Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Welcome Mac the Day Show. I guess Tonight helped run
Speaker 2: her family farm in England. She has a new memoir
Speaker 2: called The Farmer's Wife, My Life and Days, and she's
Speaker 2: brought one of her farm hands tonight, who you might
Speaker 2: know from other stuff. Please welcome helenri Banks and Nick Offerman.
Speaker 2: Oh my famen, what a treat it is to have
Speaker 2: you both here. This is thank you for being here
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 3: Nick.
Speaker 2: I think most people knew you from your brilliant comedic work.
Speaker 2: You just won your first Emmy for the Last of Us,
Speaker 2: you played the president in Civil War, and now somehow
Speaker 2: on this side. You're also a master wood worker, and.
Speaker 4: I'm an aspiring master woodworker. I know the masters that
Speaker 4: I take classes from. Would bristle to hear you describe
Speaker 4: me that way?
Speaker 2: I doubt that. I think it's pretty safe to say
Speaker 2: that you are officially a renaissance man.
Speaker 4: I'll take competent.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll settle for that. So how did the two
Speaker 2: of you meet? How did this friendship get started?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I guess social media kind of connected as a p initiate,
Speaker 1: didn't it. I mean, we were both huge fans of
Speaker 1: the writer Wendel Berry's work, and when we were over
Speaker 1: in Kentucky we did an event my husband was speaking
Speaker 1: with him in Louisville Public Library. And you've been connected
Speaker 1: with the work of Wendell for a long time, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing his work and stories about looking after the lands
Speaker 1: and food and farming for a while, and then you
Speaker 1: came to stay when you were in the UK working
Speaker 1: on a project.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all of this started on social media, That's right.
Speaker 4: If you want if you want good farming content, you
Speaker 4: go to Twitter.
Speaker 2: Some people go to Twitter for other things. Check my mentions.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I love the great Kentucky writer Wendell Berry
Speaker 4: is the subject matter that drew us together because we're
Speaker 4: all very interested in knowing about our farmers and knowing
Speaker 4: where our food comes from and who's growing it and
Speaker 4: if they care about our health or not, or if
Speaker 4: they care about their profits. And so it was through
Speaker 4: Twitter I befriended them, and I had an acting job
Speaker 4: in Manchat, England with Alex Garland, a show called Devs,
Speaker 4: and that took me very close to them, and I
Speaker 4: started spending weekends there. Had some of Helen's cooking and
Speaker 4: here we are.
Speaker 2: You're cooking that good. I enjoyed your book so much.
Speaker 2: You really walk us through a day in your life,
Speaker 2: all of the daily work that you do taking care
Speaker 2: of a family of six. You're herd of sheep, dogs,
Speaker 2: fifty chickens, five hundred sheep. I can barely keep my
Speaker 2: kids goldfish alive. How much coffee and drugs do you
Speaker 2: have to take to get all of your work done?
Speaker 2: That's my main question.
Speaker 1: Oh, does it's a way of life on a farm?
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I guess this to me is the
Speaker 1: hard work, like being on doing this all the interviews,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It's totally different.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it from morning till night.
Speaker 1: It's a completely sort of immersive thing to be on
Speaker 1: a farm. You respond to the weather, the livestock, the kids,
Speaker 1: whatever needs doing. And I wrote the book to celebrate
Speaker 1: the people that do that daily kind of mundane work. Really,
Speaker 1: but to me, it's like really important.
Speaker 2: Such important work, and it really is such a beautiful
Speaker 2: tribute to all the invisible work that so many women
Speaker 2: do all over the world. Was that your intention when
Speaker 2: you came into the book, or were you just kind
Speaker 2: of wanting to tell your personal story a.
Speaker 3: Bit of both. Really.
Speaker 1: It started off with personal stories and recipes and I
Speaker 1: wanted to leave a collection for the kids of what
Speaker 1: mum makes. And it soon developed into kind of a
Speaker 1: really deep kind of dive into like what society tells
Speaker 1: us women. You know, it's really hard, isn't it to
Speaker 1: figure out a path through and navigate how do we
Speaker 1: have kids and run business and do all the things?
Speaker 3: And I kind of through the stories through the writing.
Speaker 1: It's just been absolutely brilliant to share it with readers
Speaker 1: that have resonated with it and feel seen. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not many books that I felt seen in. I
Speaker 1: read a lot, and I love stories, and yeah.
