Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This week on Newsmakers, Dana White, the head of the UFC.
We're at a place where people can't even talk anymore, and if they find out that I'm friends with the president, I'm a mega piece of s***. I mean, I'm talking to NPR right now, right? I talk to everybody.
A dialogue with Dana White about politics, culture, and masculinity on NPR's Newsmakers. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is actor Rose Byrne. Known for both drama and comedy, she's now one of the few actresses to be nominated for an Oscar and a Tony in the same year. She's currently on Broadway in the revival of the Noel Coward play Fallen Angels. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado.
When Rose Byrne appeared on American TV in 2007 in the show Damages, it was clear she was a dramatic force. Playing opposite Glenn Close, she was nominated for two Emmys and two Golden Globe Awards. Then she starred in a series of comedies, Get Him to the Greek, Bridesmaids, and Neighbors, and it became apparent that she's also one of our most gifted comedic actors.
Her work in The Last Year Alone shows that she's so good at playing complex characters in any genre. She stars opposite Seth Rogen in the Apple TV comedy Platonic, and she received an Oscar nomination for her raw performance in the film If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You. Now Rose Byrne is on Broadway in the play Fallen Angels.
It's a revival of the 1925 Noel Coward play, a farce about two wealthy women, married, English, who go a bit crazy when they hear that the man they had both been involved with before they were married is coming to town. Both Byrne and her co-star, Kelly O'Hara, have been nominated for Tonys for Best Actress in a Play. Rose Byrne, welcome to Fresh Air. Hi, thanks so much.
Now, this play is from the 1920s. It was scandalous back then because it was about two women talking about having affairs with the same man before they were married. Had you known this play or had you performed Noel Coward before? And I'll say that Coward is a British playwright known for writing sophisticated, witty comedies about the upper class, you know, funny with a lot going on underneath.
I wasn't familiar with the play.
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Chapter 2: What led Rose Byrne to her latest role in 'Fallen Angels'?
Scott Ellis, who's the artistic director of the Roundabout Theatre, brought it to me and Kelly O'Hara for a benefit reading for the Roundabout. So that's how I discovered the play. Obviously, but I was familiar with Noel Coward. I'd seen productions of his more popular plays, I guess, that are done sort of very frequently.
Like I'd seen Private Lives, I'd seen Hayfever, like I've seen productions of his other plays. But Fallen Angels was, no, I didn't know it. It's a lesser done play. So it was a really interesting discovery. I want to play a scene from the play. Here you and your co-star Kelly O'Hara are discussing your ex-lover Maurice, who's French, who you haven't seen in years.
You're both excited about the possibility of him visiting. Kelly O'Hara speaks first.
I say, wouldn't it be too wonderful if he arrived suddenly now? Oh, I should check.
You're sure you left a thoroughly clear message at your flat in case he went there first? Of course. We're bound to get a frightful shock when we do see him. Oh, I don't see why.
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Chapter 3: How did Rose Byrne transition from drama to comedy in her career?
He's bound to have gotten bald or gone fat or something. No, no, he won't have changed at all. He wouldn't come if he had because he's far too conceited. No, not conceited. A little vain, perhaps, naturally. With those eyes, who can blame him? And those hands. And those teeth.
And those legs.
That's a scene from the play Fallen Angels. Rose Byrne, you're Australian. You live in the U.S. now. Can you talk about your accent in this play? I would think that some of this dialogue is fun to say, and some of the words, the syllables get drawn out, like the way you say eyes, blame, even teeth in this clip.
I mean, yeah, it is... The language you use, the sort of linguistic gymnastics and the extraordinary vocabulary of Noel Coward is... A delight. Yeah. We work with Kate Wilson, who's the head of voice at Juilliard. And I've been working with her now for nearly 10 years. And she's extraordinary because she's just like consonants, consonants, consonants.
You've got to hit the consonants, stick the landing. Like it's the language that sort of is everything in a way. It is this balance. brilliant sort of use of language that he had at the age of 25, I believe, when he wrote this play. It's all in the delivery and the kind of the pacing of it and just staying very lightly on all of the language. It's a real tightrope.
Yeah, I never tire of sitting backstage and constantly rediscovering the words that And he peppers throughout, like the word callous is throughout, which I just love. It's so delicious and just brilliant. And bitterly is used a lot.
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Chapter 4: What themes are explored in the film 'If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You'?
It was a bitter time, bitterly. And it's just these brilliant words that he uses that I've started to use in my day to day as I walk around in my life now. You're doing everything bitterly now. Exactly. It was a bitter time, I say in the morning to my children. And they're like, what? Well, it's interesting you said that thing about consonants.
But in that clip we just heard, too, it's like the vowels, too. It's like what happens to the vowels in an upper crusty British accent, maybe? Yeah. And also, you know, the lover, his name is Maurice. Yeah. which is a wonderful name because it's like more, more-y. It's like hidden truths in there and a hidden kind of subtext that we just dig and mine for every night.
And vulgarity, words like that. It's just brilliant. It's so fun. For a lot of the show, you and your co-star Kelly O'Hara are playing drunk. Like an owl. She's getting drunk. Slowly but surely you're getting drunk over the course of the evening. And so much of the comedy comes from that. How do you prepare to act drunk and how do you actually do it? It's interesting.
Well, his writing is so brilliant with the drunkenness. Like he's, you know, the switching of words and the slow decline and the volume. It's very specific in the stage directions. My character gets louder continually throughout this sequence of them drinking, which is fantastic. very funny and very true about drunk people.
