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[0:00] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's theater podcast, your backstage pass to revealing conversations with stars, creators, and industry leaders, on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond. I'm Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the playwright Jez Butterworth and the director Sam Mendes about their latest Broadway play, The Hills of California. Butterworth is one of Britain's most decorated playwrights, whose work includes the hit Jerusalem and his early breakout Mojo, and Mendes is one of the busiest directors working today in theater, film, and television. With The Hills of California, Butterworth and Mendes are reuniting following their Tony-winning collaboration The Ferryman, which ran on Broadway in 2019.

The Hills of California tells the story of four sisters returning to their childhood home in Blackpool, England, in the 1970s, with their mother lying on her deathbed upstairs. With four adult actors playing the sisters in the 70s, the story is interwoven with memories from 20 years earlier, as four younger actors portray the same characters as teenagers in the 1950s. One actress is double-cast as the oldest sister in the 1970s and as her own mother in the 1950s. That's Laura Donnelly, the Tony-nominated star of The Ferryman, who is Butterworth's wife and frequent collaborator. With the show now playing on Broadway after a successful West End run, Butterworth and Mendes are in the virtual studio with me to talk about the play's origins, the process of revising and honing it for Broadway, and the projects they've got coming up next, which for Mendes include the HBO series The Franchise, a new comedy about making superhero movies co-created with the creator of Veep, Armando Iannucci, plus his upcoming, ambitious project about The Beatles told across four interlocking films.

Just a heads up, when we spoke, Butterworth was beaming in live from the nighttime streets of London, so you'll occasionally hear some street sounds as we talk. Just think of it as immersive, atmospheric sound design. Here's Jez and Sam. Hello, Jez and Sam. Thanks for joining me.

[2:14] Jez Butterworth: Hi, Gordon.

[2:15] Sam Mendes: Hi there.

[2:16] Gordon Cox: I wonder if we could start just by talking a little bit about how the two of you met, and when you decided, how and why you decided to start working together. When did you first cross paths?

[2:24] Sam Mendes: I don't remember meeting Jez until the opening night. Well, maybe we met before the opening night of Mojo, but definitely he was very young. So this would have been in the, what, the 90s? The mid-90s, right? That was the first time we met. It was June or July '95, and our paths had not crossed, but I'm not going to lie, I knew who he was. I only knew who he was because he had a play opening in the Royal Court, and he was about 12 years old at the time. I think he was 23 or some time. And also because it was an unbelievably cool play, and the arrival of, obviously, a new voice and something remarkable. I think still the youngest playwright who's ever had a play to debut on the main stage of the Royal Court.

It was an event. I was immediately eager to work with him, and slightly miffed that, because I was running the Donmar at the time, that I hadn't managed to land that particular play. So I tried to woo him through various routes. But the truth was, he had a very fruitful and good relationship with Ian Rickerson, who ran the court thereafter, who produced his plays brilliantly, including Jerusalem, which I thought was just a masterpiece on every level, not only as a play, but also as production. And so it was actually, we worked together for the first time in movies. It was when I needed someone to, and by that time, I got to know Jez much better, and I felt like I could pick up the phone and ask him to give us a hand with Skyfall, which was the first Bond movie I did.

And I wanted someone to help bring wit and fizz and all sorts of things that Jez is very good at in moving to that. And so that was the beginning of an actual working relationship, which then encompassed Spectre a couple of years later, and then Ferryman was a couple of years after that. And so it's been, I don't know, 12 or 13 years now of sort of working together. And often I would, you know, in the meantime, I've also sent him, he would send me things he's doing, which I just for my opinion, and I would do the same for him, try to persuade him to write some stuff in 1917. But he said I didn't really need anything, which I took as a great compliment, by the way. So yeah, stuff like that. So it's been an ongoing dialogue, but it's been great.

[5:18] Gordon Cox: So yeah, you've known each other for many years now. What did you discover working in, I imagine Ferryman was the first like sort of very close contact that you worked together. What did you discover about each other as artists as you got to know each other? Like Jez, what did you discover about Sam?

