RITA WILSON: "Now & Forever: Duets"

School's out and there's a lot more young people in our midst than during the fall or winter months. Maybe they're in your kitchen demanding snacks like Oreo cookies or popsicles, or they're in your home office demanding your attention. Maybe there's a team knocking on your door to see if you need your lawn mode. If they are, take them up on it and give them a tip. Maybe they're starting their first real summer job. Or maybe they just graduated from high school and are packing up for college

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Really, oh my god, we have so much to catch up on, so much to catch them. So I haven't talked to you since, uh since you made me cry with the song that ripped my heart out?

Which when was that?

The Don't cry for Me song?

Throw me a Party?

Oh?

Yes, yes, it was so sweet. Well let me introduce you here before I start asking you a bazillion questions and catching up with me. I love someone today is the multi talented whirlwind. You are a whirlwind, Rita Wilson. You're a whirlwind of sparkly joy.

But don't you think most, at least in my experience from all over my journeys, I think most women are whirlwinds.

Most of us are taskers.

They do a lot of things. They're incredibly creative, and it's just I think it's something we're good at. I've always thought I wish there were more female contractors because.

Because houses would have better kitchens.

It's true really quickly.

Yeah, the house I grew up in was so tiny, and my mom and dad, I don't know how they did it, but they cooked in that little tiny kitchen. And back then we didn't know this, but my mom would go to the market every day and just get what's fresh. And she was Greek, so that was what she was used to. The concept of like buying and

Seven at the end of the day.

And feta cheese in its own sort of liquid, which yeah, so ugly and some constractive.

I mean, can you imagine a friend going, yeah, let's have some ice cream.

Or some you know, coke or something like yeah, and we could have some feta.

Yeah, here's an olive, stinky cheese. Eat this.

My girlfriend Didi, her mom was the cookie mom. Her mom bought real cookies, she bought oreos. The cookie jar had store bought cookies in it, and we're like, oh, this is so good. We don't have to eat those stupid homemade things like our mom.

Yeah, how d that's right. Some animal crackers, yeah.

Yeah, and some popsicles please mom. Your kids are big now they're grown. But were you the homemade popsicle mom? Or were you the let's go buy the box of the plastic sugar water things and just stick them in the freezer.

To this day bought the popsicles, but always always made the birthday cakes.

So I want to talk about music. I want to talk about your songs, but right now I got to talk about man called Ato. Yes, I cried, I laughed, I cried, I'm gonna be honest with you. I started watching it two or three times and I had to stop because I lost a son to suicide and that opening scene opening five minutes just I couldn't do it. But somebody that I love told me, please please watch this. I know why it's triggering you, but please, if you can, you know, go past the first part because it will

Yeah, just non judgmental too, because culturally, I don't think she realized that she was being that kind of I don't want to say intrusive, but just herself, and that in America maybe.

We're not so used to that. You know, I grew up in.

A very loud Greek Bulgarian family, so I was used to that. But for me, it was about the community that you can find if you're open to it, and that we all shut down when things happen to us that make us feel like we'll never find our way again.

Was available. He said, listen, baby, you're not getting you're not getting the pinata cake this year. If you don't agree to do this with me exactly, no care, no cake, no cake for you, baby.

And our director Mark Forrester, who's just done so many things. He's done things. He got halle Berry and Oscar for Monsters Ball, which he directed, He directed the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, and he did Stranger Than Fiction that great.

Movie with Emma Thompson.

And Will Ferrell, and I just loved his sensitivity and his sensibility of how he handled things that there was still humor, but it was all very grounded and very real. So and we shot it in Pittsburgh and it was fantastic. I loved Pittsburgh, loved the people.

The setting, and the row houses and the way Otto leased the row house. There was just so many little nuances in it, you know, from repairing the dishwasher, just so many sweet little nuances, even the cat.

Everything was so everything. You know, it's.

