Full transcript: Rose McGowan on London Real
6:16 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Rose McGowan, the activist, author, and director. After an acting career in Hollywood, to spend two decades, you went public with allegations of abuse against Harvey Weinstein. This became central and exposing the systemic harassment in the entertainment industry that shook the world and led to the MeToo movement.
6:33 Your book Brave chronicles your journey from childhood to Hollywood and your mission to reclaim your life and encourage people to question the power structures around them. Rose, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me. It’s great having you. I want to continue the conversation we were having earlier, which was cool.
6:48 How was London treating you? London has been very gentle with me. Okay, and I’ve been really grateful for that. I needed the last couple years were really really really hard, and I thought I needed a place where they a cup of tea will take away some of your troubles. You were just in Oxford yesterday.
7:09 How do people react to you here? You know, I mean, it must be like you must be thinking, I wonder what the UK is gonna be like. How does it feel? What do people say to you? I don’t know.
7:19 People are very pretty cool customers here. They’re not, they’re not. I get stopped about once or twice a day, just a woman or a man who says thank you or says something really cool or shares with their story with me, but it’s not like people running after you down the streets. It’s different it’s a different kind of fame, and I appreciate that, right? Different from the LA vibe, different from the LA vie, and different than New York.
7:48 Difference in New York even. Yeah. At New York there’s something about America that always feels, I love America but it doesn’t feel exactly like the safest place, and maybe it hasn’t been the safest place for me. Mmm so it’s probably just experience, but it’s kind of a triggering place for me, and this feels safer here. Yes.
8:10 Yeah, it is safe. I know they talked about knife crimes being on the uptick and all that, and that’s terrible, but it almost sounds quaint when you compare it with mass shootings. Yeah. I find London to be really user friendly and safe, and if you can get past four, I take the two. Yeah.
8:26 I love it. She was amazing. She was amazing. Gets you where you want to go, like that, and it’s much easier to navigate the New York subway, which I’ve still not mastered. Yeah, and you’re not far from me now, so no, want to hang out green, really North London.
8:40 You know, I was learning more about you, and I got a flashback to a point in my life in 1991 where I took a road trip from Los Angeles where I was working as an aerospace engineer to MIT, where I was going to school in Boston. It was a seven-day road trip, and I went with two of my buddies, run him off of my fraternity brothers, in one of their Camaros, and I had the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I was in the backseat, and there was no internet back then or mobile phones, so I read that for seven days. It’s an incredible book.
9:08 I was captivated and I would not only read it, and I would tell this, you guys, what was happening in Malcolm’s life, and I was really inspired by what he did, and he has this really well-known phrase, which is “by any means necessary.” Yes, and I’ve been known to have some anger issues as a kid, and I remember you saying that you kind of respected Malcolm because he taught you that anger got things done. Is that a fair enough? That’s a completely fair assessment, and I think enough accolades cannot be heaped upon, you know, his shoulders or his feet.
9:42 He Malcolm X. His book, I reread it because I read it when I was 11, and I reread the autobiography a few months ago, actually, and I was a hello friend, and it just this beacon, this light, you know, this eye. I think the world would be so different. How do you live? Don’t you?
10:01 Yes. Yes. I think the world would be a really different place, and I think there’s also something that you know, very much, first time, like Black men were not supposed to show anger. They’re supposed to be deferential, and women are generally supposed to be deferential and not show anger, and I don’t really believe in that. I think we can be whatever we want to at any moment we want to be you know, whatever we are, and I don’t see why prescribed societal thought should dictate how we behave, and I don’t think anything’s ever been solved by sitting and thinking about it.
10:41 Sometimes action needs to be taken. It doesn’t make it fun being in the anger spot doesn’t make it pleasant. It’s not good for one’s health. I mean look what happened about max, for God’s sakes. But it does propel things.
10:56 It gets things done, and it’s necessary to all hands. Yeah, you don’t want to be in that state of anger, but you need to be able to go there, not judge yourself for it, but allow it to happen, and flow. Exactly. And that was when I wrote Brave. I was angry, but I was more interested in deprogramming a system that had done its damndest to program.
11:19 I mean, if it was programming me, who has a strong mind, or what’s it doing the other people and that’s kind of what you like to talk about, is question the system, question what we’re all doing, why we’re doing it. You’ve talked about this like tapestry of your own and pulling out and looking what are the synthetic fibers and what are the natural fibers, and who are you, and who is the program that’s being run on you. Exactly. I feel it’s just incumbent upon us, you know.
11:46 We were talking earlier about how we look you know, like, is how you look, are you wearing a suit because you want to or because you’re supposed to, because you’re going to a bank today, you know. Whatever it is, is it your choice? If it’s your choice, cool just make sure it’s your choice. And I think people don’t check in with themselves often enough, and really one of the things I do is I make a list. I’ll make a list of like beliefs, and then subheadings, you know, under that, like my, like a belief system, and try to ferret out whether the belief is mine or whether it’s been something that’s been implanted into me.
12:21 And if it’s been implanted in me, then I can get rid of it. And you have two things that I think are in your benefit from may be telling this whole story one is that you weren’t born in America or you weren’t born in LA, and the second one is you had a very unique childhood. Yes, and I, one of you could share that, cuz I think it helps ya understand your perspectives. I grew up in a really unique way. I think just for the world not outside of a mare, but I grew up in another country.
12:48 I grew up in Italy, but I wasn’t with Italians per se. I was in a multinational cult called Children of God, and my father around the Italian chapter, and we grew up. I was born into it, so there was a very different set of rules. I don’t know what was happening in the rest of the world. I have no idea.
13:08 I don’t know what TV shows were on, or music people were listening to, and I also didn’t know what I looked like, because there was very little important place on what we look like. We were supposed to be raised as super minds and my parents and all of the other parents thought for that, so we had no mirrors, and for the first 10 years, what that gives you is this great freedom to not be a boy or a girl. So imagine getting to ten years old and you don’t subscribe to anything that tells you what you are, other than your own internal feelings, and that I think has put me fundamentally at odds with a lot of society, or at least, you know, like when I butt heads with it, and it also, I think, gives me kind of a superpower.
13:56 I got a grace period, that kind of indoctrination that so many people get, where they have to then think and deprogram themselves, you know, as they go along. I didn’t get that programming. They try to program me with other stuff that didn’t really work either, but you always said you were kind of immune to that. How can you really be immune when you’re 1 to 3 years old? I have a strange child.
14:22 I just came out. I just say, I just, you don’t say. I would watch what they were doing. They’re the cult members, and I just wasn’t matching up with what they were sending in. I just thought, well, if I say I believe in your God this is just to make you feel better.
14:41 Why would I want to make you feel better? It’s a, if I have to lie to make you feel better, then I’m making myself feel bad. So it just struck me as something of a devil’s bargain, and so is never able to tell people what they wanted to hear. Just it would have probably made my life, I guess, easier in the show turn, but I think when you keep giving that part of yourself away that is just to make other people feel better in the short term instead of doing what’s right, you lose yourself.
15:11 So it did give you that bubble, though, to where you could kind of evolve in some kind of a weird, natural way. Yeah, without all these kind of societal stereotypes. Exactly. It’s like growing up in a forest and then being thrown out to America, right? So that happened, texts happen How old were you when you were 10?
15:28 10. So, boom, you go to America and a Navy base. Oh, where was that, you in Washington State? Okay. Yeah, that was some.
