What I remember from that film is very different than what this is.
Thank you, Laura Dern, for so many things.
This is so weird that we have to take our shirts off.
It's like I'm on the outside looking in.
I see this life in this moment and it's so wonderful, but it doesn't quite belong to me.
I have no idea.
Did I do this movie?
Is this a show?
Maybe it's Jane?
Is this Jane?
It is Jane!
It's Jane, okay.
So Jane from Big Little Lies.
It's like I'm on the outside looking in.
It was an interesting time in my life.
I was 20, 10 years ago, so I was 24.
And I had also just worked with Laura Dern on Fault in Our Stars, who became a very, very close friend of mine.
I was kind of in this place where I was like, can I bring my full self to this character or am I so depleted and don't really know who I am right now?
So I was in this interesting personal crossroads and I was on my way to India to kind of do this job out there that was unrelated to acting.
And Laura Dern called me and was like I know that you're feeling indecisive about this moment because you're trying to figure out what life direction you want to take.
I really think that this is something that you should put a lot of attention and put effort into it, because I think if you look back and you don't do this, you're going to ask yourself why you made that choice.
And coming from someone like her, who I believe is so wise, I took her words to heart and I reread the script with such an openness.
Whereas the first time I had read it, I had read it kind of from a place of extreme exhaustion.
The second time I read it, with her words in my mind, I was like there's no world that I can't be a part of this.
And I just, I felt so grateful and honored to be a part of it.
And it was life-changing in the way that the sisterhood that all of us created in that show is genuine and is very real.
And to this day, we are all there for one another.
And that's just a rare thing to find in life in general.
And in this industry, I think it's a little bit more rare sometimes.
Yeah, thank you Laura Dern for so many things.
Thank you.
You gave me a forever within, okay, this is like a line that will make me cry still.
You gave me a forever within the number of days and for that I am eternally grateful.
That's obviously Fault in Our Stars.
Yeah, wow, that movie.
And for that I am I'm eternally grateful.
That was a long audition process.
And I wrote John Green this very long love letter, because I love to write letters.
And I sent it to him and he responded very gracefully and was like wow, thank you so much for your enthusiasm.
However, I'm just the author.
Like I don't, I can't actually cast you in this movie.
I have no control.
John was on set almost every day and having him around it was exciting pressure to to honor the Hazel that he wrote.
That was a rare opportunity to really lean into the relationship between the author of the novel and the characters that we were playing in the movie.
I mean, Ansel Elgort is to this day one of my best friends.
I feel like he transcends the label of best friend.
He's like family to me.
I love him so, so deeply.
And when we were doing the first Divergent movie we really connected and we became sort of instant siblings.
Like the dynamic between us was always very sweet and it was very supportive.
And he would come over to my house and we would cook and just talk for hours after work.
And so when I heard he was auditioning for Fault in Our Stars, I was like, oh, that's sweet.
But like, obviously it's never going to happen because he's, you know, my brother in Divergent.
Like there's no world where dot, dot, dot.
And then he was cast.
And he, you know, he's kind of the only person on earth who could have played Gus.
And I think actually what made our relationship in that movie as tender as it was and as truly unconditionally loving as it was is Ansel and I do genuinely love one another, and it's so rare that you get to see love explored without intimacy.
And although there is intimacy between Hazel and Gus, the core of it is just unconditional love.
It's two people walking each other home.
It's two people who have a desire to only be supportive to one another and make the other person feel a little less lonely in a chaotic world.
But to say that it wasn't like of course it was awkward when we had to do intimacy scenes together, because I was like I mean, I remember laughing in between takes a little bit together.
We're like I know everything about you.
Everything about this is so weird that we have to take our shirts off.
The test should tell us what to do.
That has to be divergent.
I feel like it's the only thing I've been tested in.
The test should tell us what to do.
I met with the director, Neil Berger, and the producers.
It was right after I'd done this movie called The Descendants.
I read the first Divergent book.
I don't think the other ones were out yet.
And at the time, At the time I was really into survival skills and very much fell in line with Tris and I think, who she was and what she was doing in that world.
And so Neil and I really connected very quickly and deeply because of those basic subjects, and then it kind of went off from there.
We did a lot of training for Divergent, and it was really fun.
In my heart, I'm an athlete, and so I love any type of challenge, especially if it's a physical challenge.
We had an incredible stunt team, and I still look at my stuntwoman from that film in complete awe.
Her name's Alicia Bela Bailey, and she made Tris look a lot more badass than I would have made Tris.
All right.
Thank you.
Reyna's a fucked up hoe bag and you need to stay away from her and she's going to be a meth head and she's gonna get used by stupid guys.
She's a twat say it?
I said this?
Secretly?
Big little lies?
Uh, robots?
Oh my God.
Jesus, wow, say it.
I mean, fun, but like, what?
I have no clue.
Oh my God, The Descendants, wow.
I need to rewatch that movie.
What I remember from that film is very different than what this is.
I remember George Clooney on a beach.
I don't remember saying this.
She's a twat.
Say it.
I had seen O Brother Where Art Thou.
Other than that, I didn't know who George Clooney was.
And so I met this man who was so gracious and so kind and so generous and so professional and thoughtful and treated every crew member exactly the same.
And he really showed me what it takes to lead not just a film set, but to like retain a center in the world of Hollywood.
And so I was very blown away by his leadership and his mentorship towards me.
And then also working with Alexander Payne, who the greatest note I've ever received to this day from a director was from him.
And he came up to me and it was when we were doing a very emotional scene on The Descendants.
And he just like sat down next to me and I remember I had to cry or I thought I had to cry.
And he just looked me in the eyes and he was like, just be you, stop acting.
And he walked away and I took my time, and then what happened after that was what ended up being in the film.