[5:39] Jez Butterworth: Well, what I discovered really swiftly, working together on The Ferryman was that there is a moment where Sam stops talking and looks down and does this, with his glasses off or like, and holds his head like that. At that point, you just, you know, that what's going to come out the other side of it is going to be not only worthwhile, but on the money. And I remember watching him do it once really early on in it and laughing to myself and trying not to disturb him with the laughter because I knew what came out next was going to be the way forward. And there's something really rare about that. You don't get that in many collaborations.

[6:31] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And Sam, what did you discover about working with Jez as a writer in such close proximity, rehearsing a play together?

[6:40] Sam Mendes: I think even as a fan of his work, I was dazzled by the writing. I mean, I know it sounds such a cliché, but the truth is when you actually get down in the sort of ditch with it and start working, you know, on a day to day basis with actors, you realize the level of detail and how fully imagined the world of The Ferryman was. I mean, not just that, but his other plays too. But I think particularly with that play, it was a step towards a kind of unbelievable plate spinning ability to write multiple characters in a single space consistently over the course of three hours and make you feel at the end of that time that you knew all of them intimately. I mean, it was a sort of remarkable piece of work.

And I felt like I didn't really get it completely for weeks. I mean, I got the play, but I didn't get the degree of detail in the play until I was pushing and pushing. And I found that every piece of information that any actor required was in the text. And it really was, you know, in some form. And I was always, I was also staggered by how little exposition there appeared to be in the play. And I feel this about Hills of California and yet how fast and with what detail you appear to soak up masses of information about where they are, how long they've been there, who they like, who they don't like, and everything in between. And so yeah, I suppose I was just surprised how good he was. And I know that sounds also, it's also partly because coming out of film, that level of detail is not required, nor is it, you know, you know, it's very rare that unless it's an original screenplay that a writer sees a big movie from the beginning to the end.

So I'd sort of had, I knew his sort of, the sort of dazzling part of his talent, the sort of surface brilliance, if you like, but I don't think I'd appreciated the amount of time he takes on each play. And even though he'll say, oh, he writes it quite quickly, he just states these things, they sort of incubate in him for years. And he doesn't sit down to write until he's ready to write. When he's ready to write, it's probably because he's worked out everything from beginning to end.

[9:17] Jez Butterworth: And the sound you hear in the background is the sound of a dust cart. That's them shutting greenberries. Can I just say this point, they don't open early enough and they stay open too late. Sam and I came here just the other day and it wasn't open in time. They need a can of oil.

[9:41] Gordon Cox: And where are you, Jez, for the listeners, just so they know?

[9:44] Jez Butterworth: I am sitting in Primrose Hill on a bench outside Limonia, above Chalfot Square, where I lived for seven years, just down there in that apartment there. And yeah, this is very much our neighborhood, isn't it, Sam?

[10:01] Sam Mendes: It is. Yeah, yeah. No, so I mean, I grew up there. In fact, I lived there till I was 11 and I have a place there now. And yeah, no, it's very familiar territory. But I didn't, I have to say, expect him to be sat on the street corner. You know, internet Wi-Fi signals take you to the strangest places.

[10:27] Gordon Cox: Sam, discussing the way Jez writes leads me into my next question, which is, Jez, I'm going to ask you the question that every writer gets, which is, when people ask you, where do your ideas come from, what do you say?

[10:42] Jez Butterworth: I think at this point, my awareness of what's going on in why I write plays is that they are made up of undigestible or indigestible losses that I sort of put together in an order to try and make sense of them. And they're like dreams, and I have as much control over them as you have over your dreams, which is to say you're in them, you're participating in them, but they're taking you somewhere you know not where. And I think when I go back over my plays, I can look at them and kind of identify a little bit of like a dreamscape through it. But I really, really don't know where on earth or why on earth it's happening, like a dream.

