Johanna Schneller: Star Whisperer

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of ill repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley. And Maureen Holloway.

Maureen Holloway  0:07  
Wendy, our guest this week is Johanna schneller. They're telling you right out of the gate. I have resume envy.

Wendy Mesley  0:12  
Well, I kind of get it Johanna schneller. She is one of the top entertainment journalists in the world. I read her of course in The Globe and Mail. But she's also written for every major magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, in style, Ladies

Maureen Holloway  0:28  
Home Journal. I didn't know the latest still had a home journal because

Wendy Mesley  0:32  
there were so lady.

Maureen Holloway  0:36  
She's profiled every big story you can imagine like, you name them. Brad Pitt, Robert Downey, Jr, Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts.

Wendy Mesley  0:44  
Yeah. Well, I'm I want to ask her about that. Because apparently there's a thing. But anyway, Johanna, she is she's president of the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Maureen Holloway  0:52  
She's a screenwriter. She's written at least four major adapted screenplays.

Wendy Mesley  0:57  
She's hosted several TV series about film, of course, the filmmakers for CBC and she also did TVO Saturday Night at the Movies. Maybe she's still anyway, we'll have to ask her big

Maureen Holloway  1:07  
shoes. There are also apart from film, Joanna has co written books about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, transgender cyclist Kristin Warli, in most recently, the last Doctor lessons in living from the frontlines of medical assistance in dying. Yeah. And

Wendy Mesley  1:25  
Johanna is she's married to another great writer and brown. They have two kids, including Walker who was born with a rare and super serious genetic disorder. So we can we can maybe talk

Maureen Holloway  1:36  
about that. Johanna and Ian have been very upfront about that. So when we spoke earlier, join us and were we going to talk about my responses. Well, what aren't we going to talk about? Apparently, we can talk about

Wendy Mesley  1:46  
anything? Yeah, so this week, it happens to coincide with the Academy Awards. You're an expert on on all while. You're both experts on that. So maybe, yeah, maybe we should start with that. I

Maureen Holloway  2:01  
think that's up to the multifaceted and highly accomplished Johanna schneller. Hello, Johanna. Hello. It's

Johanna Schneller  2:08  
so nice to see you. Oh,

Maureen Holloway  2:09  
it was funny. We were just saying that you are the interviewer. And here we are. You're now in the being interviewed. And it's odd, isn't it? Yes. It's

Johanna Schneller  2:18  
funny to have the tables flip. It's a it's actually a good humbling exercise to do every now and then because it reminds you of what you're actually asking other people to put themselves through for you. So yeah, my pleasure to be here.

Maureen Holloway  2:31  
We've got so much ground to cover. But as Wendy said, the Academy Awards that as usual, highly contentious, political, terrible, snubs, surprise nominations. Let's just start with the out of the 10 films that were nominated for Best Picture, what do you think of the crop this year?

Johanna Schneller  2:48  
I think it's a really good crop. I think it was a very interesting year, I think that there's a couple of front runners that have emerged now and all the various Guild Awards and things that we're seeing,

you know, my frustration with the Academy Awards, and with all awards, really, is that you get this very diverse, very interesting group of films. And then everybody somehow solemnly agrees on the thing that feels like the most serious man movie. And this year, the Serious Man movie is Oppenheimer. And so it doesn't matter how many things are popping in the corners of here or there and like interesting and fascinating, it's like, but what's really important, you know, whatever men thinking, and then that's where we go, right? Yeah, so it's Cillian Murphy or I may have mispronounced that, but I love him. He was in peaky Peaky Blinders and it is the same character and Oppenheimer's a great movie Well, it's not that great but and more and I've we've had a couple of fights about Barbie so we can we can maybe go there but but yeah, it's the man woman or it's the Man movie is one over the the woman's movie with a serious man movie, as Johanna puts it versus the frivolous woman's movie. And it's in fact, well let's talk about Barbie because this is considered the biggest snub both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie who started and was producer overlooked. But Ryan Gosling who you know, we love he was great you gotta admit he was wonderful. Okay, I know. But it's there's an irony involved the fact that can get the nomination and Barbie and her maker don't. I think the big picture here is what kinds of like if we pull the camera way back? What kinds of movies do women get money to make? And I think you tend to see more like Justine TAS movie anatomy of a fall or saline songs where we pass lives. There's great, great, great, incredible, but they're made on a smaller scale. And so when it comes time to honor the director of these movies, it's like they're small, they're little, but it's a self fulfilling prophecy because then the woman doesn't get the big

