Kousha Navidar: This is All of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Allison Stewart. Hey, thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, Chef Charity Morgan is here to talk about plant-based cooking and her new HBO special. It's called Unbelievably Vegan. We'll speak with director Justin Simeon about his new series Hollywood Black and photographer and writer Andrew Garn will join us to talk about a new edition of his book, the New York Pigeon: Behind the Feathers.

That's the plan, so let's get this started with the political play N/A. Both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi have grabbed headlines in the past few weeks for their roles as leading politicians within distinct movements of the Democratic Party. They've demonstrated that influence at the Democratic National Convention this week with their respective speeches. Here's 30 seconds of Nancy Pelosi from Chicago last night.

Nancy Pelosi: The parable of January 6th reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with its care and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power.

[applause]

Nancy Pelosi: The choice couldn't be clearer. Those leaders are Vice President Harris and Governor Walz.

[applause]

Kousha Navidar: Before this speech, Pelosi had been on a bit of a press tour, as reporting suggests that she was one of the key democratic party leaders who influenced President Biden's decision to drop out of the election but then there's also AOC, a leading voice of a younger, more progressive coalition within the party. Here is about 40 seconds of her DNC speech from Monday night.

[applause]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: And Chicago, we have to help her win because We know that Donald Trump would sell This country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall street friends and I for one am tired of hearing about how a two bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trembling on our way of life.

Kousha Navidar: You can just hear in the manner of their speeches that AOC and Pelosi represent two different generations and ideological movements within the Democratic party. Those differences and their relationship with one another are the inspiration for a play that's currently running on a New York stage. The play is called N/A. It's set as a series of conversations, debates, arguments between two powerful women.

N, played by Holland Taylor, is a seasoned politician and the first-ever female speaker of the House A, played by Ana Villafañe, is a young progressive activist who won her seat in a massive upset. Yes, these characters were inspired by Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Over the course of about 80 minutes, we see these two women, each titans in their own right, meeting at different times throughout their careers.

N tries to convince A that politics is a practical numbers game, fighting tooth and nail for results, even if it means compromise. A argues with N that change has been far too slow, and in order for meaningful progress, you need radical solutions. Now, although it's a play about politics, it's really a play also about people. There's two very famous people who want to do what they think is right.

In the hands of playwright Mario Correa, these two figures become humanized in the eyes of the audience. The play is running now at Lincoln Center's Newhouse Theater, but if you want to catch it after watching the DNC this week, you better go soon because its final performance will be on Sunday, September 1st. As today is the final day of the DNC, we thought we'd re-air a conversation about the play from earlier this summer.

Holland Taylor, Ana Villafañe, and playwright Mario Correa were my guests. I started by asking Mario what initially inspired him to write this play.

Mario Correa: I thought about it initially in the pandemic era. It was around, I guess, 2020 when I wondered how theater would ever really come back and I knew that when it did, it would have to be small and people couldn't touch each other and there would have to be separation. I thought about two characters who figuratively always circled each other but never quite connected and I was always fascinated by the real-life Nancy Pelosi and the real-life AOC who inspired this play.

I had been a congressional staffer early in my career. When I was very young, I worked on the Hill for a number of years for a Congresswoman from Maryland, Connie Morella, so I had watched women in these halls of power navigate the complexities, I think, and the specificities that women face in Congress. Those relationships had always really fascinated me, and it all came together at that moment.

Kousha Navidar: Wow, and Holland, for you, at this point in your career, what does a role have to have in order for you to want to sign on? And what intrigued you about this play specifically?

Holland Taylor: Well, it really has to have crackling dialogue, which this play does have. There is a real skill involved to writing for the theater, and you can have a play that's interesting about interesting things, but it is not written theatrically. This dialogue is so extraordinary, and what it says is so extraordinary that I called my agent back after I got this play and I had only read about a third of it, and I said, I have to do this. Tell them that I have to do this because it was that compelling to me and it has proved to be very compelling to play as well.

