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By
Suzanne

Interview with Lea Thompson of "Switched at Birth" on
ABC Family 8/28/12
ABC Family’s Q&A Session with Lea Thompson – SWITCHED AT
BIRTH
Moderator: Has Switched at Birth given you maybe a new fan
base, or a larger fan base now that there’s much younger
viewers?
L. Thompson: Yes, it’s been really exciting connecting with a
different demographic. It’s also really beautiful for me to
get a tweet that says, “Oh, my God Kathryn Kennish is mom, I
just saw her in this movie Back to the Future. She plays
Lorraine Baines.” It’s like the opposite, they’re
discovering my older work, and I really enjoy it. And I also
think that this program, the network’s targeted toward
teenage girls and their mothers but there’s also men that
really like to watch the show with their families. But I
think that it’s a really important thing to do a show. I
think teenagers, or girls are so complicated and so hard to
navigate, and I feel really proud to be part of a program
that in some way helps young women have a voice and deal
with issues and think about things in a productive way. And
I really love that I have that fan base, because I have two
teenage daughters, well not anymore, one of them’s 21 and
one’s 17, but I just lived through those years and I know
how they need good role models and ways of speaking about
issues with their moms and sometimes, when you see it on TV,
it’s a great way to talk about things. So I’m really happy
to have this new group of fans and I’m really excited about
the show.
Moderator: Like many of your previous characters Kathryn is a
very strong, determined woman, and I’m wondering in what
ways do you see yourself in her?
L. Thompson: Well, what’s very interesting for me about
Kathryn is that, she’s a woman who had this insulated life,
her husband was a famous baseball player, she’s always had a
lot of money and lived in a good neighborhood and thought
she had figured it out and done everything perfectly, and
then she realizes that she made a terrible mistake and she
took the wrong baby home from the hospital and didn’t even
know it. So it kind of shocks her into meeting new people
and to reaching out and to hanging out with people she never
thought she would and learning sign language. Her world is
expanding and also, at the same time, her children are
getting older and she realizes what is she going to do with
the rest of her life, so she goes and she’s writing this
book and all of a sudden becoming kind of a career woman,
which is changing her whole life.
So I kind of relate to that because both of my kids are now
older, and that weird feeling you have when you’ve been
concentrating on being a mother for so long. I’ve always
been working, I’ve always had a career, but now they don’t
need me in the same way and I have to try to figure out what
to do with the rest of my life. So that’s one way that I
really relate to Kathryn Kennish.
Moderator: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit
about how life changes for Kathryn, and Kathryn and John
specifically, once she has the fame of being a best-selling
author.
L. Thompson: Well, I think it’s one of those things where
you’ve been married for a long time and then all of a sudden
the person that you thought you knew everything about
changes and your perspective on them changes. Kathryn is
just coming into her own, she’s getting a voice of her own,
and I think she was always a little more subservient or
something to her husband in terms of his fame and him having
all the limelight, and now she’s got a little bit of
limelight, and it definitely shakes things up. And that’s a
really interesting lesson to learn about marriage, is that,
and I’ve been married for 23 years, and so things change and
you have to adjust to that. And in a lot of ways it’s great.
It adds a new spice to your marriage.
And so I think there’s a lot of ups and downs within their
marriage, and also there’s a young lawyer that’s helping
them with the case against the hospital and he takes a
little bit of shine to Kathryn, which is so surprising to
her, she hasn’t really thought of herself that way for a
long time, so that’s also kind of a shock to their marriage,
I think. But D.W. Moffett, who plays my husband, is such a
wonderful actor and I have such a great time working with
him, I love everything he does, so it’s kind of fun to have
conflict and get to act with him that way.
Moderator: Another source of conflict might be Angelo. Can
you talk a little bit about how that changes the dynamic as
well and how Kathryn reaches out and is there for Bay, and
Daphne too, through this?
L. Thompson: When I first read the pilot I really thought
that Kathryn was the bad guy, I really did. I thought “Oh,
here she is this entitled rich lady.” And then I said it to
Lizzy Weiss and she was like, no, I love her, and so I had
to completely change my idea of her. She really is an
amazing person. She is the glue that holds this whole new
family together. She’s the one that really tries to put her
prejudice and her comfort zone aside in order to make
everything work and make everyone get along. Angelo, she’s
never really trusted Angelo, but for Bay’s sake she has to
try to make it work. And she is definitely like me, if I
find another person in my family I’m like “Yay, let’s bring
them in, let’s try to include everybody,” and I’m a real big
family person so I can really relate to that about Kathryn,
even though deep down she does not trust Angelo. He’s just
too charming. I think it’s much harder on John because he
really realizes that he’s not Bay’s father on some level and
that’s very, very difficult for him.