budgets the next time either or the next time after that. And as a result, you have an academy awards that in 80 years has nominated like five women. But

Wendy Mesley  5:08  
it was a big it was a huge deal. The Barbie movie like, to me, it was full feminism, we can talk about that because it doesn't agree. But it was huge, like everybody dressed up and everybody went to see it and it made millions. So even even when it's huge. You can't get a director's award as a woman.

Johanna Schneller  5:25  
Yeah. Huge. It's still a girly movie about zaal. You know, I mean, it's that's the perception. Really, I think everybody can cast their mind back to the summer when both of those movies came out on the same day. And there was the BB and Hymer phenomenon. And I am really surprised that more people from Oppenheimer haven't actually thanked Barbie in their acceptance speeches because I think far fewer people would have gone to see Oppenheimer if it hadn't been rolled into that BB and IBOR phenomenon. And it just to me, that's the irony of it all. Barbie did this tremendous box office, she carried this other movie along in her week. And then at the end of the day, she's the one it's like, That's enough out of you, little lady sit down and sit down and let the you know, let the series people have their turn now. So it's not so much for me like is it Greta? Or is it you know, some other woman who didn't get nominated? It's women, capital W who don't get nominated. And that is becoming increasingly frustrating for me. The

Maureen Holloway  6:27  
Academy Awards, which are still the the pinnacle of everything you write, there's just been such a plethora of award shows now that it's somewhat diminished. But still, they are the most important. Put sometimes, and I'm watching them I don't think I've missed one in my entire life. I used to watch when I was a little girl, no idea. You know who Sam Peckinpah was? When I would watch the Getty wars just because they were so glamorous. And yet, I still say to myself, What the hell? Why are we celebrating these people? Like, you know, the Nobel Prizes don't get this kind of. And this I guess I've widening the observation slash question to the fact that what is wrong with us, we're celebrity obsessed, never before in history have have we cared so much about such, frankly, not important people. You know, I

Johanna Schneller  7:17  
write celebrity profiles, as you very kindly mentioned, and the way I always justified it is that they're sort of our Greek gods, there are a little pantheon of and you know, we want to see what Zeus and Hera and Aphrodite and all of these people are up to. And I think they're interesting, because like all of us believe that we should be living bigger lives, right? Like, we all think that we were sort of destined for greatness or something, but something gets in our way, we don't have the money, we don't have the time, we don't have the connections, we don't have the access. So if you present me with a handful of people who have all the money in the world, all the access all the beauty in the world, and then you say what is your life? Like? Is your life better or worse than mine? If you have all of these things? I think that's inherently what's so interesting about them, because I think that they provide this kind of basis for comparison, if you had all the obstacles in your life removed, would you still have trouble in your marriage? Would you still have, you know, problematic children? Would you still be dissatisfied? And the answer is yes. So So I think we, I think they serve a function for us whether or not it's the function we think they're serving. It's interesting,

Speaker 1  8:25  
because I think now with the Kardashians, and whatever, that we all think that we're all celebrity obsessed. But as as Moe was saying, we've always been celebrity obsessed. So there, there is something going on. It's just changing it. It also brings us together when we get you can meet a total stranger, and you can have a conversation about George Clooney with them. So it is a unifying force as well.

