Shadowing Practice: New interview of Emma Watson with People/EW Network! - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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In January of 2015, you made an announcement on your Facebook page.
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It was, I'm finally able to tell you I will be playing Belle in Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast.
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It was such a big part of my growing up.
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It almost feels surreal that I'll get to dance to be our guest and sing something there.
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My six your old self is on the ceiling, heart bursting.
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What changed between then and now?
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What was the thing you didn't expect that you wish you'd known back then?
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Was it the singing?
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Was that the hardest part to learn?
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That it was all going to be okay.
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Hands down.
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I think, you know, there were so many new things that I was taking on with the role.
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I'd never done a musical before.
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I'd never sung.
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I mean, I always sung, but I'd never sung publicly before.
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I'd never sung professionally before in front of anyone else.
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I'd never horse ridden for a movie before.
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I'd never danced for a movie before.
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So I kind of went into this boot camp for three months before we started shooting, which was singing four times a week, dancing five times a week,
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riding three times a week.
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Yeah, bell boot camp.
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Do you ever combine them?
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Sing and ride a horse?
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All at the same time.
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Actually, I don't.
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Thank God.
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I think my brain would maybe explode.
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You didn't sound intimidated.
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You sound jubilant.
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You know, my six-year-old self is on the ceiling.
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On the ceiling.
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Yeah.
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No. I mean, I think I feel so blessed to have already played one of my childhood heroes, which was Hermione.
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And then to get to play another one, I feel like that's almost unique to an actress, to get to do that.
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So I was like, wow, this is...
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I just felt incredibly lucky to have the career that I'm having.
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You know, in my house we are big animation fans.
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My wife and my kids love the Disney cartoons
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and even among people who grew up with them
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and are now adults in their older years grew up with these Cinderella and Pinocchio.
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Beauty and the Beast is a much more recent one from the 90s, but it means so much.
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The geekdom around animation is as intense as Star Wars or Marvel, DC, Harry Potter.
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Totally.
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Yeah, I feel like it unlocks for people something from their childhood,
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something that feels so deep inside them and something that they've always known.
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It has a level of familiarity that is just so intense and special.
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When I talk about prep and whatever else, it was like, in the build up to the movie, I really felt the pressure of that, not just from me loving those films,
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but knowing how much this character means to so many people.
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What was it you didn't want to change about her?
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What do you think is fundamental to the character of Belle
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that needs to stay the same in both the animation and the live action version?
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What I love about Belle is that she's kind of, if you look at her within sort of the category of those Disney characters, she's kind of the rogue.
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She kind of like, she takes a different course.
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That was always what I loved about Belle.
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Like when I think about Belle, I think about her singing Belle Reprise, which is her sort of coming out of her house
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and singing this song which is just kind of like bursting out of her
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which is you know I know everyone around me can't understand why I don't want what everyone else thinks
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that I should want and which is being handed to me
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but I really just want something more I want something else
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like I don't this doesn't fit I don't fit she kind
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of like the Robert Frost poem she she takes the road less traveled
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and I always really identified with
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that she's Bella's no sheep she's really on her own just
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on her own path she's friends with sheep she's friends with sheep she is friends with sheep
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but she's on her own thing and there's this like defiance
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and I just I that that energy
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that spirit was really what I identified within her that's that's
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like her her sound of music scene to it's her eyes up into the hills turning around
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and looking down at her town.
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And it's also an expression of loneliness, isn't it?
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Because she says that for once it would be grand to have someone understand.
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I have so much more than they have planned.
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And you get the sense of how isolated she is from everyone.
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Definitely.
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And I think that in the end is where Beast
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and Belle find their common ground is because they both feel really lonely.
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They both feel like outsiders in their own world.
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Belle is kind of trapped in her surroundings, in her village, and Beast is trapped in this castle.
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And there's this sort of strange mirroring.
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There's this strange parallel where only when they're together do things kind of feel like they make sense.