Almost like a nod to an era that is fading. You know, someone who gave their life to a company and then you know they're kicked out because things are changing, or forced to retire. Let's say, people who were good with tools that could fix things. I know that people still can do that, but even from my mom who used to sew and crochet, and my dad built like a whole section onto our house when we were kids, I don't know if the average person knows how to

Because that bathroom was incredible. I was following that whole process.

Oh my god, that was so much fun. But I was obsessed. I'd get off the air at midnight and then I would start the tile, you know, start the floor, and I wouldn't come to bed until like four o'clock in the morning. And then I've got all these kids. My husband was like, what is wrong with you? Just put tile down, Just put go to home depot and get some tile. And I'm like, no, I know exactly what.

It is, though, de Laila. It's a quiet time. No one is going to distract you out the phone, not an email, not a kid, not a husband, not a anyone.

It's your quiet time.

And it's also I think when you do anything creative with your hands or yeah, let's just say, or even for it can be sometimes just driving you're doing something with your hands, but that's when my mind gets creative. That's when I get to listen, that's when I get to have my conversations with God. I that's when I feel it's good time, you know. So it's hard to say no to that, even though you know you should be sleeping.

So when you're writing a song, do you write it or do you let God just write through you? I know that's a weird question.

No, I it's I always call it miraculous because you go into the room you're writing with somebody and this song at that moment does not exist. And through the conversation and through the ideas, through the creative process. I don't know how it happens, but it does happen, but.

You give birth to the song.

Yeah.

Once I said, I don't know if I told you this before, but I've said songwriting is like this because I co write. You walk into the room, fall in love with the complete stranger, make beautiful musical intercourse, and give birth to a gorgeous song.

Baby.

So I loved you first, I knew you first. I was the first love in your life and you were the ultimate love and mine. Right, how long did it take to birth that song?

Well, my co writer Emily Shackleton had approached me about singing it with her, and the version that she had and gave me was already the concept, but it was written when her newborn was six weeks old, and it felt very much like you were singing it to a

Of love that you have is just enormous, and.

It's sort of like that will never go away, That will never go away.

You will always say.

I remember my one son chat when he got his first tattoo. I cried so badly because I thought I've bathed you.

I have inch of that skin, an inch.

Of that body and that skin and oh, it's just it was just, you know, one of those things. And then you realize, yeah, you got to let go. They had their lives and their adults and they can do what they want to do, and you have to let go. And you know a lot about letting go.

I suck at it though I've never let go of anything that didn't have claw marks. I do that. How can I orchestrate things so that I don't really have to let go? You know, like they'll go to college down the street. Yeah, that's it, that's it.

That's good.

Yeah, And they're like, uh no, Ma, that's it's nothing. And you know what it's. It has been this year, Rita, that I'm talking to my sister, that I realize how horrific I was to my mother to not understand that when when I flew the nest, because I flew pretty fast,

If we're going to get older, at least we got to get something in return.

And it was done.

You know.

I think that you can only realize that at a certain point in your life.

I was cold blooded, Like you know, it was the seventies, baby, in the eighties, and I had things to do.

Yeah, I'm out.

There are discos to go to.

There's koloa and cream to drink.

If you do the vodkatonic, do not finish the night with a koloa and cream.

Oh my god. The disco era, for sure.

Did you have the dress, the dress that spun, the little lycra dress that spun with the.

Disco No, oh, that sounds amazing.

Yeah. I had a purple lycra you know, the little circle skirt. So when I would spin on the disco floor, Oh.

My god, that's fantastic.

Yeah, it was, well, you know, it's I really still think growing up in that era was kind of amazing, particularly like I think the music from that time is incredible. Like, I don't know if you know, but you I think you would like this album. It's called Now and Forever Duets. It's my duets album. That came out last September. But it's all covers of seventy songs sung as duets with Keith Urban, Smokey Robinson, Jackson Brown, Elvis Costello, Vince Gill.

Josh Grobin.

You know, it goes on and on, but it's all those songs that we love and grew up with, and all duets envisioned as duets because those songs weren't sung as duets. Willie Nelson and I do slip Sliding Away, and there's something like super poignant about hearing Willie Nelson sing the nearer.

