Anna Faris

game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted What I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place,

or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster? The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with. My guest today is actress and podcaster Anna Faris.

Anna is a very curious creature. I was recently the guest on her podcast Unqualified, and the questions she asked me were not only far reaching and interesting, they gently asked for real interrogation of my experience having a second chapter to a conversation. By inviting her onto this podcast was an absolute treat, as her answers have the same depth as her questions, which always makes for a lively and memorable chat. What is the quality you like least

about yourself? I think that I can be neglectful towards my relationships, specifically my friendships, and that also ties in with my laziness. I have developed a reputation for being very phone inattentive, so people don't really reach out to me so much anymore. It's my friend Amanda's birthday today. She was one of my very first friends that I made in Los Angeles and she is great with birthdays. Which is always thoughtful, always sending cards, always thinking about me,

and I haven't done anything for her birthday. Yeah, I'm embarrassed and lazy about it. Do you mean that you are bad about maintaining friendships because work and that programming of ambition which you sort of have to have if you're an actress an actor? Is that what got on the way of it? Perhaps? But I was. I've always been a person with few friends me too. I believe that about you, Minnie. Yeah, really, really, Johnny, no friends,

I mean really, maybe like six friends. I believe that because I believe that you're an intimate person and will not to say that people with tons of friends aren't intimate people. That's rude, incorrect. You are quite right, But it does feel like I'm not great at the day to day attentiveness. I never was, and I feel like there is maybe more pressure on our gender to be better at those things. Thank you notes, birthday cards, just being thoughtful. I think about myself a lot, Minnie. You

think about yourself being an asshole. You're not. You're not. You're so attentive and sort of involved and engaged with people, but then they think goodbye, goodbye and meeting for all. Yes, please, it's funny. I think that massive expansion that fame like if fame is like a bomb going off, and there's

that extraordinary pressure that is released. In order to kind of cope with the fallout after it and the sheer kind of mass of energy, one becomes inattentive to other things, things that are other than the maintenance of that energy. In a way, I found it impossible in my twenties to maintain friendships because I was so busy working and sort of prostrating myself at the altar of fame and ambition and loving working so much and loving that experience.

As I got a bit older, I became more attentive to less friendships. And don't you find the would age your feelings get hurt so much less? Yeah? Yes, yes, laugh of an enormous amount do, But that's good. The other day, we were in Hawaii. My parents invested in

a time share there about twenty years ago. On the way to the airport, I was talking with the cab driver about lava and he was giving me a great lecture on different forms of lava and what its uses are, and so I was, you know, gaining a new appreciation for rock and and then at the end of the trip he said, this is such a weird humble brag, I suppose, but he said, you know, you're pretty funny

in person too, which I was delighted by. But I also had not made the assumption that he had recognized me. And I think that I go through even with this shockingly bleached blonde hair, I move about life without that assumption. And it took me aback a little bit, and I was a little bit to disappoint. It sounds drastic, but um, you were bum You weren't just having a regular conversation about love that it might have been fueled by his shit I'm having it. I'm having a conversation with aunt

affairs a little bit. Or maybe it was that because I felt like I was being kind of funny and witty, and everybody in the car was exhausted and silent, and so I was just kind of hamming it up with the taxi driver, and I felt anonymous, I guess, and liberated in that if he had mentioned that before, I probably would have been pretty quiet. Maybe I don't know. Sometimes I lean into it and ham it up more.

But it's also a relief, I think because there was a time in my twenties when it felt electric to be recognized and I did you know, I went through those phases of wondering if I would get a good table or what you know what I mean, like just if somehow people would be you know, breathless. It's oh god, there she is, scary, scary movie, There she is, Tana. I think I've shed a little bit of that with age, which is nice, or at least just what it occupied

in my mind. Then it's funny. It's just funny about wanting to escape the thing which you was so exciting and that you wanted to foster. Like I loved it when people recognize me when I was younger, and now I sort of hope that they don't. Usually it's because you're in your pajamas browing milk. I was at the Beverly Center probably when I was twenty three, and I was wearing white, low slung jeans. I was probably wearing a G string. Maybe probably not because I'm verified of