[11:36] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And is it right, as Sam was saying, that you sort of do a lot of thinking, and then by the time you sit down, you know what the show is and who the characters are, and you know where you're going?

[11:48] Jez Butterworth: Yeah, that's definitely true. That's absolutely, definitely true. I definitely think about it. I have as much of it mapped out as I possibly can, but it's definitely not, it doesn't exist on a page. It just sort of exists in my head. And anything that stays in there that's worth saying, I won't forget. I'll never forget it.

[12:13] Sam Mendes: Yeah, he has an alarming memory and a very, very precise memory for dates, very specific dates. And I think also that thing of like, he has no choice on some level, but to draw on his own life and environment. And yet, at the same time, he doesn't use the elements of his own life in his fiction. And so it's like, which I think you'd find from probably a number of great writers is that they, of course, mine their own experiences, but they don't actually use the events of their life. This is not a sort of, you know, and Jez will say things like, you know, I'm looking, I'm getting close to the play, but I haven't found the mask yet. Meaning the way that I can, the avatar that takes me into a new world and yet still allows me to use details of my own life. Someone's, someone's walking past. Please, please, please apologize.

[13:18] Gordon Cox: This is a much more erudite FaceTime call than I would normally have with Jez, at 10 o'clock at night. Anyway, but yeah, there is that. And so, Jez, do you have, is there a nugget of an idea, any sense of what the nugget was for Hills of California that kind of launched the play for you?

[13:38] Jez Butterworth: Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, the start of the very conception of a play almost seems stupid. It's usually something so day-to-day, like, I don't want to die, or I miss my sister who died. This play was definitely born out of, I miss my sister who died. And I then just have to have the idea and realize that it is a loss that I can't fathom. And then I let it sit with me. And it can take decades, decades until that idea passes behind my eyeballs, and I can see it. But the very blast off of this, I would say, was definitely that. It was the idea that I had not been through that experience before that, and I'm a writer, and I was going to write about it. And how long would you say, what was the gestation period?

[14:45] Jez Butterworth: Well, she died in 2012. So that's 12 years.

[14:51] Gordon Cox: Yeah, wow.

[14:57] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Jez and Sam right after the break.

[15:06] Gordon Cox: And now, here's more of my conversation with the playwright Jez Butterworth and the director Sam Mendes of the new Broadway play The Hills of California. Just logistically speaking, the last play the two of you worked on together involved a very large cast and children and a goose. So I feel like logistically, at the very least, this play is a little less challenging. Is that correct? Just from a basics of staging? Is that right?

[15:33] Sam Mendes: Weirdly, I would say it's as challenging, but just in a different way. I mean, there was a challenge there, which was to do with, you know, there was a life force. I've said this before on stage at The Ferryman, which was sort of uncontainable, because there were things, beings on stage, that were not aware they were on stage, number one. So the goose, the rabbit and the baby had no clue they're in a play. And were puzzled and sometimes upset about this, although the baby was remarkably sanguine for most of the time. The rabbit used to piss on the apples and the kids used to have to eat them. And at least once every dozen performances, the goose shat all over the stage. So there was a sense there was live flame in it, all that kind of stuff.

But there was a sense in which you're creating a room and you were throwing everything that you could into this space. And it just had to survive. You had to calibrate it and it had to find its rhythm. But you had to give actors different courses of action, different journeys through the play, depending on what happened. So that was a huge challenge. But at the same time, um, you know, it's like the head frame was like a hot plate. You had to keep the heat in the centre of the stage all the time. It was like a sort of, you know, you could never let let the tension slack. The Hills of California is not as big a cast, not quite as big a castle, though it is large. It's still plenty of people.

