Guest Spotlight: Celebrating Women and Finding Connections Through Farming | Preparing for Broadway on a Week’s Notice

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Welcome Mac the Day Show. I guess Tonight helped run her family farm in England. She has a new memoir called The Farmer's Wife, My Life and Days, and she's brought one of her farm hands tonight, who you might know from other stuff. Please welcome helenri Banks and Nick Offerman. Oh my famen, what a treat it is to have you both here. This is thank you for being here so much.

Nick.

I think most people knew you from your brilliant comedic work. You just won your first Emmy for the Last of Us, you played the president in Civil War, and now somehow on this side. You're also a master wood worker, and.

I'm an aspiring master woodworker. I know the masters that I take classes from. Would bristle to hear you describe me that way?

I doubt that. I think it's pretty safe to say that you are officially a renaissance man.

I'll take competent.

Okay, we'll settle for that. So how did the two of you meet? How did this friendship get started?

Well?

I guess social media kind of connected as a p initiate, didn't it. I mean, we were both huge fans of the writer Wendel Berry's work, and when we were over in Kentucky we did an event my husband was speaking with him in Louisville Public Library. And you've been connected with the work of Wendell for a long time, you know, sharing his work and stories about looking after the lands and food and farming for a while, and then you came to stay when you were in the UK working on a project.

That's right.

Yeah, so all of this started on social media, That's right.

If you want if you want good farming content, you go to Twitter.

Some people go to Twitter for other things. Check my mentions.

But yeah, I love the great Kentucky writer Wendell Berry is the subject matter that drew us together because we're all very interested in knowing about our farmers and knowing where our food comes from and who's growing it and if they care about our health or not, or if they care about their profits. And so it was through Twitter I befriended them, and I had an acting job in Manchat, England with Alex Garland, a show called Devs, and that took me very close to them, and I

You're cooking that good. I enjoyed your book so much. You really walk us through a day in your life, all of the daily work that you do taking care of a family of six. You're herd of sheep, dogs, fifty chickens, five hundred sheep. I can barely keep my kids goldfish alive. How much coffee and drugs do you have to take to get all of your work done? That's my main question.

Oh, does it's a way of life on a farm? It's I mean, I guess this to me is the hard work, like being on doing this all the interviews, et cetera. It's totally different.

I love it. I love it from morning till night.

It's a completely sort of immersive thing to be on a farm. You respond to the weather, the livestock, the kids, whatever needs doing. And I wrote the book to celebrate the people that do that daily kind of mundane work. Really, but to me, it's like really important.

Such important work, and it really is such a beautiful tribute to all the invisible work that so many women do all over the world. Was that your intention when you came into the book, or were you just kind of wanting to tell your personal story a.

Bit of both. Really.

It started off with personal stories and recipes and I wanted to leave a collection for the kids of what mum makes. And it soon developed into kind of a really deep kind of dive into like what society tells us women. You know, it's really hard, isn't it to figure out a path through and navigate how do we have kids and run business and do all the things?

And I kind of through the stories through the writing.

It's just been absolutely brilliant to share it with readers that have resonated with it and feel seen. You know, there's not many books that I felt seen in. I read a lot, and I love stories, and yeah.

It really accomplishes that. And I love how you talk about when you were growing up. You grew up on a farm, and you always thought this is not what I'm going to do, and then you chose differently. You chose to follow in the footsteps of your mom and your grandmother. Why did you change your mind?

Oh?

I think love changes a lot of things. I fell in love with a farmer.

Ah, that's how it happens, against.

All my better judgments.

And here, yeah, yeah, yeah, here I am And it wasn't. It wasn't initially kind of I want to just do the things that my grandma mum had done.

It's like.

I'm making art as well through this writing and working and thinking about life through the creative projects that I'm doing. So it's not just I'm just doing one thing. And I think we're all lots of different things, aren't we.

Yes, I love you. When you say in the book I choose this life.

I choose this life.

And that's how I feel as a New Yorker when I see someone masturbating on the sixth train, I say, I chose this life. This is on me, and I had to live with those choices. Nick, you you're probably you know, when you're acting and you're on set, people take really good care of you. I assume you're at this point in your career, mister Offerman. Can I hold your umbrella for you? What can I get you from?

I'm fully molly coddled. It's a contract.

So was it when you went to do real work on Helen's farm? Was that like a was that a rude awakening? Well?

No, that's actually the strange thing that attracted me to them, And the subject matter is I grew up in a wonderful family in small town Illinois. My mom and dad both grew up on farms a few miles to each side of where I grew up, and they have these incredible work ethics and family values. And so even though my life led me to like show business and Chicago and then Los Angeles, I still gravitate towards like it's

They work, and he's now pretty much did And we had no clue who Nick was when he first arrived, and he was working on a show card.

How does that make I feel?

It actually makes me feel really good because I know that they're not going to tweet about me.

They had a big beard, and he was bald, and he'd been filming on devs, So that was, you know, a sort of strange look that you were pulling there.

And then my mom.

She called in for something and she said, who is this guy, Helen? Who is this guy? He looks like an escape convict. Are you safe tonight? You know, are you going to be saying American?

Yeah? Yeah?

And you know she's not too keen on on your first look.

But she since woom doup, hasn't she? You know, she s.

Thank you, Yeah, she's I've graduated to now I look like an escaped invalid.

Oh yes, congratulations. So you you worked on Civil War playing the President. I imagine that was an incredibly intense film to shoot. The second you wrapped, Did you run to the farm immediately?

Pretty close? Yeah, I mean it's it is very medicinal.

Program Oh yeah, who needs basic cable.