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And that's where they start to really fall in love.
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Yeah, they make sense of one another for each other.
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So the opposite of the question is that was what you wanted to keep the same about them.
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Yes.
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What did you want to change?
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What did you want to bring to it to make it your own, your version of Belle?
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What's so beautiful about the story as a whole is this idea that Belle is able to see past these extraneous,
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external, superficial qualities of Beast.
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She's able to see deeper.
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And that's one of her special powers, is that she can see behind his anger and frustration,
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see the pain and vulnerability and insecurity and her beauty is put in contrast to his beastliness, and it's kind of what creates that beautiful opposition.
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I'd have switched to Geico, saved a whole bunch.
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Car insurance, huh?
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Yeah.
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Saving money?
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Super easy.
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Oh, man, who doesn't like saving money?
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Am I right?
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I'm not cleaning that up.
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So in the original, you don't get much of a sense of... Who is Belle?
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What does she do?
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Where does she come from?
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How does she spend her time?
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before she goes and meets Beast.
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And so I wanted to create a bit more of a backstory for her.
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You kind of get a little bit of a sense of why she doesn't fit in.
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Like, she likes to read books and she's not desperately in love with Gaston.
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But why is it that she's such an outsider?
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Why does she feel like she doesn't fit so much?
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And I really wanted to get to the bottom of that.
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We kind of made her this mad,
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wacky inventor, which was originally kind of like her father was that role and it kind of became more about Belle.
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Kevin Kline's character for my father became much more of this slightly frightened, slightly nervous, cautious, but very sensible, wise, loving father.
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So it was really fun to do that and add that on.
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Yeah, crazy old Maurice.
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Crazy old Maurice.
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Building like a wood cutting machine.
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Yeah, but now it's Belle.
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Belle's like creating this mad, she essentially creates a prototype for the first washing machine so that instead of having to do the washing herself,
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she can sit and read while her machine is taking care of it.
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It's a barrel with a thing that attaches to a donkey.
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With a donkey that pulls it round.
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I know, it's a whole thing.
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Donkey powered washing machine.
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Yeah, donkey powered washing machine.
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That's also a really traumatic scene in the film because she doesn't just invent this thing
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that starts washing the clothes in the public square.
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She's using her spare time to teach another small girl to read
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And then the villagers come and I don't want to give away too much, but they destroy her machine.
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There's like an anti-intellectualism in this village, which you get from her song.
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Yeah.
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There must be more than this provincial life, but you really get a sense of it in this movie.
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They're hostile to her bringing change and her intelligence.
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They don't think women should read.
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They don't think women should read.
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And it goes further than that, which is really interesting that you picked up on that, which is that they're deeply suspicious of intelligence and anyone that,
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you know, is going beyond that.
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And they don't like anything that's foreign, unknown, that might be beyond their realm of experience.
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And so they really do.
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Breaking the washing machine is symbolic of not just them, you know, breaking something she spent hours working on, but them really trying to break her spirit
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and kind of trying to kind of push her and mold her into a more acceptable version of herself.
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I think that happens a lot with women and a lot with young girls where it's like, oh, that's nice, but why don't we just kind of push you this way a little bit and like...
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Why don't you do what's expected or traditional?
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Yeah, we prefer this aspect of your personality.
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Let's cultivate that area or that sort of thing
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that you're good at and let's just kind of like push that side a little bit.
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I thought plot-wise it also explained why she maybe wasn't so eager to get back to the village.
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It was very important to me that Belle try to meaningfully, you know, try to escape.
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And only at the point when Beast comes and saves her and she in turn saves him.
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From the wolves.
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From the wolves.
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And there's kind of this unspoken agreement of, of I'm not a prisoner anymore now, here on my own terms, and I'm going to stay with you until you get well.
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But there's something, there's a dynamic that just, that really shifts.
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What is it that makes the Beast worthy of being saved and redeemed, and Gaston not worthy of it?