Speaker 2: It really accomplishes that. And I love how you talk
Speaker 2: about when you were growing up. You grew up on
Speaker 2: a farm, and you always thought this is not what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do, and then you chose differently. You
Speaker 2: chose to follow in the footsteps of your mom and
Speaker 2: your grandmother. Why did you change your mind?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I think love changes a lot of things. I fell
Speaker 1: in love with a farmer.
Speaker 5: Ah, that's how it happens, against.
Speaker 3: All my better judgments.
Speaker 1: And here, yeah, yeah, yeah, here I am And it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't initially kind of I want to just do
Speaker 1: the things that my grandma mum had done.
Speaker 3: It's like.
Speaker 1: I'm making art as well through this writing and working
Speaker 1: and thinking about life through the creative projects that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: So it's not just I'm just doing one thing. And
Speaker 1: I think we're all lots of different things, aren't we.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love you. When you say in the book
Speaker 2: I choose this life.
Speaker 3: I choose this life.
Speaker 2: And that's how I feel as a New Yorker when
Speaker 2: I see someone masturbating on the sixth train, I say,
Speaker 2: I chose this life. This is on me, and I
Speaker 2: had to live with those choices. Nick, you you're probably
Speaker 2: you know, when you're acting and you're on set, people
Speaker 2: take really good care of you. I assume you're at
Speaker 2: this point in your career, mister Offerman. Can I hold
Speaker 2: your umbrella for you? What can I get you from?
Speaker 4: I'm fully molly coddled. It's a contract.
Speaker 2: So was it when you went to do real work
Speaker 2: on Helen's farm? Was that like a was that a
Speaker 2: rude awakening? Well?
Speaker 4: No, that's actually the strange thing that attracted me to them,
Speaker 4: And the subject matter is I grew up in a
Speaker 4: wonderful family in small town Illinois. My mom and dad
Speaker 4: both grew up on farms a few miles to each
Speaker 4: side of where I grew up, and they have these
Speaker 4: incredible work ethics and family values. And so even though
Speaker 4: my life led me to like show business and Chicago
Speaker 4: and then Los Angeles, I still gravitate towards like it's
Speaker 4: like my Disneyland. I crave can I just please go
Speaker 4: to a farm and do the dishes or help you
Speaker 4: shovel some sheep muck? And so, I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 4: something that I like cognitively sought out. It happened more
Speaker 4: more organically where I said, I'm really attracted to this family,
Speaker 4: and I showed up and they have four kids. I
Speaker 4: come from a family of four kids, and I just
Speaker 4: tried to subtly adopt myself into the family.
Speaker 1: They work, and he's now pretty much did And we
Speaker 1: had no clue who Nick was when he first arrived,
Speaker 1: and he was working on a show card.
Speaker 3: How does that make I feel?
Speaker 4: It actually makes me feel really good because I know
Speaker 4: that they're not going to tweet about me.
Speaker 1: They had a big beard, and he was bald, and
Speaker 1: he'd been filming on devs, So that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of strange look that you were pulling there.
Speaker 3: And then my mom.
Speaker 1: She called in for something and she said, who is
Speaker 1: this guy, Helen? Who is this guy? He looks like
Speaker 1: an escape convict. Are you safe tonight? You know, are
Speaker 1: you going to be saying American?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you know she's not too keen on on your
Speaker 1: first look.
Speaker 3: But she since woom doup, hasn't she? You know, she s.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Yeah, she's I've graduated to now I look
Speaker 4: like an escaped invalid.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, congratulations. So you you worked on Civil War
Speaker 2: playing the President. I imagine that was an incredibly intense
Speaker 2: film to shoot. The second you wrapped, Did you run
Speaker 2: to the farm immediately?
Speaker 4: Pretty close? Yeah, I mean it's it is very medicinal.
Speaker 4: The thing that I love about the life I grew
Speaker 4: up with and then the life that I experience on
Speaker 4: Helen's farm, is that, in this world of too much
Speaker 4: information and too much fast paced attention deficit, when you
Speaker 4: get into the subject of this book and just raising
Speaker 4: food with your family, preparing that food with your family,
Speaker 4: and just going about the daily life on a farm,
Speaker 4: you suddenly don't need modern distractions like video games or
Speaker 4: bullshit like television.