Johanna Schneller  8:49  
That's right. I think they give us permission and talk about our own lives. Like I think if you go like, Oh my god, I saw this thing where Goldie Hawn said that happiness is a choice. And do you think happiness is a choice? You know, and then you have like a little window into something you might not have had a conversation about? Like, why do I care that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have are seeming to make it work this time around you know, like they've been through the wringer and and again, you know, I just think that that's an opportunity for us to talk about ourselves whether we realize that or not

Wendy Mesley  9:22  
well in your in your columns a recurring theme is girl power. And we talked about that with the you know, the Man movies in the series Man movies and, and Barbie and so on. And so are we getting somewhere like is anything changing? Like the whole me to thing happened, but but just sort of sounds like we're still in the same rut? Are we? Are we getting anywhere?

Johanna Schneller  9:42  
Are we getting anywhere? I mean, there are more like if we wanted to turn it back to the Oscars, three of the seven films that are nominated for Best Picture This year were directed by women, that's the most that we've ever had. That's at one hand, a hopeful thing and on the other hand, a ridiculous thing Because last time I checked, women were not 1/3 of the population of planet Earth. So you know, it is very, it's a very slow moving ship to turn around people with power never want to give up power. I, I'm hopeful that more things are changing. And the evidence I see of this is that in Hollywood these days, you know, there are boxes to tick, you have to have a certain amount of diversity, you have to have a certain amount of people who are differently abled, you have to have people of color, you have to have more women. And I think that's working. I think it might have started as a box to tick. But what is happening is that we are actually seeing more movies we're seeing in Canada, we're seeing a lot more stories about indigenous lives were made by indigenous people. There's this idea now that you couldn't possibly make a movie about a black family or an indigenous family without having at least one black creator involved in the proceedings. I think all of those things are good things. I think it's just very incremental change.

Maureen Holloway  11:00  
You wrote a piece last weekend in Globe and Mail on being girls, which, so I was in grad school. 20 years ago, a late bloomer, and I wrote a paper on me and girls, it had just come out. And so it is interesting reading your article about how it holds up 20 years later, and it does in all, its various incarnations, because girls will always be me, there will always be me even girls. And I thought it was really, really interesting. My point 20 years ago, maybe my point today is that the very meanness of girls, the fact that they can be mean and specific and funny, the end of the movie is very funny, the lines are fantastic is actually called an intra female complicity or something. I can't remember some pretentious thing that I had my paper. But the fact that girls have a code women have a code, whether it's good or isn't isn't about being nice. It isn't about being kind, and returnable, and all those wonderful things that are ascribed to being female. It can be it's being witty, and manipulative. And in other words mean and I was wondering, what do you think about that? Well, you

Johanna Schneller  12:01  
know, there's this old adage that if the patriarch is having dinner, and they're just like tossing the scraps off the table, and all the women are fighting for the scraps that they're getting tossed, then they're going to be more aggressive to one another. This idea that Tina Fey wrote about when she was at Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey obviously the person who wrote the movie Mean Girls that Saturday Night Live, she basically said, they would sort of say, like, Ooh, there's another woman Ryan are coming. And what are you going to do? You know, we have our girl do we need another girl like, and they never pit the men against one another in that way, there was not that encouragement of what the book that Mean Girls is based on calls relational aggression. There's this idea that like dudes, or dudes will be dudes, and they can all just carry each other along, whereas women are just like, never gonna be. And I think that what the author of the book, so fetch, which is about the making of Maine girls, I got to speak to her for that column you mentioned. And she basically said that women need power on some level, because power is what makes us feel secure. And if the only power that we can have is power over another woman or over our peer group, then we'll take it but because it's kind of a pale power, the only power that we can get and the more power we get, I think you see the more women lifting one another app, I think that the me to movement was a perfect example of that, that all these women who were meant to feel like you weren't allowed to talk about it. Once they started talking about it together, they could make change working on the same side, I just heard an interview on NPR with Lilly Ledbetter, who was a worker at the Goodyear Tire plant in Tennessee or somewhere like that. And they told her that she was not allowed to discuss her salary with anybody else. And she found out of course, through like secret notes that people put in one another's lockers that her salary was 30% less than the guys who were doing the exact same job as she was and she put her job on the line and, and, in fact, they fired her to sort of create this equal pay act that is also having an anniversary in the states now, but she points out that it doesn't just affect your salary in the moment, it affects your pension, it affects your social security, all those things that come on down the line. So there's a whole lot of forces out there that don't want women to unite and talk to each other that are very interested in keeping women at each other's throats.