bump flows. Yeah I don't. I don't need to be reminded all the time that I have a crot. But this man came up to me and he said are you who I think you are? And I was coy because I was so excited, and I said, uh, god, you know, I don't know, like who do you? Who do you think I am? And he said, no, you're not. And so we did that for a second, which was stupid, and he was like, I don't know if you are and I said, I'm the girl from Scary Movie and he said, ah funk, I thought you were Britney Spears,

which was a huge compliment. Oh my god. It was a complicated moment just in general. Wait, did I tell you about Did I tell you about Stevie Wonder? No. I was at the Grove, like I don't know, fifteen years ago, and I just come from a photo shoot and I did have big hair and I was still in sort of like heels, and I walked by Stevie Wonder and his security guarden his girlfriend and I walked by them and then I I just stopped and I was like, there was Stevie Wonder, maybe only like two

other people who have meant as much musically. I have to go back and say hello. I just have to. So I went back and I did the completely embarrassing thing of saying hello and the whole thing and you know, I love you and in a vision has changed my life and I love you and you're amazing and I love you, and he was he was so he was like, that's great, that's great. And he was like, and what's your name? And his girlfriend went, oh, Stevie, it's Mariah Carey and I went, no, no, no, no, it isn't.

I was so mortified, and I was so embarrassed in the girl. The girl really confused and I was like, I'm I'm British. It was honestly, it was one of those moments where you hope that someone might recognize who you are, but you also hope that they might not think that you're Mariah Carey, because I carry that could be only one, you know. Okay, So what person, place,

or experience has most altered your life? I thought about this question, and I think the best, the largest idea I could come up with is my parents decision to move to Seattle when I was six years old. I was born in Baltimore. My dad was a professor at Housing State University of Sociology, and both my parents grew up in Washington State, and my parents insistence on Raisin Us in Washington gave me the theater culture that I

grew up with. It was also a really fascinating time in Seattle too, even though I was definitely observing it from a distance. But it was a time of economic depression, and so it gave birth to grunge and in the nineties I wish it could I could legitimize that more and not use the word angst. But did it give

you something to push up against? Like watching you know, this sort of musical movement happened and it was clearly a super vibe place, and there were other people who were reacting to it, all those musicians, all those bands. Was that the general feeling that you feel was good. It fed into something in my personality that felt very resistant, that felt very angry. I can't remember if I told you this. I was very angry that I was born a woman. Were you not that I was born a woman?

But I was. I had just really absorbed the inequality. I have an older brother who I love him dearly, but growing up we did not get along. He was big and popular and like physically big, and we were completely opposite and we just fought all the time. And I just felt that injustice of being a woman, and at that time too, being in Seattle, where there was like it felt like it could be nurtured easily. That just unchangeable frustration of circumstance in life, and that felt good,

Um to feed that. Do you think that it's creative to feel that like that, that feeling, that conflict, feeling that that is actually super creative that when you feel a bit uncomfortable, it forces you to reimagine and to keep imagining and to create. Definitely, I wrote a lot more, and I had an odd sense of style. I wore

a lot of black, I wore big boots. I went through this period freshman year where it was the first time I felt attractive in my life, and I would wear these tiny little skirts just barely covering my ass and like thy high stockings, and it was like I was truly experimenting. Yet I was terrified of men. I was so terrified of the boys. It was like I was I got to experiment playing various characters during that time as well. I remember my brother ran into me

on campus. I was like smoking, I was wearing this really promiscuous outfit, and he was just shocked and I was so embarrassed. I think that's part of the right of passage of women, is that we were so unsure of how sexuality is meant to be metabolized because we're told that it is to be metabolized by a man. So are you supposed to dress for them to attract them or you to dress for you to feel that so you you become more confident in whatever it is.

