Pop Culture Confidential

416: The Star of 'Thelma'! A Conversation With 95 Year Old Acting Legend June Squibb

It's June all summer! Christina talks to acting legend June Squibb. The 95 year old actor stars as Nostalgia in the summer's biggest hit 'Inside Out 2' and as Thelma in Josh Margolin's wonderful directorial debut. 'Thelma', about a grandmother determined to get justice after she's scammed out of ten thousand dollars, is a generational story and an action comedy. And Ms. Squibb does her own stunts! June Squibb's career spans seven decades on the stage and screen. She starred in Woody Allen's 'Alice' and Martin Scorsese's 'The Age of Innocence'. She has played Jack Nicholson's wife, Adam Sandler's mother, & Lena Dunham's grandmother. June Squibb was Oscar nominated for her role in Alexander Payne's Nebraska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duration:: 19m
Broadcast on:: 19 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

June Squibb's career spans seven decades on the stage and screen. She starred in Woody Allen's 'Alice' and Martin Scorsese's 'The Age of Innocence'. She has played Jack Nicholson's wife, Adam Sandler's mother, & Lena Dunham's grandmother.

June Squibb was Oscar nominated for her role in Alexander Payne's Nebraska.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Pop Culture Confidential, and I'm Christina Yurling Beru. Hey everyone, thank you for joining me. It's June all summer, June Squib that is. She's starring as nostalgia in the big hit Inside Out 2, and is the surprise action star of the summer. In Josh Margolin's wonderful directorial debut Thelma, the 94-year-old acting legend is kicking butts and taking names. June Squib's career spans seven decades on stage and screen. She starred in Woody Allen's Alice, Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence, and against Al Pacino in Sentive a Woman. She's played Jack Nicholson's wife, Adam Sandler's mother, and Lena Dunham's grandmother. June Squib was Oscar nominated for her role in Alexander Payne's Nebraska. In Thelma, Squib's first leading role, she plays a grandmother who is scammed out of $10,000 by a fraudster pretending to be her grandson. She decides enough is enough, and together with the late-great Richard Roundtree, a wild scooter chase ensues to track down the thieves in a quest for justice. What's your plan for the day? The usual. Hello? Grandma! Danny? You sound so strange. I'm in jail! Oh, my God! May I have $10,000 in this address? $10,000? How did you think this was real? Mom, you thought it was real too. Oh, my God. She was very convincing. What? She was scared? Your mother, we were all scared. I wasn't quite as scared, just for the record. You gotta tell the police. They have no use. They contact people at random, using telephone listings and social networking signs. Like Facebook? Sure. My Facebook. Why should the duck on board be able to fix this? What about my money? Am I supposed to just let them have it? I'm supposed to get a pass. I need a ride. My mother is at large. Why are we stopping at Mars? To get a gun. Do you even know how to use it? How hard can it be? Idiot, choose them all the time. God. Things happen to people as they age. Weird, crazy things. We're all diminished. The least we can do is take care of each other. She's a tough cookie. When she says her mind is something, there's no stopping her. My grandson's parked a block away. I don't have much time. You left your grandson in the car? But he's 24. We all have our good days and our bad days. And what's today? We'll find out. Miss Squib, thank you so much for joining me. Yes, lovely to be here. I love the movie, "You Really Kicking Butts." But also the relationship with the lovely family. What drew you to this project? The script. I read the script and I thought, "This I have to do. I really want to do this." I had done a film with Beanie Fieldstein, and she was friends with Josh and his family. And so she was there when he had finished this script and said, "Who did you want to do it?" He said, "Well, he would love to do a script to do it, but he didn't know how to get a script to her." Beanie said, "I'll get a script to her." So she texted me and said, "I'm sending you a script." And I texted back, "Okay." And that was it. That's how I got it. Immediately upon reading, it's a beautiful script. And I just felt this is something I want to do. It's wonderful. And it's actually based on his own grandmother, right? 104 years old, tell me about her. She's wonderful. I was hoping to meet her. We were hoping when we were shooting that she would be able to come on set. But she was like 102, 103 then. And so she wasn't always able to come out and do what she wanted to do. So we didn't get to meet. But I met her about a month ago. She's living with Josh's parents. And I went over and I walked in and I said, "I'm opposed." And she said, "No, I'm so opposed." And then I said that we giggled in the last cause we thought we were so funny. She's so proud of Josh. She just is like an exuding joy all the time. She's sitting there looking at him. Yeah. It's such a wonderful about grandparents, grandchildren. But also about aging and how differently we age, right? Some people want to live alone. Some people find it difficult. What did you want to portray? Well, I just was thrilled that this was a 94-year-old leaving lady. I