15:36 They changed my name from Rosa to Rose, the first day of school and they put my hand on my chest. They made me leave the class in the Pledge of Allegiance, which I refused to do, and the first words that I said in English, I heard the teachers behind me say “We’re gonna get the commie out of her.” And I said, “Italians were fascists.” That’s coordinated, dummy. The Pledge of Allegiance can be a little heavy if you’ve no idea what they were talking about.
16:03 I was like, and they had my hand, and we’re just like forcing it on my chest. Well, they all repeated it, and I, nationalism is something that escapes me entirely. I have no I’m not nationalistic in the least. I don’t feel any. I don’t feel like I have a home, and I don’t feel a great kinship to any land, which kind of makes me sad, but in a lot of ways I think it frees me as well.
16:30 So you walked away from this one cults, and then you kind of gone into America which is a cult. Tell me more about that. Fox News recently, you know, they’re like, “Rose McGowan says America was worse than the cult, she was animal.” Yes, it was. It was harrowing.
16:47 America was not to be, not to be challenged. America did not like to be challenged, and everybody around me wanted things to be done in a very specific way, and I couldn’t. I it seemed, you know, I say in my book Dear America, why is your cheese orange? Why is American cheese? That’s the actual name of it.
17:14 Congealed blob, a fluorescent orange in a plastic wrapping. Does this not say a lot about you? It’s a good question. And so you went from Children of God cults into America, and you’re looking at this like, wait a second. I mean, oh yeah, and everyone was telling me how weird it was how I grew up, and I was like, no, it’s really weird how you live.
17:39 Okay, nationalism the way schools were. Your education was really different, and they called me freak every day. They would throw things at me when I’d walk home. And, not went on for a number of years, and I was just so bored with it, and “You’re the ugliest thing I ever seen,” and I would say, “Saw you, saw me, you did not seen me,” and then you get to Hollywood, which is another kind of cult. It is.
18:05 It took me a while to really figure that one out, but it’s interesting. They say that there’s the 70 percentile something that if you’ve been in one cult, you’ll likely find yourself in another, and I found that statistic really interesting, and I, it was borne out to be true for me. So even though you’re hyper aware, something’s still pulling you to these different places. Why? How do you get your head around that?
18:32 Is that a little scary? It’s meta. Yeah, it’s big. It is a little scary. It’s also when you’re used to really intense mall but intense power structures it seems there’s a familiarity to that, and I think that’s what kind of, you know, I didn’t go there trying to be famous.
18:54 I was discovered, so I was never like, I need to be an actor. I had this hole in my chest. It’s only gonna be filled with fame. Not saying that’s what actors want, but there’s the Oh, a component of that which does, you know, what I mean. You’re from there.
19:08 Yeah, there’s a lot of that in LA. There is a lot of that running, but you were bouncing around homeless, having a pretty crazy time, and boom, you got discovered on the street. Yeah. Right after my boyfriend had just died. Yeah, you know, just been killed.
19:23 That’s which that sucked. You’re having an emotional moment on the street, and this woman, do you want to be an actress? And I’m crying, and I thought like ghastly people are these, and then she knew the person I was standing with, and so they kept approaching and kept calling and two weeks later I starring in a movie. How old were you? 17 and what is Hollywood like when you’re a teenager?
19:49 What is that whole experience like? It’s also maybe different now, so yes I don’t know. I did that, and then I went away for a bit, and I went back and did another movie and then by 19 night, you could say I was really in it. What does Hollywood like? It was filled with all of these rules that were never written down anywhere, but everyone knew the rules, and everyone passed these rules on to you.
20:18 Female agents were big in my life, and they had definitely a hannah telling me the rules that I had to abide by, such as, you know, you have to have long hair so the men in Hollywood won’t have sex with you. If they don’t wanna have sex either, they’re not gonna cast you, and they said it in more aggressive terms, and I just, I guess I figured they knew, and I didn’t want to be homeless again, so I grew out my hair, and that kind of led to the start of this external life. It was like my internal and my external self were so wildly divergent but stuck together, and it was almost like doing deep undercover work as a famous woman.
21:06 It was really weird. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but I always knew it wasn’t gonna be the big deal in my life. It wasn’t gonna be the big deal, so you’re always kind of playing a part as a person that plays a part. Yes. Okay, exactly.
21:18 Alright, and you’re now getting kind of really deep into this, what you’ve called it a patriarchy in LA, and I was one. If you could talk a little more about that. I just talked about in the book, and you have a great stat about the Directors Guild, but it’s not just about men. They keep this in place. No, it’s women too.
21:35 It’s not, you know. If the patriarchy takes all of us it’s not like, “Oh, there’s 49 percent of the population men and they’re ruling everything and we’re just here like, ah, no.” women actively support this power structure, and they actively support a power structure that doesn’t support them, which is by definition occult and Hollywood, it’s like, it’s almost like biblical. It goes back to like the you know, the wizened old man, like on his throne, like going like this, and whenever these kind of edicts are handed down, oh, you have to do this so the studio will be really unhappy with you.
22:19 Oh, you have to do this magazine cover where you’re wearing nothing but an ammo belt, or the studio will be really unhappy with you. Studio, be really unhappy with you, and that’s like, the, you know, the God voice talking to you, and you can really substitute one for the other. and it’s rather chilling, I think, and it’s like 96% of the Directors Guild or men. Yeah, 96% of the, in the DGA, the Directors Guild of America, are men, and that statistic hasn’t changed since 1946.
22:48 So it’s just a really narrow view, and it’s primarily white male, and that just doesn’t reflect what I see on the streets, and there’s nothing wrong with white men, but we don’t only want to have their viewpoint. what happens when you get people that push back and say, yeah, I am a white male and I’m part of the patriarchy, and that word can also mean good things. Are you allowed to curse here? Yes. Well, unfuck yourself is what I would say.
23:18 What does that mean? Unfuck yourself. Deprogram. Go through your mind. And I’m really honestly not interested in men or women or the differences between.
23:27 I’m really interested in humans, and I think if we can see each other as human before we see each other as a gender, and see ourselves as human before we see each other. I mean, I see myself as human before I see myself as a woman. Like whenever anybody says woman to me, “Wait, what? Oh, okay.” like, it doesn’t, and maybe that’s just because of how I was brought up.
23:47 I’m not sure. Maybe it clicks in. Maybe it’s more of an easy alliance with most people, but with me it’s always uneasy like label that I’ve had put on me, then he never really liked, and it comes with so much weight in history you know, you say the word men, it comes with all the weight in history of that word. Same with women and the weight in history of that word, and I just I really think if, if we figure out that we’re human before we’re anything else, we could really do some really amazing stuff together.
24:17 Okay, and if you use a word like patriarchy and say that that’s male-dominated, is that not part, plane, part of that game? A general identifying it. It’s shorthand. I have no other language available to me right now. Okay, dominant power structure.
24:35 It’s really the power structure. It’s a dominant power structure, and it’s been given because of Christianity and Islam and all these things. It’s been given. You know, fundamentally, it’s been a man’s purview in that world, and so the power structure has this kind of ghostly specter of a man hanging over it. Right?
24:59 Even though as we all know that’s an illusion. It’s a hard one to break down, but I think it’s something necessary to break down. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, and you want to have that conversation again, people’s minds, and talk. Yes.
25:14 Okay, it’s a lot broader than me too. It’s a lot. My interest lying and just unfuckin Minds. Like, I watch people get programmed, and then I was in different cults where the program, you know, so extreme, and it was, it’s something that’s done without thinking. It’s something that’s done.