[16:57] Sam Mendes: That's right. Yeah. But and it has no live animals and everyone in it is aware they're in a play. But on the other hand, it has singing and dancing. It operates on two time scales. It has moving scenery. And it's playing in an arena that Jez hasn't played in before, which is a movement back and forth in time, which is a very striking development. And, you know, and very challenging, because you have people playing the same characters at different ages. And then you have other people doubling in parts that don't relate to each other. And one crucial piece of doubling in which an actress plays a mother and her own daughter. And that is also a huge challenge to help the actors calibrate those performances, judge them right, somehow mirror each other when they're playing the same character 20 years apart, and all of those things and have one part of the play speak to the other part of the play like a sort of a dialogue.

And so it was in many ways more challenging and more, even though spread over a big canvas, a less robust play in a way because The Ferryman was very muscular, and it could survive all that chaos. It was built to survive that chaos. It was chaos in a way. I mean, it was constructed, brilliantly constructed chaos a lot of the time. But this is much more filigree, this, this needs much more fine tuning. And, and we found that in rewriting or just rewriting and adjusting from London to New York, we've been able to achieve that in a way that I think has pleased us both, but it's taken time, you know, and it's only now, even probably since you've seen it, Gordon, that it's really hitting its stride.

[18:41] Sam Mendes: Yeah, because, you know, you saw probably I don't know what day you saw last week, but it was an early, it was an early preview.

[18:44] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[18:48] Sam Mendes: So that version of the play had only been in existence for four or five performances, you know, which is unusual when you've talking about a show that's been alive for 150 performances in London, but you'd successful enough to go to Broadway, but at the same time, you're wanting to make it significantly better. And you make quite, you know, quite big and important changes, not massively, you know, different, but much more than we made for The Ferryman and much more than I made on, for example, Lehman Trilogy or anything I've, you know, I've taken from one place to the other. And it's been a really satisfying experience, mainly because of that, because we've had the time to get it right. And the rehearsal period in London was, I think, for both of us really enjoyable, because I think, you know, Jez, a little bit like writing the play, he sat with the production for a long time as well.

We both were very proud of it, don't get us wrong, in London and really liked it. But I think he was gestating a new way of constructing the third act all through that time quietly in his own way. And every time you watched it, he was operating on two levels at the same time. One, I'm watching and enjoying my play and two, how could I make it better? And so that went on through a number of weeks. Would you say that's true?

[20:04] Jez Butterworth: Yeah, I think that's entirely true. I mean, I love both iterations of it so dearly, but I feel that I've only got one task really, which is to witness it and then listen to it and see if it tells me something else and something new. I went back this morning and made a change to a play of mine called The River that they're doing at the Greenwich Theatre. I changed the beginning and the end of it like 12 years later, because that's what I want, that's what it told me to do. And this play told me to do something, and it might tell me to do something else. That's just me being honest about, can you come back to New York? You make sure it tells you that in two weeks time.

[20:54] Sam Mendes: As Jez was saying, there are two time periods and different people playing the same character at different periods of their lives. For you as a writer, was calibrating the relationship between the younger version and the older version and the ways they've changed and the ways they haven't changed, was that instinctual for you? It sounds like so much of your writing is?

[21:21] Jez Butterworth: Yeah, it was. It was entirely instinctual. I think we all exist in two time zones. I'm right here in the past all the time. I'm walking through it every day. I can't walk down any street in London without walking down there the hundred times I've walked down there before and feeling all of those moments happen. I've only ever in the past written plays that occur in one time period, one time frame, and pretty much obey the rules that were laid down many, many, many years ago. But there is something about flipping between these two times that is an attempt to try to get back to something that I think is a richer song, like a more affecting song that I've managed to do in a single time frame.

[22:34] Sam Mendes: What is the, or is there a secret to creating? Because both The Ferryman and Hills of California have these casts that feel very lived in in their roles, and they have a sort of full textured life, and particularly this family life that has in the world of the play existed throughout the lives of these characters. Is there a secret to fine-tuning how you get those kind of performances to cohere and come together?