Speaker 2: Program Oh yeah, who needs basic cable.
Speaker 4: Late night look exactly? And so for me, I just
Speaker 4: find that to be incredibly palliative. That it's like reading
Speaker 4: a really good book where suddenly the way they live
Speaker 4: is like a work of art and you can curate it.
Speaker 4: And it never has to involve shopping for anything online
Speaker 4: or going to the mall, but instead it's just how
Speaker 4: good are your Yorkshire puddings? Certainly, like, why aren't we
Speaker 4: all living like this?
Speaker 2: Well, if you ever tried my Yorkshire pudding, you would
Speaker 2: know it would be better to just shop online. There
Speaker 2: are so many incredible recipes in this book. What's your
Speaker 2: favorite recipe to cook?
Speaker 1: I think I like making something that's going to last
Speaker 1: us for a long time. So I'll cook up a
Speaker 1: big pot of like a broth or like a hamhok broth.
Speaker 3: You've had that before?
Speaker 1: Having you at the farm.
Speaker 4: Please get us? Can we just stop and get me
Speaker 4: a sandwich?
Speaker 2: Get a sandwich and pass out?
Speaker 1: But yeah, something that's going to warm us up after
Speaker 1: a day working outside. I mean, it's it's old fashioned
Speaker 1: to talk about this kind of thing, isn't it? You know,
Speaker 1: meals around the table and caring for each other and
Speaker 1: connecting and having conversations around a meal. But that's the stuff,
Speaker 1: that's the good stuff to me. That's like so important
Speaker 1: that we try and encourage our kids to learn how
Speaker 1: to cook, make things and so they can survive out
Speaker 1: there in the world and understand where it's grown, how
Speaker 1: it's grown, and let's ask the questions, the important questions
Speaker 1: about how we're looking after the planet that this food
Speaker 1: comes from.
Speaker 2: Has it changed the way that you look at food
Speaker 2: and how it's produced and what you choose to eat.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I mean my fascination with agrarian material, starting with
Speaker 4: Wendell Berry and the books of Michael Pollen and Alice
Speaker 4: Waters and many more, are what led me to my
Speaker 4: life with the Rebanks and getting to help them with
Speaker 4: lambing and actually you see lambs being born, reaching in
Speaker 4: and doing some assisting. We have a beef herd that
Speaker 4: I am an investor in, yes, and so it's the
Speaker 4: most gorgeous grass fed beef. And so not only are
Speaker 4: these things delicious, but we're trying to.
Speaker 2: Okay, now I need a sandwich.
Speaker 4: Striving to work against the modern idea that our problems
Speaker 4: can be solved with technology instead of just working in
Speaker 4: concert with mother nature. And so this grass fed beef
Speaker 4: is answering the question of how can we keep the
Speaker 4: soil the most healthy, it holds the most carbon, and
Speaker 4: all of these things work together to answer a lot
Speaker 4: of the questions that are plaguing us in modern civilization.
Speaker 4: And you get the most beautiful ribbis at the end
Speaker 4: of the assignment, Well.
Speaker 2: What life solved that? It's a beautiful book. Congratulations and
Speaker 2: congratulations to you on everything. Thank you, ki, I really
Speaker 2: really enjoyed it. Thank you for being on The Farmer Wife,
Speaker 2: Available at home on May twenty four. Helenry Thanks and
Speaker 2: Nick Ockerman. My yesternight is an Oscar nominated actor who's
Speaker 2: currently nominated for a Tony for her role in Broadways
Speaker 2: Doubt a Parable. She also stars in the Apple TV
Speaker 2: series Sugar Please Welcome, Amy Ryan.
Speaker 3: Sonny.
Speaker 5: You look sunny good.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for being here. This is such
Speaker 2: a treat. I'm such a fan of yours.
Speaker 3: It's a treat for me too. Thank you.
Speaker 2: My gosh, you've been You've had so many iconic memorable roles.
Speaker 2: You were in Gone Baby, Gone, The Office, The Wire, uh,
Speaker 2: murders in the building. I mean, I right. I don't
Speaker 2: know why the standard is six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 2: It should be three degrees of Amy Ryan. You're in everything.
Speaker 3: Wow, and you're.