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Like, what is she seeing in Beast?
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I think she can see in Beast that there's someone that is, that has been fundamentally good,
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that has been damaged, and that kind of just needs rehabilitating almost and needs is is just in need of love.
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Whereas Gaston is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum,
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who is someone who has had nothing but love and admiration and easiness.
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And because he's never suffered, he doesn't have any empathy.
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He doesn't have any empathy, he's essentially a narcissist.
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So in that way I see Beast and Gaston as opposites, and all opposite ends of the spectrum.
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They each have their entourage.
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Beast has his household full of living clocks and candelabra and Gaston has his villagers who adore him.
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They have paintings of him in the pub and the The women are all swooning over him.
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He's so cruel to them.
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But Beast is loving in his gruff way toward his people.
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That's so true.
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Again, I think there's an intentional cruelty with Gaston,
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which is about building himself up by pushing others down.
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Whereas with Beast, there's kind of, you can tell he's being unkind because he's so unkind to himself.
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And he feels so terrible on the inside.
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That it's a defense mechanism.
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Yeah, that it's a defense mechanism and it's a...
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He doesn't see himself as being very worthy.
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That kind of reflects how he interacts with everyone and everything.
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I mean, it's a very old story.
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It goes back...
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There have been versions of Beauty and the Beast going back to the second century. And it's...
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You know, there has been some criticism of it that it's like a woman in an abusive relationship.
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I can save him.
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I don't really see it that way.
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I presume you don't either.
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But what do you say to that type of concern, that it suggests to girls, stick with that abusive boyfriend, maybe you can fix him?
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Right.
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Why do you think that's not the case?
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It's such a good question, and it was something I really grappled with at the beginning.
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The kind of Stockholm Syndrome question about this story.
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So I did some reading about Stockholm Syndrome.
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Stockholm Syndrome is where a prisoner will take on, will kind of like take on the characteristics of
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and fall in love with in this sort of really strange way their captor,
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Belle actively argues and disagrees with him constantly.
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She has none of the characteristics of someone with Stockholm Syndrome because she keeps her independence, she keeps her independence of mind.
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And I also think that there is a very intentional switch where in my mind, Belle decides to stay.
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She gives as good as she gets.
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He bangs on the door, she bangs back.
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And there's this defiance that, you think I'm going to come and eat dinner with you, and I'm your prisoner.
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I'm your cat.
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Absolutely not.
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And it's only when they, and I think that's the other beautiful thing about the love story, is that they form a friendship first.
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And that gap in the middle where there is this genuine sharing and this real friendship, the love builds out of that.
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Which in many ways I actually think is more meaningful than
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a lot of love stories where it was love at first sight and you're dealing with all of these kind of projections.
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Beast and Belle begin their love story really irritating each other and really not liking each other very much.
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Slowly builds to friendship.
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Slowly, slowly, slowly, very slowly builds to them falling in love.
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That is a big problem with a lot of fairy, a lot of traditional, traditionally written fairy tales is that you're like
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So the girl's just gonna give up her entire existence and everything that's important for her to her For this guy,
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that's you know, and that seems to be like This recurring theme which is like whoa, this is you know
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Even Belle kind of goes that way because she's
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so in love with fairy tales at the beginning of the story
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and finding her prince charming She does think about her prince charming, but I think He's kind of, the sense that I got from Belle is that he's a bit of an afterthought.
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She's much more interested about getting out there and traveling and reading.
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And I think as well, Prince Charming is someone that comes along and understands her.
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She's waiting for someone that makes her feel understood in some way.
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Now, did you have any conversations with Paige O'Hara, who voiced the character?
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I didn't know.
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Back in the animated days?
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You know, it's interesting.
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I've done a few movies where I play, you know, someone's played my character before or, you know, my character exists in real life.
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And I've always chosen, I've always chosen not to.
