This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Actress Gaby Hoffmann relives 1980s New York in Netflix’s ‘Eric’’
Lilah Raptopoulos
This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. The new Netflix series Eric, which is out on May 30th, takes place on the gritty streets of New York in the 1980s. The subways are tagged, the clubs are seedy, the corruption is rampant. And one day a little boy named Edgar gets lost. Edgar’s parents fight a lot, and life isn’t easy at home. And after he disappears, his father, mother and a missing persons officer spend six episodes trying to find him. Edgar’s father is an, let’s say, unstable creative genius played by Benedict Cumberbatch. His mother is played by Gaby Hoffman. Gaby is from New York, too. She also grew up in the 80s in the famed Chelsea Hotel. Her mother was a muse to Andy Warhol. She starred in many of his films. And Gaby was a child star in movies like Now and Then, Uncle Buck and Sleepless in Seattle. Gaby returned to acting in adulthood. She starred in Transparent and Obvious Child in Girls, and more. Gaby’s performance in Eric is extremely memorable, and she’s with us today. Gaby, welcome to the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you.
Gaby Hoffmann
Thank you so much. How are you?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Well, thanks. How are you?
Gaby Hoffmann
I’m still speaking, although somewhat incomprehensibly after a week of talking about the show.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I can imagine. And to place us, we’re on video, you’re actually in London. I’m in New York, and, you’re at a press junket. Is that right?
Gaby Hoffmann
Yes, that’s right.
Lilah Raptopoulos
In a hotel. Can you explain that for our audiences?
Gaby Hoffmann
A press junket? You sit in a hotel room in the dark with false fake lighting instead of the natural sunlight that could be coming in through the window starting in about 9am. And you sit in that room until probably 1pm, and then you have a lunch break, maybe for an hour, and then you go back into the room for many other hours. And every five minutes, a new person comes into the room or on to the screen virtually and asks you basically the same questions. So it’s certainly a lovely privileged day to be living. It’s weird and it’s exhausting and it’s cool. And you get to talk a lot about a show, in this case, a show that there’s a lot to say about. So it can be quite fun. Although at some point you start sounding and feeling like a dream within a dream within a dream. And it can be very confusing. And I’m in that state now, so good luck to us all.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I can imagine.
Gaby Hoffmann
Good luck to us all.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you very much. It’s before lunch. I imagine it’s towards the middle of the day for you. OK. So any time you feel like that or like a robot, just, like, let me know and I’ll try to ask you a different question, OK? But that’s just some behind the scenes for our listeners. OK. So, why don’t we start with this: I would love to try to see the show through your eyes with the time that we have together. And I really don’t want to over-emphasise the similarities between this show and your childhood. I know you’re asked all the time about being raised in the Chelsea Hotel, etc, but you did grow up at a similar time as Edgar in a creative family. And I’m curious what appealed to you when you read the script, like as you were deciding to be a part of this, what made you feel like, yes, this feels interesting or right?
Gaby Hoffmann
I started reading the scripts after getting, you know, sort of the bullet points of who, what and where. And I had a moment of hesitation, to be honest, when I realised it would be playing a mother whose child has gone missing. I didn’t know if I wanted to enter into that world as a mother myself. But as I kept reading, first of all, the writing is quite extraordinary by the magnificent Abby Morgan. And so I couldn’t stop reading. I had that sort of initial mysterious gestalty-like marriage in another world with my character Cassie that I can’t explain why these things happen. Obviously, when there’s good writing, that’s a huge part of it. But sometimes it’s just an energetic, almost like a spiritual thing where I feel like, oh, I have to play this woman. It’s almost a magical thread that is pulling you towards something that you just feel compelled to do. Like I said, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to enter that world. But then as I kept reading and I understood that we were really going to be making what I see as a fable about what happens when we don’t take proper care of our children, what we need to do about that, I then felt like, oh yeah, this is a story that I want to tell. And then the question was just to my husband, do you want to go to Budapest for five months and homeschool the kids?
Lilah Raptopoulos
It was filmed in Budapest?
Gaby Hoffmann
Yeah. So we filmed the first four months in Budapest, and then the last month in New York City.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow. OK. I felt similar when I watched this show in that I sat down to watch an episode of it, and then watched the whole thing in a day.