Kousha Navidar: That word crackling does certainly come out. I saw this play last week and actually, I saw it with my mom. Side note, which is a question later on that I want to bring up because I thought it was interesting to see it between generational differences there but before we get to that, Ana, how about you? What made you want to sign onto this?

Ana Villafañe: Well, I was nervous at first. I thought that the topics at hand and these characters could be very easily made into one-dimensional stereotypes or cliches and that's something that I try to avoid when I read scripts. I was really pleasantly surprised, to be honest, and I was like, wait, this is incredibly refreshing and when I took the meeting with the creative team, I loved the fact that it doesn't spoon-feed an audience on what to think, but more urges people to think for themselves which I think can be helpful at all times, but especially right now in this country and at the point we're at in history.

Also, it's just having these two women at the forefront of a narrative who aren't relying on some storyline that's based on a love story or that's based on the things that we're more used to seeing. I thought it was really empowering, I thought it was really refreshing, I thought it was really human and seeing the name Holland Taylor attached was a helpful push to say, I'm going to do [crosstalk].

Kousha Navidar: At this point in your career, anything Holland does, you're like, oh, that must be [unintelligible 00:07:42].

Ana Villafañe: I was like, that sounds good.

Holland Taylor: That's very flattering. She's a wonderful partner on stage. Being in a two-hander is a special animal and you really hope for the chemistry, and you really hope for the mutual respect, and we hope for the mutual skills. I think we make a great partnership because it feels great. I think we each cover for one another. Ana covers for me much more. I have a very, very wordy part and I sometimes have to replace the word just as you would in conversation when you can't come up with the right one. I see Ana's eyes widen a little bit, like [onomatopoeia].

Ana Villafañe: Where are we going? I'm a musician, so it's like playing live jazz.

Holland Taylor: It is a little bit.

Ana Villafañe: That interaction where you have to really be listening, which I think just keeps that dynamic, really, hopefully entertaining for audiences.

Holland Taylor: Well, I think we both keep it pretty alive and I think one way to keep it alive is to not just duplicate your exact performance from night to night. I mean, we keep it very fresh. I think. Actually, it still is very fresh. We've only played about two weeks, I think, counting previews and we have the summer to play, or most of the summer. I really look forward to it every day because it is a very lively animal.

Mario has written a play that evokes these two specific women, but it is not about the women, it is about their conversation, their dialogue, the things that they stand for, the different ways they stand for it, how they operate. There's three generations between them and that's very interesting right there. It's really fun to do.

Kousha Navidar: Ana, how do you feel you and Holland developed that trust on stage? Because the two-hander Holland, like you were saying, is a special animal. Was that something that was crackling right off the bat to steal a word that Holland was using earlier, or did it develop over time? Tell me about that.

Ana Villafañe: It was pretty immediate, at least on my end. You step into something and you don't want to set up expectations for yourself. Then, in my case, just having the respect and admiration that I already had for Holland, I was like, okay, well, I guess let's see what her energy is going to be and I'm just going to follow her lead. I think going in with that, I was ready for anything, but then I was really taken aback when even before we started rehearsals, she was reaching out and Facetimed me in the middle of the day, and I was like, what is happening right now?

She was very eager, very humble, very generous, and very ready and willing to work. She didn't come with any air of superiority to it, she came with a very, let's get in there and get our hands dirty, which is how I am. Then we met each other exactly on that really nice baseline and it was a matter of, she wanted to come in early to-- it is a very wordy play, Mario.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: It is digestible.

Holland Taylor: It's like gold ore.

Ana Villafañe: Correct. Holland wanted to come in early before we were even scheduled to do rehearsals and so for a week, we came in and we're just digesting the material and breaking it down slowly and just getting it in our mouths with a little bit of extra time and that, I think, ended up being really a huge gift for us because we started rehearsals with already a rapport and with a shorthand and an understanding of just our energies and who the people are.

