WEBVTT - Crying on Planes with Jodi Picoult 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:02.560 Hi Catherine, Hi Chelsea. 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:03.800 You're in New York. I am. 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:05.360 I'm in New York City. I got here. 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:07.840 I flew from San Francisco this morning. I had a 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:10.639 great dinner last night. Oh what's that restaurant called in 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:12.000 San Francisco, Nopa? 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:14.480 Oh it was so good. If you're in San Francisco, 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:15.880 you got to go there. Anyway. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.280 I had dinner with my nephew. Oh, he's not my nephew, 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.280 he's my cousin. I don't know what any one's relation 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.560 to me is my doctor cousin Ted, who I tried 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:26.200 to get a prescription from, and then his partner, and 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.360 then my niece, she's leaving for a semester abroad, and 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.120 my sister and Doug. I had on the I had 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.000 on the road. Doug and I went wine tasting. We 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.920 went to Napa. I had a show in Saratoga. Then 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.000 he and I went to San Francisco. We went to 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:42.800 Point Reyis. 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:43.640 Oh, he lovely. 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.000 We went to the beach in San Francisco. There's a 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.159 huge doggy beach and we went there on Saturday, and 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.840 Doug humiliated me. No, he yeah, yeah, I couldn't even 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.440 pretend I knew him. It was so humiliating. He had 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:58.760 the zoomies for close to like forty five minutes. I 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:00.640 thought he was going to have a heart attack. And 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.400 me trying to call my dog when he doesn't come 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.600 is so embarrassing and humiliating at a dog park, especially 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:08.640 when everyone's off leash, because everyone's like, well, then you 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:10.400 shouldn't be here, and it's like, well, then fine, that's 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.160 not my dog. So I just walked in a different 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:15.000 direction hoping he'd follow. 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:16.039 Yeah. 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.240 I mean, he's screaming, Doug Come, Doug Come, in front 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:20.600 of all these other beach goers. 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:21.760 It's just humiliating. 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.040 It's like, especially with no response, and I have like treats, 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.440 I'm trying to bribe him with treats. But other than that, 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.280 I have to say he was fucking awesome because he 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:32.800 has like he's a little bipolar. He goes into a 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:36.280 restaurant immediately and lies down and goes to sleep. As 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.000 soon as we're sitting at a restaurant, I was like, 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.559 that's so awesome. He doesn't beg for food. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:41.440 It's perfect. 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:43.920 Yeah, And then when you get him on the beach 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.000 and he's got this big personality there, So I mean, 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:48.880 I was pretty pleased with him. 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:50.600 I brought him on stage at one of my shows 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:52.040 at the Saratoga Mountain Winery. 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.640 Oh, which reminds me of my Vegas residency starts this Saturday. 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:59.120 Coming to Vegas nine September first, is my very first 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.320 Vegas residence date. So I will be there with bells 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:06.400 on everybody. I hope I see you there, excellent. Our 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.919 guest today is the number one New York Times bestselling 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.959 author of twenty nine novels, including Mad Honey, My Sister's Keeper, 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.440 and her newest book, which you guys are gonna love 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.320 By any Other Name, Please welcome Jody Pico. 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.360 Hi, Jody, Hello, how. 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:22.320 Are you great? 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.120 Congratulations on your latest book, which is called by any 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.960 other Name. So let's talk about the subject matter in 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:32.840 this book, because it's fascinating and a lot of what 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:34.160 are they called Bardologists? 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.040 Is that what that they called? I think I saw a. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.280 Word of that once, Right, Shakespeare lovers, this has been 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.320 a very heavy debate that's been going on for a 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.760 very long time, and I fucking love it. I love 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:50.639 it that Shakespeare wasn't necessarily we don't have enough proof 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.440 to know that Shakespeare was responsible for writing all of 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:58.640 what Shakespeare wrote. And I'm using quotation marks because a 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:00.799 lot of the experiences which you cover in this book 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:02.880 this is like, how would you describe it? 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:03.959 It's I mean, it's a novel. 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.160 It's definitely a novel. Yeah. To me. 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.560 It's a book about how women have been written out 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.000 of history by the men who were writing history, About 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.079 how women's voices have been silenced and are still being 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.480 silenced today. Takes place half in Elizabethan, England and half 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.840 in the modern world, and it's the story of two women. 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:23.639 One is in fifteen eighty one. 