Chapter 1: Who were some of the unforgettable interviewees in 2025?
Thank you.
I am so excited about this episode. All year long, people have been asking me the same question, who's been my favorite interview? And all year long, I've had this same answer, that there's been something interesting in every conversation. But who doesn't love a good compilation episode?
So here at Reclaiming, we call together what we consider to be some of the most memorable moments of 2025 from the show. I hope you enjoy, and up first is Miley Cyrus. My 2013 is your 1998 because that was the time where I just got just hit so hard. And I was so embarrassed. And you were mentioning your family, too.
I mean, there was even a time where my brother and sister didn't want to go to school because of how humiliated they were to be related to me. And I remember even, you know, my brother at one point, he was saying, I don't judge you. But you could understand how hard it is for me to go to school and you be my sister. Yeah. And that really, you know...
I was a hard sibling to have as a little girl, so I was like, all right, we're even. But it was really hard for me in 2013, and I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally. If I kept dressing or acting a certain way, my relationships fell apart. No one wanted to date me because they didn't want to be with a woman.
That sexual expression part was not – For them, it was like shared with the world. So like guys, when I would try to date when I was dating or who I was engaged at the time, that didn't work out because I was sharing a part of myself that men wanted to be saved for them only. And the fact that I would...
you know, pose nude or dance in very little clothes or show my body was making them feel like I was taking something away that was meant to be for them. So I would have really hard times dating. And it was just, it was really hard. It was really hard for me to go home and see my dad and like look him in the eyes and not feel super embarrassed.
So, yeah, so having that and going home and seeing my grandparents were just mortifying, you know, or Thanksgiving with my uncle. I felt that way when the Star Report came out, where it was just, like, it had been bad enough with men in general, but in particular, my dad and my brother and my stepdad of...
Just that all these things were out there and my dad's a doctor and he still went to work every day and my brother was in college.
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Chapter 2: What did Miley Cyrus share about shame and sexuality?
It's just hard. Yeah. I still, I don't know how you feel. I still feel guilt. I still sometimes carry guilt around about that. I did EMDR about guilt and shame. And it kind of deleted some of that stuff. It changed me. I mean, I did two sessions and I feel like it kind of deleted the folder of my mind, the guilt and shame folder. So I haven't really dealt.
With that for probably about four years, but up until I did that EMDR, I had a lot of guilt about how hard it would have been to be my sibling or my parent and how embarrassing and, you know, all those things. So I definitely feel, you know, our experiences were different, but they were parallel in a lot of ways. Right. And Alan Cumming.
Confronting your abuser is a really powerful and necessary, if you can, if they're alive and if you have... the power and the strength to do so. So I did that. I went and my brother came with me. We went to confront my dad. And, you know, he was still living in the house that we'd grown up in and had been, you know, some terrible things had happened in it, violence and stuff.
And we told him we were going to see him. We hadn't seen him for years at this point, years. And it was terrifying. I mean, we were both terrified. And I thought my dad was going to hit me at one point. I really thought he was going to hit me. He had a stick, like a kind of, you know, not a walking, but like a staff that, you know, you use when you're hiking sort of thing. And he had these boots.
And I remember his boots were making this, the little tacks on them, making this crunchy noise on the road as we were walking along. And he was sort of whacking the stick against the side of his boot, this kind of thing.
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Chapter 3: How did Alan Cumming confront his past trauma?
And I... A couple of the things I said. Like I remember when I said, I want to ask you about your childhood. I'm curious about if this kind of abuse happened to you and if there's some sort of lineage to this. I'm trying to make sense of this. And I was aware that I was trying not to do too much therapy speak, but obviously I was.
But I remember at that point, he said that nothing happened to him in his childhood. He got really angry when I tried to, Bring that up. And I thought he was going to hit me then. I was really trying to make sense of it. And of course, that I realise now is a foolish thing because you're never going to get sense. You're never going to get logic from someone who is mentally ill. I know.
Me, I'm like, well, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know.
So it was incredibly empowering because we said all these things and we said, it's up to you now. If you, you know... We are giving it back to you. I mean, I was obviously doing loads of therapy talk now that I think about it. But we're giving it back to you. I don't want to carry this anymore. I don't want to carry this. I don't want to feel ashamed of it. I don't want to protect you.
