Speaker 1: Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2: The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
Speaker 2: the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3: I regret to tell you that very many American lives
Speaker 3: in love.
Speaker 4: What herd to shouts from the car, he's dead. Whether
Speaker 4: he rebird to president or four hours, people must get
Speaker 4: up and identifica.
Speaker 5: I am here in the in between, to collect their
Speaker 5: spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 2: This road is not on any map.
Speaker 5: It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and.
Speaker 2: Their greatest fear.
Speaker 5: All I ask for in payment is a tale and
Speaker 5: accounting of their lives and the great temporary that is
Speaker 5: the land we're living.
Speaker 2: These are their stories. This is.
Speaker 6: The passage.
Speaker 5: Hollywood, California, nineteen thirty two. Millions flood west from the
Speaker 5: Great Plains, drought and dry blizzards, massive churning black clouds
Speaker 5: of dust that can blast the hides off of cattle.
Speaker 5: They flee with nothing but dead earth caked in their
Speaker 5: ears and creases of their eyes, nothing but dust lining
Speaker 5: their pockets, still spitting dirt from their teeth. Those unmoored
Speaker 5: by environmental calamities search for opportunity. Here in the Golden State,
Speaker 5: they come for greener grass. They pursue their dreams, while
Speaker 5: the rest of the country sinks deeper and deeper into
Speaker 5: what will become known as the Great Depression, making tramps
Speaker 5: and cheats out of honest folks while putting the rest
Speaker 5: over the ledge. The denizens of this place will they thrive?
Speaker 5: And while factories across the land shudder and their promise
Speaker 5: turns to rust, this place still sparkles, a hopeful beacon.
Speaker 2: Shining out across the barren land.
Speaker 5: Why because this place mass produces and essential good dreams.
Speaker 5: This decade will cement Hollywood's medium as the primary way
Speaker 5: America will understand its own story, quixotic, shiny, flawless. While
Speaker 5: the rest of the world starves, Hollywood is made richer
Speaker 5: by peddling their stories of hope, intrigue, adventure, mesmerizing its
Speaker 5: patrons to become something other than themselves for the price
Speaker 5: of a ticket. Hollywood will take all of the intricate
Speaker 5: ugliness of the American reality, and.
Speaker 2: We'll refine it and shine it and sell it back
Speaker 2: to the people as a new narrative.
Speaker 5: Americans will forevermore be suckers for spectacle at twenty four
Speaker 5: frames per second. They will not only buy it, they
Speaker 5: will believe it as though these were their own inventors.
Speaker 5: And soon they will not know the difference between themselves
Speaker 5: and their silver screen heroes. But the great Hollywood machine
Speaker 5: eats as many dreams as it regurgitates. Countless penniless actors
Speaker 5: will be lord in by the spectacle, and the dream
Speaker 5: nameless starlets will get lost in this house of mirrorsgies.
Speaker 5: Some will eventually catch their own distorted reflection him I'm
Speaker 5: ready for my close up, Yet it will.
Speaker 2: Be too late.
Speaker 5: They will not recognize the eyes staring back from the
Speaker 5: other side of the glass, and in their confusion and
Speaker 5: their undying desire to be something, to be someone special,
Speaker 5: to matter to the world and become greater than life itself,
Speaker 5: they will be chewed up and spit out by men
Speaker 5: of means and dubious intention, Real talents who will be wasted,
Speaker 5: real lives destroyed by the gears of this industry. One
Speaker 5: such tale belongs to the soul I meet today, Though
Speaker 5: her story is more than a two dimensional tale projected
Speaker 5: onto a silver lenticular screen. Like so many others who
Speaker 5: came before her, like so many others who will follow,
Speaker 5: she had her own intricate tale as one of its
Speaker 5: finest artists will one day tell me on their own passage.
Speaker 5: If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course,
Speaker 5: on where you stop your story.
Speaker 7: H h, hello there, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 3: I feel stone. I stood with all the world beneath
Speaker 3: my feet, top of top, billing on the air, between
Speaker 3: me and the stars. Most people get churned up and
Speaker 3: spit out by the industry, but I sort above it all,
Speaker 3: and that is how you make a name for yourself.
Speaker 3: I wish there was an easier way, but it's all
Speaker 3: the same in the end. If you want to be
Speaker 3: a star, the only way anybody makes it there is
Speaker 3: to give away your body and your spirit and everything
Speaker 3: alive inside of you. You cannot have both life and immortality.
Speaker 3: It must always choose. I was a real actress, a
Speaker 3: serious actress, just all I ever wanted to be, except
Speaker 3: to have any sort of hold in this world.
