EP. 208 — Minnie Driver

Jameela Minnie Driver. Love of my life. Hello. Welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Minnie I’m alright. I love that I’m the love of your life. That’s great. I won’t tell James.

Jameela Circle of friends. Yeah. James knows. James knows that you are the benchmark that he has always been trying to live up to. He resents you massively. You should never meet. Never be in the same room because he will fight you.

Minnie I’ll never.

Jameela He doesn’t care that you’re a woman.

Minnie I’ll fight him.

Jameela Yeah. Haha!

Minnie I’d love to fight him.

Jameela You’re both really tall. I think you could actually be quite a good fight. How have you been, mate?

Minnie I’ve been alright. I mean, you know, dealing with the cons, really feels like still dealing with the fallout of Covid, really weirdly. Not that, not the disease itself, but the the long reaching effects of it in the people around me that I love and myself like this, it really, it feels like it hammered. That isolation hammered so many people that I love.

Jameela Right.

Minnie So, yeah, but but other than that, you know, alright. Trying trying to be as present as possible, dealing with my new aligners.

Jameela Oh sure, sure, sure.

Minnie Which are making me lisp, so apologies for that, everyone.

Jameela That’s alright. It’s funny, like because over the course of the pandemic, I started this podcast, like sort of week one of lockdown or something, week two of lockdown. And we went through a period of people wanting to talk about it, and then by about 20, 22, people were like, no one wants to hear about the pandemic anymore. Everyone wants to move on from it. But now what I’m finding is that we get to 2024 and people feel not gaslit, but almost a bit like the lack of ability to talk about it and us kind of moving on from it as staunchly as we have, almost as if it never happened, is making then some people feel like they should blame themselves for whatever hangover they’ve still got because we’re not talking about the fact that by 2022, we could not possibly have processed what happened because it was very much so still happening. So it’s only now that the impacts are starting to, like, really hit us and we’re not talking about it. And then all these TikToks are just about like putting up more and more boundaries or doing this or doing that, and there’s like a lot of pathologizing happening, but no one really talking about the sort of collective grief or collective, I mean, for some people, it really was incredibly traumatic. I wasn’t isolated because I live in a house with all my flatmates, but for some people that was really fucking traumatic and they lost friends and loved ones.

Minnie I think it’s seeing, I know, but I think it’s also like it’s seeing the kids. That’s what has been most alarming is like these children that were metabolizing, what did we used to call it? The low hum of menace that was ever present, whether you were listening to the news or not, the that there was this feeling of threat, which I see now that having taken root and manifesting in in a lot of the kids that I know, and it coming out in lots of different ways.

Jameela Like what?

Minnie From anxiety to depression to behavioral discrepancies, I mean, not things that were in alignment with these kids that I’ve known since since birth. I think we’re just seeing it now. And that idea that there isn’t going to be a future harvest of that kind of anxiety at a at a moment when 11, 12 year olds were were really, really in a moment of development to start seeing that now that they’re teenagers in the cauldron of hormones, that it’s almost like the, the, the trigger of all of that chemistry has now brought up this, this previous trauma. I’ve been astonished. I really have been astonished watching that unfold, and trying to really be as available as I can to other parents that are talking about it and feeling like it’s not just typical teenage angst. It’s exacerbated by what I think was laid in at this incredibly, tender moment of their development.

Jameela Yeah, I think it’s really important for you to bring up, but I think a lot of parents probably feel quite reassured in knowing that they’re not the only ones. I also think, given that there is this, like, incredibly important boom of us talking about neurodivergence, the tricky thing with neurodivergence, especially things like ADHD, which can, you know, manifest in attention span deficit or or types of autism, is that those things, the symptoms of which can, can sometimes be very similar to those of PTSD, you know, or developmental hindrances. And so it’s, so I’m seeing a lot of my friends unsure as to whether or not their child is struggling with neurodivergence, which is a pathology, or if their child has been on screens doing school on screen, being on screens all of the time for these formative years in their neurological development, and maybe that’s manifesting as a kind of dopamine, you know loop that they’re on, which is causing ADHD type symptoms. Is it autism or are they, have they missed vital social cues because they couldn’t see each other’s faces? Are they missing? Do you know what I mean? And so this is not me trying to be

Minnie Yeah, I do, I do.

Jameela You know, I’m not Doctor Jamil, but I am saying that I’m noticing this kind of, and I think it’s so important that we get that diagnosis correct if it’s there because that can really change someone’s life. But I also imagine it must be so tricky as a parent to know whether it is actually a pathology or a response to something that we really don’t talk enough about, which is that if you can’t see people’s facial expressions, that’s how the brain is supposed to learn so much about how to respond to someone else. The social anxiety, the adults who are fully formed have from the pandemic, like most of us, I still feel completely overwhelmed socially.

Minnie Me too, me too.

Jameela And I was 34 when we went into the pandemic. I was fully formed. And so, I can’t imagine what that must be like for a child. And so it just adds all these pathologies, it just must be, it must be such a minefield for parents. And I’m really glad that you bring it up because it’s not over.

Minnie No, not at all. And I think, as with anything, you know, there’s a there’s a huge weariness around talking anything Covid related, which I think you’re right, because of, “Oh God. I don’t want to talk about that anymore. It’s, it’s boring. It’s this, it’s that.” But the reality is it created a different topography and you just have to, we’re living on that landscape, so you might as well sort of get on with it. And I’ve noticed with certainly the kids in my life just being super kind of going into where they’re at, I’ve noticed, as opposed to kind of laying down the law and bringing all my fear of screens and, “Put the phone down, get off social media, put the, stop look, playing video games, doing all of that,” rather than going in and playing with them in that space and having a conversation while we’re there about what it might be doing, has been so much more effective. Not not being so reactionary, but rather being accepting that this is a whole other language that they have developed and discovered to deal with whatever it is they’ve been dealing with, and that there’s a I have had to learn a new way of interacting with all of that stuff, because my fear based shit has not done anything. My kind of just, you know, my way or the highway laying down the law around screens, for example, I don’t think it works. So it’s been interesting being really present with where these kids are at and observing it and being a bit more gentle with it.

Jameela Yeah. I also think that it must be so difficult as a parent, you know, to be the first generation where the kids are in some ways more advanced because they have access to understanding of these social media platforms in a way that has left all of us a bit baffled. You know, and we’ve never in history seen kids learn anything before their parents, really.

Minnie That’s exactly right.