You really hope that you're going to step into a space like this and that you're going to get that kind of relationship so I think we lucked out.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about-- Go ahead Holland.

Holland Taylor: We needed that extra time because Diane Paulus, our superb director, was in London and we had a shorter rehearsal period because she was directing an opera [inaudible 00:12:06] and so we lost a bit of time with her, so we just evened it out that way. What was it? What did you feel in the first week of rehearsal with us? I mean, what did you think?

Ana Villafañe: Our pre-rehearsal.

Holland Taylor: No, when we were on our feet doing it with-- in the rehearsal room, Mario, you know.

Mario Correa: It's so funny because when you write a play or when you write anything, you write it so that you love it and it's what you want on there. Then when you see it or even just read or later performed in front of you, it's like this thing that has been inside of you for so long is coming at you. I was so bowled over and each of you encompasses and embodies your character so beautifully, as you talked about but just hearing it for the first time, I was like, oh, my gosh, that is a lot of words.

Holland Taylor: Shining words.

Mario Correa: We need magnificent ladies to have a lot of words down in a very short period of time. The entire show is only 85 minutes, so it runs at a real clip and much of it, Diane always encourages me to stress this because much of it is actually very, very funny. There's a lot of humor and that's coming at us fast and furious and then it grows more serious. Hearing it that first time was, oh, my gosh, I could picture it in my mind right now.

Kousha Navidar: Was there anything else that you saw that first time that surprised you, Mario or over the course of the-- since it's open, that surprised you, seeing it on stage and on its feet?

Mario Correa: You know what I love about it is that the creation of it parallels the structure of the story. What I mean by that is it's always-- and God willing, we'll get, hopefully, many productions, let's hope but it's always going to be a veteran at the top of their game who knows everything and then the young, up and coming whippersnapper. That is the play, and that's also the dynamic of the people who come to act the play.

Watching Ana and Holland form their bond and bring what each of them was bringing from their life stage of experience was a parallel play that I loved watching. Now, the dynamics of that were a lot more fun than the dynamics sometimes in our play, but it was like two plays going on at once.

Kousha Navidar: Sorry, Holland, are you going to say something?

Holland Taylor: What?

Kousha Navidar: I thought you were going to say something. I have a question for you.

Holland Taylor: No, I said I never thought of that, but of course it's true.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting because as someone for you who's been a public figure for such a long time, and you're embodying the spirit of Nancy Pelosi in this way, I imagine you have some experience with people thinking they know you when they really don't. Was that something that you drew on for your character in this play?

Holland Taylor: Well, in this case, it happened very fast and I didn't really have an opportunity to research Nancy, per se and as Mario said, this is not about, about them, their personal life, this is not about them specifically, although it is in a way. I certainly relied on my instinct because I've watched her for so long that I have a sense of her and I certainly, absolutely have a sense of her inner dedication.

This is a woman who is purpose-driven every moment of the day. I can not so much identify with that because I have it, but I know it, I've seen it, I recognize it. I really want very much to do right by her but it is her principles, as Ana is doing, AOC's principles, that are the important thing to elevate in this play and it is a dialogue that sometimes is a mashup, and sometimes it's an agreement Concord and sometimes it's a struggle, and it's really fantastic to perform it.

A pleasure, a real-- sometimes a tightrope walk. It's never a walk in the park, I can tell you that.

Kousha Navidar: Ana, you listen to Holland talk about that relationship that she has with the character and versus Nancy Pelosi. How does that resonate with you, with the character of A and AOC?

Ana Villafañe: I have also spent a lot of time, I think we all have, watching footage of AOC and I think what was important for me was making sure that A is as aligned and anchored as I can make her because I didn't want the caricature side. I didn't want the sound bites or the clips or the viral videos or the headline version of this person to be it because it is the behind closed doors. It is a fictionalized version of what the public doesn't get to see on a daily basis.

