(Highlights) NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. His film credits include Starship Troopers , the Harold and Kumar series, and Gone Girl.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

So as I listen to you speak with admiration about directors and other artists who initiate their creative projects, does that mean you are beginning any new writing projects?

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

I'm three books into a four-book series called The Magic Misfits, which is interesting because that's more for a younger demographic like for 8 to 12.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I meant writing for stage, but of course, you are a writer, and you've done your memoir. I want to talk about that, too.

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HARRIS

I did a memoir as well. Yeah, that's a weird interesting...

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

That's an unusual memoir as well, I have to say.

HARRIS

The structure was unique. I wrote it as a Choose Your Own Adventure, but in many ways, I found writing, I find writing for a younger demographic almost more challenging, even though the vocabulary might be simpler, the ideas deserve and are allowed to be cleaner. You're also writing for people who haven't read a lot.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Yes.

HARRIS

So potentially impacting them in a way that can have a lasting effect, in a way that I don't think writing the same kind of fiction for adults might have.

* * *

I became very intrigued with what else can I do? And I don't say that out of some sort of disrespect or unhappiness in what I was doing. I just thought, OK, well, I've done this for four years. It's great. What else? Theater? Theater would be great!

There's no cameras. I can move my whole body. I don't have to stand in one place. So, I did theater for a while.

Well, that's great. What about movies? It would be so cool to be in a movie. You're in a location somewhere in the middle of the world. You can really spend a lot of time on one scene, and then you never have to do it again. How exciting would that be!? But I also like kind of...it turns me on to confront fears or challenges and to expand my skill set.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Right.

HARRIS

I don't know. I look at people who are a generation older than myself, even two generations older, and I'm so inspired by those that are still learning or at least have the mindset of not thinking they've learned it all.

You know what I mean? Even in painters or contemporary artists, when I see someone doing just the same painting that made them successful over and over their whole career, I'm impressed by it, but it makes me just kind of question them about is that all? Have they settled? Do they realize that they've gotten lauded for this singular type of painting? And so, therefore, they're going to continue to do that? That's what they're going to be...that's going to be their stamp? Or are they afraid to try something totally new because they don't want to be known for too many varied things?

* * *

Well, it was right around that time, right around sort of Gone Girl, maybe the end of How I Met Your Mother, which is a TV show that I did, where I felt empowered to make big acting choices. And with that freedom came more opportunities to do bigger acting choices.

I'm pausing for a second because I'm trying to think if that's unique to the actor. And it probably is, because if you try too hard as an actor in a scene, and you're trying too hard, it feels like you're overacting, and then you get hired less. Or they say, "OK, I see what you're doing. Just do it regular–normal." But I've gotten to do jobs that are far from normal, right? Barney Stinson was this character on How I Met Your Mother, and he was very big. Granted, it was a multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track. And so it was supposed to be kind of heightened, but the character that I was playing had his own vocabulary. He always wore suits. He was the life of the party. He was always drinking scotch and just full of adventure. And so the writers would write scenarios and punchlines assuming that I would take it and do something elevated in some way. I mean, they were already funny jokes to begin with, but then I would take these softballs and try to whack 'em out of the park as often as I could. So I got to do that for a long time. But again, then I feel like I'm doing TV and not film, so all of a sudden, David Fincher says, "Hey, you want to...I have this interesting idea for you to be in Gone Girl?" Totally different skill set because...

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Where he saw that from that, you know?

HARRIS

I wonder, right!? I think for him it was finding an actor that came with baggage. And then going against that baggage. So I think people that see me or saw me at that time, from what he said, I was very likable, and that you've sort of trusted me. So, then he wanted me to be someone who you, in your gut, wanted to trust, but in the story felt compelled to suspect. So that sort of amped up the creepiness. And for me, the opportunity to do something super subtle and super realistic and supernormal in a sort of messed up world story idea was juicy. I was very excited to be a part of it and very nervous, but it was very technical. So weirdly, the television work that I had done...

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

He does a lot of takes.

HARRIS

Ton of takes. I had a big sex scene, and we had to rehearse and rehearse for hours before–weeks before we even got onto set so that every single take was usable footage because if we were flopping around on a bed, and we wind up in the middle of the bed, but on another take, we were over a little bit to the left, he has to choose. He can't use some of each, right? So he wanted to make sure that not only was it full of passion and full of spontaneity, but that it was exactly the same every time.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I would like to ask you about not influences, but works that made you want to become an actor or that you saw like, Wow, this would be so great to be involved in this...

HARRIS

I can think of two. They're both live things. When I first started acting and came to Los Angeles for a one week job or something. I was with my dad, and we went to see a production of a play called Fences.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Oh, August Wilson.

HARRIS

And James Earl Jones was the star of it. And I remember I was just the whitest kid ever from small-town New Mexico in this big city of Los Angeles, which isn't super diverse. At least, it didn't feel that way. And then I'm sitting there watching this play about a lower middle-class African-American man in [Pittsburgh] and his family. And I just remember being so moved, moved to tears at 13, 14 years old. A lot about a world that I really knew nothing about. Not even from school, really. I mean, a few pages as you skip through things, but certainly not this feeling empathy for this specific man. And Lynn Thigpenn was the wife and she was peeling potatoes on a rocking chair and monologuing ire at his character. And it was so moving. And I did think even back then, I recognized the impact that the theater can have on someone that isn't even anything like what they're like, right? You don't have to see them, don't have to be Asian to see Crazy Rich Asians.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What is your advice to young people?

HARRIS

Days are filled with things that happen. And you have to sort of determine whether you're going to make choices for things to happen or just react to things that are happening around you. And why not choose to go do things. You're not going to see art unless you go to the museum.

* * *

But I think you experience a theater piece differently if you've made a night of it. If you've gotten dressed up and you're respecting it by going, I don't think you have to be in a proper suit and tie or a fancy dress or something. But if you're watching your uncle at a potluck lunch doing a magic trick, you're not as invested as if you've gotten dressed up and are now going to The Magic Castle you've paid your entrance fee and you're sitting in a chair.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Your attention is different. Your posture is different.

HARRIS

A hundred percent. So that would be my advice to the youngsters.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of Pauline Walsh and collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this podcast were Max Johnson and George Metz. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

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Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

PETER D. DITLEVSEN

Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO

Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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