Gaby Hoffmann
Oh, wow. That’s crazy.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I really loved it. I haven’t had something pull me like that in quite a long time, and part of what kept me attached to it was not just to find out, you know, what happened, but also there was a real tenderness to it. Your character, Cassie, had such an intimate relationship to Edgar. And when you, you know, I felt like the panic.
Gaby Hoffmann
Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
What’s the process of finding a character like that in you?
Gaby Hoffmann
I don’t. I’ve never had a process, and I’m always sort of just like diving into the deep end when I arrive on set. And I’ve never taken an acting class or gone to school or anything, so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, so I just sort of show up. But I’ve always sort of wished I did have a way to engage with the character before showing up on set, and I never really knew how to do that.
So this time I followed the advice of a friend of mine, a wonderful, gorgeous actress named Maggie Siff, and I spoke to a woman that she had worked with years before. This fantastic woman named Julie Ariola, who is an acting teacher. And we just sat and talked about Cassie in a way that one would talk about a real person. Sort of analysed her psychologically and sort of mused about her emotionally and psychically and spiritually. And just, I really started kind of just inviting her into my consciousness and thinking about her before I went to bed and all this stuff that, like I’d heard other actors talk about. But I was like, what’s that? I didn’t really know what it would bring or not, but I felt like by the time I put on the costume, that I already had been in a dance with her for a while.
So once I had my hair and make-up and entered into that world, that set again on a soundstage in Budapest, I actually started weeping the second I stepped into that apartment because, well, the nostalgia of New York in the 80s, even though that apartment was much nicer than the one I grew up in, it was so real, so vivid. And just the world of this woman, it was already quite real for me.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Who was she to you as you sort of psychoanalysed her like a friend or someone who was alive or if you were to explain her to somebody? Who is she in your mind?
Gaby Hoffmann
Well, it was a couple of years ago now, so it would be hard for me to really remember what my thoughts were about her then. I now have had this, you know, experience of inhabiting her and then watching the show. So my feelings now are more shaped by that probably. Really, all the characters in the show are going through a sort of dark night of the soul journey. You know, we’re finding them in a real place of darkness and confusion and loss, and then the disappearance of Edgar forces a reckoning of those realities, really looking at, in brutal honesty, where everybody is. At that time in their lives and what they’re afraid of and what they’re resisting or avoiding and, like crises do, they force changes that need to happen that we wouldn’t otherwise make happen until we have to pass through that kind of ring of fire.
So I see Cassie as being a woman who’s kind of unable to be the parent she wants to be, to be the person she wants to be, because she’s in a marriage that is full of dysfunction and dishonesty. And so I think we do find Cassie in a sort of a traumatised state and that she’s paralysed I think on some level by that and unable to jump into action in a way that she needs for herself, but really her child needs until his disappearance.
Lilah Raptopoulos
There’s this scene, Gaby, of you dancing and smoking in the middle of the living room when your son is lost. And, like, oof, I just, I was, it was very moving. Quite memorable. I just wanted to ask if you could tell me about that scene, how it felt to you, if it stuck with you as it stuck with me?
Gaby Hoffmann
Yeah. So, there’s actually kind of an incredible story here. One of the things I did that I had never done before was I started listening to music prior to filming that, for whatever reason, reminded me of Cassie. Maybe two months before we started filming, I started listening. I made a little playlist for Cassie, and like three songs on that playlist were Joan Armatrading songs. And I sent the playlist to Lucy Forbes.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And Lucy is . . .?
Gaby Hoffmann
Lucy Forbes, the magnificent, brilliant, beautiful, fantastic, lovely woman who also happened to be our director, Lucy Forbes. And then we were in rehearsals. I mean, we were just sitting around talking about the scenes and the characters, and we felt that there was a moment that was missing for Cassie where we really wanted to, yeah, just kind of be with her alone in her apartment as she’s absorbing everything and have that intimate moment with her. And what would that be? And what if she’s just kind of puts on a record and is just there moving around or not, but just alone and quiet in her apartment? So I thought, that sounds great, let’s do that. And then one day Lucy came over to me and said, so remember that dance scene that we talked about? I said, oh yeah. She said, we have a free hour. You want to try to do it right now? And I said, yeah, let’s do it. And she said, OK, what about a Joan Armatrading song? And I said, great. But she had chosen one that actually wasn’t on my original playlist, but another Joan Armatrading song that I love.