Jameela And so it’s normally been that we are the guides or the teachers or the parents or the guides, and we show you how to do each thing. And, and then there is a kind of level of of and I don’t mean this in a controlling way, but like a feeling of kind of leadership. I have a leader, and I think that kids being so advanced in this thing that their parents are stuck behind on it. Most parents that even know half the shit that kids are seeing and therefore reacting to. And so it means that that that sense of, “I have a leader” is dissipating in teenagers and they’re just looking at their parents slightly irrationally, but also I can see why.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela As like, “Oh, you’re not my leader, you don’t know anything. You’re not advanced. You’re way behind.” And it’s like, they’ve got the they’ve got the language down and they’ve got the concepts down, but they don’t actually have the lived experience of the things that they, they have the vocab for, if that makes sense. And so,

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela We’re in this also very disrupting moment where kids are more advanced than we were, of course, but also feel so much more advanced than their parents when they aren’t, because there are still I mean, obviously that’s a case by case basis, but by adults in their lives who who can be fruitful in the advice they give, but I imagine for these teenagers like there’s such and you can see on TikTok the way they talk about adults, that they just feel like they already know it all because they’ve been fed the intellectual information, which just isn’t the same as lived experience.

Minnie That’s it exactly. It’s emotional development and being, I think that being really being really sensitive to that and invariably there’s, you know, there’s always been these moments that parents have become this giant stick in the mud for teenagers. You know, my parents were, but it was mostly around sort of going to the pub and staying out late and, you know, that kind of more

Jameela It was more simple.

Minnie It didn’t feel, it really was. It didn’t feel like it was going to have, you know, endless or at least far reaching impact on my, my brain development. I don’t know, it’s, anyway, my dad used to say “Never ask someone how they are because they’ll tell you.”

Jameela Haha! I really didn’t expect any of that answer or that conversation, but I thought it was really interesting.

Minnie It really is.

Jameela I’m fascinated by all of this. I’ve chosen not to have children, but a lot of my friends have, and I’m witnessing all of this happening in real time. And just, I can’t even fathom how I would adapt to, to such a like, to something so unpredictable. There’s no template, there’s no handbook for how to guide kids through the age of technology or the age of a pandemic. And so I, you know, I applaud anyone who does because that is a it’s, you know, it’s a little bit of a minefield sometimes I imagine. You are, I mean, even just in the way that you speak about this, you’re clearly such a sensitive and thoughtful and introspective person. I think, you know, we can see that from your book, from your interviews over the course of your career. I’ve always, you know, I said this to you when I sort of bumped into you. I think we met for the first time a month ago at a party, and I the second I saw you, I, all my intrusive thoughts won about how much I love you and why and how much your interviews have meant to me, and how much you, as a figure in this industry have meant to me, because you are very strong and very defiant and very candid. And so my point of saying all of this is not to suck you off on the podcast, but mostly just to say haha

Minnie Haha! Oh now, go on and then I’ll fight James.

Jameela Yeah, you’ve been through, you’ve been through a lot in your in your life and in this industry, and and given that you are someone so interested, I guess in your own growth, how would you say you’re doing. Like, you know, it’s been a journey with your own mental health and confidence and stuff. Where are you at at the moment in this era of your life?

Minnie It’s interesting because I think more than one thing can be true at once. It used to be a lot more binary. In that I was either good or bad. And all of that was defined by whether I was working or not for such a long time, in fact, up until I had my kid, like, my kid was, this was this was a wake up moment. And for me, it would have been nice to wake up before, but I didn’t.

Jameela So what do you mean? How did you wake up?

Minnie In that there was this, there was this tiny person who was more important than than work. Work was always my definition of my self-worth. Like, whether I was being wanted was how good I felt about myself. And it’s it’s astonishing that how long I spent in that, in that paradigm. And having Henry, it woke me up because suddenly there was this externalized joy machine that needed that needed me and needed me to not just be thinking about myself. And what was weird was I had to give up and I had to give up. I wanted to, I gave up making films going off round the world. I wanted Henry to have this, I wanted him to have as stable a life as he could. I had a very strange childhood that was full of unevenness, joy and quite a lot of pain. And I wanted him to have something steady. So I stopped going off and making independent movies or movies all around the world, and I just called my agent and went, “can you just get me a show that’s called, shoots in Los Angeles?” And then I bought a house next to the studio, and that’s what I did for eight years to create this, and in creating the stable environment for Henry, I weirdly created the stable environment for myself and really sloughed off that need and desire, which will never probably be truly gone of the desperate need for approbation to kind of mark my self-worth, but rather to experience just being just not being worried about all of that stuff and in not being worried about where the next job was coming from, I learned to kind of not be worried about that at all and go, I’m, I’m, I will I will get a job in a Starbucks if I have to. It’ll be fine.

Jameela And and do you feel like in that time where then your validation doesn’t come entirely from your career, that’s when you’ve been able to kind of feel like you could stand up for yourself more, or look back on your career as contemplatively as you have, right? You’ve, like, kind of gone you’ve gone back over the past few decades of your life and the experiences you’ve had and the ways in which you’ve been treated with a kind of new and empowered lens, especially post MeToo. I think, like a lot of us.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela But do you feel like you’ve had the, the liberation from, because when you’re in the middle of it in this sort of cyclone of your self-worth and validation being constantly up for debate, it’s really hard to fight back or to feel like you’re allowed to fight back or talk about it or expose what’s going on?

Minnie Definitely. I mean, particularly when there have been punitive measures taken for a woman having done that, which I did through the 90s and was roundly crucified for any moment of speaking up about, you know, whether it was the way one was treated on set that was markedly different from the way that men were treated on set. Any time I spoke up, not even in an angry way, but just spoke up, you were just vilified. This is Pre-social media, you know, vilified in the media for having a voice. And it was, it’s been a way in which women have been treated sort of for time immemorial, which is that if you become a truth sayer, you are shut down. And it it is apparently extremely dangerous and that women need to be silenced as quickly as possible. So there has been like enormous liberation. I try not to get stuck in the feeling of frustration that it didn’t happen sooner, or that it isn’t all encompassing, and that there are so many women who are still silenced, but it’s been very invigorating. I think very, very carefully about what I say, very carefully indeed, but I don’t have the same fear of reprisal that I did because I know that I’m older. I’m considered, I know that I am, I can articulate these feelings in a way that isn’t, I think, aggressive or offensive, but rather articulate a particular fury that women have. And I think of that as a superpower frankly.

Jameela I completely agree.

Minnie And I love meeting women like you who also have that, you know, are able to marshal those thoughts and those feelings and articulate them, in a, in a humorous, insightful, deep, funny, great way.