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.000 It's Amelia Bassano, who's a real life historical figure, and 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.600 she is a female playwright who can't get her stuff 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:32.079 in front of the public because she's a female playwright, 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.480 and she winds up paying a man for the use 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.960 of his name, and that man is William Shakespeare. And 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.920 then in twenty twenty four, it's the story of her descendant, 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:42.960 a woman named Melina Green, who's written a play about 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.120 her ancestor, Emilia, and is trying to get it to Broadway, 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.720 but in a very male dominated theater world that is 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.240 not happening, and she too has to decide whether she'll 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:53.720 write herself out of history in order to see her 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:55.120 work up on the stage. 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:57.520 And to me, it's a little bit of everything. 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:00.880 It is a page turner, it is a historical it's 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.720 the spiciest thing I've ever written. It is also the 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.880 timeliest thing I've ever written, because you know, women are 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.720 still fighting to be heard today and we're living in 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.000 a time when there's a small group of people who 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.320 are making decisions about what the rest of us should 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:17.680 be reading and who gets to write those stories. 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:20.560 Yes, I mean it's not only timely, this would be 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.200 timely at any point during history, because we're talking about 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:26.960 a five century span of time where we're still up 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.120 against the same barriers of entry as women. 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:34.880 So I heard this quote yesterday. It was interesting. What 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:35.080 was it. 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:36.800 I was listening to a podcast and it says you 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.400 can go decades without anything changing, and then in a 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.680 week it can feel like decades have changed. Like when 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.599 Kamala gets elected in November, that will be that kind 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.080 of feeling like we've been trying so hard, so hard, 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.560 so hard, and then it happens like this right in 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.520 the book. So, Amelia Basano is a real life person, 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:56.159 So how does that work when you're writing that, because 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.520 how can you write about some characters that are real 0:04:58.680 --> 0:04:59.960 and some that are fictionalized. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:04.479 So we know certain things about the real Amelia Bassano's life. 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.640 Most of them come from this diary of this hack 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.400 doctor slash astrologer that she went. 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:11.600 To when she had also. 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.279 And so this guy, his name was Simon Foreman. He 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:19.560 basically spent all his time trying to sleep with her, 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.440 which she also documented, by the way, and she rejected him. 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.240 But it tells us that she was Italian, that her 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:30.200 family came over from Italy because they were super talented musicians, 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.440 and Henry the eighth brought them over to be the 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.200 recorder consort to the king, and then they began working 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.839 for Queen Elizabeth. First, we know that she was Jewish, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:39.280 and like the rest of her family, she had to 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:41.880 hide her religion. We know that when she was seven 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.520 and her dad died, she was given as award to 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:48.880 a countess who was really really atypical and gave her 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:53.279 this incredible classical education and a legal education, which girls, 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.120 especially not noble girls, were never given. And then when 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.599 Amelia was twelve, this woman got remarried and so Amelia 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:02.279 was kind of like lost for a little bit, and 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.120 for a summer she lived with the woman's brother, who 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.360 was a baron who happened to be the ambassador to 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.120 Denmark when he did a diplomatic visit to the King 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:12.520 and Queen. The next year, she was given as a 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.120 courtesan to the Lord Chamberlain of England, and he was 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.600 in charge of all theater. He was fifty six, she 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:20.280 was thirteen. 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:21.920 What a beautiful coupling. 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:23.280 It's lovely, isn't it. 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:26.120 She would have met all the players in the theater industry, 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.279 because every play crossed his desk for censorship, so she 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:31.839 would have met the playwrights, she would have met the actors, 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.680 she would have met the producers, the theater owners, all 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:36.920 those people for the ten years she was with him. 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.479 Then she gets pregnant, so she's twenty three years old. 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.279 She cannot be a pregnant mistress when he's already married, 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.719 so he marries her off to her wastrel of a 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.200 cousin who winds up blowing through all the money that 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:49.400 he gives her to be comfortable. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:51.480 And she's now twenty three years old. 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:53.520 She's got a husband she hates, she has a kid 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.160 she has to support, and she has no idea how 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:58.599 to do that, and then we don't know anything about 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.760 Amelia for years, for decades, until sixteen eleven, when she's 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.640 in her late forties, and suddenly she is the first 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.760 woman to publish a book of poetry in England, which 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:10.920 in and of itself is a reason you should know 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.240 her name right. But you know, there's this time period 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:17.400 between the two, like decades. People don't show up in 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:19.720 their mid forties and publish a book of poetry like 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.400 you know, especially when women weren't doing that, which tells 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.200 me she was writing before that, she just may not 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:29.400 have been using her name. And in terms of Shakespeare. 