Wendy Mesley  14:22  
It's really interesting. It makes me think of something that I mentioned in the in the intro, which is Julia Roberts, but it sort of fits with the whole thing like I think we actually are getting somewhere and not just in terms of diversity but in terms of of everybody getting ahead and everybody saying I will support you and let's share the power and whatever not just the the old boys but Julia Roberts. I just find it fascinating because you were saying I my husband calls them girls who like throw plates throw players or plate throwers that yeah, that they're way more interesting. And your suspicion of Julia Roberts was that she was a plate thrower and that she was actually more interesting, but she wanted to be seen as the nice girl next door and the pretty whatever. So where are we?

Maureen Holloway  15:07  
What happened I miss it what would have played out you

Johanna Schneller  15:16  
know now I want to preface all this by saying that I interviewed her many, many years ago pretty children pretty the person that she's with. So she might be a changed person. But in the couple of times that I interviewed her, I think it was three times once for GQ once for TV Guide, I can't remember what the third one was. She was definitely and again, looking at this now in a new light. This is probably what like she felt she had to do. But she was much, much, much, much more charming to men than she was to women. She was much more charming. And she understood how to work it. The movie that I interviewed her for TV Guide was a thing on PBS where celebrities went and interacted with animals. And there was one where Robin Williams did elephants and it was it was a kind of way of calling attention to these endangered animals. Julia Roberts did orangutans somewhere in Central America. And I got to talk to the director and he said all the men on the crew in love with her and she made all the women cry. So you know, the I think again, that's just a person who had this sense of what was going to get her ahead and what wasn't going to get her ahead. And that all might be different now, but at the time that I encountered her she was

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  16:38  
the women of ill repute.

Maureen Holloway  16:41  
And I talked to you personally before we did this interview, Johanna about this about so doing celebrity interviews, and I understand and and Wendy understands there's a huge difference between your celebrity red carpet type of who are you wearing reporter and an arts journalist. And I wonder, you know, you're so a continent and I'm not blowing sunshine up your skirt here, you are accomplished. You are a screenwriter yourself, you are a writer, you are not there, you're there to actually do an in depth profile. And I would think anybody who knows anything about you would be flattered that you are looking at them that way. But you must have people who dismiss you because they're famous and you're just some other person who comes along and you don't really understand what they do. And you just want to know, you know, who they're seeing and tell it does that happen? Do you have to sort of impress upon people that you're quite serious? Yeah, I