Speaker 8: To be great.
Speaker 3: It's not enough being great for someone else is someone
Speaker 3: else's game. Have you heard of me? Do you even
Speaker 3: know who I am?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do?
Speaker 3: And who am I? Now? Am I me? Or am
Speaker 3: I playing a part.
Speaker 9: Hard to know, isn't it.
Speaker 3: I get confused sometimes myself. Do you recognize me?
Speaker 10: Though I can.
Speaker 3: Tell from the way you approach familiar, although I'm sure
Speaker 3: I've never seen you before.
Speaker 2: I'm here to offer you passage.
Speaker 3: Tell me do you know my name?
Speaker 6: I you do?
Speaker 3: Which one.
Speaker 2: Peck had?
Speaker 3: Vic Hazel? Certainly not the name my mother and father
Speaker 3: gave me.
Speaker 7: No one here knows that.
Speaker 3: Hmm. Yes, there were so many roles I accepted gladly,
Speaker 3: but the ones thrust upon me by the act of
Speaker 3: my birth were an agony in boor from beginning to end.
Speaker 3: I hope those are not the ones for which I
Speaker 3: have remembered.
Speaker 2: It is time come with me.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, kind stranger for offering your hand. I
Speaker 3: can hardly see a thing in this big, blurry darkness.
Speaker 3: Grip is so reassuring.
Speaker 2: It's just up here.
Speaker 3: I am glad I do not have to walk this
Speaker 3: path alone decide where to go. I'm good about hitting
Speaker 3: my marks. I'm best going exactly when I'm told and
Speaker 3: saying exactly and I'm told to say. I only need
Speaker 3: to mess things off when left without direction, there is
Speaker 3: a great freedom and knowing where to stand and what
Speaker 3: to say, knowing the what and the whay, lets one
Speaker 3: live in the far more interesting why and how?
Speaker 9: So much?
Speaker 3: When is it cold?
Speaker 6: Where we're going?
Speaker 7: Are you strange?
Speaker 3: Sounds? Faintly out there in the story emptyness, I see
Speaker 3: images of my life. It's living through space. I can't
Speaker 3: see the horizon, but I must confess I'm not afraid.
Speaker 3: Am I a fool for that? You don't talk much?
Speaker 3: Everyone where I come from is talking all of the time,
Speaker 3: and nobody ever.
Speaker 7: Wants to listen.
Speaker 3: And anyways, I have so many thoughts inside my head
Speaker 3: I wish I never thought at all, never mind saying
Speaker 3: them out loud.
Speaker 2: It is time for you to speak your own lines.
Speaker 2: That is my price.
Speaker 3: This is your memo.
Speaker 2: It's yours.
Speaker 9: Actually, I don't know what.
Speaker 3: To tell you. Somehow in this place I can't remember
Speaker 3: my lines.
Speaker 2: Why don't you begin by telling me the story of
Speaker 2: your name?
Speaker 3: Oh easy, I named myself peg Have to peg O
Speaker 3: My Heart, a very romantic play about a young woman
Speaker 3: from Ireland who finds herself in England and falls in
Speaker 3: love with the man who lies her. At least I
Speaker 3: never found myself in England. That joke I played perhaps
Speaker 3: my greatest role at just seventeen and Ibsen's The Wild Duck.
Speaker 3: Do you know that story?
Speaker 7: I played Headwig.
Speaker 3: She shoots herself in the chest. The reviews were tremendous.
Speaker 10: The story was about this family and the way they
Speaker 10: survived dysfunction, with each member clinging to their own lives
Speaker 10: that made life VERI The family had this bird.
Speaker 3: This wild duck, injured and living in their attic.
Speaker 7: Headwig the daughter.
Speaker 3: She adored that duck and it made her happy. And
Speaker 3: though the duck was too injured to live the way
Speaker 3: a duck should, even though it lived locked in an attic,
Speaker 3: never seeing sunlight.
Speaker 7: Hadvik could believe her bird.
Speaker 3: Was happy in her home, and that made her able
Speaker 3: to believe that she was happy there too. When an
Speaker 3: unwanted truth caused the father to turn on his wife
Speaker 3: and his daughter, people claimed to Hedwig that he hated
Speaker 3: the duck, and she decided to sacrifice it to win
Speaker 3: her father's love back. When that did not work, she
Speaker 3: sacrificed herself.
Speaker 10: Two shots, two lives, and two illusions ended in an instant.
Speaker 3: Ibsen wrote, deprive the average human being of his life,
Speaker 3: lie and you rob him of his happiness? Do you
Speaker 3: come for everyone? My father or my stepmother.