[23:01] Sam Mendes: It takes time. You have to be patient. You have to let people work at their own pace, and they'll eventually meet each other when it finally arrives on stage. I think you can talk, you mustn't talk about result or effect. You have to talk about cause and environment and context and all of those things. So you do spend time circling it and creeping up on it. I think you've got to allow people to have opinions all the time. You've got to have, they all have very personal responses to the play, and they all have very, they all have parallels in their life. People that, oh, this character is like somebody I knew, and you want those stories to be told in rehearsal, and you particularly want those stories to be told when it's fundamentally, almost entirely at the centre of female cast.

And I think that was something that they all brought so brilliantly, both the older sisters and the younger. And then you do things like go and go to Blackpool, walk around, soak it up, take in the atmosphere. You just have to sort of be a sponge a little bit. But beyond that, encourage them to look in the play and to find the answers, either in the play, or in the person standing opposite them on stage. Because almost all of the answers are in one of those two places. And, you know, the rest of it is technical stuff, which, you know, in stage something in an hour, it's not that difficult, but you have to find in the physical life of the play that mirrors the emotional life. And sometimes that takes time too.

So, but yeah, I think, also, the other thing I've done with both those plays, I've given them both quite a lot of readings before we've been into rehearsal. And so I've had time long before we started rehearsal, just sort of without having to make any judgment about the play or make any big decisions, no design decisions too early, no casting decisions too early, all those sorts of things, you know, and that's really helped in gradually sort of applying layers, you know, rather than just making snap decisions.

[25:34] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And how, Laura Donnelly is once again, in the play, she's been in the previous two plays of Jez's that we've seen on Broadway. And of course, she was in The Ferryman. I think he likes her. I think he likes her, Gordon.

[25:49] Jez Butterworth: I think he likes her.

[25:55] Gordon Cox: Of course, Jez knows her very, very well.

[25:57] Jez Butterworth: Yeah, yeah. What is that? Does she have a secret sort of code to, is it because she knows you? Does she, do you find that she's able to unlock certain things about the characters or about your writing?

[26:08] Gordon Cox: Are you asking me or Sam?

[26:12] Jez Butterworth: I'm asking you, Jez. What do you think?

[26:22] Jez Butterworth: I know you are. Look, I think that she continues to surprise me every time she performs this play or anything we've done. I catch my breath. And it's, I think, almost a complete coincidence.

[26:36] Jez Butterworth: That we are married and co-parents of children. I don't relate that part of our life in any way to what we do professionally. And Laura helps with that because she doesn't really want to talk about it. So the whole thing is basically easy for there to be a division of church and state. Like she doesn't wake up and go, what about that bit where like it's like getting cut out of a fucking stone to get her to like say anything or even acknowledge the fact that what we do together is not run a grocery shop on the corner of the street. You wouldn't believe it. The only person who would believe that in this conversation is Sam because he doesn't need to. It's absolutely true. Yeah, it is true. I mean, I definitely have many more conversations about play than he has.

But that is also, she's a very private, her process is very private. She doesn't, she's not a dialoguing actress. She doesn't, she is like someone who burrows deep into the play and she has her own journey. And you need to respect that, give it time. But also, when she does have something to say, you have to listen because she rarely says anything and is almost always right on the money. She never, I mean, I'm not saying this because Jez is on this call, she never critiques the writing at all. She simply tries to understand where it's come from and what she has to achieve as an actor. I don't think she ever, I mean, maybe once I remember her saying, could I possibly change this line? But it was to me, not to Jez, you know, and she very, the boundary is very, very clear.

But at the same time, you know, she gives an unbelievably selfless, economical, unshowy performances that don't seek to ingratiate the character with the audience. It's a very unusual actor in that regard. She doesn't make a case for the character. She just plays the character. She embodies the character. And it's unusual to find most actors have always got half an eye on what they want the audience to think about them as in the role. And she doesn't. And I know that sounds remarkable for someone who is basically, you know, displaying, you know, playing somebody else for a living, but it just isn't there in her. And it's been really central to the whole experience of working on Jez's plays for me, because the Ferryman, she was at the centre of both plays, The Ferryman and Hills, California, and it rubs off on people, you know, people start, because she's so clear, she's so selfless, what she's doing that she brings that out of other people as well.