Johanna Schneller  17:36  
mean, first of all, you're very kind. Thank you so much. I'm not to like dwell on Julia, because this wasn't Julie's fault. But part of the cover story that I did for GQ magazine was she was getting her photo taken by her Brits, who was a very famous Hollywood photographer. And they were doing a shoot on the roof of his studio in Hollywood. And Herb had at the time, these two dogs that were these very exotic, beautiful looking dogs called Rhodesian ridgebacks. And I was on the roof, watching the whole proceedings with my little tiny tape recorder. And you know, her was there with 77 people. And there was a person whose job was like to go like this flick at her, you know, to make sure that everything was hanging right on the wardrobe. And there were people handing him his camera and handing him his lights and doing slides. And I was with the dogs. And every person who walked by said hello to the dog's head. No, no, no, not a single person asked me who I was. And that experience happened very early in my career, there would be profiles. And that was very instructive for me. And I tried to always remain humble, but I had a sort of second experience. A couple of years after that. I was interviewing Liam Neeson in Scotland for the movie, Rob Roy, for the cover of Vanity Fair, and the shoot not to anybody's fault just like weather and certain conditions and stuff. The shoot was not going well. So everybody was quite tense. And I'm on the set in like remote Scotland where they're shooting this movie. And so they keep putting off my time to interview Liam, it's going to be tomorrow. It's gonna be the next day. It's gonna let the clock is ticking. And, you know, it's my first story I've ever written for Vanity Fair, so I'm super nervous about it. And like, I'm calling my editor and my editors calling his agent and anyway, we finally sit down for this interview and he is unbelievably crabby, like unbelievably crabby. And I'm very disappointed because I'm like, half in love with him. And he's, you know, this fabulous creature in my eyes. And anyway, I'm on the plane home and I'm like, I'm gonna write a story about him. He can't do anything in my hands now, like he, he's actually seated the power to me now. And sure enough, when I got home, there was a message waiting for me. It was lamb. He was like, Oh my God. I was I felt like I really didn't do you justice and let's have some phone and now you now and he gave me a couple of phone interviews. And then when the story came out, he sent me another note saying, like, you really could have been meaner to me and you weren't. And somewhere when I was on that plane, he also realized, like, Oh, she's gonna write this story. And that or what I didn't say, you know, or like, it's, it's in, it's out of his hands. And so I think that's what's so interesting about the phenomenon of what's happening with celebrities now, and social media, people don't want to sit down with you, like you very kindly. So they shouldn't, you know, be happy that I'm writing but they are not happy that I'm writing about them. They, they do not care about my 1000 words in The Globe and Mail because they would rather have their 40 words on Insta, where they get to say what they want, and they don't have a person like me, BDA ating them for the world, they they're presenting what they want to present, the stuff that looks raw that they're sending out, there isn't raw, as we all know, it looks raw enough that it satisfies their fan base. And so you get people like Beyonce never given an interview, she does what she wants, well, and

Wendy Mesley  21:07  
they don't need to anymore, right? They don't need the conventional media anymore. So yeah, I know, when I was at CBC there was there was a queue was allowed an interview and the Globe and Mail was allowed an interview. And though those were the two people who got more than 10 minutes, otherwise it was everybody just shoved through. And don't ask this and don't ask that don't ask about the love affair. Don't ask about the whatever. And they and they get away with it. So I, I just like how do you figure out how do you make it real without sort of stepping on a line and making somebody grabby, it's, it's such a game.

Johanna Schneller  21:40  
I know, I know, you know, I would come home from an interview. And I'd be like, he's great, or she's so fun. And and my husband would say they're actors believed that I could see through them enough to kind of get a glimpse of what they were really like. And that was a function of time, you know, back back in the dark ages in 1984. When I started doing this, I was working at GQ magazine, and they had barely begun putting celebrities on the cover. It always used to be models. And the same was true for Vogue. And the same was true for Vanity Fair, like the idea of celebrity journalism was kind of brand new. And so there was no Entertainment Weekly, we had a lot of power in terms of, you know, if you wanted to be on the cover of GQ magazine, back, then you had to agree to sit down for three different interviews, one in your home, one at work, and one somewhere out in public. And you had to spend like an hour with each of those at each of those interviews. And then there was a whole separate set of getting photographed. And, and people did it because it was, you know, the best way to get your message across in a kind of glamorous way.

Wendy Mesley  22:49  
Now you just go on social media.

Johanna Schneller  22:51  
Now you just go on social media, or you were at TIFF, for example, at the Toronto International Film Festival, you can't get an interview with anybody anymore, because they're off in the photo suites, getting their photos taken, because that photograph is gonna get reprinted and transmitted out into the world a million more times than any one individual story. And they feel like they can get more traction with that. And it's time better spent with them for that. So, you know, so it's a different kind of access. We're getting to celebrities. Now. It's a much more curated by them access. But some people would say they're getting more access, because you know, when the celebrity lets you into their house, when John Legend is like tickling Christy Teegan, you know, you feel like you're seeing something that you wouldn't have seen if a journalist was present. So it's,

Maureen Holloway  23:35  
and yet, you know, Vanity Fair and GQ, they still have these pro you're still doing profiles. I want to ask you rather, I mean, we're always tempted, say, Who's the worst person to ever interview? But