[‘LOVE AND AFFECTION’ BY JOAN ARMATRADING PLAYING]
So we shoot the scene. I think we did about three times, like, played the whole song and kind of moved around to it. Different stuff. Our wonderful DP who kind of followed me around in this intuitive dance and it was a wonderful, extraordinary experience. Then a couple of days later, we’re all out to dinner and Clarke Peters, who plays George, who’s a just extraordinary actor, is sitting at one end of the table with Lucy and my husband Chris, and I’m sitting at the other end of the table and suddenly there’s like uproar and they say, Gaby, come down here, you’ve got to come down here. And I walked down to that end of the table. And I guess Lucy had just been telling Clark about this scene that we had shot. Turns out Clark Peters is the male singer on that track. I nearly fell over. I was so blown away. And Clark and I had just spent that week in between kind of bonding and talking about everything, and just, I had fallen in love with him. And then to hear that he was, you know, 50 years ago that that that was him, it was a really magical moment.
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s incredible.
Gaby Hoffmann
Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow. It’s so nuts when those things happen. It feels otherworldly.
Gaby Hoffmann
I know, it’s so cool.
[UNTOLD TRAILER PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Gaby, I would love to ask you a little bit about New York. You mentioned that walking into that apartment, that sort of 80s apartment, even though it was a set in Budapest, is that right? Which is bizarre. It felt so New York to me. That scene felt so New York. It kind of blows my mind that it wasn’t there. You said it was, like, quite affecting to you. What was it like just to be back in New York in the 80s?
Gaby Hoffmann
Well, oddly, I grew up in New York in the 80s in the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street and down the street halfway down the block, what is now a heinous, massive cineplex, lived a group of Hungarian families called the Squat Theatre, and they came from Budapest to New York City in 1979. They were our best friends, mine and my sister. And so I grew up in New York in the 80s, surrounded by Hungarians. So actually, weirdly, being in Budapest, in New York, surrounded by Hungarians felt totally natural and normal. You know, New York is very different than it was 40 years ago. I really miss the city of those days. It was fun to revisit it, and it was unexpectedly emotional because everybody did such a beautiful job. It was stepping into a dream within a dream within a dream, which is often how this work feels.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You said for that last month you were filming in New York City and on the streets of New York. You’ve talked about how your normal day to day as a kid in New York when you lived at the Chelsea Hotel was kind of hanging out with misfits and junkies because that’s who lived in New York back then in downtown or in that area. And you were around Edgar’s age. How was Edgar’s New York the same or different to yours?
Gaby Hoffmann
I think Edgar’s New York is pretty similar to mine. To me, this show is really about what happens when our institutions fail. Our institutions of government and city hall and the police department become corrupted by greed and power and our intimate institutions of family and marriage become corrupted by trauma, which leads to mental illness, addiction and so on and so forth. You know, of course, also with the racism, hom*ophobia that the show is grappling with. What happens when we’re not held and protected by those bodies is our children get lost. Literally. Figuratively. We get lost as individuals and as a society. And that was true to some extent in my childhood in New York as it is in the show. But I have to say, it feels almost more true today. And when I walk around New York City today, I have to say I see more desperation and suffering than I ever did as a child. I’ve been scared on the street in New York City for the first time in my life in the past couple of years. I think that Edgar’s New York City and my New York City and the city of today are all experiencing the consequences of a dysfunctional society, and that is something that we need to look at and we need to contend with.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. The show was very good at depicting that when neighbourhoods are unsafe, it’s the system’s fault for not protecting or investing in people. It’s not the people’s fault. I agree, I see that in New York today, too quite vividly. I also wanted to ask you about the racism and hom*ophobia depicted on the show, Gaby. You know, this show took place during the Aids epidemic, and you were a kid around that time. You were being raised among artists and creatives, a ton of LGBT people. I imagine it was really diverse. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind reflecting a little on living in a community that was that open at a time when the mainstream mentality was really not?
