Elizabeth Olsen Eats Her Last Meal

I am Elizabeth Olsen and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we're all gonna die. Today's guest is an actor and producer who you might recognize from WandaVision, Ingrid Goes West and Martha Marcy May Marlene. Her newest movie, Eternity, is in theaters this Thanksgiving and she was once the starting setter for your Campbell Hall Vikings. Elizabeth Olsen, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that last fact and it was very important to me. So thank you for knowing that. I wanna take you back to your first ever game in Vikings uniform. It was against Malibu High School. You're starting on varsity as a freshman. It was at home. You won in a straight set sweep. You put up 35 assists. Did you know at that time that you were gonna win the Alpha League title? Oh my God. I was a freshman playing varsity and it was a very big deal and we had a great coach in Tanner Ragland. Hey, Tanner. He does watch the show. We've talked to him. We didn't talk to him. No, that was a joke. That was a joke. Yeah, we don't do that. I practiced all the time. I did finger pushups. I was always practicing my setting against walls all the time and I loved it so much. I thought I would like get into college for volleyball. You probably could have, right? I was pretty short and the club that I played with, I was never on the ones team. I was always on the twos team and so I was humbled, like always, because that was since I was 11. So I've always had really healthy expectations of myself and I've always been told that I am not number one and so I just have continued to live my life that way as not, like with not being number one and I really appreciate it because then there's always somewhere to grow. Yeah. Do you think you've maybe artificially stacked certain odds against you in a way? Because that's become like your only mechanism to fuel yourself? I don't think I do intentionally but I do love improving. I love knowing that there's something that you haven't accomplished yet and to me that there aren't many specific goals I have that aren't more like process-based. Yeah. I don't really have like reward-based goals but it's so funny you brought up volleyball because I was doing an interview. There was a question like what would you want to do for eternity, what activity it was and the first thing I thought of was bump set spiking and I was like I actually don't want to do that for eternity but I don't know why it was the first thing that came to my mind. You mean pepper, you're talking about peppering. Yeah, I am. Yeah. Talking about peppering. You could just pepper for eternity. I guess so. There is an actor who I was working with on a TV show called Sorry If You're Lost. And Zach Rabidas and he loved playing volleyball and so we would pepper. It's crazy how hard it is on your body. I had bruises that the makeup department had to cover up for a week. I had purple and blue bruises like fully covering my arms. Have you ever thought about your last meal before? Yes, often. Do you remember the first time you thought about it? I don't know, I just know what was on it. It was the il buco kale salad and then the il buco alimentari bucatini. How often do you think about death in general? Every day. Every day? Yeah, absolutely. In what way? In a very serious way? In a memento mori way where you remind yourself to live for the moment? Or is it just utter fear? I think about while I'm driving sometimes, I think, oh wow, what if that person just decided not to stop at that red light and hit me instead? I did have a weird experience once where I was making a left, the left turning lane across the road from me. All of a sudden became surrounded by police officers and they were all pointing guns. And I've done a lot of gun training for Wind River and so the rule is if you're pointing your gun, you're comfortable with shooting anything that you're pointing at or anything behind it. And I was like, oh wow, this is all pointing, I'm in so many lines of fire. And so I ducked down under my steering wheel and made the left-hand turn. I don't know, you see roadkill and I think about death. I mean, I'm not like, ew, roadkill. I'm like, well, that thing just died. How often do you think about death outside of the show? Quite a lot, but I think less since I started doing the show. Because you talk about it all the time. Because I talk about it all the time. You get it out. I get it out, but also I think I actually stopped engaging with death on a real level in a certain way. Yeah, that sounds freeing in ways. Maybe, or no? I don't know, I'm worried it's sort of cresting to a head and something bad's going to happen. You ready to eat? Am I ready to eat? Yeah, yeah. I've been so ready to eat this whole night. Oh, I should've shut the **** up. No, I've been really excited about it. Elizabeth, for the first course of your final meal, we have the Danish rye bread with some Beurre de Barat Normandy butter and Don Boccarte anchovies from the Bay of Viscay right on top. We have the cabaret crackers with your mom's very 1970s salmon ball. We copied her recipe to the T, except we did use fresh salmon instead of canned. We'll see how it holds up. And then we have the crispy smashed potatoes with creme fraiche and golden osetra caviar. And then we have the XO egg. And then finally, we have an extra bruised vodka martini that smells suspiciously like water. Yeah, it is definitely water, but that twist makes me feel like I'm drinking a martini. It does. So you have recently stopped drinking for almost no reason. Quite literally for no reason. When I made this list of food and pairings, it was like six weeks ago or something. And I was traveling a lot, came home, wanted to do a cleanse, which means so many things to so many people. To me, it just meant like not eating only whole foods. Bunch of chia seeds in the morning. We call it an internal shower on TikTok. No, thank you. That sounds wild. The worst thing I've ever heard. No, it just means like whole foods. Like I don't cut out like dairy or meats or whatever, but it's just like whole foods and not drinking. And then I got really sick and had a really bad cold for seven, eight, nine days or something. Two days after, driving home from a Dodger game, the