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I think because in the act of creation, you do, you want to make sure that you're, that you're bringing something individual and original.
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And a big part of it was wanting to stay faithful to the, to the original telling.
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And I think, I hope we really got the balance right of being like, okay, we're gonna offer you some new stuff that you've never seen before,
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but we're also gonna give you the heart of the original.
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231
Which is why every Dunkin' latte, cappuccino and macchiato is carefully crafted with espresso and milk.
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Just the way you like it.
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You've been through this yourself on the other side of it though, handing off Hermione Granger to Noma Dumuzwene on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
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You've met her and talked to her.
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What are your conversations like about Hermione?
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Now this is a character you both share.
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Oh, it was so strange.
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It was so emotional seeing Noma's performance in a way that I had not anticipated at all.
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I went to the play like really just like, oh, you know, this will be great.
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I'll be interested to see.
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And didn't even realize until she walked in the room and just spontaneously just burst into tears.
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It was such an emotional moment for me.
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I can't tell you.
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But it made me, it was such a relief
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because I think I'd played that character so intensely up until that point to know that Hermione was going to be okay.
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I know that sounds crazy, but like to know that everything turned out all right
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and everything in the world was okay and
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that there was someone else carrying her on and carrying her forward and it was just such a relief.
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It made me so happy.
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Because otherwise, I don't know, playing someone that, I mean, we get that little flash forward at the end of the last film,
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but playing someone that kind of just gets stuck in time at 20 years old, 19 years old, it's like,
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no, I wanted her to have a future.
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Well, you see so many years of her life back to back to back and then nothing.
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So it was sort of a relief.
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You obviously care a lot about the character.
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It was a relief and again, I just feel so lucky to play someone
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that I sort of care about as much as I care about Hermione and in a way feels like, does feel like an extension of the,
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some of the essence of Hermione too.
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When you talk to her, do you feel like you have a mutual friend in Hermione?
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Like you both know her so well?
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Yeah, oh definitely.
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And that was the other weird thing is that Noma was a complete stranger but that I felt like I'd known forever.
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It was really, I can't tell you, like, there was just an instant,
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like, intimacy, connection, oh, we're totally on the same, you know, yeah.
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It's crazy.
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So obviously Belle loves books, that's her thing, she's a bookworm.
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You are too, you have our shared shelf, the book club.
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What are you reading at the moment, like what's occupying...
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We're actually reading the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
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and Eve Ens has written a ton of great books actually
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so I had already seen the play before
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so I'm kind of delving into a few of a few
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of her other ones as well I remember my mum taking me to see it
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when I was still pretty young
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and I was horrified by the whole thing I was like you know
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because it's just it's such a stigmatized topic and Eve just just boldly
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and bravely kind of just like just takes a pickaxe to all of the walls, to everything.
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And so you end up, if you bring it up as a topic, you end up having amazing conversations with people.
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People know you for HeForShe, the United Nations Solidarity Movement,
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bringing men into feminism, and supporting their friends and sisters and mothers.
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What's the latest with that program?
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What can you tell us about where that is and your involvement with it?
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Yeah, I think the other thing that was really important for me about
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that movement was men understanding that it was also not just them helping their sisters or their friends, but kind of in a way helping
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or saving themselves in order to make themselves more full and more human and more whole and, you know,
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cherishing what we consider to be often considered to be feminine
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qualities instead of kind of sweeping them under a rug
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or trying to pretend that they don't exist or just generally devaluing them.
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What I would really love to focus on is there's a lot of missing data that we have about women and girls,
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and there's a lot of these gaps that I'd love to try
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and fill and get some more information on because when you can show the data on something,
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it makes something visible and it's very difficult to treat a problem that you just don't have.
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What kind of problem?
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Gosh, everything from sexual violence to FGM to literacy rates to everything really.
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Often because we often don't measure a lot of things that happen within what we consider to be the private sphere.
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So this year I really want to focus on statistics and information and data and data collection.
