00:00Well, I have not had successful relationships, I am very, very, very sorry to say.
00:07Any relationship is full of different kinds of compromises all the time,
00:11but there's some that you should not compromise.
00:13I know that I spent a lot of my life feeling that I couldn't take the lid off who I
00:22was,
00:22what my life, you know, to be fully owning who I am, because I didn't want to feel that somebody
00:30had to compete with that.
00:32I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but that six-time Oscar-nominated living legend Glenn Close.
00:38Do you know that she has more Oscar nominations without a win than any other living actor?
00:43Yeah, that should be fake news.
00:45Glenn opened up about her life, acting alongside her daughter Annie,
00:49and why her latest role in The Wife hits close to home.
00:52Welcome to a very special edition of Strong Opinions, Loosely Held.
00:57I'm Elisa Kreisinger, and as a white woman on the internet, I have a lot of opinions.
01:01Each week, I set out to prove myself wrong by talking to an expert who might not have all the
01:06answers,
01:06but they certainly know more than I do.
01:09That's why this is Strong Opinions, Loosely Held.
01:13The Wife is Glenn Close's latest movie based on the Meg Wolitzer novel by the same name,
01:18and in it, Glenn and her daughter both play Joan Castleman,
01:21a talented writer who takes some really bad career advice from a fellow female writer,
01:27and she gives up her career for her husband.
01:30Now, there is a huge plot twist here,
01:33but I cannot tell you what it is without giving away the ending.
01:36No, I'm not telling you the ending.
01:38No, you gotta go see the movie.
01:40All right, fine.
01:42So she comes out of college.
01:44I know, right?
01:45And so relevant.
01:47That is one reason why I'm so thrilled that people are reacting so incredibly positively to it.
01:53Who knew that a movie called The Wife might actually be interesting?
01:57Well, we're in the Me Too movement, aren't we?
01:59And I think this movie actually embodies a lot of those issues just by the fact that it took 14
02:06years
02:06for a movie called The Wife, you know, written by a woman novelist and a woman screenwriter to be made.
02:12And Annie, you play Joan as a young woman.
02:17What was it like establishing Joan's character for your mom then to fulfill later on in her life?
02:23You know, I really channeled, I would say, my grandmothers in a really big way,
02:29who were two young women in the 1950s.
02:31Women of incredible intelligence and seemingly limitless potential.
02:35And they did both get married quite young,
02:37and I think always in the back of their minds they wondered what could have been.
02:41And they all became homemakers, which is very important,
02:44but I think certainly I could speak for my mom that she was unfulfilled.
02:50It's a natural instinct from a woman to try to make her partner feel good about himself.
02:57I remember when I was in college, and I was married when I was a freshman,
03:00but I was taking 18 hours, I was doing all the laundry,
03:03I was cooking the meals and also getting a lunch for my then-husband together.
03:10And at the top of it, I'd say, you can do it, you can do it.
03:13And that just was where you naturally kind of gravitate to.
03:17What were the themes, the overall themes, that drew you to the script and to the movie in the first
03:23place?
03:23I think I really thought about my parents, to tell you the truth.
03:27I had a brilliant father who was an amazing doctor,
03:33but he had, I have to say, a dollop of narcissism.
03:37And we watched our whole life, my mother, be subservient to that,
03:43even though she had great talents of her own.
03:47I think that's what first made me want to do it.
03:53I had echoes of that in my own life.
03:57Right.
03:57You mentioned Me Too a few times.
03:58How do you think the movie fits into the overall Me Too conversation?
04:02Pretty well.
04:03I think it's right in there.
04:05This is the sensibility of the team that put this movie together.
04:10A woman novelist, a female screenwriter, a female editor, a female costumer,
04:17two females, main producers from Switzerland, a female from Denmark.
04:21Rosalie Swedland was the real, the driving force in Hollywood.
04:26So this basically is a story that came to fruition because of the passion of a lot of women.
04:34For me, that represents where I hope we're going to stay,
04:39you know, with that kind of diversity in front of and behind the camera.
04:44The Wife is a timely and deeply personal psychological thriller
04:49about the uneven compromises that we make in relationships.
04:52There is a ton of Oscar buzz about this movie,
04:55and it might actually be Glenn's first win.
04:58You don't want to be the only person who says they never saw the movie, right?
05:02I personally loved it,
05:03but that's because they tackle literally every topic we've ever covered on this show.
05:08So go check it out and let me know what you think.