Jameela Thank you. I appreciate that. And I also have been deeply, deeply vilified and punished for being as outspoken as I am in a way that has forced me to like I, it definitely impacted me when it gave me anxiety, but mostly it, in in a good way has taught me not to silence myself, but just to shift similarly to you, I guess my approach. And to become a bit smarter with the way that I deliver my message, because I think there was, you know, there was, I don’t know, I think the internet and the, the word counts flattened my brain a little bit, so I don’t think I always delivered my message, you know, all this rage was just pouring out of me. And I feel like now I’ve gotten the large portion of it out publicly, I’m able to calm down now and recognize that there’s a more helpful way for me to express my opinion. And so, if anything, I think I speak my mind more often because I don’t need to choose my battles because my conflicts aren’t battles anymore. I just tell people with as much empathy.

Minnie My conflicts aren’t battles.

Jameela Yeah, that I tell people now with as much empathy and and seeking empathy from them what my experience is in a way that doesn’t make them feel as attacked and as annoying as it is to have to do that, it has changed my life and meant that now my life is the most as I want it as it’s ever been, and and people are much more respectful towards me. And, that has all come from being able to learn how to deliver the message, which I think we haven’t really had a big conversation about publicly.

Minnie I think that’s a really good point. Really good point.

Jameela Yeah, yeah, and I think that does come with age. It does come with age. It comes with wisdom. It comes from trial and tribulation. And we look at it now as silencing ourselves because, you know, we are somewhat not necessarily masking our age, but moderating it in some way, like, you know, with, with, with we’re trying, we’re shrinking a little bit and our delivery and because we’ve been silenced for such a long time, I think that we we feel very offended at the idea that we should have to package our message in a certain way, but that is just human nature. And the more I learn about the brain, the more I understand that actually, to get what we want, we have to learn how to deliver the message. Not with a, you know, a wink and a smile, but just with no attack.

Minnie No, I think it’s a question of modulation.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie I mean, it really is. It’s like, it’s like music.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie And you sometimes don’t have to change the tune completely. You just have to modulate it differently.

Jameela Yeah. Totally. And humor really helps.

Minnie To greater effect. It does. It does.

Jameela Can you, can you talk a bit for anyone who hasn’t, you know, maybe read about it. Do you feel comfortable talking about some of the things that you experienced in this industry? A moment you spoke up and how that was taken?

Minnie  I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, pre- the reason, the reason the I Minnie Driver, 54 years old, like social media whilst also being aware of the pitfalls are, you just have no idea what it was like to not have any recourse when people were writing things about you, saying things about you for there not to be anywhere that you could you could go to say, I need to meet this, these this total misrepresentation with or at least something to kind of balance it out. So living through that where people were breaking down things that you’d apparently said which weren’t true or done, which weren’t true. But then when something is written in a newspaper, no matter that it becomes chip, what it was it we used to say, you know

Jameela Oh, today’s

Minnie Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper. It was still unfathomably hurtful. And I had an amazing, I still do publicist who she was like, unless they’re talking about sort of sex crimes or drugs, you don’t respond. You just don’t. You don’t respond. So this permanently taking a high road that felt like that road was made of broken glass and that the Daily Mail was allowed to write whatever they wanted about you or any tabloid newspaper or anyone, you know, I include the broadsheets, like some of the most revolting press was in was in like The Guardian.

Jameela And what were they saying about you?

Minnie Oh, that that that it was, I think this idea, it was always those words of like strident, outspoken, all of these things that I consider to be strong, empathetic words about women that have this pejorative connotation, that the idea of speaking up, of saying. You know, I remember that was one thing when I was in this movie Hard Rain with Christian Slater and Morgan Freeman, and I was I think we made it in, I don’t remember 90, 96, 97. And I remember we were we were in, you know, 20 million gallons of water. They built the town. It’s set during this massive storm. There were huge rain machines. We shot crazy hours. It was tough, like it was a tough movie, but everybody else could wear a wetsuit underneath their costume. And I was told by the producers that I couldn’t because they wanted to see my nipples, and that there was no point in having the wet T-shirt if you couldn’t have what was underneath it. And it was very kind of plainly told, like, you’re an idiot if you don’t understand that this is this is what’s going on.

Jameela Jesus Christ.

Minnie And I just I remember just saying this is wrong. I remember calling my agent, I then remember it being, like I was boy, like, people wouldn’t speak to me on the set, like there was this kind of this that I was so punished for it. It was leaked to the press that I’d called and complained about conditions, but it was it was it was as if there were nothing to complain about and I were just complaining. So it’s this sort of it’s not even existential, this, this gaslighting, media gaslighting that’s supported by the environment that you’re in, and then you have to stay in that environment. You know, we shot that movie for seven months like it, so you you eventually you do turn on yourself. You do go, “It was my fault for saying anything, you stupid big mouth. You should have shut up.” And that goes in and then alters the way in which you kind of see yourself and your your natural inclination to to put your hand up and go, this isn’t right. This is dangerous and not, this is out of balance. That you’ll be punished for that stops you having a kind of a balanced way of approaching your life because you’ve been systemically told that it’s wrong. I mean, that’s just that’s like an example, like it was fine, like, yeah, it was uncomfortable, but it was fine. It was really the way in which it was dealt with was a kind of macro,

Jameela Teach her a lesson.

Minnie Example of how I think women, exactly. Teach her a lesson. Shut her up. And then that also then, I think the press then go, “Oh, this is a good narrative. We can run with this,” so that anything that we can feed into this silo of what we believe is a perceived personality or behavior, we will do, so oh, my God, it really. Yeah, they ran with that for a long time.

Jameela It’s a very clever, it’s a very clever tool in Hollywood, you know, I think that started from the minute that Marilyn Monroe. I think not a lot of people know how much she fought for fair contracts in Hollywood, especially for women. But there was always a marked move to make that woman sound crazy or look crazy or look difficult and imbalanced. And the way that we weaponize the concept of a difficult woman, just a woman who challenges anything, meant that everyone then had to fight the urge to become a pick me. You know, it’s like, “Oh, me? I’m not difficult like those other girls. No, no, no, I’m fine. I’ll do, I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything you say. I won’t make a single peep about anything. You want me to lose another 20 pounds? Even though I’m already thin? I’m going to do it. I’m going to do whatever.” You know, I have a friend who told me that there was a role she did ten years ago, where they told her to eat six almonds for lunch every day, and she did. And it led to like a decade of gut problems. So it’s this just like it’s just it’s just so fascinating how we just, we’re anything to not be labeled difficult.