only game that they lost against the Brewers. So I wasn't drinking. And then it was all of a sudden like 13, 14 days accidentally, and I'm doing a press tour. And I was just like, why don't I just like see how long it goes? And I'm usually very like, let's bring drinking back. I fully support drinking more responsibly, of course, but like also I respect the arbitrary self challenges. So random, couldn't be more random. So cheers to our water. Cheers to the sugar on your strawberries. Let's go fight a horse. Where are we digging in on this? I don't know. How do you want to do it? There's a little bit of fish in all of it. I actually want to introduce one more dish. We do have a little surprise. Tell me about the first time you really fell in love with caviar in your Christmas morning tradition of bagels and lox with your mom. And somebody showed up with caviar that launched a lifetime appreciation of it. That is what happened. And I was probably in high school. And I think I was kind of scared of cured fish maybe at that age. I think I was probably like 16, which is silly because I grew up eating like, you know, spicy tuna roll or something. I mean, you kind of grew up in like the sushi epicenter of America. And in the Valley, Ventura Boulevard. And so it was very normalized, but for whatever reason, I don't know. It was when I fell in love with smoked salmon and it was when I fell in love with caviar. And it's so embarrassing to want to be so falsy. But if you're going to die, eat caviar. Thank you. This is a golden Osetra. One of my favorite. It's going to be like a little bit brinier and less kind of iodiney than your classic beluga. Just because we're not, we're like, we can really just go in it. I just decided to give myself two insane bites. I love that so much. Wait, hold on. I'm coming, I'm coming. Oh, sorry. I'm just really hungry. Go, go, go. Okay. Thanks for the surprise. It's a gift from the chef, not me. Great cream cheese. I have a question though. After eating this, do you regret that? The? The water. Because how good would like, I'm not trying to get you back in the wagon. No, no, this is the point of the snacks, right? My favorite thing at five o'clock around the holidays is I make myself one of these snacks. It has to be washed down with a martini. And I read at the same time. And I do it so slowly, and it is. You said you read? Yeah, this is how I do it. I eat snacks with my martini, and I read. And I am just the happiest girl. This is an interesting segue. Here, please, take an anchovy on the densest Danish fry bread ever. That is very sort of like 92-year-old woman coated in a way, but a very elegant one. One like decked out in, you know, mink. Ethical mink, of course. We don't have mink, but. Sipping the martini. But you said that you've kind of always fantasized about being old from a young age, and you now got to play a 92-year-old woman in your new film, Eternity. Yes. Did you like learn anything about embodying that fantasy? You're like, oh yeah, this is gonna rock. I think the thing I don't think about about aging is how it physically affects you. Part of the humor of our film is them waking up and being in a whole new, younger body and assuming the aches and pains that they're used to having. And so when I think of my fantasy, I think of like a woman who's so like assured of herself and confident and unapologetic, but like has had all these like world travels and like continues to travel and maybe has a dog and like gets to look at a sea or an ocean or a lake or whatever. I always imagine it somewhere in the UK. And of course my husband's dead in this fantasy, if I ever were married, but I am married now. So my husband will have to be dead for this fantasy to work out. Does he know that? Yeah. Okay, that's good. I don't wanna know. No, this is a fantasy I've had since high school, is this like woman in this cottage in this small remote town in England and just kind of like whatever that is, like taking a nap while reading. I don't know why, but I just, I think I was so excited. I think it might be because I wasn't very close with my grandparents. I only had one that was alive since I've been alive. And I think it was so exotic for me to be old. And so I think that's why I always kind of fantasized about it, but not about how it hurts your body. Interesting, the squatting scene was so funny. Yeah. It was incredible. Cheers. I gotta tell you about my danish rye. We got the densest one possible. I mean, it was like every single thing here has some sort of like processed preserved fish product. That's right. And dairy. That's right. And starch. There's a sort of- Did you know I went to college in Russia for a semester? This is zakuski. Do you know what zakuski is? I don't, no one taught me that while I was there. It's like a Russian style of eating that's almost like the Russian version of tapas, but just ripping ice cold vodka with various preserved fish. Is this what you were doing in Moscow? I was, yeah. That is awesome. They give you vodka for every reason possible, even if you're a college student. I love that. If you like feel sick, if you have a fever, you like have vodka and then you run it off or something, like it's crazy. There also seems something very Russian about imagining yourself an old woman with a dead husband by the sea. That feels like a very Russian affectation. It could be. How at home did you feel there in certain ways? It was 2009, so it was before the Sochi Olympics, which is when they started to instate their very like homophobic laws. It was before they invaded Crimea. It was like before a lot of like our issues as a country with Russia started to reemerge again. And so I was there kind of at this time where it was all like brushed under the rug. And so I got to be there at a time that just felt enriching and the arts there, the theater, everything is... I really feel sad that all the artists left because it was rich with such amazing creatives and writers and filmmakers. When people are asking why I was there, I would say I'm going to Mahat for theater school or like try and say in Russian, which I probably don't remember how to do that anymore. But they were like, oh wow, that's like so honorable. Like they thought it was so honorable to like become an