona and how you measure that. I didnt ask you to say a word about the play itself. Darn. You didnt say a word about the play, mlp. Yeah, yeah. Simon stevens wrote this beautiful, beautiful play that mark directed that i knew i wanted to do on page 3. And its just about the unexpect unexpected in the heisenberg principle. And these people you dont expect to keep speaking after their first greeting. At the end of every scene their relationship could end, and it doesnt. And it always jumps to somewhere very unexpected. And its i think its a beautiful story. And i love that its two people who theres something about my character. Shes off putting. And i really felt that if i wasnt somewhat embarrassed while playing this part and if i didnt alien update some people in the audience in the first few minutes, that i would be doing something wrong because people, she states that in the text that people pretty much leave the country to get away from her. Shes theres something abrasive about her thats we know shes quite different from me, and i wanted to be able to show both sides of that that theres Something Sweet in her. The fact that she doesnt filter herself. And theres something honest even in her dishonesty. I love this both exist even at the i love that both exist even at the same time when she is unfiltered. When shes telling her own truth, she thinks shes telling the truth. So i found that really interesting. And acting with a particular actor is just exhilarating and wonderful. You must be getting something out of this because youve been at this for a while. I think i might be a little addicted to this play. There might be some kind of problem. Its about two weeks before its quitting. And we go backstage. Well be like, is there another city where theyd want us to do this play, couldnt somebody call somewhere, berlin, or i kind of was definitely not finished with her the first time or the second time, and this time i feel like theres one more in me one more. Tell me about this audience project that youre about to do. Which one . Mr. Mercedes. Oh. Yeah. Oh, the the mr. Mercedes, yes. I have no earthly idea what network its on. Im probably going to get in so much trouble for that audience. The audience. All my friends at the audience network. Yeah, yeah. Love them so much. Thank you very much for producing that. Thank you for having me. Yes. Its inner lodirected by jack b and theyre delicious and amazing and wonderful. And its stephen king whos phenomenal and can really i think hes he knows how to do it. Before time runs out, you are a writer or an actor first . I think im a mother. I think im a mother number one. I take that. I think in my heart, i think i might be sometimes i feel im a little bit better as a writer. But i do i do love acting. I love acting on stage. And youre pretty good at it. I cant wait to see the play, heisenberg. I will see it. I will see it. Talk to my friends at the audience network. Sorry well be checking it out, mlp, in mr. Mercedes coming up in a few weeks, as a matter of fact. Honored to have you on. Your first time. Hopefully not your last. Thank you very much. Come and see us again. Definitely. I would love to. Youre welcome back any time. Thats our show. Thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. For more information on todays show, visit tavis smiley at pbs. Or