Minnie Difficult.

Jameela And we were made to feel so crazy and I and this isn’t just a Hollywood thing. This is a, this is just a kind of very exaggerated version of what’s happening in every boardroom, in every office, at every, you know, even at, you know, universities. This is just a kind of, you know, hyperbolic, I guess, like, version of what’s happening all over the world, wherever you are, wherever you work. But but this very clever way in Hollywood of like, “Oh, she’s a bit difficult.” And it was so easy for that term to be used. I was having dinner recently, and there was this huge Hollywood producer, like one of the biggest Hollywood producers of all time at the table, and he was just going on about which different woman was a nightmare to work with. And whenever he would explain what she’d done, she didn’t sound like that much of a nightmare. There were certain things that the women didn’t want to do, that they didn’t do. And then I’d say things like, “But you worked with Mel Gibson” or like, you know, different people who were like known abusive alcoholics and all kinds of different people. He’d be like, “Yeah, but he was a great artist,” and it was so interesting to me to see a man who was, like, firmly in his in the height of his power during that time of excusing men’s, you know, being difficult as passion, you know, and just part of that artistic process.

Minnie I mean it’s nice of you to call it interesting. It’s fucked up.

Jameela It’s so and so, yeah, I know it’s bizarre, but it’s so fast, but it is fascinating to me because it isn’t actual but like a belief system. But when a woman does it, she’s just difficult and I’m grateful. And and it’s also down to how replaceable we’ve all been made to feel in every area of our lives. Again, this is in every industry. You were always made to feel like you are completely replaceable, and that has been weaponized against us. And as you said, we turn on ourselves. We believe it.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela It took me ages to really like fight for my took me like five years I think of a much, you know, more modern industry to be able to actually start to advocate for myself, I was terrified. So you talk about turning on yourself and thinking I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. Did that stop you from then opening your mouth, or did you continue, and how did you continue to? Like how were you able to find the strength to do that if so?

Minnie I wonder,  I just, I never really, I never stopped. I think they found other people to be obsessed about. Weirdly, I don’t think I ever stopped. I think I’ve, I think, weirdly, my, I kind of, I caught up with myself or basically maybe times changed enough to accommodate. Now, I’m considered someone who, all these different words, you know, like, articulate and from, from whether my podcast or my book or whatever. Somehow all these things that I have always been are now celebrated. So something has shifted with the way in which maybe it’s older women have been metabolized, or that the industry now can no longer support just being purely abusive to women who speak up. And I think, again, post MeToo, and Time’s Up, that that there was that was a huge watershed moment for women certainly in in my industry. But I don’t think I ever really did change. I really was punished. I had years of, of of really finding it hard to get work and it being really difficult, but I am an absolute, I am dogmatic in my, in my belief in what I can do. And I’m, I’m a grafter. I come from a long line of grafters, of really hard working people who are not afraid of that, who will do whatever it takes to sort of keep the train moving along. Privately, there might have been moments that I was sort of on my knees, but but publicly and like, certainly, you know, for my son or like wherever it would be like, no, you just keep on. You keep on and you keep, try and stay as calm as possible and keep all the plates in the air.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie I think women. I think women can probably relate to that. You just keep on. You do whatever you have to do. But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know that I ever changed. I think maybe I got exhausted and stopped saying anything at all for a while, but I never I never stopped thinking it.

Jameela I really related to your broken glass, you know, sentiment. I’m talking about just swallowing it and sucking it up, feeling like walking on broken glass, like I definitely have kind of wavered in the last few years when I realized how much money being outspoken has cost to me, or how much of my career success has cost me, or how many relationships don’t form because people are afraid of what I’m going to be like because of the way that I’ve been portrayed in the media, even though I’m a largely reasonable person. And so there are times where my resolution, like, kind of falters and I’m like, fuck, should I just shut up? Should I’ve just been Tahani? You know, the character that I played on The Good Place, like should I have just taken it and run with it and maybe then used my voice later, you know, when I had more power rather than sort of nipping, like nipping it in the bud or like, you know, cutting my nose to spite my face and limiting the kind of reach I had. But fundamentally, I don’t think that my mental health would have survived. Having to be that disingenuous would have survived participating in something that I hated so much silently. I don’t mean the industry, I just mean the way that the industry treated women. I think, I think my mental health has been saved for the fact that I have been at least integral. There will always be like ways in which I wish I’d done something maybe a bit differently. But ultimately, and I wonder how you feel about this, I ultimately I have no real regrets about having chosen to operate that way. I just regret my language.

Minnie Well, I mean, at least that’s something that you can change.

Jameela Yeah, exactly.

Minnie You know, yeah, I don’t know regret like I don’t know, man. That’s it really is like what’s done is done and just moving on from that. You know when one hasn’t done anything cataclysmic or genuinely hurt somebody else I don’t know, I think you just, everybody has things that they, they wish you could maybe were revisionist about but ultimately it’s a forward facing, it’s a forward facing business. Looking back does absolutely nothing unless one can do it really calmly and I don’t know, go and pick her over the coals and learn something. But, but then face forward and move forward with that information. Like I get stuck when I look back, I stay looking back. And that that’s been a that can be a real, a real sinkhole.

Jameela Yeah. And it is a largely female thing that we’re encouraged to do, right, is to constantly go over what we got wrong and see how we could do a better job. And yet, I notice that young men are often just told to keep driving forward. I spoken about it a fair bit on this podcast before, you know, and we’ll say that that really fascinating, quote that sort of emerged that I saw for the first time last year of the fact that, you know, in job interviews, largely men are hired for who they’re going to be, and women are only hired for what they’ve already done.

Minnie Oh, wow. That’s interesting.

Jameela And I thought that was really astonishing. Like the different, the different standards that we are held up to and the lack of potential seen in us and the lack of interest in our growth and how hard it is then to get your foot in the door, how much harder it is to get your foot in the door and that just that really, like since I’ve read it, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head and to think about every extraordinary woman I know and the hurdles she’s had. But, something you and I were talking about on the phone that we were really bonding over is the fact that, you know, I’m almost 40, I am I’m getting to a point in the industry where I was always told everything would be over and done, and so I have to pack it all in while I can. And yet I just feel the most happy and comfortable and confident I’ve ever felt. And I have such a reverence and respect and love of growing older. Which is a tricky journey for everyone, you know, it’s different for everyone. And I wanted to talk to you about that, no longer just privately over the phone. What has your experience been with, you know, entering into 50 years and being in an industry that is so hyper focused on our appearance and our worth and value? Where are you at with your journey with age?