I am telling you this so that I can move forward.
Here's Chelsea Handler. I mean, there's this this experience with Dan Siegel. There was one day where I wasn't he wanted to talk about he kept asking about my brother, you know, and I was like, that's not what this is about.
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Chapter 4: What insights did Jurnee Smollett and Gabrielle Union offer on ancestry?
Like, let's talk about I have I have a short temper. I have no patience. Everyone annoys me. Let's talk about that. I love you. And he was like, okay, well, we need to get a little deeper. And I'm like, no, no, no. These are just newer problems. Like, I'm hitting a crescendo where, like, I'm blasting off on people for no reason. And he couldn't get me to cry. You know, he couldn't.
I just would be, like, steely. And I would come close. And then one day he handed me an orange. He walked in his office. And he's like, oh, I thought—and we were in a different office that day, so it was a little bit out of— I was, you know, and we were sitting at a table instead of in two chairs. And he walked in and he handed me an orange. And he goes, I grabbed this from my tree.
I thought you might want an orange. And I immediately just was like, and everything came up, you know, every, all of it. And I, because he had done something so nice, you know, like an orange to me is like the best memory I have of my childhood is orange juice and oranges. Like I love oranges and it was cold. Like he knew that I liked, I think he had refrigerated it or something.
So it was like all the nice things that man could do to you or do for you, not do to you. And, and, and, He handed it to me, and that's when I just broke down. And as I was peeling it, I was, like, trying to hide my face with the orange peels. I was like, oh, my God, here I go. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm losing my shit right now.
Chapter 5: How do Sarah Paulson and Allison Janney reflect on childhood survival?
And tears and tears are coming down my face, and he's just sitting back like, finally. Like, okay, we can't fix you until you break down. You know what I mean? And that's what you learn about children too. That's what I learned in my parenting class. Even when someone's obstinate and they're rebellious, if they can still cry, they're still vulnerable and you can still get to them. Wow.
So that's important to remember with like... That's really interesting. Wait, say that again. That's really interesting. If you can... Like, if a girl's really rebellious and she's a bitch every night when she gets home and she's hormonal and she's going through preberty and she's mean to her mother and she's mean to her father, she's not gone forever.
If she can still cry, if she can still be vulnerable, and this goes for boys too, but obviously I have more women in my life. As long as you can get to them, if someone can break down, then you have access to try to heal them. Next up, actress Journey Smollett. I think something we have in common is we're both really interested in the idea around transgenerational trauma and epigenetics.
And I think you were talking about how that, like, you're feeling your DNA has the memory of your ancestors of both, right? Like, your mom, who's Black and from the South, and your dad, who was Jewish. And so I'm curious...
as to how you figured that out for yourself, that you're looking at all this transgenerational memory that's come through from all these vast experiences and how that impacts what you're bringing to the screen. Oh, I love that question. I don't know that I've ever been asked it in that way before. Yes, I am very fascinated by memory, blood memory, how our DNA holds instructions.
And there's so much research out there about that now. It's really, really fascinating. And yes, I sit at the intersection of multiple identities. I was raised... you know, by a black woman. And my dad passed away a few years ago, but he Ashkenazi.
And so growing up, my mom really made such an effort to give us guidance in knowing that, okay, you have this very eclectic background and you come from multiple cultures, but you don't have to, um, be one of those people that's just like walking through life lost, right?
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Chapter 6: What does Tarana Burke say about grace and resilience?
Like she really wanted us to just, it was just about embracing our whole self. And yes, I am a black woman and I know how the world sees me. And I know the limitations the world wants to put on me. And I think, you know, really embracing my history has helped me be able to own the entirety of who I am unapologetically. And so, yes, it is something that I bring to the screen.
It's something I bring to different characters. People often joke on me of like, I do a lot of historical period pieces, you know? And I don't think that's coincidental. I think I am drawn to this idea of inspecting, my history and wanting to understand it more.
I played years ago, there was a character, Rosalie, in a TV show called Underground and it was about this group of folks who were enslaved on a plantation and they rose up and ran away and what that journey looked like, right? And I went into that project a month after my dad passed
And in the project, my character, Rosalie, is the product of a Black woman and, unfortunately, the product of what is referred to in the show as the slave massa. And I just remember feeling in different scenes, we shot on an actual plantation. Wow. And feeling like, you know... I don't entirely know how I'm going to actually execute this scene.