25:35 We’re just gonna put this on TV, and everyone thinks Hollywood stays localized, but it goes out to the world. You know, my quibble isn’t with Hollywood. It’s just a messaging system, and my equivalence is broader than that. I like that word, quibble, quibble. Take that word.
25:52 Why’d you use that word? I don’t know. It just came out, but it sounded very British to me, quibble, and so if you had to kind of fast-forward to 2015 when you decided to write this book, well well, how would you fast-forward to, I mean, career in Hollywood, you know, or do we want to just fast-forward, and you can tell me why you really decided to write this book? I had a friend who recommended I wait till I was 80, and I thought, jerk, got my book would be so long at that point.
26:20 I can’t wait till I’m ready, but there was a woman on the plane when I came to America, and she told me I should write a book. She was sitting next to me, and I was telling her my story, and I told her she didn’t know the half of it. And I’ve always kind of filmed things for posterity, you know. In my head, I was, I talk in the book about finding a camera when I was really young. So as we’re having this conversation now, part of me is across the room filming this, just to file it away for later, and I’ll study it and dissect it, roll it around, and it’s something that I do, and I think that that helped me when embarking on writing a book to really have really solid memories and really very cinematic memories in a weird way, like cinema and my brain kind of are so intermingled I can’t, I can’t kind of separate them.
27:15 Okay, and it was a really difficult, painful process. It was a beast. Told me earlier you described it. How did you describe it earlier? I said it was like giving birth to a spiky birth canal.
27:25 It was like it took three years. It took three years to write and I love words and words means so much to mean reading is what saved me at many points in my life. I talked about that in my book too. Is just how reading was something that was such a fundamental tool for survival, and also just the beauty of words and the impact of language. So I crafted my book very carefully, but the memories that you call up and then there’s the ghosts.
28:02 They’re sitting around with you. You know, you’re talking about your dad, and it’s not like, okay, I’m shutting my laptop and going to dinner. It’s not like your ghost of a dad isn’t sitting there. Dinner going you know, with you. And I didn’t visit my father’s grave for the three years I was writing the book.
28:19 I was too angry with him. It was too angry with him, but once it came out, it was cool. We were good. I could go visit. Why were you angry?
28:26 It was just rehashing. A lot of it was just, you know, I talked in there. Like at one point I plotted to kill him. Like, for reals? Fer else, like when you were riding it or when you’re a kid?
28:39 Oh, when I was a kid, yeah, and I used to sneak out and leave the door wide open. It hopes that someone would come in and kill him for me. You’re not happy about the Colts moving his parenting, all that stuff. It was it was, he was bipolar, unmedicated, and he was a wild human. He was a really unique magical unicorn of a being, but also could be at times very abusive, and there was a point where the dark side eclipsed the light, and that was, that was really difficult.
29:09 He was an incredible artist. This work just was so psychedelic, and his mind, the way he saw things, fascinated me endlessly. A really truly stellar human being, but I think what kept him from being a free human was that he was really locked in this role of being what a man was. They couldn’t ask for help. That he couldn’t do these things, and it seemed like he was just trapped in this, in this kind of suit that he never wore, that it was a suit not of his making, but he still wore the mantle of this suit and he couldn’t get out of it.
29:46 He couldn’t express himself. He couldn’t say, I’ve messed up or I need help with this. He could not do that. And I think that’s, that’s, that to me is the patriarchy. That’s what I talk about when I talk about it.
30:04 It’s more like the invisible suit they stick you in, you know? How you get stolen as a man so young and told what you’re supposed to be, and how you’re supposed to behave. It’s so rigid, and it doesn’t leave a lot of freedom for developing your creativity and who you are, and what if you’re just a different kind of unique person who knows you know. It’s, I just wish we had more of a reprieve. You have two young boys there, one and two.
30:32 Wow. So I get to watch, suddenly have a fourteen-year-old stepdaughter. So I’m watching this. Wow, what an interesting. Yeah.
30:39 So, and I grew up with her for about eight years, so I got to see her to kind of turn into a woman and be a big part of her life, and now I’m looking at these boys, and I’m just like, man, like, it was a lot of things I definitely don’t want to do. I don’t want to tell them to be a man, right? But I want. Looks like I want them to say, actually, take pride in being a man. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a really, it’s a Canuck line.
31:01 It’s a, it’s a really fine line, and again, and then they also got the media on this side. So the latest guess our movie is programming all sorts of behaviors and relationships between genders in the background. Right? Yeah, it is, and there’s only so much I can do. I mean, I can do a lot, but there’s that going on too.
31:18 Right? And they’re in London, so I mean I’ve got my work set out thinking about this right now, Rose, cuz I’m like, yeah, whatever, I wouldn’t, because I, I want them to be able to be creative and expressive and all that and everything they want, and I also want them to be able to, I don’t know, defend themselves and do jiu-jitsu, and then also do art and not feel like one is different than the other. Right? So I think everything is an art form, you know.
31:42 I – a lot of people who say, and it’s interesting, you’ll meet people like this happen a lot in LA actually well, you would say, they would say I’m not on the creative side. They would wave their hands like it’s something else horrible that might be catching, and I would think, well, how very sad for you, because if I was an accountant, I would be the most creative accountant out there. If I was a lawyer, I’d be a creative lawyer. I think creativity can go with us, whether I think art is jiu-jitsu.
32:08 I think art isn’t necessarily just painting or photography or what we ascribe it to. I think it’s freedom of mind, and I think jiu-jitsu, anything art can be in the beauty of that motion. Right? Yeah, like Andy Warhol said, you know, business is the most beautiful art. Haha, yeah, of course he would say that.
32:26 He would say that, but, uh, but I agree with you. I hate it when people say I’m not an artist, I’m not creative, cuz it’s like, well, it’s so narrow yeah. Why would you say that about yourself? Yeah, it’s a weird program. I mean, it’s a total programming.
32:37 Yeah, and I mean, I grew up in that cuz I was the kind of, the science tech geek, and I was like, oh, I’m choosing science over my sister. Is also an aeronautical? Okay. She’s a material science engineer. Okay.
32:47 There you go. Yeah, I went to MIT. In there, there’s literally no English department, no humanities department. There’s really very little. Yeah.
32:53 I think it should be STEAM, not STEM. Speak what the science, technology, English and math, but it should be, it should be art, should be in there too. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you on that one. So anyways, in work-in-progress, raising these boys, did you always know that in this book you would be talking about what happened in ’97 with Harvey in that hotel?
33:14 Was this always gonna be there, and did that make the writing of this heavier? Yes, it did. It’s not the thrust of the book. It’s just another story in the book, but it’s an important story, and it’s kind of the crescendo in some ways. And again, it’s the book isn’t about that.
33:40 It’s really about so much more, but that is an unfortunate thing that happened in my life, and it’s something that made me very angry, rightfully so. And you had hope in holding that, not inside, but you have been holding. I’ve been holding that flame for a long time. For 18 years. Yeah, years.
34:00 And you you had talked about it, but you hadn’t put it in this kind of, I know, I was gonna say, weaponized form but you know, in a, you know, I don’t know, in a powerful form. In a powerful form, was that the book was it the timing? What was it? It was I think it was all of it, and I think Donald Trump really helped you know explain that. Well, I think he showed to the good liberals who thought everything had been taken care of, and sexism is just this nuisance thing that we hear about now and then, and racism is just a thing.
34:38 Oh, we hear about it from that crowd. It was two good guys on the left. I mean, didn’t Malcolm X a give him a southern southern white racist over a northern white liberal any day. Mmm-hmm. because he would know whose enemy was, and so Trump reminded us that we actually still have a problem that this is what this is, and this is the face of what this looks like, and this is how it behaves, and this is, this is what it talks like, and this is what it looks like, is what it sounds like.