I've always been confused, but I think that it is someone part of a woman trying to figure out who she is is the way that she dresses when she's young, and her relationship with the world. I e. Men, but many, and I felt so hungry for it. I was so hungry in high school. I had a couple of stunning friends and I just yearned. I wanted to be that, so,

I mean, who doesn't. So getting a little bit of attention in college made me feel like it made me feel irrationally angry because it felt like, fuck you, where have you been? Which is nonsense. But I think I was hungry for glances and attention from men. And I would go to fraternity parties and I would pretend that I was fifteen because my theory was these guys would still try to sleep with me. Like I I was very confused. I was mad, and I wanted them to

prove me right. Isn't that odd? Oh god, yeah, it's awful. It's like the gauntlet, the gauntlet that young women run, or feel that they're expected to run in order to figure out this thing that sort of biased against them fundamentally, which is judgment, judgment of the way that you look, judgment of how in quotes hot you are. My mom tried to protect me from it. She tried to. She never let me look at women's magazines. I wasn't allowed to like watch MTV or she has the whole diet

tribe about pretty woman and grief for that matter. Um, she really hated it if they and detained for the man. Yeah, I mean, I gotta say. I mean I liked her curly hair and wearing the leather at it, but it did bother me. I was like it did. I liked her skirts more than hers brion pants. But I think my mom's insistence that I not be boy crazy just

made it worse. Oh yeah, it's so weird. You see, even with direction, even when you have your mother giving you that direction, you still and saying this, really, this is not a good idea, that what is this compulsion that we have. It's almost like it comes in fully formed that we have to go and garner that attention and that somehow qualifies us. You can't just gently explore it. I remember being so willing to be like, oh, change, yes, so you'll fancy me absolutely, What would you like me

to do? Shave my head? You know what will it be, sir? I don't know. It's it's terrible. I mean, I'm very happy that we're still here, because I mean, when we talk about it, it's like, Jesus Christ, how did you say childhood? So where and when were you happiest? Mini? All right, if I were ten years old, I would tell you that I would be so euphoric galloping on a horse, like through the fields of Wyoming. Even though

I'm not a horsewoman. I know how to write a pony that feeling of like childhood euphoria, where happiness and sadness are at such extremities in your life. As I was thinking about this question, I was thinking, do we get those highs anymore? I didn't grow up very wealthy at all, but my parents prioritized traveling specifically to Italy as we got older, and we would all pile into a minivan with suitcases on our laps, six of us usually.

And there's a restaurant on the Amalfi coast called Da Teresa and it's a little family place and it's right on the beach and you walk down like four hundred stairs to get there in the heat, and they serve you like peach wine and this shaliaatelli, this hand rolled pasta with these cherry tomatoes and these little dime sized

sweet clams. And being there with my family and my fiance we were able to go there a couple of years ago, is kind of the most perfect afternoon being with people that you love in a place that's so astoundingly beautiful, eating food that's made with love. I'm so glad that I have those memories, and I'm really grateful that I was able to experience. I hope that I'll be able to experience that lunch again at Datosa. That makes for a pretty perfect moment. I love that, I

mean I love I love the Amalficas. It was the cheapest holiday that you could get, was just going to Europe from England. When I was a kid. I have a restaurant like that on the Amalfikas La Scolia, which is again it's just right on the water, and we would usually get a little put put boat and either come up to the jetty or you just dive in and swim up the beach and then go into the restaurant.

And they grow everything up on the hillside behind the restaurant, so the white anchovies that you eat that have just come out of the sea, with the warm tomatoes that they've just harvested. I had an Italian woman tell me that the tomatoes taste so good in Italy because it is the continent where Jesus built his blood. This has never left me, Mini, and I had to pass it on to you now, so do with it what you will do, you know, I think that's a very interesting

reason for the tomatoes tasting good. I like that because, funny enough, we would go and we would end up in this little tiny town called Ravello, which is up above Positano, and we'd stay in this tiny bed and breakfast. And when I was about sixteen, I went out with this guy who was so cute, and he told me he was a barrista, and my mom was asking me, like, who was the guy? And I was like, he's a barrister, which in England you know, means a lawyer, like a litigator.

She was like, no, he's fucking not. He makes coffee, you idiots. And I was like it doesn't know anyway, I didn't mind that he in your life. Can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I have two big incidences. The first one was I was in a relationship well let me, I'll put it okay, during my first divorce to the last

chapter carry on. During my first of us, I found out something that I had suspected, which was my dear friend, My dear, dear, dear friend had slept with my husband. Oh god, and I had suspected it and then it was confirmed. And I loved this woman so intensely. I wonder if that's why you you know, you're neglectful of relationships, Perhaps because it's like, look what happens when you're well.