Minnie Well, yeah, you can’t you can’t stop it. Like I’m quite practical about

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie This whole notion of I literally cannot stop it. And if I’m alive, even if I’m old, it means I’m not dead, which is, for me a good thing.

Jameela It’s ideal.

Minnie So I, I can’t, it’s it’s, it’s it’s optimal. I can’t stop this process, so anything in my life that I’ve dug my heels in that I’ve known I could change, that’s when it’s to dig my heels, and if I really, this is a hill that I want to die on, I know I can change. I can’t change getting older. Every day that I wake up, that is another, another day. Now, that’s not to say the carbon based breakdown of my body, you know, I’ve been an athlete my whole life, I have a chronic neck pain that I’m dealing with at the moment that is stopping me from surfing, from playing tennis, from running, from doing all the things that I love to do. However, it’s just what is happening and I have to just get on with that, and I can optimize that journey by the way that I think about it. And, my, my partner will laugh when he hears this because all he hears is me whining and complaining about how much everything hurts, but I don’t know, it’s balanced out by this enormous kind of confidence and calmness about being older and about being just so much surer about stuff, because I’ve gotten to test my theory that much longer about many, many different things. I’ve gotten to practice things that don’t work, and then practice things that do work and really be able to

Jameela Like what?

Minnie For example, I always want to jump off the ledge when when something isn’t working out. I will, my natural state always has been to panic and then just suck in every other thing that isn’t working to create a kind of tornado of shit and then exist within that tornado until it has almost destroyed me. And then finally, when I’ve reached the absolute formation of panic, then maybe I can find a solution. And now there’s this, this brilliant from just having done that so many times, and going “I hate this,” of sort of standing on the precipice of that and choosing not to go down that, into that tornado, down that sinkhole, or whatever analogy you want to use and to breathe and take a moment, separate out all the other things, be able to kind of become hyper focus on one thing, deal with that and then experience what it’s like to not do what I have always done. That has come with age. That has literally come from doing the same thing a million times, experiencing the insanity of that, and then I honestly attribute it to age of being able to go, “I don’t wanna do that.” And I can apply that to everything. I don’t want to have that conversation. I don’t want to work with that person anymore. I don’t want to take this movie because I know all this stuff about these people, and I’m I’m stoked to not work with them. I do want to write this book. I really do. It’s such a great idea. It’s going to take you a really long time, and I don’t know that there’s going to be a market for it. I still wanna write it. Those are the things that come with age, which is a kind of maybe a gut check that isn’t panic, that is calm, that I can actually hear in the noise of everything and go, everything would traditionally say no to this, but I actually feel like this is the correct thing to do.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie I love that.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie That’s, the neck pain, the neck pain is balanced out by by that. Yeah, that gut check.

Jameela Yeah. I miss my knees. I really miss my knees. I have, I miss, I miss them working every day. I, the, the sound they make when I just even sit down for a wee is just terrifying to me. It’s like maracas or something is going on in there. I look at Megan Thee Stallion, you know, twerking for about 15 minutes straight, like, in a squat, in a held squat. And I just can’t even, I can’t even remember having knees like that. So other than that, though, I, I feel as though a lot of the fear mongering that I experienced my whole life has just been ultimately disproven with time. You know, all of the things that we didn’t even, that I didn’t even come up with myself, so many of my fears and anxieties were projected onto me by other people and sort of planted in me. And then, you know, I watered and fed them, and then they grew and they became my own.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela But so many of them were like, “if you do this, this will happen. If you don’t do that, if you eat this, then your body will change and then no one’s going to love you anymore. If you say this thing, then everyone’s going to stop being friends with you,” like I there so many things that I was told would be true that turned out not to be. And I had to just, this is what we were talking about earlier, is that there’s a difference between knowing something cognitively and actually experiencing it because, yeah, it’s it’s such a spectrum of outcomes. And having survived so many different spectrums of outcomes, I now feel much more like, “Okay, well, I know what this is. I know what I’m doing.” And I also I just, I just despise the way that we this, this extraordinary and insidious lie that we lose, women specifically, lose their value, with time, the more we know, the less valuable we are with. And and somehow the kind of the wise crone like the the the wise older woman has been replaced with, like the strong older man and like, he’s wise and he’s strong and he’s got all this insight and value. And we should just either try to still look 25 forever or kill ourselves. We should just disappear, so no one has to look at our terrible old faces. And it’s it’s not gone away. Even with all the feminism, even with, all of the work we’ve done, you know, on this subject and the ways in which we’ve challenged the double standard about men and women, we’re still seeing like one of the biggest things going around on TikTok and Instagram right now is like this sort of debate of millennials looking young for their age. And Gen Z looks so old for their age, and we have 11 year olds worrying about retinol. I didn’t know what retinol was until last year. I still don’t actually know what it is. I don’t know what a toner does. I don’t know what it is. It sounds like the gym, I don’t, I’ve never participated in it. There’s so much that I, I’m not aware of that like ten and 11 year olds are learning about. They’re learning about exfoliating those little baby faces where the skin cells are still growing for the first time. It’s just still a debate. People are still bragging about the fact that they look so young at 30 because they’ve been having Botox since they were 22. Like, this is still something that people are so concerned with. And and it’s all, it’s not really tied to esthetic. It’s tied to the idea that once you look like you have experience, once once time is showing on your face, you look experienced, you become invaluable. Whereas really what it is, is that you become a threat. Do you know what I mean? That’s what it is. It’s that we’re we’re threatened by a woman with experience and with that autonomy and with a woman, threatened by a woman who’s who’s learned that the fear mongering was inaccurate. Do you feel that way? Do you feel more valuable?

Minnie That’s really interesting. Oh, God. Yeah, I feel like I have more, I feel like I have more to offer than my fear of looking old. I really, I really and not I just don’t feel, I know that I have more to offer. And I reject roundly the notion that a woman with a wrinkled face or a thicker midline have any, have anything less to offer than a young, bouncy, juicy looking girl who honestly, we have to be clear that that is just offering the notion of a kind of a fecund body that can breed and sex, like that idea that that is what we’re meant to, the we’re meant to aspire to. It was so cool being that bouncy, squishy, yummy thing. And now it’s amazing being someone who lived that and now has all of these thoughts and can write them down and can converse with other people and that isn’t afraid to actually have a bit of space and silence in between when someone asks me a question that I won’t immediately feel like I have to answer but can think about it. I, I want there to be freedom for all women, freedom at whatever stage of life they’re at, whether they’re in their 20s, 30s and 40s, with the idea that it is self-described that it’s not a fucking system. And that anytime you think it is and that you’re looking at an algorithm telling you, you know, either what you should be buying or how you should be looking to immediately use that as a red flag to question your own belief about what it is and your own like interaction with your own life and experience because that’s, that’s the minute we become robots. I don’t know about being scared about AI, but the minute we, we are the robots, if we are only looking to believe what we think is the general consensus that’s been secured for us by fear and an algorithmic based interaction.