I did do as much research as I could in terms of just ingesting material that I wouldn't have normally seen. I think she has a very particular cadence of how she speaks. She has a very particular tonality to where her voice comes from and I did want to pepper that in. I did talk with Mario and Diane before accepting the role about navigating how much or how little we wanted to pepper that in, throughout just so that it could be a little bit extra recognizable in the spirit of evoking her, but making sure-- my job has been at least making sure that for myself that she's really anchored in, like, where she comes from and why.

To the extreme that we see the clips usually, to the extreme of the baby girls and the things that we know and love about this character or don't love, there are many people that don't. I wanted it to be recognizable to those extremes, but really, really rooted in something real because I do believe that that's where she comes from and that who she is, her backstory, her socioeconomic background, all of that, I think, is really, really, really prevalent to her and really makes her who she is. That's more where my research came into play so that the outside wasn't just superficial.

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to my conversation with actors Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe and playwright Mario Correa about their production of N/A. It's inspired by the dynamics between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. N/A is running at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through September 1st. We're going to be back with more after a short break. This is All of It.

This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. Let's continue my conversation about the play N/A. It's inspired by two important Democratic party leaders who've played a big role at the DNC this week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. N/A is running at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through September 1st. My guests are Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe and playwright Mario Correa.

I want to talk about that first interaction that we see on stage between N and A because it's such a captivating and foundational part for the rest of the play. N and A first meet after A has won the primary election, but it's in a very blue district, so it basically means that she has won the general and Holland, I'm wondering, what is N trying to figure out about A in this very first meeting? What does she want to suss out about her?

Holland Taylor: Well, A is a new figure on the field. I mean, she didn't know much of anything about her. Her win was a complete surprise and a real upset in the party and a real upset in N's structure of leadership around her. And so not that she would reveal any of that or her feelings about that, but she walks into her office where A has been directed by N's staff to wait for N and I guess N doesn't necessarily realize that she's already in there.

N walks in and A is broadcasting on her phone to her-- she's doing a live stream to her many followers. We see N and A meet in this circumstance where A is doing something very typical of A and very typical of the modern generation. And N is in her own office while this is happening. And so you really see this, this tippy, tilty seesaw thing happening at the beginning. the way I'm addressing it is I'm gleaning as much information as I can about this girl, but I've got a lot of new Congresspeople to meet and she gets-- I've actually seen film of Nancy doing appointments and she opens up the door.

She's practically saying, come on, come on. Ushering someone out and ushering the new person in. Come in. Shuts it up. The door shortly opens. Bye. Thank you. Come in, please. She's seeing the next, and she's a very, very busy person. The first scene is a very short meeting where N does her preliminary fact-finding but I think she also challenges A a little bit to see what she's made of. What's her mettle? And she's made of something pretty tough and she sees that right away.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and on the flip side, Ana, for you, what assumptions do you think A has about N before she even meets her when she's doing that livestream and in that headspace?

Ana Villafañe: I think that there's a lot going on in A's mind at the time. Our show, that first scene is set as the day after the primary win. There's a lot of overwhelm, It's one of those days where everybody you know is calling you, texting you, and you get invited to go into the belly of the beast, so to speak and you get on the train and you get to DC and you're all excited and it's a new job, and you're now on the inside because there's a big plot point about feeling being on the outside of these buildings and then finally being on the inside and all of this hope and excitement to hopefully curate some change but there's still the old guard.

How do you respectfully walk on those eggshells while still maintaining your own, hey, I deserve to be here, too. I work here now, too. It's a dance. It's very much a dance, but it ends up being really humorous because of course, that feeling of entitlement and comfort to say to my constituents on Instagram to be showing them the office and it's literally day one, moment one. My name's not on the door even. It is definitely an interesting generational moment as well.