Gaby Hoffmann
Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I was aware of any other reality other than the one I was living in. I mean, that was my daily life, which was I left the Chelsea Hotel and I walked down 23rd Street and passed what we then called the bums on the street. Now, you’re not allowed to use that word, but it was a term of endearment. They were my buddies I passed every day. And I got on the subway or the bus, and I went down to the West Village, where there was a gay p*rn shop on the corner of my school. And my friends were as diverse as you can imagine. And everybody was the child of an artist of some kind or another, and that was the world that I knew. And it made sense to me. And it was beautiful, and it was fraught and it was difficult and it was glorious. It wasn’t until I was older that I realised what a unique upbringing I had, and how I was brought up in a world where I wasn’t really aware of hom*ophobia, to be honest. I wasn’t really aware of how racist the country at large was, because those were the communities I was surrounded by.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
So, Gaby, I wanted to ask you, you know, you left acting after many years as a child actor and came back to it as an adult. And in 2016, you did an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and she asked you, what do you like now about acting that you didn’t realise was part of acting before? And you answered, I still don’t quite know exactly, but ask me again in a few years. You said you were just starting to think about it, but it’s been about six years and I kind of wanted to ask you that question now. Are there things that you like now about acting that you didn’t realise were part of acting before when you were acting as a child?
Gaby Hoffmann
I don’t know what I was doing as a child, but I don’t think it has anything to do with what I’m doing now. I think when I was a child, I was performing something that I thought was being asked of me to perform. And I don’t think of myself as a performer now. I’m really bad at pretending. You know, I always say that acting is such a privilege because when you go to work, you get to dive deeper into your humanity and instead of having to suppress it, which so many people have to do to keep their jobs, which is a violence to the human spirit as far as I’m concerned. So I feel like it is just another opportunity to be curious and investigate what it means to be living this human life and to be in communion with one another, not just on the set, but hopefully with your audience. To try to reflect back to people something familiar to help them navigate their own lives and experiences, to be able to confront states of grief and fear and rage and joy and love in new ways that can further inform my own life and thus make me a better parent and lover and friend and citizen. To be a sort of spelunker into the depths of the human soul and hopefully come back up with some treasure troves that might be helpful.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
I’ve been thinking about how if you know about 10 per cent about something, the whole world just opens up to you in a new way. Like you learn a tiny bit about playing an instrument or learning a language or weaving or drawing or wine. I don’t know what it is to be an actor. Many of our listeners aren’t actors, but we watch actors all the time. And when you were talking about spelunking into the depths and coming up with something, I feel like there’s something in there that we should be paying attention to as viewers when we’re watching film or TV that might change the way we think or unlock something or change how we watch. Is there anything about what you do or acting that we should know?
Gaby Hoffmann
Well, I think that we all live sort of trapped in a strange prison of our . . . what we think of as our fixed identities. I don’t buy into that. I think we all have access to an expanse of state of self, of being, and that in that there is liberation. And that’s what I get to try to explore when I’m at work and what I try to explore in my own life. And what I find as a viewer when I’m watching somebody who’s offering a little bit of themselves and telling a story is that it helps me to find that expansiveness within myself. And that’s really what I hope we’re doing, offering a sort of guiding hand, a spirit guide, if you will, a sort of Virgil into netherworlds or however you like to think about it, and inviting people deeper into themselves. The vibe I have, if I’ve had a good day at work, I’ve discovered that what I might have thought was a corner of myself is in fact not a corner, but a doorway into a whole new room. So if I’m lucky, I’m able to do that once in a while.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, my last question for you, Gaby, this question I ask a lot of creative people, which is when do you feel most creatively fulfilled? At what point in the process?
Gaby Hoffmann
I think that when I’ve stumbled into a discovery that is surprising. When I felt something moved in some way, or said something with the tone of voice that surprises me and takes me again into some new territory. That’s very exciting because, the self gets bigger and the world gets bigger. And to me, that’s what’s creatively fulfilling is going, oh, that’s not the edge. There’s more.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I love that the self gets bigger and the world gets bigger. Gaby, thank you so much for your time. It was really such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Gaby Hoffmann
Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s really nice to spend this time with you.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Appreciate it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend, the culture podcast from the Financial Times. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you don’t and take a read through the show notes. We have linked to everything mentioned today there, and all our links that take you to the FT will get you past the paywall. The show Eric comes out on Netflix May 30th. Also in the show notes is a discount to a subscription to the Financial Times and ways to stay in touch with me on email and on Instagram. I really love hearing from you. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s my brilliant team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Kyra Assibey-Bonsu is our contributing producer and produced this episode. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer. And our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely week and we’ll find each other again on Friday.