Speaker 6: Have you met my mother?
Speaker 3: How did she outlive me?
Speaker 2: I don't speak of my other passengers.
Speaker 3: I see, but I assume you've seen them all. I
Speaker 3: was five years old when I took the boat from
Speaker 3: Wales to.
Speaker 11: America with my father.
Speaker 3: He told me we were running towards a brighter future.
Speaker 3: But I think that he was running for my mother
Speaker 3: on her illness. But of course, these things always catch
Speaker 3: up to you in the end.
Speaker 7: My father always told me.
Speaker 3: She died, but I knew it wasn't true. He believed
Speaker 3: me too young to remember, but I could see the
Speaker 3: faint etches of her in my mind, like looking through
Speaker 3: a cloudy glass. My father brought me to New York City,
Speaker 3: to Broadway, where he dressed in black and stood in
Speaker 3: the wings, commanding everything, and I got to watch it all.
Speaker 3: I knew from the first time I set foot on
Speaker 3: a stage that there was nowhere else in the world
Speaker 3: for me. But there he married again, and she was
Speaker 3: beautiful and kind. I performed in my very first play,
Speaker 3: the school production of Peter Pan, where I played the
Speaker 3: title role. My father was happy there altogether, underneath bright
Speaker 3: lights and skyscrapers, until my stepmother got sick and died,
Speaker 3: and then only a year later, my father was killed
Speaker 3: by a motorist side. I loved New York and I
Speaker 3: loved my father, and I loved my stepmother. And by
Speaker 3: the time I was thirteen and we were both dead,
Speaker 3: and I was in Ohio, and I could not help
Speaker 3: but envy them. I lived there with my uncle, who
Speaker 3: loved me but could not understand me.
Speaker 9: And when he moved to California to.
Speaker 3: Work in the movies, I moved to Boston for a role,
Speaker 3: and then back to New York City. I was in Hamlet,
Speaker 3: you know, on Broadway. I did not speak, but I
Speaker 3: poisoned the King. I studied the script so much that
Speaker 3: I could have gone on for any role at the
Speaker 3: drop of a hat. I believe I brought a great
Speaker 3: seriousness to the Walk On roll, because after that came
Speaker 3: more rolls and Ibsen and head fig in the Duck.
Speaker 3: After Ibsen felt like I was always working for a time.
Speaker 3: I originated roles in a string of premieres that mostly
Speaker 3: did not last. And then what that did the comedy
Speaker 3: none of the work of the richness of Ibsen, and
Speaker 3: I ached for the satisfaction of depths and meaning of
Speaker 3: characters I could fully inhabit. The more I struggled to
Speaker 3: lose myself in the stories, the harder it became to
Speaker 3: find myself again. I burned for a role with conviction.
Speaker 3: Then from the wings entered Robert. He was ten years
Speaker 3: my senior, with half my acting credit, which I felt
Speaker 3: would give me the advantage between us. He sought me
Speaker 3: intensely and directly, the way a director might court the
Speaker 3: one big Starry envisioned for his leading role, no audition,
Speaker 3: only an offer given with the confidence that I had
Speaker 3: the chops to perform. My role as wife was my
Speaker 3: most challenging yet and required all of my attention.
Speaker 1: Robert, that's cool.
Speaker 3: He was violent. I screamed and I wept, and I
Speaker 3: laid myself bare night after night. It was a wrenching
Speaker 3: perform morments, heavy and serious and impactful, with all of
Speaker 3: the weight of a good drama and no horrible silliness
Speaker 3: to puncture the artistic tension. This role was so demanding
Speaker 3: that I had no space in my head for my
Speaker 3: own thoughts. Two years of nightly performances took their toll
Speaker 3: on my brain and my bones, but so insidiously that
Speaker 3: the ache folks familiar is my own hearty. When I
Speaker 3: found out that my husband had been hiding a son
Speaker 3: in a previous marriage for me, thus violating the terms
Speaker 3: of our commitment, I felt only a relief clarity. For
Speaker 3: the first time in my life, I walked down on
Speaker 3: a contract. But with the the end of the marriage
Speaker 3: came the end of the twenties, and nothing was as
Speaker 3: it happened. I walked from a short, bitter marriage to
Speaker 3: a short and bitter life.
Speaker 9: Then came the thirties.
Speaker 3: And out went the lights on Broadway. Almost everyone making
Speaker 3: theater was either making movies or suddenly unemployed. Gone were
Speaker 3: the accolades, and gone was work.
Speaker 2: In New York.
Speaker 3: What is the value of an artist when people are starving?