Wendy Mesley  23:46  
my favorite question, I hate being asked that question, so, but

Maureen Holloway  23:49  
I want to ask that. And that's happened to me and Wendy as well, where sometimes he cuts through sometimes you go, and I've interviewed so many musicians, especially in hotel rooms, particularly I was when younger and I you know, I'd get asked out for dinner, but I'm not talking about that. I'd be more like I remember Rita Coolidge, while people going, I love your top, where did you buy it? I sit down the street said could we go shopping? I mean, sometimes we didn't, by the way, but sometimes he cuts through sometimes he can act. And I wonder if that's happened to you and with whom? Yeah,

Johanna Schneller  24:19  
I do think that's true. I think that sometimes you you know, I think it would be really, really hard. You'd have to be not very good at your job, I think to sit with somebody even for 10 minutes and not have some single moment where you've had some kind of like meeting of the minds or you've said something that you know, they liked or they've said something that you liked, like you have to hope that heart people are people and if they're not, then you have to hope that you have the wherewithal to see that and then you've at least got that part of the story like this person is Teflon and they never dropped their facade for a second. But I would say yes, I have. I hope they feel the same way. I felt like I had a connection over the years with Emma Thompson. I just love her so much. Because

Maureen Holloway  25:06  
we're all connected to never met her, but we're deep. I'm sure she knows.

Johanna Schneller  25:13  
When people say who is as great as you want them to be, she's as great as great as you imagine. That is how great she is. She is great. And whether she's faking or not, she seems to remember that we've talked before and she seems to remember about what and, and she's just phenomenal. And she's funny, and she's forthright and she like she has no time to waste. And she's spectacular.

Maureen Holloway  25:37  
Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah,

Johanna Schneller  25:38  
she's spectacular. And I had a couple of really good conversations with Julianne Moore, super smart, very empathic person. And you mentioned my son Walker at the, at the beginning of this and I was interviewing Annette Bening at a very emotional moment in my life was kind of when we found out what was going on with Walker and what it would mean for the future. And so one of my little tricks is does a person ever ask you about yourself, especially in the longer interviews, if you're spending an hour with someone and they never asked you a single question about yourself, then I think I have little insight into your character, right? The smart ones will ask you a million questions about yourself, because then that means less time for them to talk about themselves and they're just frittering away your time. That's a tactic. That's a different thing. But if they ask you one sincere question or two sincere questions, then I think, okay, you're human, and we're connecting on a human. So, Annette Bening says to me, How many kids do? And I'm just at that moment where, like, I know, if I say I have to, then they say, what do they like? And I'm thinking, do I want to answer these questions about Walker? And I just don't know. And so for some reason, I told her the truth. She said, how many kids you have, and I said, one, but to be honest with you, I just found out this thing. And I don't even know how to talk about him yet. So let's just and so we moved

Maureen Holloway  26:54  
on. So he was a baby. He was a baby, too.