artist because they are the people who were the voice of the people during so many fascist regimes. And so it felt like when I was coming back to New York, I didn't feel ashamed of like wanting to be an actor because I had had this experience of like remembering what it means in history for cultures and for societies. It was my first time also eating black bread. This is Danish rye, which is different, but it was like the first time kind of engaging with a denser bread. Yeah. It holds up to the dense fish. But how good are these anchovies? Honestly, so good. Tell me about your mom's salmon ball. This is a very 1970s recipe. They loved to put food in balls back then. That's right. I'm really curious to see what it tastes like with real salmon. But the funniest ingredient is liquid smoke. Yeah. That is the funniest ingredient. I think we should bring it back. I love liquid smoke as a cook. So, really? It's real smoke. How else do you, and also these, I mean, not to mention the cabaret crackers. Do Keebler club crackers work in a pinch or absolutely not? What's a Kleebler? A Keebler, the elves. You don't know of the elves. Who are the elves? You don't know the Keebler elves? They all live together in a tree house and they make fun crackers such as club and townhouse. I've probably seen a commercial because I'm like, I'm getting cartoons while you're talking in my head. I don't know for what reason or why my mom has made this my whole life. Real quick question on ball etiquette. Do I go into the cavity that you made or go separately around? It's whatever you want it to be. Wow. So, she makes it with canned salmon and liquid smoke. Obviously, when you look online, there's like, you make it with smoked salmon if you're having a smoked salmon ball. Let's see, I mean, I'm really curious. I've never asked anyone to make it and it's perfect. Wow, my mom would be fooled. This is really spooky. What are like the memories that are coming back when you're tasting? I mean, it's like literally every single Christmas Eve. I'd ask her to make two. And we just like ate at Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. It was the only thing I wanted to eat. My first Christmas in New York, my best friend, I was understudying. My first year, I couldn't come home for Christmas. My best friend, Clay, came out to hang out with me because I couldn't travel. And this is what we made. We made this in like quail, which I've never made before. But not quail, Cornish game hens. Cornish game hen. Yeah, another thing that my mom would like make for the holidays. Both are very 70s things to do. Speaking of the Cornish game hens and you trying new proteins, you're obviously like very, very in tune with not just food and eating good food, but like with food culture in general. You tried to throw a dinner party when you were 17 and you butchered an entire lamb by yourself. I think I was 16. 16? Yeah. How did that go? It was terrible because my mom has such dull knives. Moms have the dullest knives. There's an epidemic of it. It was really dangerous. Yeah, sharp knives save lives. It was so hard. I had no idea that you could ask the butcher to do special things for you. It was probably really kind of awkward for our friends because I made us sit around like a dining room table. I would play make-believe restaurants before then without food. It was just about this idea of like serving someone in my friend's bedroom. And yeah, I started doing, I started hosting then and I don't stop. I won't stop. I just love hosting food events. I think I might dig into this potato. Yeah, sorry. At some point. No, no, no, no, no. More food to come. I get so excited by snacks. As you should. It's the best way to eat. I hate the fact that we even have a main course. We should have just had like 50 different plates of this in a rotation. I know. That's cute that you're eating that with the fork. You go hands? Wait, okay. Because I've been talking so much, the potato is no longer hot and I feel responsible. It's one of those dishes that it's like an ice cream cookie sandwich where it's like a thermal paradox. Yes. Cookies are best warm. Ice cream is best cold. Why did you sandwich them together? Did it with this. It has to be eaten immediately. Tell me about the XO egg. More eggs than preserved fish. I love this. I live in Sonoma and my friends have this great restaurant called Sonoma Bar and Bottle. Bar, yeah, yeah. She's drunk. Wasted. And they do this XO egg and it's absolutely delicious. And now anytime XO sauce, like anchovy XO sauce, like anything with XO sauce, I'm having it now. I respect that so much. Oh, why am I reaching with a fork? I don't know, you're being so polite. We actually got them to ship us their XO sauce. So this is. Wait, stop it. Actually, yeah, shout out to Sonoma Valley Bar and Bottle. Yes. That's the right word? Yeah, I'm in stuff, the chefs. I'm in stuff. You're wonderful, thank you. Tanner and Lauren, front of house. Love you guys. I wanna go back to Eternity real quick because I watched that movie and a couple things happened. One, I ran home to my wife and I hugged her and I told her how excited I am to grow old with her, a real thing that happened. And then the other thing is earlier on in the movie than I was expecting, I got hit with a little bit of death panic, which is something that's pretty rare for me these days because I intellectualize it so much and I talk about it so much here, but there's very rare times where I can truly imagine the feeling of an eternity of nothingness. I kind of call it like touching the void. Did you ever feel anything like that while shooting that movie? I don't think about the afterlife. So I don't think about an eternity of nothingness. But then what? Is it just the experience before you were born? And then the stories that you put into other people's lives or the ways you impacted other people that survive you, that's the thing that continues and you can call that energy, you can call that stories. That's what I think. I think that's the impact we leave behind is like the one, how we affect people as we're alive. Yeah. So your general thoughts about death are always sort of about- Oh, this is what I was gonna say. Go ahead. I would be very strong legs. Well, thank you so much. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. What a quad! If you tell them that I don't skip leg day, they don't believe it out there. He doesn't! Thank you. I would be so comforted if I believed that there was something else, but I don't. And so I really try and enjoy that five o'clock hour when I'm not working. Yeah. There's a line that you say in the movie, life is beautiful because it ends. Yes. And that was something I really loved getting to say, actually. I loved that scene a lot. Maybe that's what this is all for, is that it's all meant to end. Yeah. And maybe that's what's so beautiful. And there's a whole other journey that happens after that moment. But I love that you had that experience with your wife because I had that experience reading it with my husband. I was just hoping that we would be lucky enough to get old. Again, I think that's why I have this fantasy of being old and it would be such a privilege to get to grow old. And so I was thinking about that a lot, I think, when shooting it. Like, wow, how lucky would we be if we got to be, if you got to be with someone for that long? And there was something that, okay, it's an actor I've worked with before. He said something to me about, you know, the thing that's so exciting about being married for a long time is every year you'll never know what it, like, it is something new. Like, I've never been married for 15 years. When I get to that, that will be a whole new experience. Having like a fling with someone, I've done that, been there, like, that's happened, but I don't know what it feels like to be married for 25 years. Like, those are actually new experiences. They're not like repeat. It's not monotonous to me. It's actually something to discover. Someone's like, you don't want to be the old lady. You want to have become the old lady in a certain way. Sure. Through that process, the process-based goal. My high school boyfriend always thought it was- Name him! You know who you are. He was actually, his family were the people who made me love cooking so much, actually. So they were very important in my life. So he thought it was so weird that I always fantasized about being old. And I kept saying, well, I think I want to have the memories by the time I, like, for when I get there, I want the stories and the experiences. And he was like, yeah, but don't you want the experiences and not the stories of the experiences? But I don't know. I think they're one and the same. It's the weird paradox of never actually living in the present. The last time we took a bite of that salmon bowl was now a memory. Yeah. You know? We are a collection of our memories and that's all we are in a certain way. Yeah. You ready to go to the next round? I really am. Yeah. I'm very excited. Lizzie, for the second course of your final meal on earth, we have the kale Caesar from Il Bucco. This is made with lacinato kale or cavolo nero. And then we have the whole Thai fish from Anajak Thai with dry-aged branzino from the joint. Shout out to Leeway Liao. That's right. Actually, Justin from Anajak did give us this fish. What? And not only that, he also let us borrow his grill from Anajak that you walked by in the parking lot earlier. Yes. So if you smelled any burning bean shotan Japanese charcoal, thanks, Justin, for letting us borrow the grill. We'll bring it back. Stop it. So this should taste as authentic and fresh as possible. Oh my gosh. You got all the players involved. We really did. So did you already know the joint? I did know the joint. The joint is also my local fishmonger for the last five years. We live in the same neighborhood. We certainly do. And then we have the Fabio Gia Onde... Gravitazionale. Bravo. Yeah. Dominic De Coco. Wine, tell me about this. So, God, I have to remember what it's called. Oh gosh. Oh, this is when it's frustrating when you rely on your phone for information. There is a wine shop that I go to that is in Encinitas. He is such a great buyer. And I had this, and I think it was around the holidays. And I then was like, I need more. I need to save this. I need to find wherever this is. And he was sold out. The only place that I could find that would come up online that was selling it was in DC. And he shipped me the six bottles that he had. I still have one. I think the year was 2019 or 18. And so it has only been re-released, I think, like a year ago. Because he doesn't make the same wines every year. And I just love it. And I'm not gonna drink it. I'm just gonna smell it, which is psychotic. That is psychotic, but I- But I'm really like trying to stick to something I've never stuck to before. And I don't know why I'm doing it. But it sounds, it's like because no one told me to. That's really great. Super balanced, like pretty high acid for how much like of that black fruit that you actually get on it, which is fun. The acid's pretty, is like a little stronger in the smell. I've also not had this year. So you're kind of having it for me right now. Good salinity to it, which I love. Low tannins, but like not in a bad way. I always want low tannins and like minerality. Can I cut you a filet? This should be, is this boned? Well, let's see. A little. No. You're the master butcher here. You butchered a whole. Well, I did just make a whole flounder for game seven of Dodger Stadium from the joint. Sorry. I wasn't at Dodger Stadium. No, yes, yes, yes. For game seven of the Dodgers World Series. I can't do two things at once. Some people do like chili dogs, and you did a whole flounder? I did a whole flounder for two people because the two other people that were coming over canceled. And so it was just me and my husband eating a very nice fish. I love that so much. But it was for game seven and they won, so I think it all worked out. Do you call yourself a foodie? How do you feel about that? I used to, and then I was like, and then the internet happened. So goddamn good. Like I used to say, I had to learn how to like cheese and if I wanted to be a foodie when I was in high school. That sauce is so good. I love food. I love learning about cultures through food. I love community through food. I love feeding people. I love watching people eat like a wedding singer style, like eat my meatballs. And I just think it's such a gift. And I, yeah, I just, I