35:07 This is what it feels like. Yeah, he helped a lot, and that’s why I have a weird love for him. Can you tell the boy about that love of him? It’s a strange, strange position to be on, certainly, to be like, I love Donald Trump. It’s funny to me because so absurd, but here but here we are.
35:41 He’s the president. I just think he does things sometimes where I’m like you have to admire us hutzpah. You’re like, wow, you’ve got here just what are you think you said. He’s like honest about all the things he shouldn’t be. Yeah, dishonest of other things he should be.
36:04 Yeah, exactly. It’s obvious. It’s he just makes it really plainly obvious what it is, what the it of whatever it is, is like he, all those guys have been doing the same stuff he’s been doing all along, all the other presidents, you know. He’s just the one that he’s like, hey, doing this, and people like, ah, I’m like, did you not know that it was happening already, right? I mean, he might be pushing it harder and doubling down on it, but it’s all stuff, you know, the drones with Obama, the children in cages.
36:37 That was during a bomb when I like, and I’m not Pro Democrat nor my pro Republican. I’m pretty much against all of it, but in terms of showing us how to grow, I think Donald Trump’s done a hell of a job. I think I named Simon Sinek in here, who’s got a great concept called Start With Why, and he said Trump is a reflection of us. He’s a reflection of America, or of the world, of what we really are. Do you believe that?
37:08 I think, are an art. I think he really makes people assess what their core values are, and their core values might be shitty values, at least to me, or there, but I think there’s some I agree with him, but I think he’s also what you’re not, and I think never has there been a public figure that’s made it so easy to use him as a mirror for yourself and describe what you are and aren’t by just simply placing his cardboard cutout in front of you and staring at it. You know, I think it’s a really interesting mirror to look in, and that’s why you love him, and that’s why I love him.
37:52 That makes total sense, Rose. Thank you. to the book. It was the right time. Trump, you obviously had time to think about it, to really spend time right in this book, but ten years ago, would this have not?
38:05 It wasn’t time. It wasn’t time. It wasn’t time for me personally in my life, and it wasn’t time culturally. Society wasn’t primed yet. They needed it.
38:16 It was kind of like, I was like, come on, wake up, wake up, and also social media wasn’t in place yet, like there were a lot of things that just had to naturally evolve before it could happen Did you know this was gonna drop like a bomb? Yes. when you started writing it? Yes. Okay, there was a million dollar bounty on my book.
38:36 How does that happen? How does someone know you’re writing the book? Well, he knew everything, and he hired a company called Black Cube he, being Weinstein, to come after me, and they stole 125 pages of it before it was published. So to have a rapist in your head is, it’s, that’s a bad acid trip. Yeah.
39:06 So he was always had you in his sights? Oh, he knew you were gonna be a problem. Yes, cuz I never signed a nondisclosure agreement, and that was a conscious decision you made. Yes, the conscious decision I made. So you settled with him a hundred thousand dollars?
39:19 No NDA, and at the time that was something you were like, seemed like a lot of money. Yeah. Well, I tried to buy a billboard that said Harvey Weinstein is a rapist, but getting that outdoors wouldn’t sell it to me. Shocking, but true. I thought I was gonna get one.
39:35 I wanted to replace the sign on Sunset Boulevard where the Marlboro Man always had his ad buy the Chateau Marmont. I thought that would be a good place for a billboard. He’s a good place for them. It’s a good place for a bellboy, but you couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that because I donated the money and I got some therapy.
39:52 Okay, but never sign that NDA. Never sign an NDA, and in the back of your mind, this was always gonna be something you would talk about? Yes. And he knew that. He knew that.
40:00 Okay, so in the meantime he’s making it very difficult for you to work in Hollywood? It’s very difficult. I got stuck on a TV show because they couldn’t get a job in film. Film and TV weren’t as crossed over as they are now, and it was a lot of people were very confused by my move into TV, and for me it was just purely a move to keep food on the table, you know, because once you get famous and then you get blacklisted, what do you do? What do you, what’s your option, right?
40:29 For to make a living, where are you gonna go for a job? It makes it extremely difficult. And a few directors on the way kind of stuck their neck out. Is that right to say about, like, Rodriguez, where he put you in the film knowing that there was beef between you and Harvey, or no? Cuz then he sold the movie to him to distribute, right?
40:48 And then some, you didn’t? Okay. Yeah, but he did, and then said he didn’t think Harvey did distribute it because of that. Who knows, right? Yeah.
40:57 Okay, so you’re ready for me to say things in Yiddish. I’m like, it’s a bunch of Michigan I don’t know. It today is a Yiddish day, and I love the Yiddish language. Okay, you speak Yiddish? No, I just speak Yiddish.
41:09 Okay, sounds good. So you’re writing this. They know you’re writing it. They’re trying to stop it, and it got like ex-Mossad agents trying to get it, trading my life, like pretending to be sexual assault survivors and and becoming close with me to steal the book and to find out my designs and my plans. And then so I call the New York Times.
41:29 I called this woman and a group called UltraViolet, actually, which is I can file, action pack, and I said I need help, and they put me in touch with Jodi Kantor from the New York Times, and I told her the story is bigger than you can imagine. It’s bigger than you can ever know, and then I had to. I had to buy time, so for the last year that I was writing the book, I was in fake negotiations with the monster, as I call him in the book, to get the book done, but also to give it enough time to get these New York Times articles written, because they needed to come out before my book.
42:15 Right? What negotiations were you with the monster? Million dollars, like settlements, settlements. Okay. which I was never going to do, but it kept them at bay.
42:27 You know what, captain? Okay. Okay. Now I’m starting to understand this whole giving birth analogy. Yeah.
42:33 So you’re not only writing a book, which can be a pretty lonely process, but you are juggling massive stress. I’m juggling some of the most formidable people, and his lawyer was is Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Boies, and that’s the lawyer who was coming for me behind the scenes. He’s he’s a big baddie. He hired Black Cube. It’s all completely insane.
43:01 Of course, but it’s really just that. That book, Brave, is my fight to have my own voice for the first time, and it’s fitting that it was such a fight even just to get the book out. Did the woman of the New York Times right away get it, or did she have to spend a little time looking into it? Oh, she got it, but she had a, but because the story was so big and had grown, I’m sure you know, it was one of those. It was like everybody knew, but nobody was willing to go on the record, kind of thing, and so I gave them documents and just set it up, and then I called in Ronan Farrow and kind of got him at war with a time.
43:45 At the time, he was with NBC, and I got NBC into a war for the start of the New York Times. Any one of them would fall, and without both, it might not have gotten done. Exact. Do you think it might not have? It wouldn’t know, really.
43:57 I don’t believe it. Whatever it was, just one. Why? Because he and his cronies, they exert such powerful influence. His protection came from the Democratic Party because he was a big fundraiser there and knew a lot of people.
44:11 Even the New York Times, they could have, could have Wow, because they could have done the story any time in the past. They all knew, maybe not to the levels of the depravity, you know. Most people didn’t know that, but certainly the stories had been out there for a long time now. October 2017. This drops.
44:35 What’s that month of your life like? Yeah, that month was extra good. As you kiss, Rose, extra that was a little bit extra. It was, I met my partner that I’m with now the night before the New York Times story broke, and I had just gotten word that the story was coming out the next day, and someone, my friend, brought Rain, my partner, to my house, and I was just not fit, and it wasn’t like trying to make a love connection. It was just like, hello, human being, and I had just gotten off the phone and gotten the news, and I said, you don’t know this, but the whole world is going to change tomorrow.