Jameela And fashion magazines and media and all these different things that are telling us how to behave and what to look like. Absolutely. And I feel excited for the for Gen Z in that they seem to have more of a sense of individualism that we did, but it is insidious. And it comes, it comes for us all. It really does, and so

Minnie It does.

Jameela A part of me wonders sometimes if the fear is that those of us who are quote unquote, aged and experienced and who have, you know, who have found the joy in our own agency and autonomy, is the fear that we’re going to tell the yummy, juicy young ones, the bouncy ones, the truth about how things work. And then they might be, God forbid, yummy and bouncy and juicy and also.

Minnie And wise.

Jameela And wise, you know, do you know what I mean? So it’s like that, so there’s this kind of concerted effort to discredit those who might be able to warn the others, such as like, don’t listen to her. She’s old and she’s washed up and she’s bitter. She’s bitter, and so she’s lying to kind of ruin your fun, which is not at all what we’re trying to do because I think, I think I think it’s much more fun in life. I would have had more fun, I don’t know about you, if I’d known some of the roadblocks ahead were coming, and I wouldn’t have been fucking constantly blindsided all the time. I wish that I’d known more. I wish that the generation before me hadn’t been so silenced. They were so silent, so I wasn’t warned about fucking anything. And then I spent life in trauma from all these surprises when really I could have just, I could have just known what was coming and navigated myself somewhat around it. You can’t protect yourself from everything. I don’t think that’s what we’re trying to do, but I think we’re just trying to give people a bit of a roadmap and people keep burning our roadmap.

Minnie But I think there is more wisdom available for younger women and men. I think there is more wisdom available because of the way that media has evolved the, the, the availability of information. But what’s interesting is that you can you can cater to whatever it is you want to support. You can you can find everything to support the eating no carbohydrates is going to be the best thing for you, that the keto diet is the best way ahead. You can find something that supports the absolute opposite, so weirdly, we can we can find stuff to support our own truth. But I still think spending time investigating what that is to know, because I know that you can feel it in the pit of your stomach and in your heart, you can feel what actually is right for you. We just most people aren’t, we’re not we’re not trained to listen. So I think getting trained to listen to that, however that is I don’t know whether you, one takes a walk on the beach, whether you go swimming, whether you sit and you meditate, you do yoga, whatever it is, but to investigate that seems to be the most powerful thing because there is so much noise. And I wish that I had started listening, listening and trusting much earlier. But doing it now is cool, and perhaps it’s all seasonal. You really only this is the, that’s the gift, that it’s given to you when you are a bit older and

Jameela Totally.

Minnie And maybe people will listen and maybe they won’t.

Jameela Well, I think now that now they can listen, they are listening. And I think activism has been and advocacy and feminism has been hugely instrumental in that. And I think the reason there’s such a backlash against feminism now, you know, with the rise of kind of incel culture or red pill culture is because it is so potent, is because it is so is because it is traveling so far.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela And and women are finding their self-respect at younger and younger ages, and that’s so amazing to watch.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela And I guess that’s why I want to lean in to my, you know, wiser and older years and, and to reframe the fact that we’re seen as invisible after a certain age, too. It’s like, “No, I’m just seen in a different way.” I’m still seen. I’m just seen in a different way, in a different context, and in a way that actually I feel more comfortable with where I feel like now that I’m older, I have more control over the way I’m seen. I’m not able to be as easily objectified and projected onto because I am so firmly in myself, and that’s just something that I, I hope other people start to reframe as, because there is really like a huge, in the last few years post pandemic, a huge it felt like 2020 we started to embrace ourselves more. You know, we weren’t wearing makeup, we weren’t getting dressed up anymore. We were just sort of at home vegging out and just all bonding over how liberating that was. And then, almost by design, there’s been a huge swing in the other direction of a kind of obsessiveness about appearance and an obsessiveness about aging that just that that’s why I wanted to just to talk to you about it because I feel like you’ve had a kind of journey with, you know, embracing your own aesthetic. You know, you’re someone whose body type was always scrutinized I feel like early on in your career.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela And also the fact that we are women who are not afraid of talking about graduating into different periods of life.

Minnie I mean, the idea that it’s not seasonal is just absurd. The idea that one should remain eternally young and it starts to look creepy and doll-like and odd and weird, and I don’t know, just like the, the, the, the very youthful idea of embracing where you’re at, which is for me, fundamentally, when I was, when I was young, young, young. Presence being present, I didn’t wake up every day and think about, I was just where I was at every single day. Whatever happened, happened. I refuse to mourn the loss of that. If I wake up every day and it’s like I don’t look great, it’s like, “Alright, well, what’s the best version of this?” Because as Carrie Fisher once said to me on my 25th birthday, she went, “This is the youngest you’re ever going to be again. And every birthday will remind you of that.” It is the youngest you will ever be again, so shut the fuck up and get on with it. Like it just, make the best of what, of what’s going on. And what did she say she was like? She said, “Try not to be crazy,” which I always appreciated because it’s like

Jameela It’s a struggle. It is a struggle. Haha!

Minnie You gotta make an effort. You gotta make an effort. She was so wonderful and wise and amazing and divine and lovely. And she saw, she saw a young woman struggling. And she used to take time to come and talk to me. And she would ask me how I was, and I go, “Oh, I’m fine.” And she’s go, “Don’t give me that bullshit. Tell me, how are you? What’s going on?” And I’d go, “You’re going to think I’m dumb for saying I feel like I’m washed up because I’m 30.” And she’d be like, “You’re right. I do think you’re dumb, but here’s what’s here’s what’s up.” And then she’d tell me a whole thing and I would feel galvanized. She she was always looking in. She was always looking in to other people to check in with how they were. Even as she herself struggled, she was always checking in. So I don’t know. I remember to do that. I do that with my younger friends all the time.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie How are you? What’s going on? How are you feeling? What’s up? What are you scared of? And they’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to say that I feel old now that I’m 30.” And I was like, “What? Because I’m because I’m so much older than you?” “Yeah. Kind of.”