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What do you think is like the primary blind spot that guys have about this movement? about feminism, about doing the right thing?
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Just...
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What is it that we're not saying?
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I think the word is really difficult
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because it seems to inherently suggest a preferential treatment of the feminine over the masculine
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because it has the feminine in the word.
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And I think that's a real oversight and a misunderstanding.
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Rather than just basic fairness.
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Rather than just gender equality across the board.
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This isn't girls are better than boys, boys are better than girls this is just everyone deserves a fair chance at whatever it is.
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I think also because a lot of prejudice and certainly misogyny is so normalized,
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it almost, it's like it's right under people's noses.
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So when you raise it, there's kind of like a, well, that's, we've dealt with that.
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Women, women got the vote ages ago, like this isn't a thing.
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And then when you start to kind of unravel it for people, they go, oh I didn't think about that
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or I didn't think about this and
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if I were to say I was a feminist it would
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be a personal attack on you as a man as opposed to a patriarchal system
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or something much larger than an individual person.
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I think also that men think that they can't be feminists.
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That's a big misunderstanding.
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Some of the best feminists I know are men.
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Why do you think they can't, they feel they can't?
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Like that's not masculine if you're a feminist?
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Yeah, that it's not masculine if you're feminist, that only women can be feminists because it's about, again, it comes back down to that misunderstanding of the word.
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To the word, that is feminine, so I can't be.
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Yeah, so I can't touch that.
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I like to joke about the man box, which is like, you can only be a man
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if you fulfill these certain qualities and you stay within this square of like,
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you're in your man box and you're safe in the man box and something about, for some men, about going near feminism is a step out of the man box.
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Because they know it's just so fragile.
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It is fragile, I know.
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It's going to fall apart.
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They do.
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They hold their box together.
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That identity structure, you know.
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Definitely.
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And I really sense that.
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And also, no one likes to feel, they feel that there's blame attached to that word.
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And I think that's very difficult to deal with.
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What do you think it is in pop culture that makes guys so resistant to women as superhero characters?
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You know, I cover the Star Wars films as well, and certainly it's not the majority of the fandom at all, but there is a certain subset that doesn't like that the last two Star Wars movies,
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the two new ones, both star women, both are focused on women as the main character.
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You see this sometimes with like the female Ghostbusters movie too, like you're ruining my childhood by casting women in these parts.
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Why is it they don't accept women in these roles
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when women have been accepting guys in these roles for a long time
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and love Star Wars and Luke Skywalker even though he was a boy and they weren't?
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What is it that, why Why are women able to accept it and guys are not some guys?
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It's something that they're not used to and they don't like that.
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Anything that deviates from the norm is difficult to accept.
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I think if you've been used to watching characters that look like, sound like, think like you,
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and then you see someone up on the screen that you go, well, that's a girl, she doesn't look like me.
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I want it to look like me so that I can project myself onto the character.
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Whereas women are great at doing that.
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Anyway, we see whoever does on screen and we recognize the human qualities in the man that we relate to.
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And there's not such a gap, but for some reason there's some kind of barrier there where they're like, I don't want to relate to a girl.
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Often I feel like, you know, the superheroes that...
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If I asked a young boy what superhero they looked up to, I feel a lot fewer would say a female one,
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or would ever use an example of a female one, than in reverse.
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Which is a shame because I feel like we need to live in a culture that values and respects
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and looks up to and idolises women as much as men.
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So I think that's starting to slowly change, but it is something that I feel like it does actively need to be addressed.
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You hear people talk about, obviously Carrie Fisher just passed away, and women will talk about how important that character was to them.
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Princess Leia was a touchstone.
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For me, I have a seven-year-old daughter, and Rey is her idol.
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And she loves Princess Leia too, but Rey is for her.
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Do you feel like Hermione is on that spectrum too?
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Definitely.
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Do you hear from, I guess, little girls now, now, but also people who were in their 20s who grew up with your films, that they connected with Hermione.