think food is so special. So my mother, when I was growing up, I was having a sleepover party. She wanted to know exactly like what each kid loved in the morning. And so she would always have raisin bread for Veronica and she would always, my one, my friend Elle, one night when we came home drunk, made banana flambe and my mom, for whatever reason, made sure there were ingredients for banana flambe like every time we had a sleepover after. And so it was just sweet that she was always thinking about feeding us in that way of like, but each bit specific to each person, what they like. And so it's something I enjoy and I want when someone comes over to my house, I want to know what they don't like. I don't need to know, like, tell me your allergy, sure. But like also tell me what you don't want to eat. Yeah. Because I want you to have a good time. Can I give you some Caesar salad? Yes, please. You're a fourth generation Angeleno. That's right. And most people would hear that and think that you were an industry kid growing up. That's right. But you really weren't. Like a lot of your family members worked with their hands in a way they did something tactile. Your dad was like an amateur golfer. Your mom was a dancer. You have cobblers in the family. That's right. Did you ever think about not going to acting and doing something tactile like cooking? Are you happy to leave that as a hobby? No, I think I always wanted to be a performer since I was a little girl. Like I had a mimetic nature. I would always be mimicking everything that I watched and loved. And I wanted to be in Gypsy. I wanted to be in Grease. I wanted to be in My Pal Joey. I just, and Carousel. Like I just wanted to, I wanted to do that so badly. And I just kind of lived in my imagination. And then it became dance classes and it became singing classes. And I would do acting classes with professional child actors. I just loved it so much. And it wasn't really until I got into junior high was I was insecure about wanting to do it so badly that I pretended I was going to do something in like accounting or banking or something. Because I loved math. But you were insecure about wanting to become an actor. So you started telling people you wanted to be an accountant or a banker because you loved math. That's right. Most people have that flipped a little bit. Is that coming from being in LA surrounded by industry kids? Does it come from you being on sets with your sisters when you were younger? Well, I think it's because I knew it was why people came to LA. So when you're from LA, you shouldn't want that dream. It felt foolish for me to want something that people like came to the city for. I was like, well, I know better. Most people don't become actors. And then, you know, high school theater started, I was able to do the musical only because of volleyball when I first got into high school. And then my junior year of high school, I really wanted to do the straight play, which was in the same season as volleyball sets when I stopped playing volleyball, full circle. And that changed my life. And then I was just like, this is all I ever want to do. I don't know why I pretended I didn't. I wrote like a huge letter to my teacher because I was so grateful that something like was reawoken in me. That was what I always, was my passion since I have a memory. I don't really, like, there's nothing that I wanted to do more before that besides like maybe like be a princess, you know? There's still time for you to be a princess. There's small nation, Luxembourg, I think could be a real option. Really? Liechtenstein, I think, you know, your husband dies and then you can be like the dowager princess. It's a possibility. Was any part of you sort of avoiding the idea of fame? Was that part of like this embarrassment or fear? For sure. The term famous and actor go together but they don't always have to be. They don't have to be. And so my way around it was studying theater and thinking I was going to go into theater and not film and TV. Like when I was in college, I would always go to independent cinema, but I didn't understand, like theaters, but I didn't understand or like that blockbuster, I'd be like, what's that movie with Burger Posey because I loved all the Christopher Guest films. And so I would get all, accidentally get these independent films, not knowing the mechanism that made them or how they were made or how, like how much money they were made for or how their film festivals. Like I didn't know any of that, but I knew all about the theater festivals and that community and regional theater and Steppenwolf. And so I knew more of that stuff. And so it was only when I started auditioning that it kind of all happened with Martha, Martin, May Marlene, where I wasn't really aware of Sundance. I'd heard of it, but I didn't understand the system of it. Cause I really just thought I was going to avoid everything by just doing theater, which was a harder community to break into. No, it makes sense. And it's so much, you don't get that wide distribution. You have to do it all like live. On set, it seems like the people who I've talked to that like really enjoy the process. Like there's nothing like live theater because you get that immediate feedback and you're riding that rush every single night. It's been so long for me. I really want to go. I really want, I was supposed to do something in London and that fell apart last minute. And I, there's something I'm hoping to do in New York in the next couple of years when we figure out the time. When you're the princess of Luxembourg, you can build your own theater. It'll be great. That's right. And then I can make all my people watch me. If you're trying to avoid fame, joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, I think I got over it by then. Do you think? Yes, but go ahead. Going to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is like really not the way to do it. Oh yeah, if I were to try and not be famous. No, but was there any part of you that feared your life changing in a way that you couldn't control after joining the MCU? No, because I signed on for like one or two or something. So I thought that I was only going to be a supporting part in a couple. Oh, gotcha. So I thought it was an exciting