Elise Hu

You've written quite a heartbreaking and beautiful essay.

And you've also written some really extraordinary poetry about some of the terrorism that we've experienced worldwide.

more recently.

And there's a poem titled The Places We Are Not, which I'm wondering if you might be able to read today.

Sarah Kay in 2018.

Amber Tamblyn is an award-winning television, film, and theater actor.

She's also a novelist and a poet.

I spoke with her in front of a live audience in New York City in early 2020 in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Design Matters.

You're known for many iconic roles beyond Emily Quartermain on General Hospital.

You were Joan Girardi on Joan of Arcadia, Martha M. Masters on House, named for one of your actual friends, Martha Masters, Jenny Harper on Two and a Half Men, and Tibby Rollins in the sisterhood of the Traveling Pants films.

How do you feel about those roles now?

Well, I have a bunch more questions about it, but I do want to ask you if it's true that you told John Cryer to go fuck himself in your audition for Two and a Half Men, which was in front of Chuck Lorre.

So what brought that up?

You said that show business is voyeuristic and that if you're an actress, you're playing that which the voyeur looks at for a living.

People look at you to escape their realities, to invent their own new realities.

How do you how did you manage to keep your own identity and how have you been able to avoid the often treacherous pitfalls that other child actors have succumbed to?

Well, you said that poetry was one of the few areas in your life where you felt like you had full control.

There seems to be a lot of judgment when an actor tries something other than acting, whether it be writing, music, politics, even activism.

Did it feel it was harder to be taken seriously as a poet because of your celebrity?

Do you want to read that poem for us?