Your destination, the more you're slip sliding away.

However, I think if anybody is going to break the sound barrier of living forever, it's Willie.

Yeah, it's definitely Willie. I actually was telling there's a young couple that lives on my property that both are very musical, and so we have bonfires in the backyard and they have my young kids out there and you know, they'll sing. And I said to them the other night, I feel so bad for you kids, and they're like, why, I said, you missed the era of the best music. And I was talking about that album, those songs that

I think like that era of music was kind of coming out of the sixties where we had writers like Carol King, but they were writing for other people, they were writing for groups. And then there was this emergence of the singer songwriter, and you had Joni Mitchell, Harold King, Stevie Nicks, Carly Simon. Linda Ronstadt didn't write that much,

And it felt very real and very intimate.

The older I get, you know, the wisdom comes. One thing I realized I was listening to some great music the other day, and in my mind, if it's a great song, it's gospel. When a song resonates in your soul like that, yeah, it's gospel. To me. It's like, you can't refute this, you can't argue this.

That's a fact.

Yeah, like slip sliding away. That is gospel, that is wisdom. That is a whole sermon wrapped up in a three and a half minute song.

That's right, that's right. That's what I love about songwriting is the storytelling. Is how are you going to tell this in three and a half minutes?

To condense down the truth? Yes, about loving a baby first and loving them with every fiber of your being and knowing you would trade places with them in a heartbeat. There's something bad, it happens, Yeah, And being able to tell that in a three or four minute song, Yeah, that's your gift. That's your magic, is being able to preach the truth of love, to condense it down till it's just pure.

It's pure. I think that what you went through is maybe the hardest.

Thing a parent can ever go through, and you have handled it with enormous grace, and I think you've probably inspired so many people who may have been not able to get out of despair. And I know that it doesn't ever go away, but I know that it is. It's there, and you've accepted and you live with it. I don't know if you have read anything by Pauline Boss, and she writes about ambiguous grief yep, an ambiguous loss. That concept is, you know, we all think that we should have closure.

There is no closure.

There is no clue.

I'm glad that people are talking about that and recognizing it. One of the sweetest gifts I got after losing my first son, Sammy was somebody saying. It was Jill that told me the whole doesn't get any smaller, but your life will grow around it, your life will expand around it. Right now, all there is is the whole. There's no room for anything else.

That's a beautiful, beautiful way to look, to see it and to understand. Yeah, you know, it's also like I remember after nine to eleven, we were all questioned, like, how could something that evil happen? How could something that bad happen? How could that occur? And people were asking, Where's God? Where's God in all of this? Like, you know, how can if you pray to God, how did God

World, you're going to just lose your mind, be stuck.

And you'll lose your mind. You'd be on a hamster wheel of grief and pain.

And so read it. You had a song come out a couple of weeks ago, right, Yes, and every woman needs a Little Black Dress exactly.

It's called Little Black Dress. I wrote it with Laurie McKenna and Phil Barton. Laurie McKenna is an incredible songwriter. She has her own albums, but she has written just hit after hit when Grammy's and I had this idea about a little black dress, because what's more universal than a little black dress. But it was really about like when you close have memories. To me, I can look at something I wore and remember exactly where it was, who I was with, what we talked about. It's like

And are they your memories? Is there truth in the air is there? Are they your memories? Are we going to discover?

No?

Not yes, in some ways yes, I mean all songs are truthful, and all songs are they come from your own sort of like were.

You wearing a little black dress the night that you and Tom fell in love?

No? I wasn't.

But there was a design I had a little black dress by this Parisian designer. She was American, but she moved to Paris and she used to design for Elizabeth Taylor. Her name was Vicky Teal, and Vicky Teal she said to me once when I was buying a little black dress, she said, whenever Elizabeth Taylor wants to close the deal, she comes to me and I design her a little black dress because her dresses were just like they take advantage of the female.