opportunity to be on a different kind of scale. I mean, I had done Godzilla before that, that Gareth Edwards directed, and he came from like a very small, independent film before that. It was an amazing cast. I was kind of confused why I wasn't being considered for these larger films. And my agent said, it's because everyone just thinks you want to do independent cinema. And I was like, well, I do, but I also like Iron Man and I like Indiana Jones. So I started having these general meetings and Marvel happened and I didn't audition, but it kind of worked out for me and for Aaron, who I loved watching on your show. And it was really nice to get to do that back-to-back with him from Godzilla to Marvel. And he and I, we were husband and wife, and then we were brother and sister. With all of like the otherworldly and fantastic elements in the Marvel Universe, I think you did the most grounded and human show in all of that with WandaVision, which told like a very human story of grief and love. Was it sort of like gratifying for you to like take all of, you know, the Marvel superhero stuff and really ground it in the personal experience of somebody? What I felt really grateful for more than anything was that we were, I was so scared to bring these characters to television because they are made for like these larger than life experiences in a big cinema. I mean, if you don't have your television programmed in a way, a lot of special effects look really silly. And so that like the default of a television doesn't usually look great. And so you kind of are worried about bringing these characters to a small home. And I think what was so brilliant is if you're going to do that, make the whole show about television. Make it about how it makes people feel the nostalgia, the comfort, and then tie it into this entire character's backstory of like her and her childhood and her brother and like where she would go when their families were in, when she was, or when her like country was at war. And so I loved that we were using television as an art form within the storytelling. And I thought that was just so beautiful. And that was always the plan before even Jack Schafer came on board to write it. That was always the intention with the film, with the show. And I thought Kevin Feige, it was Kevin Feige's like nucleus of an idea. And I thought it was brilliant. And I think it turned out that way. It meant a lot to a lot of people. Yeah, it was really, and also who knew there was gonna be a pandemic when it was released, you know? Did you? What did you know? Ready to move on to course number three? Pizza. Lizzie, for the final course of your final meal on this earth, we have the rabbi pizza from Gorilla Pies. Hold the pastrami. We wanted to bring it to you fresh, right off the paddle. This is wood-fired in the parking lot. Thank you so much, Chef Colby. Can I cut you a slice with the scissors, or would you like to do the honor of the bris? No, I don't think I've ever cut pizza with scissors. There's a, you don't cut pizza with scissors, do you? I thought you were a foodie. I have the roller. Well, I'm not a chef. And it looks like it's in a specific shape for pizza or something. Or is that just like a normal pair of scissors? Thank you. Oh, these are my hair trimming scissors, actually. Delicious. Thank you so much. I was curious what that tasted like. You don't use the hair trimming scissors for? For cutting my food? It's not a good thing to do. No, but you know what I do that's just probably not sanitary? I use my kitchen scissors for gardening. That's not that bad, right? I don't know. That's where the food comes from. Yeah, but it gets really dirt, it's like dirt. Yeah, I thought you were gonna say something way worse than that. And like stems and stuff. Cause I'll like, yeah, I'll like use kitchen shears for like, I don't do a lot of art projects, but I'll like crop top t-shirts. Oh, cute. Thank you so much. Do you ever cut like rug mats with them? What's that? Rug mats. Do you cut rug mats with your kitchen scissors? A rug mat is like rug broad? No, like a mat for underneath your rug. You're supposed to put a mat under a rug? What are you, made of money? So it doesn't slip. They're very cheap. I've never done that before. They're very affordable. It's so that you don't slide all over on the rug. I think this is probably a thing that my wife has done in our house. Yeah, or else you'd be slipping and sliding on rugs. I, this is real. When I lived alone as a young man bachelor, I- How often did you fall? I didn't fall because I used wet paper towels. Well, you were being inventive and you could have invented the rug mat. I basically did. You did. I only did it because, I don't know if you ever used wooden cutting board, wooden cutting boards, you put a wet paper towel on the wooden cutting board so it doesn't slip. I thought I would just put a cloth down. Oh yeah, I guess I'm- Like a damp cloth or something. Yeah. But yeah, that's really funny you did that. Yeah, and then every like two months I'd slip because the paper towels dried up. Well, when was the last time you thought about that? Never, I could have died. How exciting is this? I could have, this is so exciting. So what we have here today. That's right, what do we have? This is the rabbi pizza with pastrami from Gorilla Pies. We did a wood fire it in the parking lot with the crouchy, the Thousand Island, sorry, Russian dressing, tying it all back to Russia, caraway crust. I'm so rude. That is so good. He would be so proud. Well done. You specifically asked for this, this was for dessert. What was the call there? Are you not a sweets person? Not really. I like ice cream, but I didn't really want to like just eat ice cream. I like Humphrey's yogurt. Incredible, I love Humphrey yogurt. For people that don't know, you can pick all of the mix-ins and they kind of put it in a proprietary grinding machine. Like a McFlurry. It's like a McFlurry, but then it comes out like as- Blended. Hard ice cream. So I feel like a McFlurry is halfway to milkshake. Yes, no. This comes out hard. Well, it doesn't like get harder or anything. It doesn't get harder. No. It's already like- It stays the same hardness. Yeah, it stays the same hardness, but it blends whatever. Do you think you have a