Moderator: I’ve spoken with most of your cast mates, and I’ve
heard so much about your pillows, way back in the beginning
and how much they meant to everybody, everybody mentioned
it, so I’m curious how did you get that idea and how did you
decide who got what kind of pillow?
L. Thompson: Oh, that’s so funny. I forgot about that. I
don’t know. I just remember, when you get into your creepy
little dressing room you’re like I want a nice, clean, soft
pillow to rest on, so I just bought these. And I also
thought, I got these little fuzzy pillows with little
animals on them, and I just looked at them, and I knew the
actors, not that well, but I also thought, what would
Kathryn, when they were little kids, especially for the
kids, how would she see them, and there’s something goofy
about my character in kind of a lovable way, she’s very
sincere. And so that’s so sweet that they mentioned the
pillows. I just thought that that was a good present, better
than flowers, because it would keep lasting for the whole
run of the show.
Moderator: I love that Kathryn had that romantic moment with
the younger lawyer, because I’m 36 so I grew up with you in
sexy roles, I think that’s how most people think of you, and
I’m curious what do you like better, what’s more fun,
playing a mom or playing the sexy roles?
L. Thompson: Well, moms are sexy, that’s how they got into
that predicament in the first place. (laughs)
Moderator: Good answer. Good answer.
L. Thompson: And I’ve been playing moms, you know, since I
was 21, so it’s just different aspects of moms. But I do
like the idea of representing the honest truth about women
in that they are mothers but they also still have some spark
left in them and they still have a lot of drama and
excitement, I mean, everyone knows that. So I just really
like playing real people or well-rounded characters, and
that usually includes romance and all of that. I like that
they let me do that, have that moment, because I always
tease, we all tease Constance Marie because she has such
gorgeous men all the time. And I’m like, you are definitely
a fantasy for all those housewives out there, to imagine
that they could have this line-up of hunks all going, please
love me, please love me. She’s the luckiest girl on TV, I’ve
got to say.
Moderator: Do you enjoy dramatic or comedy more? And has
comedy always come easy to you?
L. Thompson: No, comedy’s the hardest thing in the world. But
one of the things I really love about Switched at Birth is
that D.W. Moffett, Constance Marie, and I are well known for
our comedy chops and the fact that Lizzy Weiss cast us was,
I thought, a really great sign for the future, because there
is a light touch to Switched at Birth, I think. And I’m not
really fond of people who don’t have a sense of humor, so I
like that our characters, even though there’s a lot of drama
and a lot of crying and getting angry and all that, there is
still a light touch and a sense of comedy and that all the
characters do have a sense of humor, and of course Vanessa
Marano is hilarious, she’s like the funniest person I know,
she plays Bay on the show, and so that’s one of the things I
like about the show. And those procedurals or cop
procedurals, I think I’d really have a hard time doing that
because everyone’s so serious all the time. At least we get
to kind of make fun of ourselves, which is just how I like
people to be in general. I hope that answers your question.
Moderator: What do you find the most challenging?
L. Thompson: On the show? The most challenging thing is
learning the sign language, and not just learning the sign
language but translating the sign language because it
doesn’t exactly translate, which is something everyone
should always know about other languages, is that there’s no
perfect, direct translation. So when we’re trying to take
lines that we’re speaking and signing they’re usually
different, you’re not saying exactly what you’re saying, so
that becomes challenging and learning the sign language. And
of course if you do it too much when you’re not used to it,
it hurts your hands and arms.
Moderator: Do your daughters watch Switched at Birth? And
what do they think of the show?
L. Thompson: My daughters love ABC Family and they love the
show. And they’re always squealing, and it’s really fun, we
all get in my bed and watch the show, which is really fun. I
love that it’s a show that they like to watch. They’re 17
and 21, and they’re both actresses, and so it’s just great.
And they’re fans of all the actors and they geek out, and
it’s really, really awesome.
Moderator: There are so many twists and turns on Switched at
Birth, do the writers let you know what’s going on ahead of
time, or do you find out these surprises as you get each
script?