Speaker 2: Incredible on everything that you do. And congratulations you were
Speaker 2: just not dominated for your third Tony. Yes, thank you,
Speaker 2: it's so well deserved. I got the chance to see you.
Speaker 2: It was such a tree. You're exceptional in it. And
Speaker 2: I heard that you stepped in with a week's notice.
Speaker 2: A week's notice.
Speaker 5: I got a phone call on a late Sunday night
Speaker 5: to step in and I said yes. In the following Tuesday,
Speaker 5: I was white knuckling it on stage in a nun's habit,
Speaker 5: trying to remember lies there was.
Speaker 2: It was a wild ride, that is. It's such a
Speaker 2: brave thing to do to get that call and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: can you be here tomorrow? I need an answer immediately.
Speaker 2: It's braver crazy. I feel like you're so talented. You're
Speaker 2: one of the people that could actually be so confident
Speaker 2: to be like I got this and you did. You
Speaker 2: were incredible at it. I heard that as part of
Speaker 2: your preparation you slept on an air mattress.
Speaker 5: It's not that I wanted to find the characters paining
Speaker 5: through an air mattress. It's more that I didn't want
Speaker 5: to wake up my family because I was getting up
Speaker 5: at five point thirty in the morning to study lines,
Speaker 5: so I didn't want to wake my daughter before school,
Speaker 5: so myself and the dog were on the aerowbed.
Speaker 2: You're a good mama. I try. I slept on an
Speaker 2: air mattress. You cut out sugar, dairy, and caffeine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just to help the immune system, which I've since
Speaker 5: been mainlining since the show's closed.
Speaker 2: Of course you should. Absolutely. I want to talk to
Speaker 2: you about this incredible show, Sugar. Yes, that you're starring in.
Speaker 2: It feels like kind of an homage or a love
Speaker 2: letter to all of the classic noir gum shoe detective movies.
Speaker 2: Were you a fan of those movies going into it?
Speaker 2: Not really, but I.
Speaker 5: But I love that this show spins it a bit.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know my character is kind of the
Speaker 5: classic fem fatale, but we pulled away from the you know,
Speaker 5: the woman in distress and became she just was a
Speaker 5: strong friendship, which you don't see between a male character
Speaker 5: and a female character. You assume they're going to you know,
Speaker 5: end up rolling in bed by the first episode. But
Speaker 5: you know, if you have Colin Farrell, why would you
Speaker 5: want to roll in bed?
Speaker 2: So, you know, let's just be friends. Let's just be friends.
Speaker 2: The pain, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the restraint and the congratulations.
Speaker 2: You deserve an Emmy for the restraint to not jump
Speaker 2: on Colin Farrell's I don't know, I pro really are
Speaker 2: you this? So the show is on Apple? I'm curious.
Speaker 2: There's a massive, massive twist.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, don't read anything if you haven't watched it
Speaker 5: in time that Apple has asked you to and you're
Speaker 5: going to binge it later on, just stay away from
Speaker 5: anything you read it.
Speaker 2: Don't read any spoiler. Yes, it's a huge, huge twist.
Speaker 2: Now I'm curious. Did Apple make you sign the same
Speaker 2: nda that they made the guys that make their iPhones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then when I'd call home, I think the
Speaker 5: Apple was picking up on all the scripts, always.
Speaker 2: Listening, listening, always. It's it's so remarkable that you went
Speaker 2: from playing this like rock and roll ex rock and
Speaker 2: roll star addict immediately to the strictest nun. Do you
Speaker 2: ever worry that you're just too versatile as an actress?
Speaker 2: Just simply too talented.
Speaker 3: I'm running out of Hairduce.
Speaker 2: It's all about hair, it really is you. You also
Speaker 2: have a movie that's coming out soon, Wolves, Yeah, in September,
Speaker 2: and it stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I've never
Speaker 2: heard of them. Who are these fresh faces?
Speaker 5: Huge careers ahead of them, potential? Yeah, yeah, I'm really
Speaker 5: I would putt put your money on those guys.
Speaker 2: If you're a betting woman, I bet you're gonna blow
Speaker 2: them out of the I'm very excited. Thank you, so,
Speaker 2: thank you for having an absolute delight. Seven finale of
Speaker 2: Sugar airs May seventeenth on Apple TV Plus.
Speaker 3: Amy Ryan.
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