Valley Girl accent? No. I don't. Do you think I- You specifically don't? Do you think I have a- Do you think you answered that question- No, I don't. Specifically with non-regional theatrical diction? I absolutely do not have a Valley Girl accent. I am not dentilating my T's. I am not a Valley Girl. I've received pronunciation. People usually think I'm from New York. That's why I said that. People assume I'm from New York. Interesting. Do you think that's a theater accent? Because there is a uniquely theater-trained accent. I agree, but I don't think I speak in that accent. I don't think you do, because I listened to an interview with Carrie Coon. Carrie Coon speaks in that accent. And Carrie Coon speaks in that accent. Yes, she does. And I thought about your accent, and I was like, is she trying to conceal a Valley Girl accent? No. Split the difference. So when I went to NYU, the voice class I took and dialect class blew my mind. We recorded our first day reading the exact same stuff from this Edith Skinner dialect book. You go through your year of your voice classes. Everyone's voice dropped an octave, and not intentionally. Everyone's voice just dropped an octave. I had a mean friend from high school who bullied me when I came back from college. He was like, why do you sound different? And I was like, well, and I don't think I ever really sounded like that, but I definitely had a higher-pitched voice, which I equate with trying to take up less space, but. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Did that ever factor into you on set trying to take up less space? Because thinking about a role like Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene where you kind of play very scared and confused in a way that's very, very affecting to the viewer, did you actually feel a little bit scared and confused in that sense? I mean, I do quite a lot of prep for everything. I don't know if I did that much vocal prep for her. But I felt very connected to how I thought she was, as a person, not wanting to take up space, being kind of shy, being kind of impressionable, but then also trying to find her strength or whatever it was with her family, and feeling misunderstood, and then feeling seen for the first time with these other people. But I do use vocal work as I've gotten older for everything. It, to me, is really an important thing that unlocks a character for me. So does their walk, or their physical traits, or their posture. And there are certain things that I could do that remind me of playing Candy Montgomery in Love and Death, or even Joan. And the thing that's embarrassing with me is that I do start taking on the accent of these people after the fact, and it is annoying to my husband, and it's harder for me to shake. And then I do this thing when I was working with Carrie Coon or when I was working with Natasha, I just start talking like them. And it's a form of flattery maybe, but I also just start doing how other people talk. I was doing a Han for a long time. It was, yeah, it's like, who am I? They talk about the fight-flight reflex, but there's another couple that people rarely reference, which are fight-flight-Han. Do you mind if I just take some more topping? Are you sure you don't want me to cut you? I realize this is now annoying that I have to hold the key. No, I don't think that's weird. I just want more topping. You just want the salad. Yeah, I want some kraut. I want some cabbage. You starred and produced in a really incredible show called Sorry for Your Loss that tackled grief in a way that I hadn't seen done before. And I think- It's the only subject I tackle. Have you dealt with a lot of grief in your life? Do you think you're sort of preempting what that feeling might be through art? One was an accident. Wanda Maximoff, that ended up becoming her main trajectory of a character because she lost everyone in her life that was important to her. Sorry for Your Loss was a spec script I read that really moved me. I thought the tone was really funny. I thought it was interesting to be a young widow. Like, how does one start their life over again? I think about that a lot, actually. Both my aunts were widows and kind of young. And so I think that might've been also why I was drawn to it. I think the thing that's been really interesting is having done that show, you know, I used to be scared to bring up how someone was doing after someone died, like three months after the fact, right, or something. You're kind of like, oh, they probably don't wanna talk about this anymore. It's been three months. And then you learn that actually people wanna talk about them all the time because our relationships with the dead don't die. They continue. They're relationships that will forever continue. So I guess that was something that I really took away from that show. There's something, I'm not exactly Woo. I kind of don't believe in manifesting at all, but I do believe in the fact that. I kind of believe in manifesting, though. In what way? It's like if you get a car, like a new car or rental or whatever, it's like the only car you see on the road. So it's like the moment you start noticing it. Yeah, and so I think of it similarly where if you put it out there, it actually might be something that comes, you'll just start noticing different signs along the way. So in that way, I think of manifesting. There's one scene in Sorry for Your Loss that I really wanted to ask about because it felt very, very lived in, in a way. It's when your character thinks that something terrible has happened to her husband, and she finds him just sleeping off a drunken night in his car, and you're banging on the window. But you say, don't die, don't ever die, which is a thing that I've, my wife has said that to me constantly, and it's this fear of sort of being without somebody. Had you ever felt that before in your life? Because it seemed very natural. Maybe I was reading too much into it. I don't think you were reading into me just doing my job, but. I wanna believe that there's something greater out there. No, I don't really fear other people dying all that much because I just, I don't think they're going to die. I think I'm gonna die. And maybe that's just such a narcissistic thought, but there's a lot of different types