L. Thompson: They do not tell us what is going to happen
ever. And the only reason that Lizzy Weiss, the creator,
doesn’t tell us is because she loves watching us go, Oh, I
can’t believe that happened. She really just literally gets
some kind of sadistic pleasure out of it, I don’t know, and
so it makes for fun. And also always the re-dos, because we
always do a re-do, it’s always really fun, sometimes we
don’t get the script until right when we’re going to read it
through and so we’re right there. What’s nice about it is
that we can understand how much fun it is for the fans to
discover these things as they happen.
Moderator: That’s awesome that you guys are kind of
experiencing it in a way kind of like we are as watching it.
L. Thompson: Exactly, exactly. And you know, I don’t know how
she does it, I don’t know how they come up with such
fantastic surprises all the time, but they do, they do. They
keep everybody interested. And there’s always some kind of
new fabulous, gorgeous guy coming on the show, which we all
appreciate.
Moderator: Your character, Kathryn, has a daughter who was
switched at birth and now in real life how would you react
and how would you handle it if you found out one of your
real daughters had been switched at birth?
L. Thompson: Well, that’s a tough question. I think I
probably would react in a lot of the same ways as Kathryn. I
think I would try to get to know my daughter and get to know
her world. I love family. I love the idea of family. And I
try to do whatever I can to keep my family close to the rest
of my family, so I think it would be so difficult. One of
the things that Kathryn deals with is that she made a
terrible mistake. She didn’t know that she was taking the
wrong baby home. She didn’t recognize her own baby. So her
whole idea of what a good mother she is, is totally rocked.
And I can relate to that. I think a lot of women blame
themselves for everything, and so I think Kathryn really
blames herself, but she instantly loves the daughter she
gave birth to, and certainly loves the daughter that she
raised. What I think is interesting about the show is how
they stay in their families, they stay with the people that
they were raised by. Even though we live together we stay
pretty close to the people we raised, which I think is
really how it would be. And even though people don’t know
somebody that was switched at birth, most families have some
contact with either someone who was adopted or they were
adopted and then they meet their parents, or they have egg
donors, or they’re step-children. Our idea of what is family
is always evolving and is it nature or is it nurture, so I
think that’s what makes the show so viable and interesting
to people, one of the things.
Moderator: We were talking about your daughters, you’ve got a
daughter named Zoey that starred on Disney Channel in
several episodes of Suite Life playing Maya.
L. Thompson: Right.
Moderator: Will we be seeing her back on Disney Channel any
time soon?
L. Thompson: I don’t know. She just did a movie called
Beautiful Creatures that’s coming out in February with
Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, and my other daughter,
Madelyn Deutch, is doing a movie called The Wild Ride, about
the Kentucky Derby, with Skeet Ulrich. So they’re both
acting. I hope they’re going to be on the Disney Channel
soon, but I don’t know. They’re both working now.
Moderator: Zoey was incredible on The Suite Life and she
takes right after her mother as a great actress.
L. Thompson: Oh, bless your heart. Thank you so much. I’ll
tell her you said that.
Moderator: Would you return to Broadway? And if so, what role
would you play today?
L. Thompson: I would love to. And the one part, which I would
never get, is I’d love to play Mama Rose in Gypsy, you know
that great part, that’s one part I’d like to play. But you
know what, I love acting on stage, so I sure hope I get
another great part. I did Sally Bowles in Cabaret on
Broadway for many months, and that was one of the great
experiences of my life. They actually let me sing a little
tiny bit in Switched at Birth this season, whatever part of
the season that’s coming up.
Moderator: How do you think Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Simon
Cowell comment to you about your dancing shaped your life
today?
L. Thompson: Well, Mikhail Baryshnikov, I was auditioning for
ABT and he said, “We’d love to have you, you’re a lovely
dancer, but you’re too stocky.” And then I was very sad
because I was very thin, and then I quit dancing. I just
walked out and I quit dancing, and then I became an actress
right away. So it definitely changed my life for the
positive, because I’m by far a way more successful actress
than I would have been as a dancer. The main thing I got
from that was that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger, but also that sometimes the thing you think is the
worst thing in your life is actually the best thing. So it’s
an important thing to try to remember when you’re in the
depths of some kind of horrible depression, that whatever
happened to you might be the best thing that ever happened
to you. You just never know, there’s always a greater plan
and we’re perhaps not wise enough to know what it is.
Moderator: What has been the most challenging aspect of being
a mom in today’s generation with social media and
technology, Lea?