Jameela Hahaha!

Minnie Like I was like, it’s fine, it’s really fine. And they’re like, “Okay, I feel really old.” And I’m like, “Okay, good. That’s that’s okay.”

Jameela It’s funny.

Minnie You’re older than you were.

Jameela And I don’t think I don’t think you even mean it in a judgmental way when you were talking about the look of trying to kind of freeze time.

Minnie No, not at all.

Jameela It’s it’s with empathy. It’s with empathy.

Minnie It’s why we want, it’s why we want to do that. It’s why we feel the need to go do that. I think a woman, a woman, can do whatever she wants with her body, but it’s also telegraphing a particular message. And for me, just in terms of like where, where we’re at and the women that I’ve talked to and what I see around me, it’s not it’s not telling a story of, of feeling okay. And that’s the bit that makes me sad because I get Botox, like, I’ll do that, like I can I’ll do the stuff that I feel is, you know, what I what’s right for me. And if a woman wants to go choose to do that with her face, I agree, but it speaks to I wish that I didn’t do anything. I wish that I was like, “Yeah, I’m just going to I’m just going to be wrinkly and older now, and I’m going to stop trying to stay in shape because that’s what I’ve done in my whole life. Maybe I should just sit down? Because I don’t know, I’m constantly interrogating it.

Jameela I think it’s nothing wrong with exercising like that’s important for your mental health. And I think being athletic is fantastic.

Minnie Not at all.

Jameela Yeah. Like I said, I think I think my, my perspective on this is, is one that is probably a bit sadder than other people’s, which is that I hated being young so much. I hated it so much. I totally wasted it on, it wasn’t my fault, like, it just kind of got wasted by all the trauma and how hard I found it to be alive back then that I don’t look back with any fondness at all at my juiciest years. I don’t. I look at it as just like I see, I don’t see other people this way, but I see young pictures of myself and I can I can see the terror in my eyes and how even when I’m smiling, I can see how sad I was and how confused I was. And I, and I feel like my sort of juiciness contributed to my problems because because I was so sexualized and and I was so abused, you know, because sometimes people find me attractive and and so when I look back on those years, I just can’t wait to fucking get away from them. I can’t wait. I don’t ever want to look like that again. I don’t ever want to see, I don’t want to see that version of me ever again, like I I see like there are little moments where I realize I have to get out of Los Angeles because I’m, like, starting to look at my, my face and start to go like, “Would it have looked better if it was like this?” And then I immediately go, “Okay, I need to go to Europe immediately and go away.” But but generally I never want I never want to be that again. I look at it as the scariest time in my life and and so for me, I’m running away. I’m running at full speed towards being older and and calmer and and wiser and and of less value aesthetically to other people, if that makes sense.

Minnie Yeah. I mean, I think you have a very different, you have a very particular relationship with, with all of that because you are, that’s what people have all, have seen first that you are incredibly beautiful. And what their, what they’ve come to know is all of the rest of you, everything else that is more expansive and more dimensional.

Jameela Yeah, and I didn’t mean that, as in, like, we should shun our aesthetics. That’s not what I meant.

Minnie No, no no, no, not at all.

Jameela I just more meant the youthfulness. I was just like, that’s the thing I never want to chase. I want to run away from that.

Minnie Yeah. Your relationship is your relationship with it. It’s like you don’t want to, you don’t want to go back to that. I think everyone maybe, I just think everyone has to, has to, has to be really present for what their relationship with them self is them self, not what they see, how everybody else metabolizes them, or an aesthetic that they think they’re supposed to follow, but really who they are. And what is that optimized version of them? But it requires self-knowledge and self-inquiry again, which is often painful. People don’t want to do that. They just want to put on the mask and have that be the thing that people metabolize, rather than actually synthesizing how life has affected you, your environment, your childhood, your everything, and then decide who you are going to be as a result of that, how you are going to look, how you are going to speak, what you are going to do. So perhaps it’s about slowing down and paying attention and and being empathetic to ourselves first.

Jameela Yeah. It’s also hard. I think part of what makes us discourages us from figuring out where that messaging comes from is that it’s so, it’s like a mist in the air at this point because it’s in our phone. It’s it’s like on our screens. It’s everywhere we turn. It’s in the conversations that we overhear. It’s in the conversations that we have with ourselves privately. So it’s hard to trace back exactly where these ideas come from, of how we should behave or how we should look, or what weight we should be.

Minnie But don’t you think that we can, we can

Jameela We can.

Minnie Go and identify what makes up, but what makes us feel good. So in whatever environment you live, we all have the things that whether it’s I don’t know, for me it is going and being in the ocean or by it. I fundamentally feel different. And I know that that mindset is the place to, to begin from, of looking at all the other stuff that you can, you can see it almost as if it’s a lighting change that you start seeing all of the things that I’m being, that are being sold to you and that are away from that fundamental truth. But I think you have to, you have to be intentional about that and go, “I’m interested in going and finding the place that I actually know this is where I feel good,” whatever that is for you. And then using that as your litmus test in a way.

Jameela That’s so wise.

Minnie As long as it passes that test.

Jameela Oh, that’s so wise that I could just punch you in the face. Thank God you’re on zoom.

Minnie Yeah.

Jameela That’s so wise because essentially what you’re saying is that, what I what I gather from what you’re saying is that that all of this toxicity can be found in the dark. And so if we fill that darkness with our own individual light of like, I love spending time with my dogs. I love spending time with my kid. I love spending time with my friends. Because that is, I think, probably the thing that has happened in my life post-pandemic is that I have made such a concerted effort to fill my life with joy, that I don’t have time any longer to think about, to sweat the small stuff, and to sweat the meaningless stuff that didn’t actually come from within. Now I’m actually answering to my fundamental needs, and there’s less space. There’s less time even to think about myself because I filled it with like, hobbies and friends and fun and pleasure. And so I think that’s

Minnie I think it becomes much more difficult to admit that other stuff because it doesn’t have anything to bounce off. If you have identified and it’s not doing big, crazy, glamorous things, it’s like what you said. It’s like snuggling with your dog or talking to your child or holding your partner’s hand when you go in the supermarket, like. Whatever. Those things that make you feel that way, all that other stuff, then it it doesn’t kind of hold up in a way, or at least you can identify it as that other thing that is present in our life. I don’t have to judge it. I just don’t need to engage with it in the way that I did before, or certainly let it be the standard bearer for what my how I want to move forward in my life. It just takes its place on the great big fucking bus of my life in the back, along with the other troublesome kids.