of narcissism. There are people who I know who have said they are not afraid of death. They tend to be like surfers, or like somewhat people who do extreme sports because they have children, and they have to like meditate on the fact that these are things that could happen. I am not one of those people. I'm not ready to die. I'm totally scared of it. It doesn't sound like a nice thing. There's too many things I want to do, and places to go, and things to eat. But I wanna be prepared for it. Death is really sad. I was about to ask you, why are we talking about it so much? It's like the whole premise of the show. Sure, well, do you think it's sad? Because ultimately. I think death is sad. You don't find any of the sort of beauty in it. The fact that nobody would have created great art if they had an unlimited amount of time. The fact that we all go through this thing together. That is nice to think of it that way. I just, I think I also think about like, God, we're just such small grains of sand on this planet, and our lives are really meaningless. But then I think about how spectacular this whole situation is, that we're surrounded by electricity and technology, and we're recording things that then get to be projected on whatever is the internet. But I do think what we've created as humans is really spectacular. And then I also think what we didn't create is even more spectacular, if you think about the ocean and trees that are massive for only dinosaurs. And I find that all kind of remarkable, and I don't really want to leave it behind. I know you do, but I don't want to do it early. I'd like to live a full life. When you are that 92-year-old, do you have any memories that you sort of want to be playing in your head as you slip into that eternal nothingness? I think I want lots of babies in that memory. Like other people's babies. Maybe I have a baby, and just remembering what discovering the world looks like. I'm having so much fun watching little kids right now grow up, and it's something that's new for me. And I am just so moved by how they look at the world. And yeah, I think those kinds of memories are really amazing. And then probably memories of long laughs and nights and jokes and people having a good time laughing. You ready to get in the lightning round? I am. I'm like brain dead right now and full. And then I'm thinking like, you're right, why did I ask pizza? I do love Humphreys, but I'm so grateful we ended in pizza because you have to have pizza before you die. Who's the one person dead or alive you'd want to share your actual last meal with? I'd love to, I would love to have met my mother's mother. What song do you want to be played at your funeral? I'm just thinking of like people. Like I'm thinking of like Sharon Bonnet and Way's blood. And then I'm thinking of like Pulp and I'm thinking of Ani DiFranco and I'm thinking of Lilith Fair. I don't know. Both ends by Ani DiFranco, it is. Such a good song, such a good song. Flirt, marry, kill, legendary Valley restaurant edition. Barone's, Casa Vegas, Smokehouse and Burbank. I don't know the first one, so kill it. You know Barone's? Nope. Pizza spot? Okay, we're going to replace that with Bob's Big Boy. I'd kill Bob's Big Boy. He's just a child. I mean, I like what they have. I like what they have with the fun cars on weekends. Like that's nice, but I'd kill Bob's Big Boy. I'd flirt with Smokehouse and marry Casa Vega. But if Casa Vega, if I could replace Casa Vega with Art's Deli, I would. Oh, you're on that too. And I would marry Art's. Who's your dream eulogizer at your funeral? That was a funny idea. Not one to be shared. I don't know. Like part of me wants to say someone like philosophical, like Benjamin Lapetout or something. And then part of me is like my friend Madeline. I think also equally philosophical. Yeah, she is philosophical actually. And she's very wise. If and when Tarantino makes his 10th and final movie, what would your dream role be? Anything. I don't, I'll do anything. I love his films. What's your biggest fear? Probably dying. What's your greatest regret in life? Probably like how I spoke to my mom as a teenager. You know, something like that, because like that's hard. And, you know, being a parent to teenagers is hard. I thought you were gonna say not getting pastrami on the rabbi pizza. I don't regret that. I really like it this way. How do you feel about it this way since you always have it with pastrami? It's not meaty enough to carry. This is about your last meal. We just had so much protein. What do you mean we had so much protein? You had half a hard boiled egg with some extra sauce on it. That's a fake. I had more than that. I have protein powder under here. I can give you some afterwards if you need it. Stop it, those thighs. If you had your own Food Network show, what would you make on the pilot? Probably Dana Shreibread. Who's on your Mount Rushmore of Food Network chefs? Martha wasn't Food Network, but she's up. She counts though. She can be on the Mount Rushmore. She'd be Martha. Ina, I would do. Is Jamie Oliver considered a Food Network chef? Yeah, he had a Naked Chef. Okay, so I'd do Jamie Oliver and Tom Klikio. Finally, Lizzie, are you happy? I'm very happy, yeah. I'm really happy. Thank you for doing, I've been truly looking forward to this since the invitation that was in my inbox and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. And honestly, I think this is something that people can reimagine at different times in their life and I hope you have me back. I would love to have you back. And maybe I'll be drinking then. Please, please be drinking then. Yeah, I probably will be, but what if this is like the rest of my life? It could be the rest of your life. Who knows? Anything can happen. Because you know, you could also be around for eternity. Go check out Eternity in Theaters. Nailed that plug. Thank you. Go check out Eternity in Theaters this Thanksgiving. It is truly a wonderful movie. Thank you. You're fantastic in it. Lizzie, if you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there. God damn it. Things I wish I prepared for. And that's a wrap folks. I think that's it. Thank you, this is everything and more. Thank you so much. You can take the wine home and you can age the open bottle.