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She was smart and she wasn't ashamed of that.
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She wasn't too concerned about winning over the boys.
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She was more interested in being herself, except for when she had Polly Juice Potion.
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I feel like, yeah, yes, 100%.
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But I feel like, you know,
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Hermione was that perfect example of turning on its head this initial prejudice that she gets,
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which is that you're bossy, this you're that and but Hermione finds a way to wield her intelligence
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and become the really the leader in this in this group of of two other boys
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and that's kind of the role
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that she assumes Harry is much more Harry is much more
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intuitive Ron is just along for the ride uh Hermione is is She's the one with the plan.
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She's in control.
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And I think somehow that gave other women permission to feel that they were allowed to take up space.
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And they were allowed to do that.
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And what's so fundamentally beautiful about Hermione is that is her loyalty to that group of friends.
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In a way, she's really the glue that keeps that trio together.
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So her role is.. it's fundamental and the boys know it and they really treat her with that, with as if they know that, yeah.
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Did you face that growing up?
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Did you have people telling you to do, as we talked about with Belle, to stay a certain way, focus on certain things?
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What type of obstacles were thrown in your path?
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The amount of positive feedback I would get from looking pretty
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and like putting on a nice dress and smiling nicely and doing all of that,
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The amount of affirmation and validation that would come with me spending time doing that
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versus studying for months and reading something interesting and being passionate about something and talking about it,
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I mean, that would barely get a side glance.
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But there's so much.
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So if you showed up on a red carpet looking beautiful, you'd get a lot of attention for that.
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Yeah.
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But if you gave a speech or talked about something.
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Young woman when it just felt really, this is really depressing.
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Like, I have, I've put so much of myself into whatever this thing is.
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And ultimately, all anyone seems to care about is this other thing.
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That's not just me.
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I'm, I'm, I know I'm in a very unusual and unique set of circumstances, but I have lots of other female friends who will be like,
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I gave a presentation that was 20 minutes long and someone just said, oh, like, why are you wearing that weird pantsuit?
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And they were like, that's what you took away from 20 minutes of what I just said?
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You know, it's like, it's really hard.
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So I think that's a tough one.
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I think that's a really tough one.
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You had a choice.
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I mean, you went to college and you had a choice then to either continue acting or pursue something else.
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You majored in English literature, is that right?
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What made you decide that acting was then going to become the main event and not just something you used to do?
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Perks of being a Wallflower.
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Really?
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Really.
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Yeah, it's so funny because I went to college and I was genuinely kind of like, well, I'm going to go study and then I'll kind of like, I'll see what happens.
417
And then Steve sent me the script for Perks of being a Wallflower
418
and I went and I sat down with him and it just reignited this.
419
I was like...
420
Had you read the book before you read the script?
421
No, I hadn't.
422
So I read the book and it just gave me this weird compulsion.
423
I was like, I have to tell this story.
424
You know, I...
425
Oh my God, if I don't do this, nothing else makes sense.
426
Like, I don't want to spend my time doing anything other than making sure that this movie gets made.
427
I must go to Pittsburgh.
428
I must go to Pittsburgh.
429
I must get funding for this movie.
430
You know, and it's like...
431
And it was really strange
432
because I just didn't know coming out of Harry Potter whether I was going to feel
433
that way about anything else for a long time.
434
You know I had loved performing and I had loved acting
435
but really a big part of the passion for me was
436
that I just loved those stories and I wanted to be part of
437
that world and I loved who that character was and it wasn't
438
so much for me about the idea of being an actress.
439
It was the idea of, like, I just want to be part of this.
440
And Pucks, and working with Steve,
441
and feeling that I had something else to give and offer was what really did that for me.
442
Do you write?
443
Are you interested in writing?
444
I do write.
445
I do write, but I write, I think when I write my best,
446
I'm writing about something that I'm either so angry or so passionate about that it kind of just comes out.