Speaker 3: What good is it to be a great actress in
Speaker 3: a desolate time? The crowds that had once clamored for
Speaker 3: attention at stage doors were now standing dirty faced in
Speaker 3: soup lines, and I was on the brink of joining them.
Speaker 3: I had no choice but to leave New York. I
Speaker 3: accepted a part in a play all the way across
Speaker 3: the country, joining my uncle in Hollywood. The long, arduous
Speaker 3: journey from one coast to the other carried a weight
Speaker 3: of terrible finality. Time works differently here, doesn't it. I
Speaker 3: can see my life as if it's all happening now,
Speaker 3: feels as though I only just met you, And yet
Speaker 3: here too, I can see my headstone growing weathered in
Speaker 3: my body, floating, sinking, and turning to dust in Ohio.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe they buried me in Ohio. I can
Speaker 3: see my uncle now, and I almost wish I hadn't
Speaker 3: gone yet. I am glad to be here with you,
Speaker 3: looking into the face of eternity, where all my life
Speaker 3: feels like an instant. It seems in a few more
Speaker 3: decades might have been a small thing to see what
Speaker 3: I had time to see. All I can see now,
Speaker 3: all my life and the people who loved me. You
Speaker 3: feel like an old friend. But I suppose you would
Speaker 3: have waited for me. Yes, the only friend who could
Speaker 3: have been put off to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Speaker 3: and still be waiting forever.
Speaker 11: Unchanged.
Speaker 2: It is true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I am at the end of every life.
Speaker 12: Though standing here now seeing it all, I begin to
Speaker 12: feel that there was no success that could have made
Speaker 12: me truly happy.
Speaker 3: My father and stepmother were dead, my real mother was
Speaker 3: an ocean away. The space between me and everyone left
Speaker 3: in my life felt at least as fast. With the
Speaker 3: death of my Broadway career, I felt like an orphan
Speaker 3: twice over. The move to California felt like an irreversible settling.
Speaker 3: My uncle was happy to take me in again, which
Speaker 3: was very kind. My first and final play in Hollywood
Speaker 3: closed in just under two weeks to glowing reviews. I
Speaker 3: did not long for fame, wealth, or even love. The
Speaker 3: idea of turning my own life into something worth living
Speaker 3: in felt so impossible to me that any small seeds,
Speaker 3: say many of otherwise sown, intended and allowed to grow
Speaker 3: for time seemed to me a wasted effort. Building a
Speaker 3: life that I desired would interfere too greatly with my
Speaker 3: need to escape the life that I had. All I
Speaker 3: wanted was to live completely inside the lives of strangers.
Speaker 3: I hated the part life had given me, and I
Speaker 3: hated the part I had written for myself an equal measure.
Speaker 3: I hope I am remembered for the parts I played
Speaker 3: in more beautiful stories. I am terribly afraid my poor
Speaker 3: job as Peg and her Sorry Tale will be my
Speaker 3: most famous and my final act worth discussing. Hazel Clay
Speaker 3: cousins in Thirteen Women.
Speaker 9: That was the film my only film.
Speaker 13: Hazel was a lesbian, and she killed her husband, and
Speaker 13: she went to prison. She got to berculosis in prison,
Speaker 13: and then she fell in love with the wife of
Speaker 13: the doctor who was treating her, only to have her
Speaker 13: heart broken.
Speaker 3: She starved herself to death in her hospital bed. Except
Speaker 3: almost not that made it to the screen. It was
Speaker 3: not my vanity that broke me. It was the unwriting
Speaker 3: of a story I had lived for months in service of.
Speaker 3: For months, I was Hazel more than I was Peg.
Speaker 7: To prepare for my performance.
Speaker 10: I prepared for my own death.
Speaker 3: To truly authentically betray a woman convinced to take action
Speaker 3: against her own life, I had to become one. I
Speaker 3: died again and again on my own, and then in rehearsal,
Speaker 3: and then on camera, and then some test audience, never
Speaker 3: sacrificed anything for art in their lives, could not appreciate
Speaker 3: the story I had given everything inside of myself to tell.
Speaker 3: And instead of honoring the life we had created, the
Speaker 3: studio simply untoken. I did not know how to live
Speaker 3: on after my own death in a world where it
Speaker 3: had not happened. Why we stopped, Why are you looking
Speaker 3: at me that way? That can't be the part you
Speaker 3: want to hear about. Fine. There was a ladder leaned
Speaker 3: against the h of the sign when I got there,
Speaker 3: a prop perfectly placed for my final act. Please, wherever
Speaker 3: we're going now, do not bring me to judgment?
Speaker 7: Is pig. I am Hazel, heart.