45:26 She’s like, “Okay, crazy lady.” Like now the world is actually gonna change tomorrow. You’ll see, watch. And I felt like I was, I had ropes in my hands with fireballs on the end of them, and I was going like this, gearing up for battle, because I knew it was gonna be a hell of a battle in the public eye, and it was, and simultaneously I wind up on book tour, so I get asked about every you know, it was, it was, I was hard book to her happens a couple months later.
45:57 Yeah, come on, excited and what’s it like being in the media storm? You said the media was brutal on you. Brutal and how are they brutal? Because on the one hand, the New York Times is coming out with all this stuff, and it’s, some media is telling your story, right? Backing your story, I guess.
46:14 Now they’re telling the facts. Okay, right? they’re not taking sides, they’re just telling the facts as they lay but it’s a lot of hostility from people that want things to stay status quo from both people in the industry and just in the world. They don’t like, you know, it’s like if you have this comfortable chair under you, even though you know it’s not rightfully yours people don’t want it. Don’t want you to be like, no, sorry, you need to sit in that chair.
46:48 They don’t want to move chairs, even if the other chair is better for them. It’s a good analogy. And so what happened? What was the biggest thing that surprised you about that media backlash? I wouldn’t say anything surprised me.
47:05 It was just the force and the shear of the, you know, like if you touch your phone, you have an app, and you hold your phone, and you’re like, oh my god, this is the, the porthole into like the billions people’s voices, and they all have thoughts, you know, and it’s, it’s like a live wire. The second week after the New York Times story broke, I was in Hawaii, and I let my phone go in the ocean. I was like, just die. Just need to knock. I needed to break that line between its to go through the cyclone and then still fight it, you know.
47:52 Is, is it’s a very hard thing to survive, and also the power people coming after me and trying to shut me down, and then you know, a lot of women trying to help that too, and you had to keep fighting because you’re being challenged. Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do this? So it is a big fight. It’s a big fight.
48:17 In what was sad about it was, you know, it wasn’t. It was a big fight, and that the fight doesn’t encompass the fact that my book is about so much more that it’s about thought structure, right? That part of the discussion was kind of lost. It wasn’t it was too broad-minded at the time. I think, I think we are starting to have the conversation now, whereas before it was like very focused on, you know, I would do an interview and they were just asked him about the hotel room.
48:48 It’s like you’re being sexist by reducing my life to a rape and American media, I mean, you just have to watch CNN. It’s wild. They have no news from anywhere else in the world unless there’s a terrorist attack. Nothing exists outside of America. Nothing like there’s no weather in Africa.
49:16 There’s no, it doesn’t, it doesn’t exist, and so for this to have gone global the way it did was, was quite the storm. And everyone’s scared because it’s starting to rattle all of their power structures. So first it’s the Weinstein group, and then it’s law of Hollywood, and then it starts going into politics, and they’ve corporates, and it was just kind of like, I swear I was sitting around my house one night in LA, and I was wondering I was like, it was probably about a year before my book was done.
49:57 I was like, I wonder if I can make people ten percent smarter. That’s an arbitrary number, but I bet I could be a ten percent better person. I wonder if I could do that for other people too, and so I kind of put that on my to-do list, kind of push society. And so I feel like sexual harassment, all that stuff, was like the flaming spear tip that I wrote in on, but isn’t necessarily. It’s not the all-encompassing thing.
50:22 It’s not what my actual work is about, but it is something that I thought we needed to have addressed. I thought why should things just be the way they are? Why who says? Again, that goes back to just accepting the power structure for the way it is. I thought I think we can be better humans.
50:42 Are people getting that message now? Yeah, I think so. Okay, you seem really different than a year ago. Yeah, I mean, you know, I watch videos. You, I’m not being triggered.
50:51 Yeah, I mean, book tour, transvestite confrontations, tank right there. That was right afterwards. Okay, your same day, it’s literally a half an hour I don’t seem jumper on. Yeah, and I mean, I understand it’ll be why, but I mean you’re, you’re, you got a lot on your shoulders. You’re emotional.
51:08 You’re, it’s, I mean, it. And now you seem really, you seem stoic. Yeah, I’m really calm. What happened in the year? I healed.
51:16 I took I left America. I went to Sicily, and I called it life rehab, and I just got well and balanced and a way out of the, out of the eye of the storm, and I had to call time on it, and I was like, okay, I’ve given enough. I need to live now. My back was swollen, like about three inches up from the middle of my neck to the middle of my back, about this much extra, and it was just not that had swollen up that were just constantly, you know, just ripping apart on my back, and I was in tears just walking down the street.
51:58 I was in so much pain. What, you know, the physical toll was, was pretty immense. I think that was a manifestation of completely. Okay, so you did unplug and got out? Yeah, once you’ve done, once you’d fought your battle?
52:12 Yeah, I’ve got the book out there and, yeah, answered all the questions that were worth answering. All right, you did those interviews where they ask you those questions and reduce your life down to the rape, right? And you did it, and then you’re like okay, cool, I’m gonna leave this guy’s, you guys, and I’m gonna go check out. Yeah, okay, I’m gonna let you guys marinate in this, and hopefully the next go-around will go a bit better, and that it’ll be a little more cerebral and nuanced, you know what I think is what we’re doing now.
52:42 Hmm. It was quite a boom. Did you expect that big boom there? Anything about that you didn’t expect? No, no, the world was gonna change whether it liked it or not.
52:55 Talk to me about MeToo. That happened afterwards, and it was the hashtag. A lot of people using that hashtag, and it became, I became kind of synonymous with it. Yes. Right.
53:07 Well, so, an activist named Tarana Burke started the hashtag about ten years ago, and Alyssa Milano found the hashtag and just said, has this ever happened to you? MeToo. So what I understand about MeToo is like it’s a shorthand for survivors to speak to each other. Did this happen to you? MeToo?
53:25 That’s literally what it is, but the media created MeToo as a movement. I mean, you have the civil rights movement. You have Malcolm X. You have Martin Luther King Jr., and you have, you have different movements, but this one was, it wasn’t that. MeToo was, it’s, it was like it was like someone just pushed a button on a social reset.
53:52 It was just time. Let’s just think differently all at once, and everyone’s like, ah, freaking out, but we can do this. We can think differently, but MeToo is really my, because I was on book tour, like when that popped off, so all my questions were about MeToo, and the rape, and it was just like, it got very frustrating for me, just because what I wanted to talk about was kind of the broader structure that would allow such things to even have to happen in the first place, that we would need such a hashtag, but I, you know, I made it sound like there’s thousands of women with pitchforks in the street running after men, and I think that was a media created phenomena, and not true.
54:38 It’s simply a way for people to communicate, and so in that way, I think it’s done a lot of good. What about that? I think it’s like 90 women that came out talking about Weinstein afterwards. Yeah. How do you feel about them and their stories that came and came later?
54:55 And I’m proud of them because there’s way more than 90, you know, and I’m proud of them too, just for surviving it. Not all of us, you know, anybody could watch what I went through and be like, dear God, why would I want to put myself through that? You know, it’s not exactly like I’m the poster child for why somebody would want to come out and speak. It’s not like it’s gonna go easy on you. It’s not like those two people that are in that Leaving Neverland documentary about Michael Jackson.
55:23 You know, we’re finding it easy, probably, right now. Was everyone accusing them, you do it for money? You’re like, what money? You do it for attention? I already had attention.