447
For me, writing is like an overflow.
448
Writing is like, oh, I have all this stuff and I need to get it out of me somehow.
449
And I put it all down on paper.
450
It's therapy and it's like trying to work things out in my own mind and trying to understand.
451
It's trying to understand better what's going on in here.
452
The following ad is being condensed for your viewing convenience.
453
So I just switched to Geico.
454
What took you so long?
455
I know, I saved a ton of money on car insurance.
456
That's what I'm talking about.
457
Geico also gives you 24-7 access to licensed agents.
458
Booyah!
459
So has there been a woman in this business who has been inspiring to you, who's helped you along? we've talked about obstacles
460
and people not valuing what you have to offer but has there been another woman who said here's how you clear those?
461
For me I think my big like aha moment
462
or my big feeling of like wow there's like this whole cavalry
463
that are coming to my support and women that I can call
464
and try to make sense of things was more when I started
465
when I became a part of of the feminist movement and it was meeting people like Gloria Steinem and
466
Sheryl Sandberg and Bell Hooks and you know and Eve Ensler
467
and and Caitlin Moran it's it's it's really the women whose books I started reading
468
and then was fortunate enough to meet and speak to who made me feel
469
that something that I
470
that a set of circumstances I had been taking very personally were in fact not personal at all
471
but actually part of a systematic and much larger and bigger thing than myself.
472
Do you think things are getting better on that front?
473
Is the arc toward improvement or do you feel like we're backsliding?
474
Taking the longer larger view,
475
we are always slowly moving towards progress but it does feel as though we take one step forward,
476
we go back a bit, we make progress, there's a pushback, there's always a pushback.
477
When anything comes under pressure, when anything is difficult, one of the first things to go, or one of the first things that tends to be attacked,
478
is women's rights, is women's reproductive rights.
479
Women's liberty is one of the first things that people try to curtail.
480
It's It's an easy way to try and feel that things are being better controlled if women are kept
481
nicely and neatly in their place.
482
There's a lot of talk in this business about female directors and women are editors,
483
they're writers, they're producers, but there are very few female directors overall.
484
Why do you think that is?
485
Oh, we're like, we're not even on the scale.
486
I think we're less than five percent.
487
I don't know because you look at people like Catherine Bigelow and you look at Ava DuVernay and you're like,
488
you know, these are explosive.
489
These are explosive movies that they direct.
490
There's a big, big diversity problem there that has to be addressed.
491
It really does.
492
Are they being kept out, do you think?
493
Or is it something else?
494
Because women aren't present in these other fields in filmmaking.
495
It's a double prong effect which is that because we don't, because there are fewer role models, because we see fewer women doing it,
496
I think fewer women are able to see themselves doing it, have the confidence to see that they can do it, think they can do it.
497
So it's partly internal and then I think it's also external,
498
there's just a blanket level of prejudice about women's capacities in
499
that role and just a lack of confidence of just like I'm going to give you
500
that check for X million dollars to go and make this movie.
501
They just, there's a gap there that doesn't seem to be able to be bridged.
502
I don't know if it's a trust, you know, I don't know what it is.
503
That there's like some psychological hang up among the people who have the power to greenlight these things
504
that they don't give that shot to a young female director.
505
And I think also there's a genre idea of like, well, this is a movie about buildings exploding and fights and superheroes.
506
So a woman can't direct that.
507
This has to have a man directing it because it's about explosions and fights and stuff.
508
So only a guy can do that.
509
It's like, you know, there's just kind of a, there's a way that things have been done for a very long time.
510
And, you know, you almost need to like open up new neural pathways in people's minds you need to expand people's vision,
511
you need to get people out of comfortable habits and patterns in order to see new possibilities.
512
I want to ask you about your next project, The Circle, with James Ponsold.
513
It's based on another book by Dave Eggers.