L. Thompson: Well, I don’t really know how to be a mom in any
other way, but I’ve tried to stay up on things so that I
could know what my kids were talking about and what they’re
doing online and Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff and
understanding why they like it, and then understanding what
to warn them about. But I think it’s always been hard to
stay honest with your kids and warn them of the real
consequences to the things that they do. I think it’s easy
for them to forget, or not want to know the consequences of
what they’re going to do. But I think ... for me when I
inform them of the real problems and the real dangers of
what’s going on, I think they get it and it’s only when you
don’t understand that they’re, I don’t know, for me I just
was really honest with them about why they shouldn’t post a
picture of themselves doing this or doing that, you know.
But it’s a different world, and no one’s really sure about
how it all ends up. But if you use these kinds of things in
a positive way, then they can be useful to you in creating
community and work.
Moderator: How has the cast relationship has evolved over the
past couple of seasons?
L. Thompson: They’re just the best people. I just love them.
Constance makes me laugh every day. Vanessa is the funniest,
smartest girl, we call her 911, and we always go, “Thirty
years in the business,” like pretending we’re smoking a
cigar. She’s just so professional and so interested and so
smart and funny, witty. And then Lucas Grabeel has got this
heart of gold, he’s so talented. It’s such a joy I get to
sing a tiny little song with him in the show, and it was
like such a great moment for me. He’s a very special person.
And then D.W. Moffett’s hilarious and we just get along like
a house on fire. And then Katie Leclerc is the most
beautiful, funniest, kindest person I know, so I feel really
blessed.
The young girls, you know, this is a hit show, we won
awards, it’s getting a lot of attention, and they’ve never
let it go to their heads. They’re just professional, happy
to have a job, committed, but not difficult to work with. We
all come in, if we have to cry we don’t have to make things
difficult for each other, we just cry. But when you have to
go to work and you have to work for 12 hours and you’re in a
relationship that could last for many, many years it’s such
a blessing to be with such nice people. I really couldn’t
ask for a better crew, and especially because we’re doing
drama it’s really fun that everyone’s got a nice sense of
humor.
Moderator: Certainly technology has evolved over the years.
And you also, of course, mentioned Twitter a lot, I’m
wondering, if Twitter was around during your Some Kind of
Wonderful days or Back to the Future days is that something
that you think you would get more instant feedback from
fans, or would you have liked to communicate with fans that
way, or were you maybe more private?
L. Thompson: That was a definitely different time, and I
think this is the same for ridiculously famous people, you
were separated from your fans. You weren’t supposed to talk
to them for fear you’ll say something stupid, which I do
every day. But it always felt uncomfortable to me. I really
like people. I really like getting a sense of the pulse of
what’s going on and what they’re feeling.
I like Twitter because most of the time people are pretty
kind and it’s not anonymous really, so people aren’t that
gross thing when people are anonymous hiding behind a fake
name. It’s just not natural. It’s wrong. If people are going
to say something, do you know what I mean, they should say
it. It’s bad enough if you can’t look at someone in the eye,
but if they’re just saying mean things and hiding behind a
fake name it’s very cowardly. But Twitter doesn’t feel like
that. It feels like people are generally polite, and so I
enjoy that interaction and I enjoy Instagram even more than
Facebook and all that. I actually get business done. I was
doing radio interviews today, and one of them, we missed
one. And he tweeted me like, “Are you okay?” and then I was
like “Oh, I’m sorry we missed you,” and I got his number and
I called him. So I didn’t make an enemy. I kept an
interview, so it’s actually a really interesting way to
communicate.
Does that answer your question? Also, sometimes famous
people that I know, they’ll communicate with me and we’ll
say hey, and they’ll say, do you want to do this charity,
and I’ll say, oh, sure. And it’s a really good way to
communicate, I think, at least right now for me.
Moderator: I’m hoping since Eric Stoltz has been working on
Glee a little bit with doing some directing he may coerce
you somehow to come over and do an episode so we can hear
some more singing from you too.
L. Thompson: Oh, I would ... any day, yes, that would be
awesome. I love Glee and I love Eric. And I think it’s
really funny that he’s a director, but I guess we all grew
up. I’m a director too. Thank you, though. You tell him to
put me on that show.
Moderator: Oh, he’s on Twitter, you tell him.
L. Thompson: I know. I have talked to him on Twitter, that’s
true.
Moderator: Around the office here we have a consensus, we
think Kathryn might be the best mom on TV right now as far
as what’s realistic, but also she’s really good at it, she’s
got a lot of stuff coming her way. So I imagine for an
actress portraying that character it’s kind of a
responsibility. Do you have fans who ask you for parenting
advice and how do you respond to that?