thought that was kind of wonderful. And I think that she chose such grit and determination. And she's not always right. I mean, we see that. She pushes through things sometimes when she shouldn't. It would be better off not. But I just felt it was a very truthful look at age. And that to me is what I'm looking for. I want it to be the truth. I want it to be real and life. It's not only about relationships. It's an action movie and you do your own stunts. Most of them tell me about how you decided to do your own stunts. And what was the most difficult? Well, when I read the script, I thought this scooter thing would be great fun to do. And it was. I enjoyed that a lot. And I kept pushing, you know, to do more and more. Because they were frightened of me even getting on the scooter. And at that scene in the home where I run into Richard, that was completely. No one knew I was going to do that because I was told just to drive it up to him and then they would take care of it later, you know, the whole hit and everything. And I thought, well, this is ridiculous. So I just slammed into him and Richard had this look on his face, which is very real because he didn't know it was going to happen either. And then I thought, well, I hope they're getting this on camera and I zoomed off around and down the hall and they did. They got the whole thing on camera. So that was me doing all that. And that was not to be. They had made plans for the. Double you have to do that. And you also did falls and things. Yeah, I did those dead roles were mine, and I sort of understood what they were. And I kept saying I could do this. And they were so worried about me. But I think as it went on, they realized that I was able to do more than they ever dreamt I could. So they let me go, so to speak. I sort of got to try things at least. And Tom Cruise is, of course, referenced in the film and he does all his own stuff. Are you a fan? Oh, I am. I love and the mission impossible. You know, he's had a wonderful career, but I love the mission impossible. Does he know anything about this movie? Has he? Well, I know that he has a link. I don't know if he's seen it or not, but he did see some scenes, I think from a table read when he gave us the okay to use his shots in our film. There was some acknowledgement there. I don't quite know what it was. And I don't know if he's seen it or not. I know he was given the opportunity to. I was just saying in another episode of my show that there's so many more roles for women. It feels like it's particularly women that are a little bit older. Do you feel that the industry has changed in terms of this? Very much so. I feel very strongly. I just did another film with a 90 year old lady. And I think it's amazing that it's being written, but thank God it is. And I mean, you know, thinking we have so many wonderful leading ladies in their 40s, 50s. These even some that are still working and still viable and that would never happen before. I don't think so I think we are looking at age differently. I think we're looking at women differently. You must have come into an age where this industry was not obvious for women. They were expected to have children or two. Oh, yes. How did you persevere? Was it about you that said, I'm not doing that. I'm doing this. I think that I have always said I was an actress and I have no idea where I got it from. What made me do that or why? But I always have felt that and I've always felt that I was going to get what I wanted. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't. And I have a child, I have a son, and thank God I did. It was one of the best, most wonderful parts of my life was having this child, but I never stopped working. I mean, even, even, I mean, he now, I think he laughs about it now, but I'm sure there were times when he was little that it was difficult. But I don't know. I really, I just think that this is something that was decided within me, that I had no control of it really. Shopify grows with your business no matter how far or big you grow. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the, did we just hit a million order stage? Shopify is there to help you grow. Whether you're selling your fans next favorite shirt or an exclusive piece of podcast merch, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. From their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system, wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/income, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/income to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. And in your long career, what has for you been the biggest change in the film industry and we've gone through for women. We've gone through me too. We've gone through so much. What have you think has been some of the powerful moments? I think the whole switching from film to digital has made a big difference. There's a difference in the time elements involved in shooting a film. One thing I keep marveling at is the editing because now they tend to edit while the film is being shot. And that never happened. I can remember my early films. They never did that. They waited until after the film was shot to edit. And now I think that a lot of that job is done as they go. And that's made a difference in the time now that a film has to come out. I was mentioning some of the incredible people and films