55:33 It’s not, this is not what this is. You called it the year of the trigger. You’re the trigger, and you said it wasn’t supposed to be easy for us. No. It wasn’t supposed to be easy, but we got through it, and I think we’re still growing, and that’s what’s great.
55:50 Where is it now? Where’s MeToo now? I think it’s, I don’t know about MeToo, but I know where I am. You know, in a growth phase, you know, in a phase where it’s a healing chapter. You know, yeah, I think there’s a lot of healing going on, and I think it’s like, you know, when you clean your closet, you make a mess, but guess what?
56:16 Your closet gets clean. That’s how sometimes you have to make the mess. That’s really simple. And what about people that have been caught in the MeToo movement? Maybe it’s friendly fire or collateral damage or this kind of a reactionary force to any allegation.
56:37 And I mean, you know, think of names like, I don’t know, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who’s been on this show, or Aziz Ansari, which was more like a date that then kind of dr., and then maybe it goes on to Michael Jackson, or Kelly, but feels like we have this sensitive social sphere out there in media that is ready to pick up and go after these figures. What about when it’s, when now there are careers get put on holds, right? And we don’t know what’s happening, because that is a product of this mutant movement to a certain extent.
57:08 I suppose it is collateral damage, and that sucks. It would suck to be in that cross her I think we’re all figuring this out as we go along, and there’s no easy answer, you know, but I think it’s important that we’re having the conversation about it, and I think it’s important that people are talking about it. It’s important to me that a young man came up to me the other night and said it changed how he and his mates talked about girls. That was nice. It’s the woman at the restaurant who says her waitresses are no longer getting pinched on the ass, so that’s nice.
57:43 It has permeated culture in all sorts of different ways but I think the end result is gonna be that we all of us just kind of reset ourselves and try to be better humans. That’s what I see happening. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, because they said you’re gonna clean, they’ll cause it, and he’s gonna make a mess. It is, and I guess it is gonna be messy now, and we’re having all these conversations and trying to figure it out. Yeah, I mean, I heard Sean Penn talking to Marc Maron like a few months ago, and he was like talking about it, and I just want to, like, say something he said, and just get your thoughts, because I was trying to figure it out in my own head, you know, as a male, and he just, he was saying it’s too black and white.
58:28 It creates stridency, enraged without nuance, and he says when people try to discuss in a nuanced way, the nuance gets attacked. Well, he’s not wrong. Yeah, he’s not wrong. Where he and I are saying very similar things in that point, you know, and that’s largely, you can lay that at the media’s hands, and how they clickbait stuff, and how they run their headlines, and how you know, how they want to stir the pot. So there does need to be a more nuanced conversation, but that’s what we’re doing right now.
59:02 Yeah. What do you think of this concept of political correctness, or of, yeah, everyone being so scared to say something? I mean, you didn’t grow up in America, so you must see America is this weird. I mean, I see when I go back, sometimes it just seems like this weird guy No, Beast. I say something wrong all the time, and now it’s almost like super hyper sensitive.
59:25 It’s, it’s, and it’s scary, and there’s not you’re just gonna get nailed, basically, and you have to make peace of the fact that you’re gonna say something dumb, but you’re like, is it dumb? I guess it’s dumb. Oh, I guess if I see it from that perspective, that could be considered pretty dumb. Okay, that was dumb. Yeah, yeah, and that’s from a statement standpoint, but also they’re like, okay, when in doubt, pull back, and we can’t take a risk on something that’s special, right?
59:52 These big corporations, so it’s like at the first sign, let’s pull back. Ryan, she’s kind of this political, just don’t say it. I mean, the opposite of Trump, really. It’s the opposite. Yes, and that’s weird dynamic.
1:00:02 It’s kind of happening. I guess they need to be brave. Yeah. people need to be more brave. I think it would, in their own lives, and at work, and society and yes, it is uncomfortable on the front lines.
1:00:18 Can you stand it? Absolutely. I’m here to live and tell the tale that you can fight the Machine and still survive, and I think that corporations are never known for their bravery, are they? Really? Usually the Creator, or, like, say, a Steve Jobs or somebody like that.
1:00:37 Yes. But after that. No. So you would say to someone who’s been out there who thinks they’re part of that collateral damage, then they need to step up and be brave and fight for their own nuance and their own rights. Yeah, and say myself, guess why they have to.
1:00:53 Okay. sure. What? Let’s have a conversation, right? That’s what I also think, you know, like Louis C.K., and people like that, like he should, I think he should just have a roundtable with the women that he’s done a nice thing to, and then have a talk with them, and if they give their blessing, and go on with your life, go back to your comedy.
1:01:12 Do it, but, but own it, right? Own it and talk about it. You know, I would love to do a show where I talk to people who’ve been accused, not the super predators, because that’s a category that’s just its own thing. There’s no resolution there. That’s it.
1:01:30 That’s just, that’s a mind that’s not with the lower-level stuff, like Louis, potentially power abuse. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk to the immaturity, why it’s like the thirteen-year-old boy getting back at the girls that didn’t want to go out with them, you know, whatever, it, who knows what it is? Yeah, you know, all wrapped up into abuse of power, essentially, at the end of the day. Let’s talk about this, but yeah, as far as, like, you know, you’re not gonna say to some pedophile priest, go come talk to someone and then go on your merry way.
1:02:08 That’s a different kind of mindset. What are we gonna do with that mess? There’s no, what, there’s no one talking about it right now, is there? I mean, we’re talking about it but just feel like there’s no Cardinal Pell. Just got convicted, right?
1:02:21 Six years. Okay, so what’s happening? But slower, the church can take its time. Oh, right, there was somebody who did, I did this art video, and someone did a 10-minute break down of the video, and listed all the reasons why I was in the Illuminati and sending out Illuminati messages in my video. Mrs. Rose McGowan was sent to destroy Christianity, and I was like, that’s a really good idea.
1:02:47 I hadn’t thought it up. Note to self, destroy Christian. But you wouldn’t mind sitting down with some of these people and talking this out and finding a solution, because I mean, with someone like a Louis C.K. or some of these people, I mean, you know, you can’t banish them forever. There has to be snow, you know. So it needs to be some culpability, and just be like, you know, I f***ed up, right?
1:03:11 I f***ed up. I was a weirdo, and I f***ed up. Do you forgive me? Yeah, cool. All right, I promise to be a better human.
1:03:20 Let’s go. That’s really all it would take, but it’s when there’s no acknowledgment that it becomes harder for them to come back, and also, does it just service to victims right now it seems choices like permanently blackballed. I’m like, that used to do in Venice back in the days, right? They’re just gone as long as we don’t talk about him. I think we need to have a conversation, you know, again, again, not if they’re pedophile, not if they’re like serial rapist or something like that, or a rapist, that’s, that’s a different category but, but yeah, I think a nuanced conversation is exactly what we need.
1:04:06 You know, what happened to you, and you’re a little boy that made that. Okay, and what happened to you when you got power that made that little boy. I think this was a good idea. What programming went into your head? Dissect it, throw it away.
1:04:20 De-program. I think if we use a lot of, like, like how cult deprogrammers, you know, I think society could use some of them. Yeah, how do they do it? They often start with, like, looking at belief systems and fears and seeing why somebody has a belief that they have, and where did it come from? It’s kind of what I talk about, you know.
1:04:48 I watched my father wire people’s minds. I know how to unfuck him. That’s what I’m doing in my book. I don’t think very interesting to see you sit down with a lot of these people, and I think there’s conversations very much so. Is there a statute of limitations for certain behavior?