L. Thompson: I think she is a nice mom, Kathryn, because I
think she really tries to open up her mind and really see
the kids’ point of view. Like I was saying earlier in the
interview I thought she was the bad guy at first, but then I
realized she wasn’t. I think she also has a really soft and
deep love for people, and compassion, so I think those are
qualities that we’d all like in a mom. And in terms of
parenting advice, I personally have two children, so I have
nothing but respect and admiration for moms. I know what a
difficult job it is. So more than advice I usually just have
empathy for other moms and how much you have to grow as your
children grow and how you have to keep accepting them as
different people. As they get older and older you have to
accept them as they change and realize that they have their
own path and that they’re not like just an extension of you,
that they are actually real, whole people that have their
own journey, and you know that can be really hard to do. It
means that you have to keep growing as they grow. So I guess
that’s my advice, but I don’t know. You make a lot of
mistakes you have to forgive yourself for too when you’re a
mom, because you’re just a person yourself. But it’s
interesting, I’ve been playing a mom since I was 21, and
moms are just people, they’re all different and they have
different ways of doing it.
Moderator: I know from experience that the ABC Family
audience, they’re sort of in a league of their own as far as
their fandom, and I’m curious if you can share with us one
or two of your most touching or surprising fan interactions
since you started Switched.
L. Thompson: Recently I was on the beach with my kids and my
neighbor, her daughter can’t hear -- she has several other
disabilities, but one of them being that she can’t hear --
and now she’s about 11 and she’s been my neighbor and I’ve
watched this little girl growing through these really
intense disabilities, and as soon as she started being able
to sign she could come out, her personality could come out.
And she recognized me because she loves Switched at Birth
because there’s sign language in it. And it really brought
tears to my eyes to see her and all the other little girls
on the beach who are now learning sign language and learning
it from Switched at Birth so they can communicate with this
little girl who was stuck in her own little world, which was
very frustrating to her. But now she can communicate that
she wanted a picture of me that she can take back to her
school so she could show off that she knew the mom from
Switched at Birth, and it was really touching to me.
So it’s mostly been about that, about how the sign language
and the fact that we’re dealing with these issues that these
people have been facing without a show to help them out with
it, or to make it okay to be deaf and to make it okay to try
to communicate with someone even though you don’t know sign
language exactly, you’re trying, and that’s all that
matters, I think that’s been a really effective and
beautiful experience for a lot of people who felt alone.
That’s been the most beautiful thing about this show. It
really is speaking to an underserved community of people who
are deaf or hard of hearing and making other people
understand about sign language and interested in learning it
themselves.
Moderator: Is there any specific guest star you’d like to see
on the show?
L. Thompson: Brad Pitt, Andrew Garfield. Well, we’re so lucky
to have Gilles, and we’ve had such amazing guest stars. We
had Meredith Baxter playing my mother. I hope she comes
back. I thought she was amazing. And let me think, as the
show grows and is on longer we’ll get more and more
interesting people. I can’t think of anybody that we should
get. I’m sorry. The sky’s the limit.
Moderator: Is there anybody that regardless of whether they
would guest star on the show, though, that you’d really love
to work with, even actors or directors? I’m guessing Brad
Pitt.
L. Thompson: Well, I’m going to go do a movie called Ping
Pong Summer, it sounds like a weird title, but Susan
Sarandon’s going to be in it with me and I’m a big fan of
hers so I’m really excited to be working with her. It’s
always like Christmas for me, it’s like a surprise and I get
to work with such wonderful actors. But I think if I ever
could work with Meryl Streep, who’s in my opinion the
greatest actress of our time, I would love that. That would
be the most amazing thing, because everything she does is so
inspiring. Apparently if you really need someone to cry in
acting class, a girl, you just say Meryl Streep and they
cry, “I’ll never be as good.” But I don’t feel that way. I
just feel like if I could just act with her, because when
you’re acting with somebody you experience them in a
completely different way and it’s always profound. Some part
of them kind of joins you and it’s awesome. So that’s my
answer, my long-winded answer, Meryl Streep.
Moderator: Have there been any plot lines that you might have
wished went in another direction, or do you have any ideas
about how you’d like any of the current plot lines to go?
L. Thompson: I do have my ideas. I think the whole book thing
kind of came from me, because sometimes you give the writer
a little bit of an idea of what you think, and I was really
interested for the people who watch the show in exploring
the idea of a woman whose kids are getting older and she’s
spent her whole life kind of being a housewife and being
second to the husband and the kids and the house and just
being kind of service and all of a sudden she realizes what
is she going to do with the rest of her life now that the
kids are getting older. And so I talked about that because I
feel that myself with my kids being older, and I said, you
know, it would be interesting to see how she blossoms that
way. And they came up with the idea of the book and that she
wants to have a career of her own.
