Kelly McAdams

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: R.I.P. Michael K. Williams
Let Me Run This By You: Loyalty
Interview: We talk to Kelly McAdams
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
And Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Pulice. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? So that's the actual truth of the matter. So, but what it is bringing up is like these feelings and you must have, well, I don't know what I'm assuming you have these feelings when you're taking care of another being of like, I, especially a baby who can't talk. Right. I don't know what's wrong with you. There's something wrong with you.

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00:00:50

You're not, something's off. You can't communicate to me because you don't have the language and doors can't communicate to me cause she's a dog. And, but I am responsible for you because you have no other person to guide you, my husband too, but he's like, you know, whatever, he doesn't know what's happening either. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of like waiting and saying, okay, well, you know what, hopefully this doesn't kill you. You know what I mean? Like we're going to figure it out, but it, it is, it does bring up these, this issue of what to do in between the time. And this is what I experienced with my mom and tests and everything in tests.

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00:01:33

And when you send a script off and you're waiting to hear what, how do I work with myself in the, in between times of not knowing of submitting the thing, whether it's a poop sample or right. Example and hearing the answer. Yeah. Well, so I hear you talking about two to at least two things. One being just the feeling that you get when you're taking care of somebody and there's something wrong. And what that usually raises for people is however, somebody treated them when there was something wrong with them and they were little. And my biggest flaw in that regard is I get scared.

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00:02:14

And then that makes me angry. And I, and I want to be like, I want to invalidate it and say that there's nothing wrong with you or that the worst thing is wrong with you. And it just becomes this thing. And I think for us, it's been a lot that we don't have very much wiggle room in our system here. Like we sort of need everything to be functioning at all times because we don't have much of a safety net in terms of like people to help us or money to help us if there's a big problem. So we both really scared when there's a problem. We get scared of like, if it means somebody, you know, can't go to work or somebody, you know, is going to need a of our resource.

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00:02:59

It just, it kind of triggers that. The other thing about waiting is also very painful. And I feel like there isn't any other way around it, but to say like, here I am waiting and here I am still waiting and are all like, you know, it w whatever will be, will be, and to try to have that sort of like not being attached to the outcome, which is hard. Yeah. And no, and knowing that, you know, for me, it's like, I've done what I w it's like, knowing did I do what I could do? Yes. I did all what we're doing. All that we can do, whether it's for this or that, the other thing.

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00:03:40

And sometimes you, haven't done all you can do, and that makes the weighting worse. Cause you're like, I actually half-assed it. Or I, I fell short on this and we'll see, and then owning that part for me. And then you're right. There is absolutely nothing I can do. I can't, I can't fix this on my own. I am not a vet. And I am not a poop tech. I that's not in my skillset. And so I just have to boil the chicken and boil the right and make the rice and, and feed the dog. And she, her mood is fine. Everything is fine. It's just a shitty problem. It's a problem of shitting.

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00:04:20

And, and I did not anticipate that's one of the things of having a puppy that I did not anticipate was the amount of fecal matter that I come in contact to on a daily basis. Right. And I'm coming in contact with, on a daily basis right now. And I couldn't have known that. And, and that it's so weird, but it does come back to writing in and everything. And that you can't know until, you know, and you, and, and my amazing mentor psychiatrist said to me, marriage, you cannot actually be that ready for marriage and childbearing and child rearing marriage makes you ready for marriage in some ways. And child rearing makes you ready for you. You cannot because I want it to be so prepared, like how to prepare, and you can do some of the work, but like you do, and writing.

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00:05:09

So I talked to this amazing woman on Sunday who invited me to her house in Brentwood. I was like, oh, I'm getting fancy here. And she's a Chicago play Chicago playwright, who is a television writer. Oh, I'm I'm, my internet is funky too. But anyway, okay. So she's a Chicago playwright and I was in a play of hers in 1999. And now she writes big wig television, and she's about to be a show runner. And I just said, let me see if, yeah. And she's, she's always been lovely. And I said, let me see if we could just take a meeting and like, whatever.

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00:05:51

And then she invited me to her house and, and she was just dropping so much wisdom. And I was like, soaking it all in. But she said the same thing, which is, cause I was like, okay, like, let's say, I, I, I get I into a writer's room. Like ho how do you, how do you do it? She goes, you just shit. Like anything else you just show up the first day and you try it out. And I was like, oh, like everything starts somewhere. Yeah. And, and actually everything is just a series of many, many steps. And like, that's the thing to do actually in both of these scenarios is like, okay, so, you know, what, what am I, what can I do right now?

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00:06:34

What can't I do right now? What can I know right now? What can I not know right now? And developing some feeling that you're okay with the not knowing that's, that's the thing that I feel like gets triggered for people who are control freaks is just not knowing is really upsetting. And the pandemic is upsetting. And then not knowing with, you know, whatever you're gonna do with your career is upsetting. It's all. But it's really all unknowns because even something that you really know right now that you really feel too in your heart to be true, it may or may not continue in that vein. Right. Yeah. Right. In two seconds, like it is.

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00:07:16

And I, you know, I was reflecting on the death of Michael K. Williams. You, you must be so sad about Omar. I burst into tears. And then I thought, if this is fucking an addiction, I'm going to cry. And it is, it was a heroin addiction. And I was like, wasn't he famously like in recovery during his, yeah, I think so. I think he, he had it's like, and, and it just, it's just so sad. And so I felt angry and like addiction, you know, it just triggers so much in my feeling about addiction, about suffering from a disease that we just don't understand or care enough to really look at as a, as a, as a national and international healt...