Diane and Mario really worked with me on making sure that the excitement and the naivete and the hopefulness came through rather than the sense of entitlement that it can sometimes veer into. It's pretty fun.

Kousha Navidar: Mario, you have a background in politics and it's interesting for you when you look at these two characters, how do you think each of these women thinks about power?

Mario Correa: It's fascinating. I think that that's really central to the story, which is that N sees power as a series of levers, and her struggle to achieve power has been really through that knock out the system, and there's been a lot of gender inequality that she's dealt with in that fight, whereas I think that A of the younger generation sees power as a movement and the way in which we envelop the levers of power and push our will there.

She sees the world more through race and class. The intergenerational struggle between these women is really about their worldview and about seeing how it is that you affect change because in reality, they both want much of the same thing thing. They're just at odds about how you achieve it. That's what they're trying to find in terms of their own common ground. How can they both push forward?

Kousha Navidar: You know what's interesting about that? I saw the play with my mom, as I mentioned before the break and obviously, there's an age difference between us. I'm right around AOC's age and while our impression of the characters didn't line up neatly by age, it was interesting to consider how age impacts the perspective of these characters and I may be thinking about the perspective of the audience.

Mario, for you, have you gotten a peek or at least wondered about the different ways that audience members might be taking in this play based on their own ages?

Mario Correa: No, it's been fascinating. I was talking to a young woman a couple of days ago, and she said to me, "I left that play asking myself, why am I so mad at Nancy Pelosi?" She said, "I've sat there and I've understood what she's been through and how she got to this place." And then conversely, I've had folks my parents' generation say like, "I think I like that AOC character." I'm like, well, this is A, but I'm glad that you like both of them.

I am seeing that translate and that is just so meaningful and we see a lot of younger people at our audiences as well, younger for the theater and we see a lot of diversity in our audience. That makes me so excited. There's snapping sometimes, there's a lot of head nodding. I see folks relating and then having arguments in the lobby afterwards like, no, I think the N was right or A was right And that's what you, of course, dream of.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and that snapping. I think my show actually had an applause break a couple of times for some things, mostly for what N was saying. Holland, I'm wondering for you, getting that audience reaction, does it impact how you do the show night by night when you're approaching it like the jazz thing that you were talking about?

Holland Taylor: I try to stay very fresh and vulnerable to my own impulses every time I do the play so that I don't ever give the identical performance at all but I find the philosophy and the meaning behind a lot of the things that N says, and A as well, I find it very moving. These are great standards. These are great blueprints of society, of our wants and our needs and our feelings and our goals and our ideals.

I believe the character N is meant to take all of that very seriously and be very susceptible to that. It's really quite something to perform this. It can be quite uplifting and a lot of the-- yes, it's a play of ideas, people who are talking concepts. It's not in the day-to-day vernacular of life, but it's people who are passionate about these abstract feelings and these concepts and so it's a really lively experience.

Yes, the audience does affect me somewhat, but they feel-- regardless of their mood, they always feel very with it. You really have to concentrate when you're saying a lot of this material because it is so precise and so dense and you really have to stay right on it. I have a speech that I give-- the character gives a speech. It's an important one and it's very meaningful to me as I'm saying it because the concepts are so huge and so heartfelt and you have to have that balance between the beauty of the abstract and the fleshliness of the feelings.

It's just a wonderful experience. The audiences, of course, were very close to the audience. It's a very-- The theater is 300 seats, 299, and they're right there. If anybody's chuckling and having a particularly good time, I'm like, yes, keep it up, kid. It's great.

Kousha Navidar: What do you hope audience members leave this play talking about or thinking about Holland, I'll wrap that up with you. What do you hope people take away from it?

Holland Taylor: I hope they have had an exciting experience that has them bubbling. What's better than the theater? It's really something when you see something that really enlivens you and I think our audiences do because we hear them.

Kousha Navidar: That was my conversation with actors Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe and playwright Mario Correa. N/A is running at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through September 1st.

 

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