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:29.560 You know same thing. 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.640 We know a lot of facts about Shakespeare. We know 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:36.000 that he was a businessman, a producer. We know he 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.040 was an actor. We know that he evaded taxes twice. 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.800 We know that he had multiple restraining orders from his 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.440 colleagues that he worked with. We know that when there 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.160 was a famine he hoarded grain and he jacked up 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.080 the price for all his neighbors. He was a lovely individual. 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.960 He also never left the country. He was not educated 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.520 at a university. He was self educated. But when he 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.720 died he didn't own a single book. He didn't bequeath 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.480 a book to anybody when he died. He was not 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.760 buried in Poet's Corner at Westminster like all the other writers, 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:09.440 even many you've never heard of who were in this 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.840 famous when he died, not a single other playwright said 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.679 anything about the loss of such a great talent, although 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.440 by far he was the best known quote playwright of 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.480 the time, you know. So what we know about him 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.160 legally and historically is that he was a businessman, not 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.840 that he was a writer. There is no proof that 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.360 he wrote anything with his name attached to it. And 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.360 it's my belief that people used his name and paid 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:34.800 him for the use of it so he could make 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.640 a quick book, and they were the ones writing under 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:40.600 his name. And I think Amelia is one of several 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:41.520 people who was doing that. 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.880 Oh interesting, Okay, but here's my question. 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.640 If that's all true, right, and he wasn't credited as 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.400 being a writer, even if other people were using his name, 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.880 he would still have been recognized when he died as 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.880 a writer because those plays were all produced under his 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.920 name as written by Shakespeare in real time. 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:02.720 Unless it was kind of like an inside joke in 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:03.719 the theater world. 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.240 Like an open secret, which I actually think it was. 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:08.920 And there's there's actually a scene in the book where 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.160 I write about the First Folio, which everyone knows Shakespeare's 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:14.360 first folio, right. It's a collection of like thirty odd 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.040 plays that he allegedly wrote by himself while he had 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.040 two full time jobs. And he was also allegedly the 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.000 only playwright of the time who didn't collaborate. 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.559 But okay, whatever, So he has this folio. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.520 After he's dead, all these plays are brought together, and 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.440 they're brought together by his nemesis, Ben Johnson. Okay, Ben 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:35.080 Johnson and Shakespeare hated each other, and Ben Johnson was 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.680 the first guy to take all of his plays and 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.240 instead of looking at them as kind of pulp fiction, saying, 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.520 oh no, this is the four of my work. So 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.600 all of a sudden, Shakespeare's dead and someone's collecting his plays, 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.400 and his nemesis, Ben Johnson is the one who writes 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.480 all of the preparatory material, saying you know, all these 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.000 lovely things about Shakespeare's as a playwright. But if you 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.559 read between the lines of what Ben Johnson actually wrote, 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:01.600 he said it has things like don't look on the 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.640 face of this playwright, look at his words, and there's 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.479 this whole conspiracy theory about the actual etching of Shakespeare 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.079 that everybody knows. It's the picture you're thinking of when 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:13.440 you think of Shakespeare that was on the first folio, 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:16.800 and how in it it looks like he has two 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:21.400 left arms in other words, no quote right arm right, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:23.760 and there's a line around his face that looks like 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:25.960 he's wearing a mask. And there are all these people 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.120 who've used that to say, oh, see, that's proof that 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.400 that everyone was kind of in on this joke, and 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.320 Ben Johnson was leaving us a bunch of puzzles and clues, 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.440 thinking everyone in the future is going to figure this out. 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:39.640 But apparently we missed the punchline. 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:39.839 Well. 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:41.439 And I can't remember if this was in the book 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.760 or in some an interview that I read with you, 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.960 but you had mentioned at some point that Shakespeare as 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.439 we know it, traditionally a lot of times it was hyphenated, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:51.560 and that back then was known to be like this 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.439 is an imaginary character, or this is you know, sort 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:55.160 of a pseudonym. 