514
This is about technology and its role in our lives, how we are sort of constantly surveilled.
515
I mean, we are today, we self-surveil.
516
We We tweet about where we are, write on Facebook about where we are, but this takes it to another level.
517
What does it have to say about life in 2017?
518
I think that's what's so fun about this movie is
519
that this is not a dystopian future that's set in 2050 or something.
520
This could be basically tomorrow.
521
I mean, this is kind of an uncomfortably close film about where, if we aren't careful, we could very easily go.
522
in that technology is advancing us and giving us so much and empowering us in so many amazing ways,
523
it's also handing over potentially huge amounts of information.
524
And information is power, I think, even more than money in a way.
525
Tom Hanks plays this sort of Steve Jobs type character.
526
Yeah, he plays this kind of incredibly likeable genius...
527
Big brother.
528
Big brother figure who, you know, is kind of...
529
He has an amazing way of explaining things
530
that doesn't make it feel like your civil liberties are being taken out of your hands.
531
He's kind of perfect for the role because he's so charming as so much of this stuff is.
532
It's shiny and exciting and you turn on your phone and you get this big dopamine hit.
533
It's really addictive.
534
Do you find social media to be empowering or do you find it depressing and...
535
Equal hearts, equal parts, sorry.
536
Despairing.
537
Depressing and terrifying and equal parts empowering and thrilling.
538
I think that's the key really is bearing in mind the
539
kind of I really draw a super conscious line between what is public
540
and what is private and
541
that has kind of helped me maintain a certain degree of sanity
542
because having people weighed in
543
and give an opinion on absolutely everything about me would just
544
destroy me as a human being I would not be able
545
to I would I would just be a shell of a
546
human like people are criticizing who you're who you're dating
547
or you know I mean there are some things
548
which are inevitable in which I've got used to but censoring yourself and watching yourself and and also I noticed so
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 548 sentences and 6503 words to shadow. The speech runs for 38:37. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| feminist noun | /ˈfɛmənɪst/ | An advocate of feminism; a person who believes in bringing about the equality of the sexes (of women and men) in all aspects of public and private life. |
| wash verb | /wɑʃ/ | To clean with water. |
| fewer | /ˈfjuː.ɚ/ | Less; a smaller amount of something non-integral commonly expressed as an integer |
| sheep noun | /ˈʃiːp/ | A woolly ruminant of the genus Ovis. |
| charm noun | /t͡ʃɑɹm/ | An object, act or words believed to have magic power (usually carries a positive connotation). |
| feminine adjective | /ˈfɛmɪnɪn/ | Of or pertaining to the female gender. |
| donkey noun | /ˈdɑŋ.ki/ | A domestic animal, Equus asinus asinus, similar to a horse. |
| carefully adverb | /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/ | With care; attentively, circumspectly. |
| whereas | /(h)wɛɹˈæz/ | In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although. |
| friendship noun | /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/ | The condition of being friends. |
| craft noun | /ˈkɹæft/ | Ability, skillfulness, especially skill in making plans and carrying them into execution; dexterity in managing affairs, adroitness, practical cunning… |
| worthy adjective | /ˈwɝ.ði/ | Having worth, merit, or value. |
| spectrum noun | /ˈspɛktɹəm/ | A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes. |
| prisoner noun | /ˈpɹɪzənə/ | A person incarcerated in a prison, while on trial or serving a sentence. |
| animation noun | /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of animating, or giving life or spirit. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| look up to verb | To show respect or admiration for (someone); to see (someone) as a role model. | |
| come along verb | To accompany. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come under verb | To come underneath (something). |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been accepting · has been inspiring |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to and · used to do |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | they've always known · have planned · have switched |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being handed · is trapped · is put |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 146 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, faithful /ˈfeɪθ.fl̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: wash /wɑʃ/, sheep /ˈʃiːp/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, feminism /ˈfɛmɪnɪz(ə)m/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like feminist, wash, fewer.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.