There's a scene in the pilot of Underground in which my character is being whipped. And we know the historical context of that, right? And Misha Green, the creator, the co-creator and co-showrunner of Underground, she also created Lovecraft Country. Right. She and I initially really butt heads on how to do this scene. And in hindsight, I realized the pressure we were both under.
Like, we didn't want to participate in any sort of trauma porn. Yeah. You know, but you also want to get it right. And you want to... historically pay tribute to the truth and be a vessel for truth.
And I remember us just like debating and arguing about how we were going to shoot this scene to the point where I just said the night before we were going to shoot the scene, I said to the director, Anthony Hemingway, I don't want to talk about this scene tomorrow.
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Chapter 7: How does John Oliver use humor to address serious issues?
Don't talk to me about it. Don't say nothing. All I want you to do, just let the cameras roll. And I just ask that you shoot everyone else. And when you get to me, I just ask, don't let me hear the sound of the whip until the camera is rolling. Because I don't really know how I'm going to do this tomorrow. Wow. I remember being on set and I was standing near this oak tree.
And I just looked up and I thought of like, oh, all of the things that this oak tree has seen. It has been here for over 200 years. And I heard Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit. And I thought of all the beautiful bodies who have seen this tree as their last image. And all I did was I prayed for the ancestors to use me as a vessel. And we did the scene and he just kept the cameras rolling.
We did it a few takes. And I remember I felt completely taken over by spirit. I felt completely taken over by something higher than myself. And that blood memory, that connection to the memory, both the triumph and the tragedy of my folks, of my history, of my people, does reverberate in moments that are important. And here's Gabrielle Union.
I'm sort of a junkie when it comes to self-exploration. I hope you don't mind jumping into when you turned 50. Yeah. So, like, many people have parties or plastic surgery. And you did a really unique thing of you went to Africa. Yeah. Right? Four countries in Africa. And you made a documentary, right? And it's Gabrielle Union, My Journey to 50. Is that right?
Chapter 8: What humorous moments wrapped up the episode?
Okay, good. And so what were you hoping to explore and find there with that? Every time I set foot in the continent, I reemerge. I am reborn. And I get little pieces of myself. I reclaim them. And I wanted my friends and my family to experience that same thing. And so I gathered some of the closest people to me that were able to fly to Africa. And we started in Tanzania.
And we kicked off one of the big party celebrations there. With the Maasai. And then we went to Ghana. And I wanted to take my family to Elmina Castle, which was the last place our enslaved ancestors were held before they were put on ships. Oh, wow. During the Middle Passage. Okay.
Yeah.
Onto their enslavement in various parts of the Americas. For me, it is a very haunted, occupied space that is incredibly sacred. And if you're quiet enough, you can hear our ancestors speaking to us. And sometimes it feels like a warning. Sometimes it feels like protection. Sometimes it feels like encouragement. But they're speaking to us. And too many of us aren't listening.
And I wanted my family and my friends to be able to have the opportunity to listen. And when you can hear them, you can really truly be in touch with yourself. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it's amazing. It's so interesting what you're saying, too. Journey Smollett was on just a couple weeks ago. Me too.
And we were talking about sort of transgenerational trauma and that, you know, and she was talking about where that connection to ancestry comes in for her in her work. And I just think what a beautiful connection. thing that you did about and the way you talk about it, too, of just the listening. And my mom, you know, my mom had never been to Africa.
And my mom's sister, my aunt Katie, and we were in Ghana. at the River of No Return, where they would, you know, after basically marching our ancestors the distance from New York to Florida, they would put them in this river to clean them up, and they'd, you know, lather them in grease to create the appearance of good health, to get the highest dollar.
And as we were walking down towards this river, my mom falls out. And my mom is late 70s, and I'm thinking... Oh, this is it. My mom just died. And everyone's, and this is all, you know, the cameras were rolling, so this is all being caught. Oh my gosh. And very clearly, I heard my grandmother's voice, who's been gone many, many years. And she's all right. She's all right. And she took a break.
She came back. She came to—they brought her numbers, you know, back to within reason. And she was like, take me to the river.
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