And they, they all look up to her. And it's very moving to watch. And it's and the four sisters, the four elder sisters in this play have become a really powerful team. And, and, but they all, you know, private or publicly, you know, I think, look up to Laura, in that regard. And I think it's really helped. But they're all, of course, remarkable in their own right, all four of them, and they all have very distinct, they all bring something very different to the table. And they're all special. Yeah, yeah.

[30:00] Jez Butterworth: Do you write with Laura or anyone else in mind as you were writing? Or do you, are you the kind of writer who writes for an actor ever?

[30:07] Sam Mendes: No, I don't think I do. I mean, I think that somewhere at the heart of the beginning of this process, the device of a mother and a daughter being played by the same actor found its way into it. I love a good device, a good Brian Friel device, you know. I love it. Like, you look around for them, you know, and I felt like I really got something there. I had a quick look through all the plays I owned, and couldn't find anyone who'd played a mother and a daughter. I'm sure it's happened. But it left me the license to think, oh my god, the needle and the damage done, you know, like the before and the afterwards, to give that to one actor and allow them to be both could be extraordinary. And yeah, it feels to me like it is.

So to that degree, I was thinking, who could do this? And it was not a hop, skip and a jump before I got to Laura. Because, you know, she is, you know, I think the subject of drama is dignity. It's not life or death. It's like our dignity is at stake. I think we come along to watch plays to see how people preserve their dignity in the face of lies. And I'm not sure anyone I've ever met does that better than Laura Donnelly.

[31:43] Gordon Cox: Yeah, well, The Hills of California is moving toward its Broadway opening. It will have just opened when this episode releases. And at the same week, Sam, you've got a TV show coming out. The first episode will come out pretty soon after this episode releases. That TV show is called The Franchise. And it's a comedy about making superhero franchise movies, which is something franchise movies are things you both have experience with, both with, for instance, the James Bond movies. And Jez, I had forgotten until I had, I was, you know, preparing for this interview that you also had a hand in the most recent Indiana Jones movie. So these are things that you have experienced. So this is a world that you both have experience with. What is it that, how do you find your work in films like that, which are so very different from your theater work? What appeals to you about them and getting involved in those projects?

[32:32] Sam Mendes: I think it's probably quite a different experience for Jez than for me. For me, it was five years of my life. For Jez, you know, he dipped in and out in a very enviable way, at least for those of us at the time, we're under the same amount of pressure. He just popped in, you know, sprinkled his magic dust and buggered off again. And for me, I just wanted something. I mean, at the time, I remember wanting to, wanting to be the coolest, wanting to be the coolest dad in the school. You know, I wanted to do something for my kids and I wanted to do something that shocked me out of the ways that I've made things in the past. And that scared me a bit. I felt I was repeating myself and I needed, and I also wanted to come back to England to make a movie.

I made five movies consecutively in America and I wanted to come back home. And I was very, and I'm very fond of Daniel. And I felt that that was, he was doing something interesting with it and maybe I could join in. And that's why. And so for me, it was a very unusual route into a franchise because I don't think I really understood the franchise nurse or bond until I was in the middle of it. And I thought, Oh, hang on a minute. It is quite weird when you're a director and you're used to being the person who is, you know, kind of the sort of generating engine of these projects to be jumping onto an already moving train with an actor who's played the part already. And you say, I think maybe we should do this.

No, I don't want to do that. I've done that before or prefer to do it this way. And you're like, fair enough. So you sort of having to, and that the idea of this sort of self generating energy that happens in the franchise, you know, that is both vast and also on a knife edge all the time, a kind of adrenaline rush and a mixture of, you know, huge highs and, and, and, and massive, you know, chaos. That was something, it's not like making a normal movie. And that's what drew me to when I saw D'Armando Iannucci, you know, we had this idea of making a sort of workplace comedy set behind the scenes of a franchise rather than a movie. And because it's quite a different world. And I loved it at the time.