This is something I'm kind of proud of though, because what happened was for four years, I imagined running into her in Los Angeles, and I imagined what it would be like I imagine just getting into her face. I imagined just I would fantasize about it, you know. And I didn't run into her years past, which was surprising because you know, we live alone but not far from each other. We're both actors. But I would miss her like I would ask people, like, what do you think?

What does it mean that I missed her so much? Like my heart? It kind of aches in a way that it didn't at all for my ex That's hilarious, that's amazing. And I was on a flight with my son, who was ten months old at the time, to London, and I had our nanny with us. We decided to exit the plane after everybody else because this kid, you know, all this stuff, and I'm leaving the flight with a whole of my ship and I hear Anna and I turned around and coming up the other aisle was my

friend and I just dropped my stuff. I burst into tears. We like collapsed into each other's arms. The flight attendants must have been just totally freaked out. We held each other as we walked to baggage claim. My nanny was like, row boy, what's happening? And now we're dear friends. It felt so good. It felt so good. She was. She was just like, I'm so sorry, and I said, I

just missed you so and it felt so good. And I'm proud that my first reaction my gut wasn't like fuck you, you know it was it was so it felt very honest, and I'm I'm I'm proud of myself for prioritizing what I really felt, which was that I missed her. It's so commendable. I mean, it's really extraordinary. It's really extraordinary to still be friends with the person that was instrumental in part of the ending of a marriage. Because maybe it's not the whole story, but like it's

a pretty huge thing. It's a huge betrayal of a friendship. But then to be able to go beyond that and into the friendship is actually stronger and needs to survive more than the betrayal does. That's that's a beautiful evolution. If I may. The other moment that I thought about what this question was, my son was born early. He was born ten weeks early. And I'm really well, I don't know if I'm proud, but I was able to be very present and focused in the moment my mind

didn't leap too far into tragedy, into whatever. You know. I was able to absorb information that was scary and process it and continue to march forward and be there at the nick you with my son in that position that one just doesn't imagine, you know. So I think

that knowing that I could do that, I think was affirming. Yeah, oh my god, especially at that time, in that moment when you're flooded with expectation and then there's a different set of circumstances that you're faced with in this you know, the anticipated most joyful moment of your life is then kind of co opted by serious medical concerns. Yeah. I remember, because it was my first pregnancy, my first baby. I remember having a couple of moments of envy and a

couple of moments of why me. But I'm really proud that there were only a couple of them, you know. I'm really proud that I was able to like no, no, no, like this, Well, here's what we do. How old is he now? He's eight, he's about to turn nine. I can't believe he's great. He's just a confident gem. He's so confident it's wild. Yeah, these kids are I mean I think they're just kids who are very different to

when I was young. They feel like they're more confident and they're way more knowledgeable about like what's up in the world. Oh completely, I am such a luddite, and I think I'm both a willing and unwilling luddite. I think because I got scary movie right after college, I didn't have to learn how to use anything. So yeah, so I'm in trouble when it comes to him being a teenager with technology. Well, maybe he'll teach you. My son is very patient and sweetly patronizing. I can't wait

to meet your son, Minie. He's like, Okay, now, what's your password? Have you written it down? Have you written it down somewhere mom? Yet in my notes? Okay, we might want to have a hard copy as well as a digital copy because sometimes you delete shit. Okay, all right, thanks Dad. It's so funny, it really is, And I think there's something so sweet, like he loves teaching me, and sometimes I pretend not to know stuff so that

he can tell me. Oh that's really sweet. I mean it's a bit manipulative, but I really like watching him figure out stuff and tell me about it. Oh, love. I can't wait. I can't wait to see. I don't know whenever that will be, but I hope that it's I hope that it's soon. Earnie. Thank you, Minnie, I just love you. Recent guests on Anna's podcast Unqualified include me Hassan Minaj, Bob Odenkirk, and Glennon Doyle. Mini Questions is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, supervising producer

Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Minni Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver