This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jessica Rush: Hi everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Mamas Talkin' Loud.

[0:03] Cara Cooper: I'm Cara Cooper.

[0:04] Jessica Rush: And I'm Jessica Rush.

[0:06] Jessica Rush: Today's guest is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, radio host, podcaster, writer, and actress.

[0:12] Jessica Rush: We are pretty sure there is nothing she can't do.

[0:15] Jessica Rush: She joins us today amidst the run of her Off-Broadway one woman show Approval Junkie, based on her memoir of the same name to share how it's never too late to find your purpose.

[0:25] Jessica Rush: Here's our conversation with Faith Salie.

[0:28] ♪ Musical number: "Mama's Talkin' Loud" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[0:43] Cara Cooper: Faith, welcome.

[0:54] Faith Salie: We are so happy that you are here.

[0:56] Faith Salie: Good morning.

[0:58] Faith Salie: I am so happy, and I have to stop myself from fangirling all—I mean, you know I'm like the biggest jazz hands Broadway fan.

[1:08] Faith Salie: So the fact that I get to talk to both of you is so exciting to me. Thank you.

[1:13] Cara Cooper: Well, thank you for joining us, for being here.

[1:16] Cara Cooper: We're super excited.

[1:17] Cara Cooper: I watch you on CBS Sunday Morning and listen to you on NPR or any number of the many things that you do.

[1:24] Faith Salie: So we might end up walking by each other on the street, Jessica.

[1:28] Jessica Rush: Yes.

[1:29] Jessica Rush: Yes.

[1:29] Jessica Rush: We're in the hood, yeah.

[1:30] Faith Salie: Yeah, for sure, for sure.

[1:32] Cara Cooper: Well, when we start out, you, as you know, because you've listened, we always ask about your kids for you to tell us about your kids.

[1:38] Cara Cooper: Because in our world, we don't often get asked that.

[1:40] Cara Cooper: So will you please share with us about your children?

[1:43] Faith Salie: Yeah, they are preposterously big now.

[1:47] Faith Salie: Um, this happens, doesn't it? They grow up, they get breakthroughs and things.

[1:51] Faith Salie: Um, my son Augustus.

[1:53] Faith Salie: Oh, I'm glad you asked because I just realized next week is his half birthday.

[1:58] Faith Salie: And we do half birthdays in our house.

[2:00] Faith Salie: I usually make a Coca-Cola cake and cut it in half, which is easy to do because it's a bundt.

[2:05] Faith Salie: You can cut a bundt in half easily.

[2:07] Cara Cooper: Yeah.

[2:08] Faith Salie: Um, you have a look of recognition, Jessica.

[2:11] Faith Salie: Is this because you grew up in Texas?

[2:13] Jessica Rush: You know Coca-Cola cake?

[2:14] Faith Salie: Yes.

[2:15] Jessica Rush: Yes.

[2:15] Faith Salie: I need to—I was like, what is a Coca-Cola cake, Cara?

[2:19] Faith Salie: I mean, it is some buttermilk, marshmallow, Coca-Cola, chocolate goodness.

[2:27] Faith Salie: And I don't—if you're uncomfortable with the word moist, you just don't want to go near this cake.

[2:31] Faith Salie: Some people don't like that word.

[2:33] Faith Salie: I like that word.

[2:36] Faith Salie: I'm gonna make you one.

[2:36] Faith Salie: I'm gonna make you one.

[2:38] Faith Salie: Seriously.

[2:38] Faith Salie: There will be somehow delivered to you.

[2:41] Cara Cooper: All right.

[2:42] Faith Salie: Um, I grew up in Atlanta, so that is why that enters my life.

[2:47] Faith Salie: Um, so my son turns nine and a half next week.

[2:50] Faith Salie: And my daughter would tell you that she is not seven, she's seven and a half.

[2:54] Faith Salie: Um, my son is Augustus, and my daughter is Minerva.

[2:58] Faith Salie: And in my show, Approval Junkie, I actually have a little line saying why we named our daughter Minerva.

[3:08] Faith Salie: Buy your tickets and go find out.

[3:10] Faith Salie: So you have to come and see it.

[3:11] Cara Cooper: Exactly.

[3:12] Faith Salie: I didn't mean to make that such a spoiler.

[3:14] Faith Salie: It's, uh, my husband is an ancient Greek and Latin scholar, not professionally, but, you know, academically, and we were praying for her.

[3:28] Faith Salie: He's Jewish, I'm—I was raised Catholic, but we light candles anywhere we go, and I was praying for her when I was like 10 weeks pregnant and found out I was having a girl, and we were in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome.

[3:40] Faith Salie: And in Piazza della Minerva.

[3:43] Faith Salie: Um, and we thought that's a beautiful name.

[3:46] Faith Salie: She's the Roman equivalent of Athena, so the goddess of arts and wisdom.

[3:52] Cara Cooper: Well, I think that's perfect.

[3:54] Cara Cooper: That's like you're—I feel like that's like the meeting of your minds, right?

[3:58] Cara Cooper: You're like this artist, this actress, but you're a scholar and a journalist, and you know, a finder of facts.

[4:05] Cara Cooper: So that's all those things meshed together.

[4:07] Faith Salie: And you know, my husband is a chief strategy officer.

[4:11] Faith Salie: Whatever that means.

[4:13] Cara Cooper: Yeah, yeah, you're talking to two actors here.

[4:15] Cara Cooper: We know same CSO, but um, but the goddess Minerva slash Athena is also the goddess of war and strategy.

[4:24] Faith Salie: So it just covers all the bases.

[4:28] Cara Cooper: It's fascinating.

[4:29] Cara Cooper: I love it.

[4:29] Cara Cooper: I love hearing origin stories of how names come to be and how we as parents choose, you know, these monikers for our kiddos.

[4:39] Faith Salie: You know, it's really meaningful, and my kids have a hyphenated last name, which is my last name first.

[4:44] Faith Salie: Thank you very much.

[4:45] Faith Salie: So that if there's ever a prescription and they can't fit the whole name, my kids have my last name on the bottle.

[4:51] Cara Cooper: Well done.

[4:51] Cara Cooper: Smart.

[4:52] Faith Salie: I like that.

[4:52] Faith Salie: Yeah, and that's like—I suspect you as well are raising very progressive feminist children, but I love that, you know, my kids' names precede them when it comes to how kind of equitable and feminist our family is.

[5:11] Cara Cooper: I think that's awesome.

[5:12] Cara Cooper: You know, I mean, it's—I think the same is very similar with Elliot being a girl, you know, and as opposed to her, you know, her name is such a sort of gender-neutral name now and didn't used to be, but naming her Elliot, it always—whenever people say, just yesterday I met a stagehand and his name's Elliot.

[5:30] Cara Cooper: I said, oh, I said, that's my daughter's name.

[5:32] Cara Cooper: And he was like, oh, you know, he said, I've never met a girl named Elliot.

[5:36] Cara Cooper: I mean, he's an older man.

[5:37] Cara Cooper: And I said, yeah, that's—and he's like, I like that.

[5:40] Cara Cooper: I like it.

[5:40] Cara Cooper: And it's always lovely to sort of have that—people are always like, that's really—yeah, I like that.

[5:45] Cara Cooper: That's cool.

[5:46] Faith Salie: It keeps people on their toes.

[5:47] Faith Salie: Like every—I feel like every time you can sort of subvert gender stereotypes.

[5:52] Faith Salie: And I just went out, I took my stage management team out for some drinks last night, and I told them—and you all must be used to this when being in the theater more often than I am.

[6:05] Faith Salie: But at our first rehearsal, everybody went around and said their pronouns.

[6:09] Faith Salie: And look, pronouns aren't new to me.

[6:11] Faith Salie: Plenty of people have them in their signatures, but in my daily professional life, like we don't—we don't express our pronouns explicitly, right?

[6:21] Faith Salie: Maybe it's because I've worked with people at Sunday Morning for a dozen years, and same with NPR.

[6:25] Faith Salie: I know people's pronouns.

[6:27] Faith Salie: Um, but it was so wonderful.

[6:31] Faith Salie: It was so caretaking to—because there were plenty of people on our whole Approval Junkie crew and team who are non-binary.

[6:40] Faith Salie: And grandma here was like, wait a minute, you can have a she and they pronoun? Explain that to me.

[6:48] Cara Cooper: Yeah, well, and just that's new in our world too, though.

[6:51] Cara Cooper: We didn't used to do—I mean, that's all just sort of—and that's what's happened with the movement and with people just sort of waking up and being more aware of the diversity within ourselves because in 2019 when we started Tina, we did go around and say our pronouns.

[7:09] Cara Cooper: That was the very first time I ever did that.

[7:11] Faith Salie: So it's not—we haven't been doing it for a long time.

[7:14] Faith Salie: It's new to us too, and there seems like, you know, I've—I'm—I just finished hosting this podcast for Audible Originals called Broadway Revival about what happened during the shutdown for so many artists and people in theater and what it's like to return, and so many people talked about the—I don't know if this is your experience—the gentleness of returning, like not just inclusive, like, hey, what are your pronouns, but how are you feeling? Does your body feel safe going to and from the theater?

[7:14] Faith Salie: Uh, like my—our tech rehearsals were not a 10 out of 12.

[7:50] Faith Salie: I was there for eight hours. My director was like, no, I'm not gonna work you harder than that. That makes no sense. Just a real sense of like, um, global self-care.

[7:50] Cara Cooper: Yeah, yeah, it's a big shift, and I think the people who have been in the industry for a really long time are like, this is really different.

[7:50] Cara Cooper: Like it does feel different, and then for the younger people, they're like, no, this is the way it always should be, you know what I mean?

[7:50] Cara Cooper: There's—I think the next generation has such a different viewpoint on how to move through the world, whereas those of us who are a little bit older have been like, no, it just knows to the grindstone, put your head down, things walk uphill both ways in the snow.

[7:50] Faith Salie: Yeah, exactly.

[7:50] Faith Salie: Like things are happening around us that aren't okay, but just keep going, just keep going.

[7:50] Cara Cooper: Whereas these younger people are like, no, no, that's not okay.

[7:50] Cara Cooper: You had a really interesting journey to motherhood, and we want to touch on it just a little bit.

[8:49] Cara Cooper: You did a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about it, but we've only spoken to one other person that did this, that froze their eggs.

[8:55] Faith Salie: So can you tell us a little bit about all of that?

[8:59] Faith Salie: I'm evangelical about it.

[9:02] Faith Salie: I feel like that will be—I don't even know if my daughter will have a bat mitzvah, but I'll—congratulations, here's a certificate to freeze your eggs when you're 18.

[9:11] Faith Salie: I feel like it is the key to any young woman's happiness and liberation.

[9:19] Faith Salie: Even if you don't know if you ever want to have kids.

[9:23] Faith Salie: It's—it's so—I decided I was married way too young at age 34.

[9:31] Faith Salie: And um, I think any—look, y'all, I think anyone who gets married before 40 or has kids before 40 is just a baby having babies.

[9:38] Faith Salie: I just—I like because I didn't have my kids till I was 41 or 43, that's all I know.

[9:45] Faith Salie: And um, and they came exactly when they should have for the kind of parent I want to be and the life experiences I can bring to them.

[9:55] Faith Salie: Um, and the gratitude, right?

[9:57] Faith Salie: Like not just in being able to have them in my 40s, but being able to have them with this man, with my husband, and not my husband, which is what I call my first husband.

[10:07] Faith Salie: Um, and like God bless them, and like, you know, all of that challenging journey with that marriage made me grateful for what I have now.

[10:17] Faith Salie: But I was going through my divorce, and I was 39, and I was seeing a fertility doctor because I was like, I'm doing this.

[10:27] Faith Salie: I don't know how I'm done waiting for somebody else.

[10:31] Faith Salie: I had a plan to move to DC to live in the lower part of my brother and his husband's townhouse.

[10:39] Faith Salie: I was like, this is just—this is gonna happen somehow.

[10:41] Faith Salie: I can commute to work.

[10:43] Faith Salie: And um, and my fertility doctor, who at that point had done a surgery on me when I was 38, um, she did all these tests, like, hmm, why haven't you been pregnant ever?

[10:56] Faith Salie: Um, and like, let's rearrange your uterus.

[10:59] Faith Salie: So she did a surgery on me, and my brother, brother David is the one who took care of me.

[11:04] Faith Salie: I mean, I don't have a mom, I don't have a sister, I didn't have a husband.

[11:07] Faith Salie: My brother David came up from DC and took care of me and bought me the granny panties to wear after surgery.

[11:14] Faith Salie: And then he took me downtown to Macy's to sit on Santa's lap and ask for a baby.

[11:20] Faith Salie: Um, which it works, by the way.

[11:21] Faith Salie: If you need to believe in Santa, it works.

[11:26] Faith Salie: Um, so the same doctor who is like half scientist, half fairy godmother, Dr. Maureen Moomji, she was like, have you ever thought of freezing your eggs?

[11:36] Faith Salie: And I just thought that ship had sailed.

[11:38] Faith Salie: Like, I'm—I thought I was old at 39.

[11:41] Faith Salie: Um, and by the way, now that I'm 50, I'm like amazed at how young I am.

[11:47] Faith Salie: Um, and so I was 39, and when she said that that was an option, I was like, uh yeah, let's do it tomorrow.

[11:55] Faith Salie: And the kind of shift in—so I was dating a lot, like not seriously, but I was on this plan to become a single mother by choice, dating a lot.

[12:07] Faith Salie: And then I truly think that when I decided to freeze my eggs and kind of become that self-possessed and take control of my future in that way, everything shifted in the universe because my first date with my husband was the night before I started the egg freezing process.

[12:26] Faith Salie: And like he texted me on a Blackberry, hello, 20010. Um, the morning after our first date, and he was like, you know, you know, hey, what are you doing today? And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna tell him I had my Blackberry under the table at the NYU fertility orientation. And I was like, I'm at a at a um orientation for freezing my eggs. And this was back before there were appropriate emojis to respond to someone you just started dating who told you she's freezing her eggs. So he just did one of those, like, you know, you whatever you use on the keyboard to do a like an open mouth. Yeah, like splash. And like, other than that, he was unflinching. And we our courtship was like timed around shots and um, you know, pelvic rest.

And when we got married merely a year later, um, because that's what happens when you date when two people are 39 and you meet each other and you're like, this is it, we're doing it. Um, I told him in my wedding vows, I knew you were the one when you let me put my syringe in your refrigerator. Um, and it's true. Like, what kind of guy is just totally okay with that? Um, but what's really interesting is that I our son Augustus was conceived naturally. Um after uh 11 months after we started dating, I I got pregnant naturally. Uh, as my friend Danny, I was shooting a pilot while I was dating John, and my friend Danny, the producer, knew that I was dating a man who was a member of the tribe. Um, and and announced to the cast and crew that I was engaged in the Jewish Semen Acquisition Project, or JSAP.

And he would yell during the shoot, JSAP, ASAP. So apparently, JSAP worked. And as I say in my show, Jewish semen is magic. And um and and I get pregnant, like John and I got pregnant. Um, well, I got pregnant, he helped. Um, I had a miscarriage. Then I tried, this is all this is all when we were just dating. Um, two weeks after my miscarriage, uh, he proposed to me. And then that summer, as we're quickly, we have three months to plan a wedding in Rome. Uh, we try some artificial insemination, because why not? So that didn't work. Then I had a chemical pregnancy, which you may or may not be. That's sort of like they say you can't be sort of pregnant. Well, you can. Yeah. And then as we are going to Rome to get married, I find out I'm pregnant again naturally.

And and uh our my fertility doctor is like, look, I need you to have low expectations. Like you might have a miscarriage on your honeymoon, and that's okay, because we have IVF planned for when you get back, and I didn't have a miscarriage on my honeymoon. And we went to Vespers all over Italy, and when we came back, we saw a heartbeat on the ultrasound. Um, and I had my son at 41, and then went back to the frozen eggs to get my money's worth, did I VF, had a miscarriage, and then um, and then we Minerva is is my little is my lab baby, as we like to call her. Um that was she was she was uh the product of one of my 18 frozen eggs. Wow. Sorry, you thought that would be a short story.

[15:43] Jessica Rush: No, no, no, I love it, and I love that you go ahead.

[15:48] Faith Salie: I was pregnant five times in three years, and there was never, as devastated as I was by the miscarriages, I have to say, I I had so much faith in both faith and God and the universe. Um and and in science. And I I never thought I wasn't going to become the mother that I wanted to be. And and maybe that was naive, but I'm so lucky. I mean, it's an incredible story, an incredible journey. And even in your retelling of it, you can hear that you never lost your faith. Like you can hear that even though there were these bumps along the road, you knew it was gonna happen. But I going back to the beginning of how you opened it, I this thought that freezing our eggs, it's like it's like the ultimate feminist movement we could do because it takes away this thing that makes us unequal, or in society's eyes, unequal to the men in this in in society.

And it takes away that pressure to find a husband or find a partner or figure out how you're gonna have kids before you're old and you know, unable. I mean, I I just think that that's such a that's exactly right. It's it takes away the urgency.

[17:08] Cara Cooper: Yeah, and it allows you to pursue an incredible career like you have pursued, and that's something that we talk about so much in our industry as as women and as as people that are are our youth is of the utmost importance in our industry. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is. Um, and it's a fact. And and and that dividing line before before motherhood and af after motherhood is a defining line in our industry. And to take away kind of that that pressure of it and to be able to do it later in life, and to also take away the need to balance a career and also this heavy, heavy, like the most important thing we can do in this world, right? Is procreate and and and bring forth the next generation and raise the next generation. Like to to divide and conquer. It's just such a uh what is the word I'm looking for? Not rational, but it's just so oh my gosh, my brain is not working.

[18:12] Faith Salie: That's motherhood for you, right there. I'll tell you what, that's that's what that is in this moment.

[18:17] Cara Cooper: I would add that, yes.

[18:20] Faith Salie: I mean, by the way, if you hear a siren, that's because yes, I do live in New York. So just if you're listening, this is real, it's not sound effects.

[18:28] Cara Cooper: Should I pause?

[18:31] Faith Salie: No, it's all right.

[18:32] Cara Cooper: No.

[18:32] Faith Salie: No, okay, wow, y'all keep it really real. You know, something you just said, Carol was that like the most important thing we do is is become parents. And and yes, and in the spirit of improv, um, I am also so unbelievably fulfilled by the work I do, the that that creativity, that kind of productiveness, that I don't, they're not even mutually exclusive. Like no one's making me choose between being all that I am professionally and being a mother. And what I think freezing one's egg and sort of harnessing all the control you can about your own fertility proactively, it allows you to to do both. And and no one should make apologies for that. No one should have to set her dreams aside while focusing on becoming a mother.

[19:28] Jessica Rush: I agree completely.

[19:29] Faith Salie: And I figured out the word practical.

[19:31] Cara Cooper: Practical.

[19:32] Faith Salie: It's so practical.

[19:33] Cara Cooper: Like it's the practicality.

[19:35] Faith Salie: Exactly. And and yes, I let's also, while we're using the P word practical, it's also I am also privileged that I could afford it. So let me let me put that out there. Like that was like I was 39. I wasn't paying for braces or school or clothes. I was like, what I'm gonna spend my money on right now is freezing my eggs. Um but I will also say, and I guess I'm just unbelievably lucky and anomalous, but my whole like professional ascendancy happened in my 40s after spending 20 ages 25 to about 36 in LA feeling like I was too old already. I had moved, I had grown up doing theater, I had done musical theater in a professionally as a kid, and then in college and then in grad school, I was in England for grad school, and then I'm like a doofus, I moved to LA being like let's go do sitcoms when when what I should have done is gone to New York, but the universe got me back to New York anyway, in a in a really itinerant way.

But I spent a decade trying to sell myself in LA, trying to be the funniest, prettiest, skinniest, whateverist. And I distinctly remember an acting class I was in when I was 34, and the teacher was like, you know, you're too old, right? And and it was and I believed it, I internalized it. So the fact that I that I had my kids in my 40s, that I got on CBS Sunday morning and NPR in my 40s, that I wrote a book in my 40s, that in my 40s, the I was asked to turn my book into a play, and my husband pulled me aside the other day, and he was like, baby, you're 50, and you're starring in an off Broadway show in which you play yourself. Because my joke is like during the pandemic, I was like, when the show comes back, I hope I'm not too old to play myself.

And he was like, that doesn't often happen. And so I I don't want any of us, by the way, looking at you two, you both look like for whatever it's worth, because looks don't matter, but you're both gorgeous look like you're 25. Um, like, I don't want us women to keep like articulating the idea that age matters so much. Maybe it does, but I almost like I don't want my daughter to ever hear me say that. Like for me, I just put blinders on. Age didn't matter for when I became a mother, it didn't matter for when I wrote my book, it doesn't matter for when I finally get to perform off Broadway. And I just want to hope that that kind of uh improbable momentum continues for me.

[22:07] Jessica Rush: Here, here.

[22:09] Cara Cooper: That's so true.

[22:10] Jessica Rush: It's giving me hope, faith.

[22:12] Faith Salie: Yes, I know.

[22:13] Jessica Rush: Yeah.

[22:14] Faith Salie: Exactly my husband keeps saying.

[22:15] Cara Cooper: Other than the best is yet to come.

[22:17] Faith Salie: Yeah, yeah.

[22:19] Jessica Rush: Y'all are so young. When I listen to your podcast, Jessica, you're just talking about being 40 the other day.

[22:24] Faith Salie: And I was like, I'm 40. I wasn't even married or had a baby.

[22:29] Cara Cooper: True.

[22:30] Faith Salie: So young.

[22:31] Jessica Rush: When you're surrounded by actual young people, though, eight times a week.

[22:36] Faith Salie: Okay, fairly so young.

[22:38] Jessica Rush: Okay, that's fair.

[22:40] Faith Salie: Because I am only surrounded by our 24 year old nanny.

[22:43] Jessica Rush: Right.

[22:43] Faith Salie: Every once in a while, I'm like, damn, I'm as old as her mother.

[22:46] Jessica Rush: When you when you when you work with people who were like, I was born in 1997, and you're like, or or we have someone who was born in 1999.

[23:01] Cara Cooper: Yeah, one of my stage managers.

[23:03] Faith Salie: I'm fairly certain that you're show that kids born in the in the 2000s.

[23:04] Jessica Rush: Yeah, yeah.

[23:05] Faith Salie: I mean, that's a good idea.

[23:09] Jessica Rush: But you're but you are giving like to hear that you have accomplished all those things post-40 is really exciting, honestly.

[23:17] Faith Salie: Like coming from a very heartfelt position of someone who's kind of trying to figure out what like the next phase of my career slash life, what I want it to look like, like that's really exciting to me to think that other things can happen besides this thing, this pocket of my life that has been just one thing, you know.

[23:35] Faith Salie: I'm so glad it's exciting. It should be because other things can and will happen.

[23:39] Cara Cooper: 100%.

[23:43] Faith Salie: We're gonna take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[23:51] Jessica Rush: Well, you gave us the perfect segue um to approval junkie. Um I want you to talk us through it all, like the inception of the job.

[24:01] Faith Salie: Sure. Y'all giving me a lot of time. You're doing too much talking. I'm very uncomfortable because I'm used to interviewing people, and I'm like, I like I want to stop and listen to you.

[24:13] Cara Cooper: Yeah.

[24:16] Faith Salie: No, we like to be able to do that.

[24:18] Jessica Rush: You're way more interesting, trust.

[24:20] Faith Salie: Yeah.

[24:21] Jessica Rush: Yes.

[24:21] Faith Salie: I mean, I think you I want to know about how it started, obviously how it evolved into um a one woman show. But I think like, and correct me if I'm wrong, we all have you're either an approval junkie or you're not. Like, I my friend has a daughter who is could give two F's about what anybody else thinks. And she's always so worried about her. And I'm like, she's gonna be the happiest person in the world.

[24:46] Faith Salie: Like she's just gonna move through life, like doing what serves her. And you know, maybe to the detriment of others, that's yet to be determined. However, um, you know, I think that we have this thing in us that you're an approval junkie or you're not, you may think differently, but also the industry that we all are in, right? You said you went to LA and you were there for 10 years. Like being an actress is all about gaining somebody else's approval so you can get a job.

[25:04] Jessica Rush: That's exactly right.

[25:06] Faith Salie: Yep.

[25:19] Jessica Rush: Um, so that's my little tidbit, but talk us through, talk us through the inception of the book and how it then became this one woman show you're doing right now.

[25:28] Faith Salie: Um, I was getting my headshots taken when I was probably 27, and the makeup artist was named Teo. That would be T-H-E-O, but pronounced Tao. And he just PS like read my tarot cards while he was doing my makeup and was like, wait a minute. You were so in LA. Oh, please. There's a whole part in my show about how I went to the acting guru in LA. Her name is Leslie Kahn. She is still out there. The her acting studio um locals call it the Constitute. And um, and and she I read my lines with her because she was like coaching me for an audition, and she looks at me so intently that I was like, oh my god. She's about to say, I don't know why you're not a massive star. And instead, she looks at me and she says, Why aren't you as pretty as I want you to be?

So that is the like apex of an LA story. Well, let me add that my then my husband was then producing a TV show and he created a role for me and I didn't get it. No, I'm not sure. So like the like the role was the character was named Hope. Like it was it was made absolutely for me. And I didn't get my own role on the show my husband was producing because probably I wasn't pretty enough. But anyway, I was just throwing that in for how LA it all was. Um and Teo looked at me and he was like, wait a minute, you're a writer. I was like, uh I mean I'm I'm an actor. Like my friends are writers. I had so many friends from college who like were writing sitcoms at the time. Like I had and and I had my master's in literature.

So my idea of writing was like, well, Virginia Woolf's a writer. Dickens is the Brontës are writers. And it took me, it took me, you know, 15 years to accept the fact that I am among other things, am a writer. And I got to my early 40s and was so astonished at the happy endings that I had had been given to me, um and I had in some way achieved, also being very lucky. Um, you know, I finally found my beschert as as they say. I love I mean I'm I am married to a Jewish man and I'm not Jewish, but I love dropping in the Hebrew and the Jewish uh role with me. Um and uh and that I would finally figured out my fertility piece. I had come to peace with the loss of my mother, which which uh pulled the rug out from under me when I was 26 years old, um just surviving Hollywood, all the things.

And I thought, okay, I want to write. I want to share my experiences. And I have so many different stories. Under what theme can I share them? Like they have to be organized. I'm not Tina Fey. Tina Fey can just write stories about her life because she's Tina Fey, right? But I I need some kind of organizational idea. And I was like, oh yeah, uh I'm an approval junkie. Like I have these are the things the beautiful, pathetic, amazing things, um, embarrassing things I have done in the name of being heard and being seen and being loved. Um and I thought, you know, for a certain type of very honest human being, that will be resonant. So the book comes out in 2016 and on my mother's birthday, uh which is August 29th, I receive an email in 2016 from Susan Booth.

Does that name ring a bell to either of you? She is the artistic director of the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. And she and I have never met and she sends an email saying this may be crazy, but I read your book and would you consider turning it into a one-woman show for our 50th anniversary at the Alliance Theater.

[29:05] Cara Cooper: Wow.

[29:27] Faith Salie: Yeah. Talk about fairy godmother and I what Susan didn't know was that I mean she read my book so she knew I grew up in Atlanta, but what she didn't know was like the Alliance Theater was was Broadway to me. Twice a year I got to stay up late and dress up and my parents put me in the back of whatever gigantic 80s car they were driving at that point. And we got to go to the Alliance theater. And I got to see a musical. And I got to see uh they usually they took me to one Shakespeare. And the productions there are exquisite. It's like one of the best regional theaters in the country. And that's where I sat as like eight-year-old Faith saying, like, oh, I want to do that. That's what I want to do.

And for her to invite me to come back to the place where it all began, like in my heart, to play myself after years of trying to get someone to pick me to play somebody else, was just and again, like y'all, my my whole story is about striving. And this, like, this one thing was given to me. Yeah. I didn't have to like knock on the door and say, I just turned my book into a script. So that's how it began. And I still can't believe it. Like, who's this lucky?

[30:40] Jessica Rush: That's amazing.

[30:42] Cara Cooper: Yeah, knock on the knock on the wood.

[30:44] Faith Salie: No, that's just that's incredible. I mean, the we both know what that's like to search for approval and search for approval and audition and audition and audition and try to make yourself into something maybe you're not just figuring out what do they want me to be, what should I be, all these things. And for someone to see you through your memoir, to see to read the book and have such a reaction and a visceral response to want to extend that to you to say, come be yourself and do this.

[31:15] Faith Salie: And to have the faith in me that I would know how to turn a book into a play.

[31:19] Cara Cooper: Yeah.

[31:20] Faith Salie: Oh my gosh. She really laid it out on you, Faith.

[31:24] Faith Salie: Yeah. I am forever indebted to Susan Booth, who is just a great human being in every way. And it's interesting because in my book, it my gay best friend Manfred uh introduced me. He and uh John's gay best friend, Rob, and my gay best friend Manfred are the ones who introduced us to each other. So we say we were set up by gay date. Uh-huh. And it turns out that Susan and Manfred had gone to grad school together for directing. Um and they and their their professor, and I put this in my book, their professor taught them to think of living. Hold on, I want to get this right, nakedly human publicly. And and the first time I met Susan in person, because she was up in New York and we went out to dinner after I had said, I mean, I was not coy.

I emailed her right back and was like, are you kidding? Yes, I'll do this. I don't know how, I'll need help. Yes. But we went out to dinner and she like dropped the fact that and Manfred, by the way, it's like my kids' godparents, right? Um, and uh was our was our best man. Um, and she's like, I went to school with Manfred, and and this is what our professor taught us, and that's what I try to do to l, and and you know, there's a cost, there's a cost of it. There are when you play yourself, or when you are a commentator like I am, or when you express your opinion, and when you are a woman, and when people don't like the sound of your voice, or how big your forehead is, um uh you you and and you live nakedly human publicly, like there are people who are not gonna like you, and it will live forever on social media, and yet, like I'm not saying I'm brave because I'm not, I just don't know any other way to be.

[33:07] Cara Cooper: Same.

[33:08] Faith Salie: Right?

[33:09] Cara Cooper: Same.

[33:10] Faith Salie: No, I I that's what yeah, I've said that before, I think. Yeah, Kara knows I have no filter, but I don't know. And I also at this age, I have zero X left to give. You know what I mean? Like, it's not worth it.

[33:12] Cara Cooper: But I don't know how to not be an open book. So I I get that. I identify with that.

[33:24] Faith Salie: So it's interesting you say that because do people often say to you, like this would come from people, presumably who would not enjoy performing. So people often say to me, especially with a one-woman show, right? 90 minutes, no intermission, about my life, right? They're like, oh my God, you're so brave. And I, and it's such a generous compliment. But I I always say thank you. And it doesn't, it's that's not what it's about. I don't, I think that's doesn't fit that doesn't suit, right? Like uh it might be brave for them to go up on stage because that's not how they're built, but I just feel lucky. Like, no, I want to say you're so generous. You put on pants, you decided not to watch Netflix, you showed up to hear my stories and sat there in a mask and and and opened your heart to receive my stories.

[34:12] Cara Cooper: Yeah, I love that.

[34:14] Faith Salie: Yeah, it's true. I mean, do you think you're brave? I guess we're all a little brave to go into this business, but it's not what I lead with.

[34:21] Cara Cooper: It sounds like patting yourself on the back for being so heroic.

[34:25] Faith Salie: No, I don't think I'm brave. I mean, I definitely doesn't mean I don't have massive anxiety or agita when I speak about some things that I know are gonna not be handled well, but I don't think of myself as being brave. I just don't know any other way to be.

[34:37] Cara Cooper: I talk a lot, so Kara shared a dressing room with me for six years. She knows that it's like, you know, I just do, I do, and I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Like, I certainly not I I'm definitely open, but I'm definitely not let me just tell you everything about me. Do you know what I mean? At the drop of a hat.

[34:58] Faith Salie: I think you get extra credit for doing this podcast.

[35:04] Cara Cooper: Thanks.

[35:06] Faith Salie: Because you are.

[35:06] Cara Cooper: Yeah, no, I mean, I've shared more on more on this podcast, I think, than I ever thought.

[35:12] Faith Salie: Well, it's you we're talking about brave, it's like how we talk talk to our son about being brave. We were talking about the word, and we were like, being brave is doing something that scares you. If it doesn't scare you, it's not being brave, you know, because it's just something that you're gonna do. And we're like, no, bravery is when it's something when it's something that is hard for you or scary, and you do it anyway, you know?

[35:33] Faith Salie: That's exactly right. And I try to let my kids know through this very abbreviated rehearsal process. Um, we have three weeks of rehearsal and then only a four-week run. Um, for now, but you'll extend.

[35:46] Cara Cooper: Yes, yes.

[35:47] Faith Salie: Or take, I would love to do the show in LA. I feel like it would it would strike a different chord there.

[35:52] Cara Cooper: Yeah, I'm sure.

[35:53] Faith Salie: But yeah, but I wanted my kids to know, even though I didn't see them much during the rehearsal process, I wanted them to know how yucky and hard and excruciating it is, how vulnerable it is. Again, not making myself feel like a hero, but they'd be like, Hi mama, how is rehearsal? And I'd be like, Oh, I will I don't feel like I did very well today. But I like it's hard. Like uh, my director, Amanda Watkins, who by the way I should completely credit with turning my book into a play because she had the vision that I didn't. Um, with a lot of post-it notes. A lot of posts. It was like a beautiful mind, the post-it notes everywhere figuring it out. But um, she loves sitting in the muck, the muck of creativity, where you don't know the answers.

And as the writer and performer, it's hard. It's hard to rehearse in a room where there's no spotlight, there's no filter, you just have the stage manager and the COVID supervisor and your director sitting there, and they've heard all your jokes a million times, and you're still trying to figure out your lines and your blocking. It's so naked. And there were, I don't use the word sucked in front of my kids, but there were so many times I sucked. And I wanted them to know that, right? That's I think that's part of the being brave is like being so nervous and but still being willing to make mistakes.

[37:12] Faith Salie: It's Rosie Revere Engineer. You all have that book, right?

[37:15] Jessica Rush: Yes, yes.

[37:16] Cara Cooper: Kara, do you have that book?

[37:18] Cara Cooper: Yes.

[37:19] Faith Salie: Okay, just checking. I was gonna like, yeah, I was gonna send it to you prime this afternoon.

[37:27] Cara Cooper: We got it. Don't worry.

[37:28] Faith Salie: Okay, phew. So I feel like there's this intersection, and correct me if this isn't hasn't been your experience, but becoming a mother, right? Is for me, I think shifted the approval who I sought approval from.

[37:44] Faith Salie: Yes. Um, it wasn't necessarily from my kids, but like approval of myself. Like it's a constant battle to be like, oh, am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? What am I doing? So it's less about the exterior, although that certainly has an effect, especially especially in the age of social media and the images we see of motherhood. We're constantly bombarded with this image of perfection. Um, but for me, it's been much less about that, but more about oh my gosh, am I am I doing a good enough job? So it's been seeking approval from myself on motherhood. How how has that been for you?

[38:21] Cara Cooper: You have a great quote um in your book about uh I'm gonna I'm gonna try to quote you right now. If you seek approval from someone who thinks it's hilarious to do downward dog in a diaper while he farts, you are an approval masochist. So I assume you were talking about Augustus there. Um, but talk a little bit about your need for approval and how it shifted during motherhood.

[38:42] Faith Salie: Oh, it's it it's such a time capsule when I wrote the book because yes, my son was was barely two, and my daughter was a newborn. Um I was, you know, I was breastfeeding her with one arm and typing with the other hand. Um I oh by the way, I loved your interview with Elizabeth Stanley talking about all the different places one can breastfeed. I I I breastfed in a corner of the C D C. Well, I I mean not breastfed, I'm sorry, I pumped. I pumped in a corner of the C D C. I pumped in wait waiters, W-A-D-E-R-S when I was like doing a story on oysters. I was like in Cape Cod on an oyster farm, like with with a breast pump, uh, just all over the place. Um I f I agree with you. There is nothing like motherhood to clarify what's important to you.

And by the way, I want to be really conscious about this. I I would like to say parenthood. Um, I I being a parent is as important to my husband as it is to me. I know that's not always the case. Uh, and I think that's really sad. Um, and and I hope it's usually the case, frankly, right? Um my husband and I talk a lot about a lot about the parents we want to be. We have a FaceTime session with an incredible family psychologist who who is our parenting coach, and we've been seeing her uh for an hour a week for the past three years. And it's it's like it's it's kind of instead of couples therapy because we're we're both there together. And frankly, if we ever have tensions, it's usually around who's doing what and how much are you doing, and yeah, um, and a friend of mine, she put it so beautifully.

It's not it's not about the kind of people you want your children to end up being, it's about the kind of parent you want to be to them, right? We don't have we have very little control over who our kids become, really. We can we can role model generosity, gratitude, silliness, purpose. We can role model all those things, but at least my husband and I are not the kind of people who are going to say our our child's gonna be a chess master, or our child's gonna speak five languages. I think we missed the boat on that. Um and every time I come back to what centers me is thinking, was I the kind of parent I wanted to be today? And by the way, that and and and to your question, Kara, that is how I give myself approval, and I can tell you again, I'm not a superhero, but most days I am the kind of parent I want to be.

It's not it's as we know, it's not easy. It takes like it takes preternatural amounts of patience, but part of being the parent I want to be, and I think this is I I want everyone to hear this. This is my absolute favorite quotation about parenthood. It's from Jung, Carl Jung. The the greatest burden on a child is the unlived life of its parents. No is the pronoun. It's so weird that Carl Jung said it's parents, but anyway, um, I don't I don't know if he was a great dad. Um it sounds like Gollum. Um so maybe you've covered that that on the show before, but I am the best mother I can be when my children witness me showing up for them and living my life. My children have okay, fine, for four weeks, I don't get to put them to bed.

They get to see their mother walk out the door to do her own Broadway show. Like, oh sorry, not Broadway. Sorry, wishful thinking. Oh Broadway! You're the one who's gonna draw vacant. Pick it in the universe, put it, speak it, speak it. I love it. But but like, my I I just posted a picture of my son walking by a kiosk, just casually walking down New York, New York City Street on the upper east side, and there's his mom on a kiosk. And I don't mean to be self-aggrandizing. What I'm saying is like, holy, I won't say a bad word because of your mom, Jessica. Holy crap. My children are witnessing their mother at age 50 have her dreams come true. Like, isn't that something to give them and show them?

[43:13] Jessica Rush: Absolutely. And it's something to show fellow mothers and fellow people, and just, you know, to show people that you never have to stop dreaming. I think it's so hard, like we've talked about. After a certain age in this business, I know Kara and I are both struggling, even though I'm working, I still'm like, wait, but what's next? And who am I? And I'm over 40 now, and I'm not the chorus girl, and what's, you know, but I don't have the Tony nomination. I mean, it's all these things. And to just hear something like that, where at the age of 50, you have accomplished all these things in the span of like a decade, and and this ultimate dream of yours that you didn't even know you had, right? Like this was not something you even knew you had, and it came and came to you, and it's gorgeous. It's beautiful. I love that.

[44:02] Faith Salie: I wish I would who asked me this. Oh, I was doing um, I was doing a little publicity thing and um for Audible, and they said, Who whom would you like to be at opening night? And I said my daughter, who can't see the show because there are a few F words, um, and Ruth, who is my 105 year old friend, whom I talk about in my prologue. Well, I saw I saw Ruth going to vote on Twitter back when you took her. Yeah, yeah. And that's the first line. So when we returned to the show, we we added a prologue, and that's the first line of the show. I say, in October of 2020, I took my 104-year-old friend Ruth to vote. And my daughter Minerva held her hand as she did that. And let's remember that like when Ruth was born, women couldn't vote.

But the third person I said is, I wish, I wish my mom, I wish my mom could be there. And I and I just brought that up, Jessica, because of the because of the way you just said that, like how how beautiful it is to have this come true. And my mom died when she was two years older than I am now. And I I talk about her in the show. She's just she's infused throughout the show. Um, but it's it's an amazing thing to reach what I hope is the middle of my life. And um, and her prayer for me was she wrote this, she wrote me a card a week when I left since I left for college until she went into hospice, and she always signed off. She'd say, I pray for your peace, purpose, and happiness. And those are the last lines of the show that I that I say to my daughter.

And that word purpose, I don't think I understood it when she was writing me in my early 20s. Now I get it. Like that's purpose transcends approval, right? When you're in your purpose, there's no need for any external validation. And you're pumped with your own internal validation because life is clarified.

[46:17] Cara Cooper: Well, that was I can't help but thinking in you in the telling of how this show came to be that your mom had a hand in it. I mean, that it was on her birthday that you got that email and that it was at the Alliance Theater where she used to take you. I mean, and in all, you know, obviously, our industry lost a great um contributor this past week, but everybody's talking about how he can now be at every performance, right? So your mom's there. There's no way she's not, you know. Um, she's with you.

[46:48] Faith Salie: Yeah. I just, I mean, it's funny that you didn't get the part of hope in the in the show your husband wrote or was producing, because I feel like that's all you have given me in this past hour that we've been speaking to you is hope. Um, you know, hope to move forward and and faith, faith to know that like things can continue and put the pursuit of your dreams and our happiness is what's the most important. Uh, and getting that purpose so we can show our kids that every day. Um, so thank you, Faith, so much for being here and for talking to us and for sharing your truth. And you guys, if you want to hear more of Faith's story, you have to check out Approval Junkie. This comes out on Tuesday, so there'll probably be two weeks left of performance, correct?

[47:34] Faith Salie: Oh, please, yes, that's right. And also, it will be recorded for Audible, so it will be like available to hear as a play in the spring. But please come if you can. Come and sit in the theater and hear me talk to Ruth and my mom and my daughter.

[47:48] Jessica Rush: Yes, for sure. I can't imagine they will they won't want to be flocking after hearing you just speak a little bit about it. Because now I can't wait to go.

[47:55] Faith Salie: Yeah, exactly. Oh, I got you know what? I know somebody, I can get you seat. I have to get my babysitter, but I will do it.

[48:03] Jessica Rush: I will pay for your babysitter. I would love to have you there.

[48:07] Faith Salie: Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Faith. I hope you have a great Sunday.

[48:11] Faith Salie: This is I have a matinee to do. Look how I'm so excited. I look at that. Like, I know this is old hat to you, Jessica, but I'm like, all right, everybody, I'm going on my matinee.

[48:23] Jessica Rush: No, I love it. May we all have that much joy as we head to do our shows today. Do you know what I mean? Like, let's just, that's what it should be. It should be joyful, it should be fun. Yes, it's a job, but it should be joyful. And so I love your enthusiasm and I love it so much. And um, and I'm so happy that we were able to talk to you. So thank you for it.

[48:41] Faith Salie: Me too. Thank you. You got y'all have cupcakes coming your way somehow.

[48:45] Jessica Rush: Ah, have a good one.

[48:53] Jessica Rush: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Mamas Talkin' Loud. Special shout-outs to Justin Squiggs Robertson for our fabulous new graphic. Kristen Lopez, Bobby Lopez, and Justin Wardweber for our awesome theme song, and of course, the Broadway Podcast Network for bringing us to you.