Johanna Schneller  26:57  
And so we moved on, and daughter, their daughter, and then she had been told a million times, she has a heart out, she has to pick up her kids at schools, just be out buy three, blah, blah. So 259, I say to her, you know, thank you so much. I really love talking to you. And I turned off the tape recorder. And she said, Now listen, tell me about your son. And it was so sweet. Like it was just such a human thing. And she sort of sat there for another 20 minutes. And we talked like mother to mother. And it wasn't for the story. But it just it meant the world to me. And so like I will always, you know, for anybody says who's the greatest person you've ever met? It's like she's right up there for just because of that human quality. Yeah. How is he doing? He's, I would say he's pretty good. He's 27. Now, he's been living in a group home for 15 years. We love them. They're fantastic. It's called the Stewart homes and they're based in Pickering in Peterborough. He's he's in a place in Pickering. But the pandemic was really hard on all of them, and continues to be really hard. Like, one of the great things about this group home was that it got the kids out into the world. And they would go to the mall and they you know, they go to Boy Scouts, I'd be like, what is Walker doing a boy scouts, they were like, doesn't matter. And, you know, he went to school on the bus. And he had kids who looked after him. And you know, the Boy Scouts, I think got something out of hanging out with him probably more than he got out of hanging out with them. But anyway, the pandemic comes in, like, boom, that's it. It's it's over. Like they're in their rooms, they're with their one on one caregivers, nobody's talking, Nobody's going anywhere. And you could just feel the whole every one of those he lives in a place with eight other kids and, and you can just feel them all sink, they just all sank. And the caregivers did the best they could to keep that from happening. But you know, it's a golden thread. These kids are sort of hanging by. And then we had this really heart wrenching. It's hard to describe how heart wrenching It was first encounter with Walker during the pandemic because for months, we weren't allowed to go and see him. And they tried to show him us on the iPads and he doesn't care about that stuff. He doesn't know what he's looking at. So we would like hey, whatever, but it didn't matter. The first time we're allowed to go see him in person. It's been I want to say seven or eight months. And I keep saying Does he think we died? Does he think we don't care about him anymore? Does he have any sense of how much time has gone by so we go visit and we have to wear full PPE, shields masks this that we can only meet him outside, and we're not allowed to touch him. And he is not demonstrative. But he sees us and he runs to us. And we have to backup. We can't touch him. So we did this horrible little dance where he he's coming to us and we're backing up and he's coming back up and finally he just got Was any six twist knees and fries. And then we sat down and cried too. And then they said, that's your 20 minutes. And I said to you, I don't even know what that was, that was so horrible. I can't even explain what that was. And I wish I'd had defied the caregivers and just like, bumped into him or something. I wish I had just been able to show my shoulder making contact with his shoulder, because what would it have done, right. But this was a vaccine, and we didn't know where anything was gonna go, there was nothing we could do. So that's a long way of saying, it was, it's been a hard couple of years for us in him. But when he sees us, he's, you know, happy to see us, he now can come home again, we can go back and forth and things are getting back on track. But it's been, I think, like most of us who have children, we won't know the impact of whatever age they were during this pandemic, we won't know for a couple of years.

Wendy Mesley  31:03  
Yeah. And did he know what did he know that it was COVID. That meant you couldn't hug them? No,

Johanna Schneller  31:07  
we would have no sense of being able to know what that was like. Yeah, they were just in now still to this day. So they're getting it, it's still people are getting it. And they'll get it at his house. And then everybody goes back to their room and tries they try not to give it to each other. Like it's it's just for everyone. It's a it's an ongoing difficulty. But I think for these kids with special needs, it's just a whole other level that we don't think about very much of of how difficult it is, if you can't explain it to someone,

Maureen Holloway  31:37  
you and Ian has been so forthcoming about it. I've read you both through the years for all the other things you write about it, but especially this and I hope it helps you both to deal with it by being so open about it because it's certainly inspiring to other people. And and you know, a deep it, obviously, because of a mess, have deepened.

Johanna Schneller  32:01  
You know what I think it was good for, I think it was good, because the before it was a book, The boy, the man was a series of articles in The Globe and Mail. And it happened that they were running in December, and we were going to a lot of Christmas parties. And so we'd go to one of these Christmas parties, and whichever of the three installments had just come out in the globe. And people realized, oh my god, I read about Walker and ah, and except for our very closest friends, a lot of people in our lives didn't really know the extent of everything that was going on with Walker. So it was new information for a lot of people and everybody was super kind about it. But what would happen every time is they would say, you know, like I've got an uncle who's an alcoholic or my brother's kid is in real trouble. And, and I realized that everyone is carrying around something that they're not talking about. And it's heavy. And when you give somebody permission to talk about the thing they're not talking about there something happens between people it was it was such an we've come home from those Christmas parties with like pounding addicts like oh my god, that was so like, I heard 15 stories that I would never have heard otherwise, like it was so profound. And so I do think anytime anybody shares any kind of story about that, anything that they're struggling with in their life, it does help people because because we just are, we're trained to be like, we're fine. How are you doing? I'm fine. You know, it's really hard to say anything other than fine. So I, I like to think that it helped people talk to each other about stuff.

Wendy Mesley  33:38  
Moe and I both have kids 2525 and 30. And it just, I mean kids is just is a remarkable thing. And, and I think Maureen and I both been fairly open about about, about things or bad things that have happened in our life. But it's hard because as you say, so many people, they don't want to go there and you don't want you and Ian don't want to go there and talk about Walker all the time either. So how, like, people sort of anyway, all of this to say as I think people need to be a little bit more open than they are and and you have been so open about about your son. So

Maureen Holloway  34:18  
I'm sure it informs you as a writer and an interviewer too, I think of like, what is it about Johanna schneller that people want to talk to her? And I think it's because you yourself have empathy and and and even if people don't, even if they think you're with the dogs, which is what I think you should call your memoir, I'm with the dogs

Johanna Schneller  34:39  
or whatever their dogs have names.

Maureen Holloway  34:40  
Yeah. There's something about you that people want to. They want to connect with you. So keep up the good work, for lack of a better expression. It's been a real pleasure. Well, I

Johanna Schneller  34:54  
mean, you must have your ways of getting people to talk and I mean One of my ways of getting people to talk isn't as nefarious as it sounds. It's just genuine. It's like, if I asked somebody about their parents divorce, I'll be like, Well, my parents got divorced. And it was like this, it was like this for me. How was it for you? There are people who think you should never do that in the course of an interview, right? That you should just be like a shrink. And that's never been my way of going about it. I don't know if you know, this writer Taffy Broadus or actor who, who writes for The New York Times Sunday magazine and wrote Fleischman is in trouble. Half of her stories are about herself. And, and, and that's her way in. Like she just gets people talking because she's just so yappy and fabulous. And then, and I've interviewed her for a couple of things. And I just didn't like, I'm so in love with her because she's just so happy. And so I think, yeah, some somewhere somewhere, you have to let your own personality come out if you if it's going to be a real exchange.

Wendy Mesley  35:54  
I'm just looking at the clock. And it's we've been talking for more than half an hour. Yeah, I know. Johanna, you're wonderful to talk to we have so many more questions, but and we could probably talk for hours. And I remember seeing you I don't know whether you were doing CDC or what you were doing you were in the makeup chair. And I was I was too shy to say hello, which is so stupid. Like, here I am. I was probably a little bit in a rush or overworked or overwhelmed or what but my main thing was I was too shy. So it's really really nice to to meet you. I feel like I know you from reading you Andean and from from reading the story about about Walker over and over and over again. So assessments are nice. Yeah.

Maureen Holloway  36:35  
Yeah, we've been fangirling for a long time. So so thank you for coming on and talking to us. We really appreciate it all right, well, hold on. Well as an interviewer she's a fabulous interviewee

Wendy Mesley  36:54  
ya know, I mean, she,

Maureen Holloway  36:57  
we haven't even she's written books on made on medically assisted death. She's written by Rob Ford. I mean, movies aren't even the half of it. Yeah,

Wendy Mesley  37:06  
I just there were so much to talk about with her with her son, let alone all the celebrities let alone all the books that she's written i i remember and it's I had to confess to seeing her in the makeup chair and being too stupid really to go over and say hi, I'm a big fan and you're wonderful and I remember her husband walking down the street with Walker and he would have been two or three years old at the time and I knew that there was an issue but it was way before boy in the moon was was written it was way before the the globe series about his severe severe genetic disorder

Maureen Holloway  37:43  
he has he's never evolved Pat if you haven't picked up on it he has not evolved past the mental age of two but as cared for and loved and what can you do? Yeah,

Wendy Mesley  37:53  
so she's wonderful and he's wonderful and they've been through something really hard and they've they've well not that you can never figure out everything some things just mark you forever but she's a great she's a great great thinker

Maureen Holloway  38:07  
and a funny both she Andy and are like hilarious and so I mean you can be all things and yeah really big.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  38:19  
Women of ill repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley. With the help from the team at the sound off media company and producer yet Val graver.