Jameela Yeah, yeah. We just leave no space for it. There’s no space for it. I was in a, on Saturday night me and my, you know, one of my best friends who I’ve known since I was 11. We were at a ball pit party, just a big old ball pit. And it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. And in in no moment was there even the thought of how do I look? Do I look old? Am I, am I like, I am I past it? Is my career fading? It just wasn’t on my mind. I was just having fun in a ball pit with another woman who’s almost 40, and it was fucking brilliant. And the more that we spend our time engaging in that, it’s something that I was sort of doing unconsciously. But the way that you’ve worded it is so important because it doesn’t dwell on the negative, it doesn’t dwell on investigating even really the negative, which I think to some degree we have to know so we can, you know, see where the threat is coming from. But you are focusing on like a forceful, enthusiastic approach to a pleasurable life. And I think that’s really important.

Minnie Yeah. Be that way facing.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie At least you know. Well, the other thing that I have been that I’m obsessed with, oh, I know I’ve really wanted to talk to you about this, was that 60% should be 100%. It is ridiculous and harsh to aim for 100% of anything. That 60% should really be what we are aiming for, and that if we you leave that margin of error and mistake and it’s not fully going to work out, if 60% becomes what you, what you aim for this, it’s amazing how much pressure is taken off and how much pressure that deficit accommodates. And I think we’ve been sold a really raw bill of goods in thinking that we should be 100% of anything at any given time really.

Jameela Yeah, well, it’s not possible, but there is such a huge swing toward the 100%. There’s such a terror about being mediocre, and you’re told that mediocrity will be found at 60%. But I think that’s not true because I think actually when you make space,

Minnie I don’t think that at all.

Jameela When you make space for failure, that’s where you normally find the most growth and the best ideas and the funniest stories.

Minnie 100, 100.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie 100%.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie 60%.

Jameela Okay, hahaha!

Minnie I don’t, I think that

Jameela I’ll join that movement with you. I love the sound of that.

Minnie The thing is, I just I think that it is it is 100%, 60% this notion of mediocrity, like, we all know kind of what that feels like, but what we what we’re kind of aiming for like 100% happy all the time, it’s not possible. 100% a great partner, 100% a great mother, 100% a working actor. It’s not fucking possible. You can’t be that, so the idea of just allowing there to be this deficit, that 40% is the gray area. It’s not black and white either or. Either I’m 100% or I’m shit. It’s somewhere in the middle. And that we I realize that I’m now becoming the I, and now mediocrity is actually I want that on a t shirt.

Jameela Yeah. Haha!

Minnie Like 60% sure is what I’m going to get on a t shirt. I just, maybe I just have to live it and then I’ll write a book or 60, 60%.

Jameela I mean, I kind of already I’m kind of already at 60%. I decided to, you know, I told you about this on the phone that I’ve, I in the last few years, I fully scaled back my career where I was like, “Oh, God, I’m, you know, I got really sick, and then I realized that, oh, God, if I actually, if this does actually kill me, I’m gonna really regret the way I’ve lived the last decade.” Like, I had some fun and I met some amazing celebrities, but I also think that I didn’t know enough of what was going on with my friends, and I didn’t spend enough time with my dog. And I’m so aware of the fact that he’s getting older every year, and I really want to make sure that I look back at the end of our time together and go like I made the most of him because he’s the fucking best. And so I’ve, I’ve definitely been, I’m very much so living my life now in fear of actual regret. So I’m never going to regret, I’m never going to really on, like, a spiritual level, regret a job I didn’t take in the way that I’m going to regret not having spent enough time with a friend, not having spent enough time with my boyfriend, not having spent enough time engaging in pleasure and resting. Oh, to rest. To have had a nap yesterday with my dogs at 4 p.m. was unbelievable. And then to be woken up with a cup of tea by my partner, I was like, this, this is bliss. And so I’ve been chasing those moments and then working just enough to sustain them. I’m selling my house. I’m going to live a cheaper life so that I can do more of what I love. And it’s very rare that you you really make a lot of money you know, doing your most indulgent pleasures. And so I just that’s it. I’m chasing, I’m already on that 60% flex. And so I’m ready to join the movement. I’m ready and willing.

Minnie I think it’s great, we’re starting it right here.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie I think it’s at least worth investigating, you know, I really do.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie Of like what is

Jameela I can’t rest 100% of the time because I die of boredom. I’d die of under stimulation.

Minnie Exactly.

Jameela So, yeah.

Minnie Exactly. You start applying it to every area of life, and I’m telling you.

Jameela I like the specificity of it because we’re all told balance, but we’re not really told how to actually tip the balance, like how to actually scale that out. We’re just told balance is key. Moderation is key, but you’re giving people a finite number to hit.

Minnie I am.

Jameela Alright. Let’s all go for 60%.

Minnie I mean, I’m calling it 60. It’s just less than 100 and also not 90 because that’s also a lot.

Jameela Yeah 90’s bullshit.

Minnie That’s too much.

Jameela Yeah.

Minnie It’s somewhere, look you can probably go up to like 75 if you’re a real overachiever, but for me it’s 60.

Jameela Great. Your ideal. You have a podcast. Will you tell us what the podcast is about so people can find you there and find more of your pearls of wisdom?

Minnie Yes. Thank you. Well, I very much enjoyed Proust. I had a questionnaire back in the 19th century, which was meant to be a kind of. It was like a parlor game. And I’ve always loved the notion of finite questions revealing something about a person. So I ask the same seven questions to everyone that comes on the podcast. And invariably the answers are so different, and the follow up questions are so different because we are all so different. But there are areas that we overlap. And it’s it’s interesting. It’s become my own personal little cultural anthology. I really am fascinated by the people that I talk to. And yeah, that’s my podcast, it’s called Minnie Questions and you can find it wherever you listen.

Jameela Fabulous. Well, everyone go listen to that. You’ve been a total delight. This was so fun. And this is, you know, when I was little and watching all your movies and your interviews, I always hoped this would be how our first proper conversation went. And, hahaha! And, I’ve had a lovely time.

Minnie Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jameela Thank you.

Minnie You’re absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.

Jameela Likewise. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chapellow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener I weigh my ability to challenge myself and still learn new parts of me I didn’t know were there before. I weigh my ability to love people for who they are and not for what they can give me. I weigh the love I have for my cats, my constant companions, and I weigh my ability to acknowledge my anxieties but push forward anyway.