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.320 Yeah, that's also something that people bring up that's to 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.080 me more hypothetical, like, oh, it's not a real name. 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.400 I think what's more interesting is to look at the 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.280 fact that, like Shakespeare didn't speak all these other languages, right, 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.079 because he wasn't educated at university. He didn't go to 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.440 Cambridge or Oxford or whatever. But some of the source 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:15.960 material for the stories that he used for the plays 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:22.199 was only available in ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, French. 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.120 He didn't speak those languages, and it wasn't like people 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.040 were going around telling all these stories all the time, 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:28.800 and they weren't translated yet. 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.200 So how does he know this stuff? You know? 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.719 How does he know about where the Queen of Denmark's 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.560 closets are in her bedchamber when he's never been to Denmark? 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.240 How does he know that a certain type of tree 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.600 grows on the north bank of a river in Italy? 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.400 You know, to me, this is all really interesting. And 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.400 why especially this is a good one. Why does Shakespeare 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.680 all of a sudden stop writing historical plays about kings 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.280 and start writing Italian wedding comedies. 0:11:58.040 --> 0:11:59.280 That feels like an odd choice. 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:00.880 It's all very valid. 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.440 It's also fascinating, you know, because I've only really heard 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.040 about all of that kind of conjecture about Shakespeare, but 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.160 I've never I mean, I would say your book is 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.720 the biggest dive I've taken into it because I'm not 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.679 a barnologist someone who is obsessed with Shakespeare and all 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:15.599 of that. And I don't even know the reference of 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.400 the first folio that you're making. That's how uneducated I 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:21.440 am on this topic. First, I need you to answer 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.720 the editorial question, how does one from an editorial standpoint, 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.480 combine historical real figures with fictional characters, like why are 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:31.560 the rules around that? 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:32.840 As a writer, well, I. 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:34.800 Mean I write fiction, so there are no rules, which 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.960 is holy. You have it much harder because you're writing nonfiction. 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:40.480 But for me, I can do anything that I want, and. 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.320 So even when you're using a real life person, you 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:45.319 can say that they absolutely. 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:46.920 Oh she's been that a while Amelia was home. 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:47.559 Yeah, I've done. 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:49.880 If there's a statute of limitations. 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:51.440 You should also know, Chelsea, I've never written about you, 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:52.400 so you can sleep tonight. 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:54.760 But don't worry. I've done enough of that. 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.760 I made sure that when I finished the book, I 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.160 the actual references, the actual truth, and the places that 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.840 I departed from the truth, because I did want people 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.000 to know what was real and what was was not real. 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:11.480 I think it's really important too to say that even 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.160 if you haven't been a Shakespeare scholar, I'm going to 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:16.880 give you enough knowledge to get through this book and 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.120 know what you need to know. You don't need to 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:21.680 come into this having read any of Shakespeare's plays. 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:22.440 Really, no, you don't. 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:22.840 You don't. 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.480 I speak from experience. This is a very juicy book. 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:27.920 I love it, and I love the toggling back and 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.080 forth from the present day to a different time, you know. 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.120 I love like having a period piece setting. And then 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:36.480 these two characters, these two main protagonists that are mimicking 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:38.600 each other in their lives in a way. And I 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.200 do want to talk about this theme of the book 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.480 because this really hit me hard, probably because I'm always 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:44.280 paranoida just about ending up. 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.240 Like you know, on the street or something. 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.520 I mean, the contrast from her life of getting being 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:55.360 this guy's mistress and treating her with respect and adjuration. 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.240 This man truly adored her, and the way that this 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:00.680 is written and she, you know, she gets carted off 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.720 and she's sold to some guy. She doesn't know where 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.120 she's going, and she ends up in one of probably 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.080 the best circumstances short of actually falling in love with 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.280 your captor. You know, this guy allowed her to read 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.960 his plays, This guy who ran all the theaters in London, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.320 he allowed her to read her plays. He loved hearing 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.280 her poetry. He wanted her to flourish, and he admired her, 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.520 and she had a beautiful life with him until the 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:24.360 I don't want to give anything away in this book, 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.600 but until her circumstances change, and then there's a shift 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.840 that is a really fucking hard pill to swallow. Yeah, 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:36.080 as a reader, it was so painful to even read. 