Late night look exactly? And so for me, I just find that to be incredibly palliative. That it's like reading a really good book where suddenly the way they live is like a work of art and you can curate it. And it never has to involve shopping for anything online or going to the mall, but instead it's just how good are your Yorkshire puddings? Certainly, like, why aren't we all living like this?

Well, if you ever tried my Yorkshire pudding, you would know it would be better to just shop online. There are so many incredible recipes in this book. What's your favorite recipe to cook?

I think I like making something that's going to last us for a long time. So I'll cook up a big pot of like a broth or like a hamhok broth.

You've had that before?

Having you at the farm.

Please get us? Can we just stop and get me a sandwich?

Get a sandwich and pass out?

But yeah, something that's going to warm us up after a day working outside. I mean, it's it's old fashioned to talk about this kind of thing, isn't it? You know, meals around the table and caring for each other and connecting and having conversations around a meal. But that's the stuff,

Has it changed the way that you look at food and how it's produced and what you choose to eat.

Absolutely. I mean my fascination with agrarian material, starting with Wendell Berry and the books of Michael Pollen and Alice Waters and many more, are what led me to my life with the Rebanks and getting to help them with lambing and actually you see lambs being born, reaching in and doing some assisting. We have a beef herd that I am an investor in, yes, and so it's the most gorgeous grass fed beef. And so not only are these things delicious, but we're trying to.

Okay, now I need a sandwich.

Striving to work against the modern idea that our problems can be solved with technology instead of just working in concert with mother nature. And so this grass fed beef is answering the question of how can we keep the soil the most healthy, it holds the most carbon, and all of these things work together to answer a lot of the questions that are plaguing us in modern civilization. And you get the most beautiful ribbis at the end of the assignment, Well.

What life solved that? It's a beautiful book. Congratulations and congratulations to you on everything. Thank you, ki, I really really enjoyed it. Thank you for being on The Farmer Wife, Available at home on May twenty four. Helenry Thanks and Nick Ockerman. My yesternight is an Oscar nominated actor who's currently nominated for a Tony for her role in Broadways Doubt a Parable. She also stars in the Apple TV series Sugar Please Welcome, Amy Ryan.

Sonny.

You look sunny good.

Thank you, Thank you for being here. This is such a treat. I'm such a fan of yours.

It's a treat for me too. Thank you.

My gosh, you've been You've had so many iconic memorable roles. You were in Gone Baby, Gone, The Office, The Wire, uh, murders in the building. I mean, I right. I don't know why the standard is six degrees of Kevin Bacon. It should be three degrees of Amy Ryan. You're in everything.

Wow, and you're.

Incredible on everything that you do. And congratulations you were just not dominated for your third Tony. Yes, thank you, it's so well deserved. I got the chance to see you. It was such a tree. You're exceptional in it. And I heard that you stepped in with a week's notice. A week's notice.

I got a phone call on a late Sunday night to step in and I said yes. In the following Tuesday, I was white knuckling it on stage in a nun's habit, trying to remember lies there was.

It was a wild ride, that is. It's such a brave thing to do to get that call and be like, hey, can you be here tomorrow? I need an answer immediately. It's braver crazy. I feel like you're so talented. You're one of the people that could actually be so confident to be like I got this and you did. You were incredible at it. I heard that as part of your preparation you slept on an air mattress.

It's not that I wanted to find the characters paining through an air mattress. It's more that I didn't want to wake up my family because I was getting up at five point thirty in the morning to study lines, so I didn't want to wake my daughter before school, so myself and the dog were on the aerowbed.

You're a good mama. I try. I slept on an air mattress. You cut out sugar, dairy, and caffeine.

Yeah, just to help the immune system, which I've since been mainlining since the show's closed.

Of course you should. Absolutely. I want to talk to you about this incredible show, Sugar. Yes, that you're starring in. It feels like kind of an homage or a love letter to all of the classic noir gum shoe detective movies. Were you a fan of those movies going into it? Not really, but I.

But I love that this show spins it a bit. I mean, I know my character is kind of the classic fem fatale, but we pulled away from the you know, the woman in distress and became she just was a strong friendship, which you don't see between a male character and a female character. You assume they're going to you know, end up rolling in bed by the first episode. But you know, if you have Colin Farrell, why would you want to roll in bed?

So, you know, let's just be friends. Let's just be friends. The pain, you know.

Yeah, so the restraint and the congratulations.

You deserve an Emmy for the restraint to not jump on Colin Farrell's I don't know, I pro really are you this? So the show is on Apple? I'm curious. There's a massive, massive twist.

Yes, yes, don't read anything if you haven't watched it in time that Apple has asked you to and you're going to binge it later on, just stay away from anything you read it.

Don't read any spoiler. Yes, it's a huge, huge twist. Now I'm curious. Did Apple make you sign the same nda that they made the guys that make their iPhones.

Yeah, but then when I'd call home, I think the Apple was picking up on all the scripts, always.

Listening, listening, always. It's it's so remarkable that you went from playing this like rock and roll ex rock and roll star addict immediately to the strictest nun. Do you ever worry that you're just too versatile as an actress? Just simply too talented.

I'm running out of Hairduce.

It's all about hair, it really is you. You also have a movie that's coming out soon, Wolves, Yeah, in September, and it stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I've never heard of them. Who are these fresh faces?

Huge careers ahead of them, potential? Yeah, yeah, I'm really I would putt put your money on those guys.

If you're a betting woman, I bet you're gonna blow them out of the I'm very excited. Thank you, so, thank you for having an absolute delight. Seven finale of Sugar airs May seventeenth on Apple TV Plus.

Amy Ryan.

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