1:05:07 Obviously not for criminal behavior, but is there a point where we look back 40 years and someone’s yearbook, and we say, okay, was this a bad person or inappropriate, or was this a sign of the times? I think it depends on what it is. I suppose, are you talking about blackface in the yearbook? So you’re talking about anything? Well, it’s hard.
1:05:23 It’s hard to justify blackface. You say you can’t really justify it’s hard to do that, but it’s just like, it seems like, yeah. I don’t know. You know, these are questions I’m having, like you’re going, you know, our Supreme Court, you know, nominee review or process. Yeah, there’s a lot of other baggage in there.
1:05:39 It’s more, a lot of other issues. But yeah, I’m just wondering, like, you know, cuz this could go in many directions. You know, let’s go down a lot of directions. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. Yeah, I know, right?
1:05:50 We’re, we’re in a new frontier. Do you need to see some resolution with Weinstein and all that stuff, or is it, is it, are you done? Yes. Sorry. I mean, I’m done, but I just wish it was all done.
1:06:18 I don’t think anybody wants it to keep going on. You know, I don’t think anybody does, but he did this. He’s very much the reason he is in this situation. He did this. I know I was there, and the latest things that we’re hearing, like you said, about the Michael Jackson documentary and these are the things where everyone seems to want to want to really talk about these things and think about these things.
1:06:53 I mean, that documentary, five years ago, would it have had the same effect? I don’t think so. And wow, I don’t think the documentary would have made people in power could have stopped it, and there wouldn’t be the voices to say no, this has to be made it wouldn’t be that. No, you don’t get to shut me down. I have other avenues, so you powers up, you and a lot of other people have empowered a whole new group of people to see.
1:07:18 Yeah, you’re not gonna shut me down anymore because Rose did it, and all these other people did it. Yeah, okay. yeah, and again, it’s not our shame. Hand it back. What does that mean, when you say it’s not my shame?
1:07:29 I there’s so much. That goes there’s so much shame. That’s the number one thing that people that are victimized, to say that they have so much shame, and the only shame I ever carried was, I wasn’t shame. I was mad at myself. I was mad that I had survived living as a street, with a street kid, as a homeless kid, you know, and not being raped there, and then it happened to me once I was in fancy bill that really bothered me.
1:07:58 I was mad at myself for letting my survival instincts down, but I was in a meeting with my boss how was I supposed to know? But I think when I say shame, give it back. It’s almost like you’re sitting in a bus stop, and you’re just waiting for your bus, and someone comes by and throws a mud pie at your head, and it’s shame, and that mud, it’s all over you now, and you’re just sitting up like this, and the reality is, now you can scrape all that mud off me, like, actually, this pie is yours.
1:08:32 You take that back. This is not mine. I don’t need to feel this. This doesn’t need to stick to me. What you did doesn’t stick to me.
1:08:42 It’s yours. You own it. Is it all off you now? Muscle gone, mostly. Hard to get all that stuff.
1:08:51 Well, it’s hard to get all that stuff off. I still have nightmares. You said something else recently to that. You said a lot of people know this fight-or-flight reflex, but there’s also the freeze. Yeah, reflex.
1:09:01 Yeah. This is big because a lot of people freeze, and then a lot of people beat himself up for the freeze. Yeah, it’s actually, I think, more common than the other two. The freeze, I think is the most common. I was in an Uber, right after the big news stories broke, and the driver didn’t see that it was me, and I was sitting behind him, and he was going on and on about Harvey Weinstein, and then I was like, there’s this ridiculous and he’s like, I just don’t understand why these women couldn’t just run, and I’m like, haven’t you ever been so scared that you froze?
1:09:36 And he said, now, the now that you mention it, when I was 9 years old, I got so scared, I froze, and my legs had turned to stone, and I couldn’t move, and he’s like, that’s what it’s like. I said, that’s what it’s like yeah, you turned into a stone, and he can’t save yourself. You’re just a rigid statue. I’m glad that they’ve added fight, flight, or freeze, yeah, because that can really trigger that chain. Yeah, definitely like, why did I, why was I unable to move?
1:10:09 But it’s, it’s like when someone, if you’re at a haunted house or someone jumps out, so spoopy freeze like that for a second, you know, but now imagine the scary thing keeps happening, so you’re just, and you’re trapped, and your brain is going so fast and so slow at the same time, trying to figure out what’s going on, because this series of unfolding events is not what was in your head. It was not. I was in a meeting. This is not how this meeting was supposed to go.
1:10:40 I imagine if you had a meeting today, you probably did not think you’re going to be raped by the end of it. I too had that same assumption. What do men say to you when they stop you on the street and they say, hey Rose, I mean, you were voted Man of the Year by GQ. I’m pretty cool. What did the men say?
1:11:03 Like you said, people stopped you in London, but what do they say? They say really cool stuff they say like I said, my favorite for it was just the other night. It’s like, really beautiful young man is probably like 25, and he was like, we just speak differently about girls now, and it wasn’t meaning in a PC way. I think he meant it. He’s like, he’s like, we see them as human, and it’s, it’s variations of that, or I’ve got daughters, or you know.
1:11:33 And I was think, even if you had sons, that’d be good to think differently, but it’s, it’s lovely, and I, I said at the GQ Awards, you know, in my speech I said it, you know. People asked me for what I do is for women, and I’m like, no, and the abstract, it’s for men. What does that mean? It means that I think if I mean, like, you know, when you’re reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, he is calling white people white devil, and you’re reading it’s hard to take.
1:12:10 You’re like, oh, yeah, but fair enough, right? historically this is how this went down. This is how a lot of these people think, and this is what this person experienced, and they have a right to that. So I think it must be, as a man, to know that there are these super predators in your midst. It gives you a bad name, right?
1:12:33 And stuck with this, like, just like how I hate maybe being stuck in the white crowd. My god, I’m a white, double dammit, I didn’t mean to be. I just got stuck in that skin in this lifetime. That’s how it shook out. So I think it’s, it’s like how do I explain that?
1:12:56 How would you explain that? Is part of it because that’s why I, that’s why I do feel angry, because it’s like, that doesn’t represent me. Yeah, it’s not me. I’m one of the good guys. Yeah, yeah, and then I would say be better.
1:13:07 I had a guy, I got up in my face in New York. It was like I wanted the good guys. I was like, great, be better, which is great advice. Great, be better. Yeah, don’t stop, keep going, right?
1:13:17 I guess that’s the advice for even the collateral damage people. It’s just like, okay, be better, you better, step up, defend yourself. Yeah, and this is all part of us all evolving. It’s a collective. Girl, gonna be bumpy it’s gonna be fasten your seat belts, gonna be a bumpy night.
1:13:31 It was hard for me to read the white devil for Malcolm, but I did see it as fair enough. So Malcolm went to Mecca, and he saw white people going to Mecca. Yeah, he came back and said, maybe I was wrong to categorize everyone. Is it done? And then he really started thinking about it.
1:13:44 It was an American thing, right? Then he got killed. Huh? Then he got killed. What do you make of that evolution of him?
1:13:52 One thing I always fascinating about him is that he did evolve, because that was hard. Hard evolution killed him. No, as that evolution killed him. Yeah, because he was honest, because it was honest truth. Truth gets you killed.
1:14:04 They were worried about your life. Yes. Still, hopefully not you. must have really been worried. I was pretty stressed.
1:14:14 It was, it was pretty. I felt like the life force was blinking a low, and there was a lot of people coming for me. Do you think you’ll evolve like Malcolm? Change your mind, change your views? Well, yes, in us in some ways.