Speaker 3: Broken and wasting into nothing.
Speaker 14: On purpose Henry Maddic pressing a shotgun in her own chest.
Speaker 14: Peter Pan, leaving everyone and everything behind to live in
Speaker 14: neverland and never ever ever grow up.
Speaker 6: I am the wild.
Speaker 3: Bird with the broken wings, a great sacrifice to nothing.
Speaker 7: I laid there a long time at.
Speaker 3: The foot of the Hollywood Sign, staring down at the
Speaker 3: place where the glittering val he met the twinkling night sky,
Speaker 3: until every light blurred and all I could see above
Speaker 3: and below me were stars.
Speaker 7: While who were standing here still?
Speaker 6: Please?
Speaker 7: I don't know where to go.
Speaker 2: It's time for the truth.
Speaker 8: I don't you the truth.
Speaker 2: It's time for you to tell yourself.
Speaker 7: I wish sad and jumped. That's the whole awful truth
Speaker 7: of it, HM.
Speaker 15: Relies.
Speaker 8: As soon as my feet left the threshold and my
Speaker 8: body felt suspended in the air, I tried to catch
Speaker 8: myself on the way down. But I lost myself.
Speaker 15: Oh my whole body screamed and agon eve when it
Speaker 15: put it on the ground, And I longed for the
Speaker 15: cinematic power of an editor's scissors to unwrite my depth
Speaker 15: for the second time.
Speaker 7: Even now, I.
Speaker 3: Wish I could undo my undoer.
Speaker 16: I always make the wrong decision with love without direction
Speaker 16: as to wear my featured land the biggest times of
Speaker 16: my life, I've always been speaking someone else wrote for me,
Speaker 16: wearing someone else's clothes and someone else's name and someone
Speaker 16: else's life. I always loved living in every story except.
Speaker 7: For my own.
Speaker 15: I wish I had given the character a Peg a
Speaker 15: better chance.
Speaker 3: Truthfully, how do you not want to be remembered as Peg?
Speaker 3: Only a Peg whose death was simply a footnote the
Speaker 3: story of her life, instead of.
Speaker 6: The other way around.
Speaker 3: Maybe I could have had my own go at remembering
Speaker 3: not remembering, instead of worrying so much about the memories
Speaker 3: of others. Oh, it's beautiful now, I see the road ahead,
Speaker 3: stage lights marquise the crowded city, sidewalk, a stage door.
Speaker 3: It's amazing, there's an end to all this inky, starry darkness.
Speaker 9: I was sure we could walk forever inside of it.
Speaker 3: I can hear the sound of applause, firing of cameras,
Speaker 3: fuzzy like through the edges of a fairly waking dream.
Speaker 3: It is a more beautiful end than I could have
Speaker 3: hoped for, and I'm glad to see where we are at.
Speaker 3: Thank you friend.
Speaker 11: Then that sky out here, at the end of nothingness
Speaker 11: is something spectacular.
Speaker 6: Oh, the breeze.
Speaker 11: Smells fresh and strange, and I can hardly remember the
Speaker 11: last time I had the company of someone so warm familiar.
Speaker 3: Maybe we could sit here a while before we go.
Speaker 3: I have always thought there was a magic and sitting
Speaker 3: silent in the dark looking up at the stars. But
Speaker 3: it's time.
Speaker 7: Ah, a red carpet. Haven't you thought of everything?
Speaker 2: The double doors at the end of the carpet, beyond
Speaker 2: them misier destination.
Speaker 3: Well, mustn't keep my audience waiting.
Speaker 5: Hey, yeah, break a leg peg. She was in love
Speaker 5: with stories, made her own way across the ocean and
Speaker 5: then across the continent in search of them. She imbued
Speaker 5: each character she played with depth and purpose Bravo, but
Speaker 5: she never took the same care with her own story,
Speaker 5: instead allowing herself to chase after meaning.
Speaker 2: In the words of others.
Speaker 5: Perhaps she will move forward with her heart and invest
Speaker 5: it in her own existence. Perhaps she will find motivation
Speaker 5: in her passage.
Speaker 17: The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Fairyman. This episode
Speaker 17: features Shane Darcy as Peg and Whistle. Written by Kit Fay,
Speaker 17: with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski. Our
Speaker 17: executive producers are Nicholas Dakowski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
Speaker 17: First assistant director, script's supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
Speaker 17: Music by Ben Lovitt, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
Speaker 17: by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
Speaker 17: design by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Speaker 17: Jan Campos, Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising
Speaker 17: producer is Josh Than. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski,
Speaker 17: Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is of production of
Speaker 17: iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.