Let's say, and she was a work of art.

And she was a work of art. So I love little black dresses. I still do now they're a little bit looser than sometimes. But but no, there was truth in it in that, you know, these little black dresses

It's that to me. It's about love.

So it is about you and Tom, I still see you that way.

You know, you still look like that girl I met, you know, very sweet.

I was wearing sweats when my husband fell in love with me. We worked out at the same gym. That's how we met. He never saw me with makeup on for six months.

Oh amazing. Yeah, that's fantastic.

Yeah.

It was because I had a dog, a yellow lab, and I only owned black workout clothes. So not only did I not have any makeup or a little black dress, I was covered in white dog hair every time I go to the gym.

That was interesting is you weren't really lifting a a bar bell, but you were lifting lit rollers.

Yeah.

Yeah, Oh my god, that's a funny scene in my head now. Oh gosh, so Where would you like to go in a little black dress that you've never had a chance to go to because you've traveled all over the world. I mean you were where were you in Spain when COVID hit no Australia shut down in Australia, Yeah.

That was crazy. Where would I like to go to the little black dress?

Or maybe someplace you've been and would like to revisit again in a little black dress.

You know, when I think of a little black dress, I really think of Paris. It's just like that kind of romantic thing.

I see myself getting dressed in a beautiful Parisian hotel room and go walking to a little bistro down the street. You know, just something very I see the street lights that are lit.

Maybe there's a little bit.

Of a mist on the ground, like post rain, so it's reflecting. The lights are reflecting. I don't know.

It just feels like that.

Little tables setting outside. Yeah, you cross your legs and you wear in a little black dress and you have to kind of scooch it down exactly. Yeah, Yeah, I see it. I see it. Oh fun. We're getting to know Rita Wilson a little better today and hearing about the many, many projects she's been involved with recently and what's been going on in her life. I am so grateful to my podcast sponsors for helping to make this happen.

Yeah, yeah, oh gosh, that'd be great.

Well, so I did CMA Fest and the Bluebird And you know, to me, when you get to perform live, it's it's like taking a vacation.

I really really love it.

We also have Asteroid City that is the new Wes Anderson movie that I'm in, as well as Tom and a cast of thousands, I would say, Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman, Brian Kranston, Tilda Swinton.

It goes on an on, Margot.

Robbie, So we had the premiere for that. That's super fun. And then we always take time out. We'll do a family trip somewhere with everybody, So we'll do that and just relax. You know, there's I don't know if it'll be done by then, but right now currently there's a writer's.

Strike, so we can't really work as actors. I'll still do some writing, but I'm just also going to make sure that it's good family time.

Well, have a blessed, wonderful, RESTful take a break. Like you said, you'd take a family vacation. Do not work, do you just?

Yeah?

I am literally that concept, which I would like to call a sabbatical, which is what people do, is they take three months off. You know, it came out of teachers. For every seven years of work, they would get one year so that they could go out into the world and take in so that they could bring these new ideas and new interesting facts and stories to their classrooms. And I feel like as creative people we.

Have to do that.

Sometimes you can't always just be in the output mode. You have to have quiet time where you just are out there absorbing and taking it in.

And so yeah, I definitely will do that.

Road trip trip.

Nothing better.

We should do a road trip together someday.

We could be like Gayla and Oprah.

We could be like Thelma and Louise, only not do that last scene.

The last scene for us, for me would be driving through an in and out.

Rita Wilson, I love you, love you, love you. Please give me my love too. You're happy in your family and we will catch up soon.

Thank you, Thank you for having me. Really great seeing you.

Hye bye bite. Rita Wilson has been involved in a non stop fluri of projects, her star studded album Rita Wilson Now and Forever Duets, her collaboration with superstars Sebastian Yatra Untill Your Home and Emily Shackleton on I Loved You First, her new production company Artistic Films, and a recent appearance at the June CMA Fest named just a few of the iron she's had in the fire. Oh and she's in the new Wes Anderson film. We talked