So I like that plot line and I like the idea that Kathryn is
getting a little more Bohemian and a little looser and her
world view is opening up a lot, and I like that. I think
some of the plot lines I would like to have they won’t do
because the character of Kathryn and John, their marriage is
very important to the network, so I would like them to have
really big problems in their marriage, but I don’t think
that’s going to happen.
Moderator: Too much drama, huh?
L. Thompson: I think they like our relationship, and we do
have a really great relationship and we do have great
chemistry. I mean, I think we have really good chemistry,
D.W. and I, as actors.
Moderator: Oh, you do. You definitely do. And the last thing,
do you have any preference about how Bay and Emmett’s story
is going to go?
L. Thompson: I don’t. I think what he did was so terrible I
don’t think Kathryn would want them to get back together,
but she is pretty accepting. And Emmett has been really
trying. He’s been really feeling bad about it. Trust me, I
don’t know. They don’t tell us what’s going to happen.
Moderator: Switched at Birth is on a Disney owned network.
Would you consider doing other Disney projects, and what
would be your dream Disney project that you’d love to do?
L. Thompson: My dream Disney project that I would love to do,
I would love to be a singing voice in one of the animated
movies. I never have done that. And I love singing. I would
love to be some kind of grand singing witch or something,
you know? So that would be mine, something that I could sing
in Disney. I think they do those movies so well and I
remember my children always having to have the Beauty and
the Beast dress, and The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid
was my favorite movie of theirs and so it just has a really
strong place in my heart. I think that some kind of singing
role for a Disney animated movie would be my dream.
Moderator: Maybe they can create you a new character,
Princess Lea.
L. Thompson: Perhaps. Instead of Leia, I could be Lea.
Moderator: What are some other things that surprised you
about your character?
L. Thompson: I love Lizzy Weiss, the creator and the main
writer on the show, I love that she sees both sides of the
coin all the time. She’s a very interesting person. She
should kind of be a lawyer or a debate artist, because she
can definitely see both sides of the argument and write them
so that they’re both right, and that’s a beautiful thing for
an actor and for a person to think about. So there’s been a
few surprises. I’m actually surprised at how inclusive she
is and I’m surprised that when she gets mad sometimes she
lets me get really mad and I’m surprised at that, and I’m
really surprised at how she can grow. She definitely has
grown a lot. There’s been a really good arc for her
character, and for someone who’s been so sheltered and her
world has been very small and closed in, she’s got an
ability to move outside of the box and write her book, I
mean, this crazy thing of writing her own book, that’s
crazy. I wish I would get to that. I wish Lea Thompson would
do that. So that was a big surprise. And of course at the
end of these eight episodes there’s a big surprise at the
trial that Kathryn does that I was very surprised about.
Moderator: What is one surprising thing that you, being in
Hollywood that other people might not about that kind of
world?
L. Thompson: One of the interesting things is that the more
that I’ve seen the more famous you get the more miserable
you get. It’s a very hard world to live in and I think it’s
even worse now with everybody having a camera. I think that
that and if you believe your own publicity it’s just misery.
Those are some of the things I’ve learned in Hollywood.
Also, honestly, if you do good things, good work, work that
you’re proud of from your own perspective, from inside your
own self, it doesn’t matter if five people see it or a
million people see it. If you do good work the way it feels
inside of you is no different. It’s completely the same. And
every single little decision you make, every single time
that you’re nice to people as opposed to being mean to
people, it all adds up to how you feel about yourself and
how happy you are. So that’s a surprise, because from the
outside it seems like you’re only happy when you’re
successful, but the truth is you’re only happy when you’re
doing good work and being a good person. So those are
surprises in Hollywood. Does that make any sense?
Moderator: Oh yes.
L. Thompson: Having been in Hollywood for 30 years, that’s
how I perceive it. It’s like anything, though, what you put
into it is what you take out of it. I just feel like I’ve
been always interested in doing good work no matter what the
medium is or how much money I’m making or how many people
are going to see it, and that’s paid off for me.
L. Thompson: Also about the book! Kathryn Kennish wrote it,
not me, but the character of Kathryn Kennish wrote this
book, which is very interesting, especially for big fans of
Switched at Birth, and it’s out today in various online
places. I have my own copy. But for big Switched at Birth
fans it’s very interesting and nicely written. So there you
go, I talked about the book.
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