that you've worked with throughout your career. Is there a particular director or actor that really formed you? Well, I think I have to say that Alexander Payne was a tremendous influence in my career that when I did about Schmidt with him, I all once became so legitimate in the film industry. And then of course with Nebraska, the award season that we went through, that was another hit in my career certainly. So I have to thank him and I do thank him a lot about it. But I think I was most impressed with working with Jack Nicholson. And he never ever made me feel that I was lesser than he even with all his experience in film and my certainly when I shot about Schmidt, that was, you know, I feel I was sort of floundering in a way. You know, I didn't know what I know now, certainly God knows that was 20 years ago. But he was, he was so wonderful. He was such a gentle man. And he just made me feel like a peer always. And that was lovely for me in that film. For many of us, it's really scary to sort of change where you come to a certain age like I can't start doing this now I'm this is my path. You were 60 when you went from theater to film for the first time you're 90 you were 90 something when you got your first leading role now in film. What's the secret to being so brave as to making such huge life changes like that. I have always looked forward and I don't know why again, you know, it's just what's within me. I've always looked for what was coming. And I think I've looked at my past, but I never dwell on the past. And I'm always really excited about what's happening, what, what might happen tomorrow, you know, it's an exciting thing to me. And your next project, which I think you may already have filmed is Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut Eleanor the Great. Right. Is it a big secret or can you tell us something about it? No, I can, I think I can tell you about it. It was a wonderful experience. She's a great director and, you know, she's young and she will be a better director. And in the years, because she's really, if she wants to do it, I think it's according to how much she wants to act and how much she wants to direct that she's a really a very good director. And it was a wonderful experience, a wonderful cast. And it will be coming out next year. And it too is the age. It's all about age. So you've done almost every genre possible, now animation, now this action, indie movies, you musicals, you sang the first better part of your career. Is there a genre that you want to tackle left? Well, I'm Westerns. I've never done a Western and I used to ride quite a bit when I was younger. And so, but I don't know that I could even get on a horse anymore, but I think if I got on what I could stay on it. But I think that there are other things you know you could do in a Western that I would just like to do one because I've never done one. Well, you do your own stunts there also, I'm sure. I've heard that you really love Scandinavia and you Nespia. I just interviewed him recently. Yes, I'm thinking that you could be, this is sort of a detective-y part in film. You should do this sort of detective without the alcoholism and dark broodiness of the sketch. You should do that. Oh my God, I love his work. He's so good, so good. Now, I don't know where I got, but I love Scandinavia noir and I have quite a collection there in my apartment. What's next for you besides the Eleanor the Great, which we talked about, do you see yourself just going on? There's no retirement in your future. Well, I don't know that I'll just go on really nilly, but I just committed to doing an adult animation series. I think that probably will get started, they think next year after the first of the year. And I like doing animation and it's certainly something that even anything physical, you still can get to the studio and do that. And I have one or two things that I'm thinking about doing and I just haven't decided yet. I just want to take our last few minutes here, because I want to ask you about Richard Roundtree, who unfortunately passed. Was he able to see the movie? He did, his children, we became friends with them at Sundance and have seen them at the, the Premiers. And I think he saw it a few days before he died. He had it. He had it. We, they said it. And they said he loved it. And he was thrilled to sing. What was your experience working with him? Because he's such a legend. He was so dear, so lovely. It was my birthday and he wasn't called, but he appeared with roses for me. And, you know, he, it was such fun just knowing he was sitting behind me on that scooter. And of course, I kept thinking, Oh, my God, that shaft. We never mentioned that. We never did. We talked about our kids. We talked about everything, you know, because we had a lot of time together. Is the rumor true? Is the rumor true that everyone dressed up as you on your birthday? Yes. Yes. And he did. He had a white wig on. I love it. June, thank you so much for giving me the time for this. And it was such an honor to talk to you. Thank you. I've enjoyed this. Bye bye. Thank you so much to June Squib. Thelma has its US streaming premiere this Friday, July 19. And inside out to is in theaters now. Thank you so much for listening. Pop Culture Confidential is a part of the Evergreen podcast network. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]