1:14:43 I have. I think really this past year and a half, two years has been made me evaluate a lot of things, and really get to the core of why I was like, why are you compelled to do what you do, and really that compulsion comes from, I just see so much beauty in humanity. I really really do. I see so much beauty in people that they can’t even maybe see themselves, and if they do see it, I want them to see even farther, and that’s what I like, and that’s my compulsion, and I think I’d like to think maybe in the afterlife sometime I can have a conversation with Malcolm X, and I’d be pretty cool, and you’re probably getting to see this movement and what you’ve done for these greater knock-on effects because you’re not in the middle of that storm now, and you can say, hey, maybe, maybe we are all evolving as humans.
1:15:50 We are, and that’s what I wanted, and you want to take us a bit further. I guess, yeah. That’s all what’s happening in next with Rose. I’m playing my first show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August from my album called Planet 9, and it’s, it’s like music. It’s almost like the reward for going through the book, in some ways.
1:16:11 It actually, like, it’s really healing. It’s really beautiful, kind of like music to go to space to and no, no one-woman show or one-person show up there. Yeah, but you’re gonna perform would you ever talk? Yeah, I’m gonna talk. I’m also doing some talks here.
1:16:30 I’m doing one of the Southbank Centre, and then the National Concert Hall in Dublin. That’s all, like, at the end of April and early May. But we’ll see where it goes. You know, I’m, I’m finding my footing outside of Hollywood. It’s in a whole new world.
1:16:45 Will you ever go back to LA? I love the land there. It’s so beautiful. California is so beautiful, but it’s a mind thing for me. Would you ever go back?
1:17:03 No, I can’t. There’s just something weird going on in LA and I don’t like the energy, and I don’t want to be there. It’s just a very it’s beautiful, and it’s harrowing. It’s a dark place. It’s got a real dark underbelly and over belly, and it’s weird.
1:17:23 Everybody’s obsessed with looking hot, and I’m like, no, but you actually want to be cool there. There’s a temperature difference, like you don’t want to be like, I’m so hot, like men and women. It’s like this weird bubble, but if you find it’s that crazy bubble, it just stayed right there. You like it, containment around them or something, but it goes to the world. That’s when it becomes really dangerous.
1:17:46 Yeah, and what about politics? I’m gonna see you in DC sometime get that scheming look going on there. You’re pretty good planner, you’re pretty good schemer. I’m pretty good schemer well, see how it goes after my op-ed in The New York Times. Okay, that’s coming out soon.
1:18:06 Okay but it would be as a Republican, they say, if they’d have me. Stranger things, stranger things, change your things. Okay. so that’s great. Talking to you, yeah, I was good talking to you too.
1:18:20 Always curious. Just to ask a couple more questions, just about you. What, what’s something that just you do every day that’s just not negotiable, something that makes you feel good and who you are. Is there any kind of daily practice that you do? I read.
1:18:35 Yeah, so, so I probably, I’ve read ten books in the last two weeks. I’m kind of a voracious reader. Okay, what kind of stuff? The last ten days, I had to do a lot of press, so I wanted something really simple, so I just, I found this bizarre 1960s series of detective novels from Wales, a very remote village in Wales, and it’s like missing sheep things, like that. It’s something so banal but it’s, it’s keeping me on an even keel.
1:19:11 This Welshman and a sheep, and you’re close to Wales, so, and it’s close to Wales, and it’s quite meditative. You know, I go between all kinds of books, but, but I try to choose things that match the mood I’m in. Okay. few other questions. If I was gonna ask five of your friends, what’s Rose’s superpower?
1:19:30 How is she able to do the things that she does, what would they say is yours? Being brave, which I say in my book, doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It just means you do the scary thing anyway. That was my father’s nickname for me. The brave one.
1:19:53 Curse, kind of a curse, kind of best day of your life, worst day of your life? I’d say the worst day of my life was the day I got raped. And the best day of my life, I’d like to think I haven’t had it yet. But I had a pretty nice Istanbul New Year’s. Really love that.
1:20:27 Oh, it’s great music. New York City, cuz so cool I was on a boat on the Bosphorus at midnight, and it was lovely. Yeah, okay. I was pretty special. That’s pretty cool.
1:20:40 What scares you? My own mind. How so? You know, we Irish were prone to be melancholy sometimes. Sometimes I get depression.
1:20:54 Scares me, fear of the future. Your basics. What would we be surprised to learn about Rose McGowan? Something you do. There’s just like weird and wacky.
1:21:08 I only know how to make cake. I don’t cook, but I can make a hell of a cake, really. Yeah, any kind of cake? Red velvet, especially. Really?
1:21:18 That’s not easy. No, but it’s not that hard, but it’s, it’s more inconvenient if I’m really hungry. I have to make a cake. I’m allowed to do anything else. Okay, I think you win for that one.
1:21:31 Okay. What keeps you awake at night? Injustice. I can’t stand it anywhere in the world. You know, and there’s so much, there’s so much.
1:21:49 If I were to give you a special phone, and you could ring up the 20-year-old Rose McGowan, give that young lady a bit of advice. What would you tell her? I would tell her exactly what she already knew: it’s gonna be a hard road, and it’s gonna be a long road, but you’ll be okay. You’re gonna be okay, and don’t be scared to come into your own power. I was really scared of my own power for a long time.
1:22:18 I didn’t believe in it, ignored it, didn’t want to use it. It was almost like it was too big, you know, and I, the last that big fight in the last couple of years took, took a lot of my power, took everything I had. I would say, and maybe that’s what I was scared of. Maybe it was a healthy fair, cuz it took your power away. I didn’t take my power away.
1:22:48 It took all the power I had. I still have power but it, in that, and the fireball shooting thing, you know, it was like, oh it was just, I’d rather not have to go into battle again, but I will if I have to, but I’d rather not. Well, you seem charged up to me. Best advice you’ve ever received, could have been from a parent or friend or squeeze the lemon. Squeeze the lemon.
1:23:18 What does that mean? I think it just means squeeze life squeeze that lemon, get that juice out. And last one to that 20-year-old is watching us out there. The one is starting off their life looking at you, and what if I stick it to them, what do they need to keep in mind to to maybe squeeze the lemon or to get the most out in this short time. I’d say read my book.
1:23:49 There’s a lot in there. There’s a lot in there that will help on the journey of becoming You know, Rose, we’re in a world where the short soundbite gets the attention a lot of times, and I think people know you, and I think we all know each other sometimes by these short sound bites and these tournaments, but it’s never the truth. Everyone always has a story. What’s that old thing, you know?
1:24:39 Walk, walk a day in a man’s shoes, when woman shoes, or non-binary shoes, and then you might understand, you know, what they’re all about. And I appreciate the time today, because I think maybe people will start understanding a little bit much more about what you’re about, and why you did the things you do, and why you continue to do those things, and the book does that as well, and I’ve learned a lot getting ready for this, and then spending time with you, so really appreciate what you do, and the way you do it, and the way that you want to continue this discussion and make it about the humans. It’s kind of what we’re trying to do here.
1:25:10 Try new people, listen to each other. Yeah, and maybe just listen for a little lesson. Yeah, because we’re all playing the same game. I think deep down inside we all want love. We want to love each other.
1:25:22 Yeah. Just sometimes we don’t know how we’re programmed the wrong way, and sometimes we got to check ourselves, but I do think we all want to get to the same place. I believe in us. I do. Me too.
1:25:36 Yeah. Rose, thank you so much.