And I remind myself of that every single day I'm on a film set, which is just like, stop trying.
Don't force, just allow.
Maybe the way to help Chicago is going to be on the wall.
That's one of the divergent movies.
Maybe the second one.
Maybe it's Insurgent.
Or maybe it's the first one.
Maybe it's the third one.
Maybe it's Legion.
We got there.
Maybe the way to help Chicago is going beyond the wall.
Yeah, it was an odd way to end that series.
I think it would be fun to explore what a fourth film could be.
I did just read that Veronica Roth, the author, released another divergent book.
I haven't read it yet, but I'm very excited for her.
Maybe we'll do it when I'm in my 40s, you know?
Triss comes back as a mom.
And you know, at the end of the book, the third book, which they had split into two films, there was this very interesting plot point that I was excited to kind of figure out as an actor playing Triss.
Triss dies.
That's the plot point.
I think it's cool, you know, when a protagonist, like, when their world ends.
I always think it's, you know, there's some reality to doing as many things as Triss does physically and escaping death so many times to kind of then seeing what happens to her.
And I don't know.
There's something about it that I think is very poetic.
Thank you.
I'd like to think that there's more to a person than just one thing.
Oh gosh.
I have no idea.
Is this a show?
It's a film?
Um, Spectacular Now?
Okay, I do remember.
I'd like to think that there's more to a person than just one thing.
I'm really drawn to authenticity and authenticity can look a million different ways.
Anything that stirs something within me, whether it's action and that stirs sort of this exciting like challenge of working with a green screen, or it's A character that really moves me on the page and makes me feel something when I'm reading it, or a location that a film is set in that adds like a whole new layer of something to respond to.
Those are sort of the pathways for me understanding like, or I guess receiving butterflies.
And a lot of what I do feels quite instinctual.
And so I'm drawn to things that are authentic, no matter how strange, odd or small or grounded.
That authenticity presents itself as
I really would love to do some comedies.
I love to laugh and I've done one comedy and it was so much fun and it's really nice to go home every day and just be like wow, like I laughed all day.
I feel great instead of going home and feeling exhausted from crying or screaming or attacking someone.
Thank you.
Take your pills, ignore the clowns, fight the jackals.
That is from Misanthrope.
They renamed it.
It was originally titled Misanthrope.
It's now titled To Catch a Killer.
Take your pills.
Ignore the clowns.
Fight the jackals in the winter, which filming in Montreal in the winter, a film that predominantly was night shoots during COVID, was no easy task.
It's definitely the hardest project I've ever been a part of, simply by the nature of the elements that we are presented with.
We were doing the scene and I had to yell and it was, I think, like three or four in the morning and it was negative, however many degrees.
And the director came up to me and he's like, Shay, I need you to yell.
And I was like, I can't.
I can't even move.
My lips are frozen.
I can't yell because I can't move.
And we had to sit in the car and thaw out so we could do the scene again.
Thank you.
Find her father.
He was leading a group to the bunker to start the world.
You will not let her be afraid of people.
That would be paradise.
You will not let her be afraid of people.
I think surviving without community would be very, very difficult.
And so I have no clue how I would do in that situation.
I went to school for herbalism so I know I do know quite a lot about, like the natural world of healing.
And when I was younger, as I mentioned earlier, I really, I was super into survival skills.
I did a lot of survival courses, took a lot of courses on foraging and understanding kind of wild plants.
I loved it.
There was like this, this connection to the earth that I found at the time very grounding and very interesting.
And also like having survival skills in the city and understanding, kind of like, the nature.
I'm in a very different place now.
I live in a big city.
I'm very dependent on turning on the water.
I don't really think about it.
But at the time when I was younger, I was sort of living in the mountains in a small little cabin.
And I loved the fact that I could understand the way that the world worked around me and felt like I had some tools for survival.
Who knows if they would help today?
Thank you.
There wasn't, or there was a crash.
I was left unconscious.
I couldn't remember anything until I saw you tonight.
Three women?
Oy, I have no idea.
Oh, this was the Greek, this was the killer heat.
No, what is, what, what was this?
Oh, the last letter from your lover.
There was a crash.
I was left unconscious.
This was very early on in me trying to understand the world of producing.
For me now producing is so exciting because so often, because of the nature of making a movie and the amount of money that it requires and the amount of people that are involved, every now and then, I feel like the core identity of a film can change for bureaucratic reasons.
For me, I see my role as a producer, as someone who's just kind of like an overarching protector of the integrity of the story that we're telling.
And obviously movies kind of always shape-shift and change form and it's what makes it so exciting to me.
It's the only art form that requires thousands of people sometimes to make one particular product.
It takes so many people from so many walks of life all doing this weird, like being involved in this strange circus where you're away from your family, you're away from your friends, you're working 15, 16 hour days.
It's such an odd lifestyle.
And to me a great producer is somebody who, like honors the entire organism, who doesn't just focus on particular parts of it.
And that's what I love from kind of being in a producerial role.
Oh, all right.
I'm late.
I'm late?
I feel like this could be so many things.
Oh, I'm late because she's pregnant, because she's late on her period.
Right, okay, secret life.
I think the reason why teen dramas did so well in that 2007 to 2015 world was Instagram wasn't a thing yet.
I think Facebook was around, but Facebook was still It was booming, but it still wasn't accessible.
Most people didn't have iPhones on our set on the Secret Life set until the end of the season or the end of the series.
People's attention spans were still higher.
People were going home and turning on the TV and watching something because they weren't on their phones.
In these individualized spaces,
We don't have that same like get on a couch and gossip together about a TV show that we used to have, because now we're all just kind of on our phones gossiping about everything and anything.
And I think it's diluted a little bit the experience of the weekly entertainment that comes in from a TV show like that.
I miss it.