They often get louder and louder and louder, and that's what happens to Jane. And then it's referred to in the third act that she was much worse than Julia, and she really is. She sort of unravels. And then there's a violence that comes out in the character too that is very dark and can also happen, I've seen, with people when they get too inebriated.
Sometimes it can really, you know, it can not reveal the best part of them. Yeah, there's a lot of physical comedy in this play. It reminded me, actually, of kind of Lucy and Ethel and I Love Lucy as far as the physicality of it. Or maybe you're both Lucy as far as how over the top. Oh, I mean, that's just such an honor.
I mean, you know, we stand on the shoulders of those women, you know, of those. And like Carol Burnett, like they're just on a pedestal. Kristen Wiig, you know, the physical comedy of those performances. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I mean, John Cleese, these are the people I love. put on pedestals, Maya, Rudolph, you know, just brilliant physical comedians.
So we've definitely pushed that side of things, which has been very fun.
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Chapter 5: How does Rose Byrne prepare for her role in a Broadway play?
How does performing in a Broadway show, eight shows a week, how does it compare to shooting a movie? You know, even like something so kind of adrenaline pumped as your last film, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You. I was just wondering how it feels differently, those different kinds of performance. No, it's a great question.
Something I'm sort of wrestling with because it's kind of a little bit hard to describe in any erudite fashion. But it feels we are trying to reach the back row, you know, so it's a physically it's just bigger. It is a bigger experience. And then to sort of to perform in a bigger arena like that and to still remain different.
truthful in that sense of like, you know, I felt like I was screaming when I first got up because we're not wearing mics either. There's mics on the stage, but we get up there and I'm like, what? You know, hello, Jane, you know, starting to yell. How do I translate that in a way that still feels authentic? But the theatricality of that, leaning into that too.
So it's been a learning curve again to do that. But I had long wanted to do true comedic piece on stage. It's been one of my dreams, so this has been extraordinary to have this experience. I also like that you do some hair acting in this play. At one point, your hair shows how drunk you are and what may have happened to you over the course of the evening because your hair is really big and
It actually reminded me of your hair acting in the movie Spy from 2015. I'm glad you threaded that needle, Anne-Marie. I appreciate that. There are so many fun things like your hair, what you do with a napkin. And you and your co-star, Kelly O'Hara, are constantly re-pouring yourself champagne. So there's champagne all over.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Rose Byrne face in portraying a complex character?
So it's just interesting all the different kind of props that you use. Yeah, and listening to that clip, the main thing about that clip is timing when I drink and when I eat because you're constantly drinking and I'm constantly eating throughout that sequence, which is fine, but it did take a minute through the previews to really figure out how to –
time that technically so it's funny you know to get the breath on the beats for the comedy and also to establish how much they're drinking you know so it's that was again sort of a technical physical feat to figure that out do you eat the same things every like are you ingesting the same yes yeah that was also a process of like figuring out yeah what could be an oyster what can we eat that is
you know, described in the play of what they're eating and then figure out, yeah, so that was also a process of figuring out all of that stuff. But also really fun. I mean, it's so fun and delicious.
Chapter 7: How does Rose Byrne balance her acting career with motherhood?
Well, what are you eating? You're not eating oysters? So the oysters is a jello. It's a yellow, like a lemon-flavored jello, which is actually good. It's like very bland. And then there's one chicken sausage that we, you know, kind of nibble on. And then these like weird sort of like,
potato things with the steak and then we have like donut holes when we're eating it's supposed to be profiteroles yeah you eat a lot of those profiteroles throughout I'm eating a lot of them and they've sort of become again a source of some of the comedy like playing with the food and all that kind of stuff Now, I want to ask about the film, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You.
And I have to say, I feel a little bad about asking you about it because you talked about it for so long. It premiered in Sundance back in January of 2025. And, you know, it seems like you've been talking about it. It came out late last year and then you were nominated for the Oscar earlier this year. And it's such a great film and you're so great in it, but it's kind of relentless.
And I wondered if speaking about it was also relentless No, I mean, it was an extraordinary experience for me, honestly, that Mary Bronstein wrote this incendiary screenplay and I just did not want to mess it up. And it was such a creative opportunity. And her and I have just, we hit it off and had this
A real experience, you know, one of those experiences in life that, you know, sort of creatively has kind of changed me. How would you describe the film and your character, Linda? I've loved speaking to other people about the film because it really is – it sort of defies generalization or description because it's – It's sort of like a fever dream in a way. It has Gallo's humor in there.
It's also obviously extremely – there's horror kind of tropes in the film too. I think Mary Bronstein really kind of broke the mold with the tone of the film in many ways. Yeah. And she really sort of plays with the edge of consciousness, I think, in many ways and tapped into sort of like the monster within and the fear of being a parent and the horror of being a parent and some of the joy too.
But obviously she's in a really extraordinarily difficult situation, this woman. But I still can't believe the film kind of got as far as it did just because it was, you know, it's a small independent film so it was just extraordinary. Yes, the film is written and directed by Mary Bronstein, and it's based on some of her own experiences.
Her daughter had become ill when she was younger, and she had that similar experience about trying to get her well and feeling trapped or the weight while doing it. And I read that you both did a lot to prepare for the role that happened. The two of you would meet after dropping off your kids at school and just talk about the script, about motherhood.
Did any of the stories that you shared make it into the movie? Yeah, we were really lucky. We had a period of really like five or six weeks where I would go to her apartment and we just started from page one and just went through every single, you know,
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