“Just being an actor, frankly can be a bit boring.”
Emilia Clarke talks to Brut about turning producer for the film, “The Pod Generation.”
Emilia Clarke talks to Brut about turning producer for the film, “The Pod Generation.”
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00most, a lot of actors are just waiting for their phone to ring, you know, which feels very passive,
00:06clearly not that kind of person, and very kind of antithetical to
00:14to being a creative individual. So until you realize that you yourself can have those
00:20relationships with the creative people in charge of making things, then just being an actor
00:28frankly can be a bit boring, for want of a better word. You know, you do a big thing,
00:33you're sitting on set for hours with nothing to do and with no say, and so being able to be
00:40a producer, I knew it would be something that would be so much more fulfilling and make me feel
00:46so much more present in the industry that I was in and give me more onus to be able to speak openly
00:54about the projects that I was a part of. So what are some of the challenges that you face in
00:59juggling those two roles and was there anything that was surprising that you learned while on set?
01:06I mean, it's, yeah, all of my friends are actors and I have lovely friendships with directors as
01:14well. So there was this analogy someone gave me once of like, you're at a wedding and the director
01:23is the mother of the bride and the producer is the party planner and then the actor is the drunk
01:30uncle that turns up and like does a dumb speech and then falls off the table. Do you know what
01:33I mean? So like, you're kind of, all of those different roles kind of feel very accurate now
01:39where you're like, as an actor there is, you have such a singular thing that you have to do and I
01:45think that it can, it's very easy for people to infantilize actors, you know, so much is done for
01:53us and I again, I always balk at that idea, I always feel very awkward about it and so being
02:00able to truly understand exactly how much goes into making a film, how much goes into making
02:07a production, the list is endless. So in Hollywood, I read that women make up only about a third.
02:14It's mental. Of producers. How do you think having more women in behind-the-scenes roles
02:20can move storytelling forward? Absolutely it can. I mean, I'm not going to go through all the
02:25cliches of like, women do it quicker and cheaper and faster, but being able to have
02:35different points of view in creating a piece of art are integral to that piece of art being good
02:42and worthy and important. You have to. We cannot make things in a vacuum. If you relate to any
02:49gender, any pronoun, whatever it is, each of us can live in an echo chamber and each of us, thanks to
02:58algorithms, can feel like the world is catered just to us. But when you're making art, it's
03:05when you're making art, you have a duty. Yes, a duty of care to the people that you're
03:12that you're giving your work to. As a child, I watched TV. I watched films. I absorbed them. I
03:19related to them. They made me feel alone or they made me feel better or they made me feel seen and
03:24I think it's incredibly important that we take that carefully and that we examine that fully
03:32and that we allow ourselves to speak to every type of human being out there, every type of
03:38experience, because that prevents us from ever becoming stagnant. It should help bridge the
03:47divide that we're living in in society right now, globally. First world, third world, whatever it is.
03:54The extremes are so large. Art has a place to bridge that divide and to move people to feel
04:03emotional about different people's experiences. And so therefore you move through the world with
04:09an empathy for others and with an understanding for others and with the time to be able to consider
04:16other people's points of views and have them be heard. And I think it's vital.
04:23you