And it's a heady and exciting thing to know, for certain, when you make a movie, it is going to enter the main artery of the culture, whether it's any good or not, it could be rubbish. But everyone is going to talk about it for a spell, there's no question, certainly in the UK. And that that was a, that was quite exhilarating. And, and that's a bit of a drug. But when you leave it, it was sort of a relief, you know, that you feel like, okay, you know, you can start making your own stories again. But, but I loved it. I loved it. And it gave me a lot, I think, and, and it really, and I saw the world in ways that I would never have imagined, you know, Jez saw the inside of Pinewood a few times, that was about it.

[35:37] Jez Butterworth: I did. Can I just say, I've got 1% left in my phone. But in the course, in the course of this call, I have returned one dog to its owner without you. I've seen four foxes. Wow. This is very exciting. 100 yards from the bridge where Ted Hughes set his unbelievable poem where he buys a fox cub. Just right here. Yeah. Yeah. Around the corner. And can I just say for those, can I also say those listening who are maybe worried about Jez, he's not in a cardboard box. He is a man with a home dressed in attraction.

[36:28] Sam Mendes: Oh, and he's gone.

[36:29] Gordon Cox: Well, that was the first time that's happened on this podcast. And I'm thrilled about it. What can I say? Yeah. Insight there, Gordon. And so is everybody else listening. What it's sometimes like trying to track him down. I'm amazed. I'm amazed he managed to do it. As I mentioned, you've got the franchise coming out shortly on HBO. What else is coming up for you that we should know about?

[36:53] Sam Mendes: Well, that's it. I've got these huge Beatles. I've got this huge Beatles project that I'm working on for the next several years. So this is the last time you will see me until sometime in the middle of 2028 or something like that.

[37:05] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I was just going to say, does that preclude working in the theater?

[37:07] Sam Mendes: When I emerge from my padded cell? I mean, yes, in terms of original productions for a while. Absolutely. Because I'm going to be fully committed to which is one of the Beatles project, which is one of the reasons why I ended up doing two plays. Not back to back, but you know, without any film or television in between was because I felt like it might be the last time I'm in a rehearsal room. And also, Jesse's way is to sort of send you to half a play and say, can we do a reading of this next week? And can we do it in a month? Can we put it on West End in two months? And it's like, well, you know, I didn't really know he'd been talking about writing, but talking about writing and delivering it to totally different forms.

And so he delivered it. And I felt like if I don't do this now, I'm not going to be able to do it at all. And so I did it. And that's the reason why I haven't quite quickly and, and therefore it finds itself in New York quite quickly because, you know, so I, other than wanting to see my production of a play I did called The Motive in the Queue come to New York, I'd love to see that come to New York. And Lehman Trilogy has just returned to the West End. So the plays, the last couple of plays I've done are still very much alive, which is lovely and makes me feel like I'm not abandoning the theatre for the next four years.

[38:35] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Well, welcome back to Broadway. And it's nice to have you. Nice to see you again. And we'll see you in, I don't know, five years or so.

[38:41] Sam Mendes: Yeah. Well, yeah, maybe, maybe before. Thank you, Gordon. And thanks for, you know, riding the wave that is Jez Butterworth on the street corner. That was Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes, whose latest Broadway project, The Hills of California, is now on Broadway. Mendes' TV show, The Franchise, premieres on HBO October 6th. If you enjoyed this conversation here on StageCraft, please take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcasting app. It really does help. Or tell a friend about StageCraft. Find past episodes and subscribe at all the places you get your pods, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, a great place to find more theatre for your ears. Until next episode, find me on Instagram and Twitter at Gordon B. Cox. You can also check out my newsletter about international theatre. It's called JQuiz, and it's at gordoncox.substack.com. Thanks for listening, and see you at the theatre.