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:38.640 You know, what her next situation entailed and where she 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.880 went and then that dynamic, and it made me think 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.040 about as a writer, when you're writing, especially as someone 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.760 who's written as many books as you have, what is 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.120 the methodology there? Like how do you think about those 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:54.640 turns of events? Like do you want to make them 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.560 as drastically different as like the contrast so stark? 0:14:58.800 --> 0:14:59.720 Is that your intention? 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:02.840 I think that the pitfall I didn't want to hit 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.160 in this book because Amelia does suffer so many tragic 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:08.760 moments in her life. I didn't want you to be like, 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:10.760 oh my god, not again, you know, Like I didn't 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.560 want it to feel overwhelming, and part of being able 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.040 to combat that comes again from that diary from that 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.680 astrologer doctor. You know, when she talked about her life 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:22.960 with the Lord Chamberlain, with this guy who is so 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.160 wealthy and who was the theater head of all of England. 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:27.960 Basically she was so. 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.960 Proud of what she achieved. Then she talks about how 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:34.040 all kinds of men would give her jewels and would 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.400 look at her and noticed what she looked like. And 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:40.120 you could tell that even though she wound up in 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.240 a very poor, different circumstance than she was for those 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.280 ten years, she was like, hey, I was someone. Don't 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:48.440 forget if I was someone. And it was hearing that 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.720 fire in her that made me want to create her 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:54.280 as you know, really a spitfire, someone who keeps on 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.320 getting up every time she's knocked down. Interestingly, you talk 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.600 about how kind the Lord Chamberlain was to her. We 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.680 don't know anything about that relationship. We know that she 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.560 from what she says in these diaries that are written down, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.320 that he kept her well and that she seemed to 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.720 be comfortable with him, but we don't know anything else 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.520 about it. And in my opinion, you know, I was 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.520 thinking Okay, here's someone who is thirteen years old winds 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.800 up in this you know, artificial relationship with a fifty 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:23.200 six year old man where she's literally being groomed to 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.240 be his court is in. And I didn't want again 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.320 there to be a terrible time for Amelia during those 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.600 ten years, because it seemed like she enjoyed it, And 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:33.840 I thought, I don't really see her falling head over 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.360 heels with this guy, but I do see her finding 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.720 a friendship there. And you know, that was why I 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.960 chose to characterize and write Lord Hunston the Lord Chamberlain 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.800 the way that I did. So sometimes it means taking 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.480 a clue out of history and just sort of spinning 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.120 it and extrapolating it to create the character around it. 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.480 I mean, what a luxury are you? Just like, take 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.040 what you like and discard what you don't. You know that? 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.360 Yeah, I mean that is the definition and essence of 0:16:58.400 --> 0:16:59.080 being a writer. 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.680 Okay, but wait, can I tell you the freakiest thing 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:03.360 that happened to me when I was writing this book 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:05.520 one of them way is that I wanted to combat 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.080 again all the tragedy in Amelia's life was I thought 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.520 this woman deserved a little happiness, and so I wanted 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:12.280 to give her a love affair with a man she 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:16.159 truly loved. And there's this historical fact when Amelia's in 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.480 her sixties, she goes to court. She represents herself in court, 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.720 which is crazy, and she's fighting her brother in law 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.280 after her husband's death. She was basically supposed to get 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:27.359 money from a patent that hewned, and her brother in 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.520 law stole it all. At the end of this trial, 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.440 out of nowhere, the Earl of Southampton comes swaning into 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.480 the court room and he goes, hey, this isn't my court, 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.520 but if it was, I'd find in favor of her. Now, 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.639 this would never happen. You would just not see a 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.840 noble intervene in some commoner's life, right, And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:48.960 why did this guy come out of nowhere to talk 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.880 to Amelia? And then I realized, you know, during those 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.120 ten years that she was living with the Lord Chamberlain, 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.040 court was a pretty small group of courtiers and ladies nobles. 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.080 She would have known Southampton, and he was about three 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:03.359 and a half years younger than she was. He was 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.639 considered to be quite a hotty of the time. So 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.520