{"id":678588,"date":"2026-05-18T12:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/678588\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:25:08","slug":"a-lot-of-people-dont-think-i-can-act-wallace-shawn-on-hollywood-therapy-and-speaking-out-on-palestine-wallace-shawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/678588\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A lot of people don\u2019t think I can act\u2019: Wallace Shawn on Hollywood, therapy and speaking out on Palestine | Wallace Shawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I ask Wallace Shawn<\/a> how he cast his latest stage work, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, the actor and playwright smiles matter-of-factly: \u201cWell, I think that\u2019s secret. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d It\u2019s polite, to the point and sets a clear boundary: something that I soon discover that the charming 82-year-old is entirely comfortable with.<\/p>\n

On an overcast Wednesday, we are in a restaurant atop the hip Manhattan arthouse cinema Metrograph, watching people trickle in a few days before a retrospective<\/a> of his films opens there. Spending time with Shawn feels like stepping into his own constant sense of wonderment: something midway between a knowing shrug and puzzlement over his immediate situation. When the cinema\u2019s publicist offers him a Twix bar, he cocks his head and asks what that is, but politely accepts one. (When she returns with more options, he opts for popcorn instead.)<\/p>\n

Born in New York and a theater mainstay since the late 60s, Shawn has reached the farthest from his native island through memorable turns in Hollywood hits like The Princess Bride<\/a> and Marriage Story<\/a>. After making his first big-screen appearance in Woody Allen<\/a>\u2019s 1979 film Manhattan, he popped up in cult hits like Bob Fosse\u2019s All That Jazz and Alan J Pakula\u2019s Starting Over before indelible leading turns in My Dinner with Andre or Vanya on 42nd Street, both co-written with Shawn\u2019s longtime collaborator Andr\u00e9 Gregory. Acting is a miracle, he tells me, because while actors \u201clook like us, like we could do what they do \u2026 we can\u2019t, really\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a curious comment from someone with more than 200 screen credits, but Shawn has been pushing himself to the limit this spring. On the two nights a week that Moth Days is not in performance, he has been restaging his blistering 1990 monologue, The Fever.<\/p>\n

\u2018Obviously, a lot of people don\u2019t think I can act because otherwise they\u2019d give me different parts.\u2019 Wallace Shawn and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless (1995). Photograph: Aquarius\/Paramount\/Allstar<\/p>\n

I saw Shawn perform that solo two nights before we meet. He entered to valedictorian applause, asked for sympathy should he need to consult the script he\u2019d brought on-stage, and good-naturedly acknowledged the play\u2019s length: \u201cAdmittedly, two hours is a long time, but it won\u2019t be longer than that,\u201d he pleaded. He didn\u2019t end up needing the script, and its indictment of capitalism and moral decay poured out of him like lava right up till the two-hour mark. \u201cThat\u2019s a physical feat which is at the absolute limit of my ability,\u201d he says. \u201cI am surprised that I can go through it without falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

But outside his collaborations with Gregory, Shawn feels disappointment that his ability to excel at avuncular, comic relief types in Clueless<\/a> or Gossip Girl has not led to more dynamic parts. \u201cI don\u2019t think the returns are in,\u201d he tells me. \u201cObviously, a lot of people don\u2019t think I can act because otherwise they\u2019d give me different parts. I\u2019m clearly not highly respected as an actor by a lot of people, even if I\u2019ve been sitting here for many decades, totally available. When I see myself, let\u2019s say, in Young Sheldon\u201d \u2013 the seven-season series where he held a recurring role \u2013 \u201cI think: they cast me in that part and I acquitted myself. I don\u2019t think they made a terrible mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film fans agree that Shawn is a treasure. Earlier this afternoon I tagged along with him to sign film posters at the nearby Posteritati gallery, where the entire staff \u2013 including those not on-shift that day \u2013 had come in to see him. When informed of this, Shawn batted the praise away with his hand. He was thrilled to see an original British one-sheet for My Dinner with Andre, then asked if signing a postcard for Toy Story 2, in which he voiced a toy dinosaur, would decrease its value. When they heaped praise on to Jonathan Demme\u2019s A Master Builder (2013), which Shawn adapted from Ibsen\u2019s classic and starred in, he noted its dismal box office.<\/p>\n

Shawn\u2019s own financial situation was more or less solved in his late 30s. \u201cI began to understand that I could make money by being a funny actor,\u201d he says. \u201cI was quite delighted to find that, even though my [stage] writing was not appealing to a large number of people, my acting apparently could be.\u201d This realization spared him from having to water down his writing, leading to 17 decidedly singular stage works to date, including translations of Machiavalli\u2019s bawdy comedy The Mandrake and The Threepenny Opera, his sole Broadway<\/a> credit.<\/p>\n

Moth Days, his latest, is a sort of primal return \u2013 whether he knows it or not. Structured as a series of direct audience addresses, it features four intellectuals (it could be titled The Man, The Son, Dad\u2019s Wife and His Lover) detailing the ways a father\u2019s affair influenced their lives up until their dying \u201cmoth day\u201d. Performed by Hope Davis, Maria Dizzia, John Early and Josh Hamilton, the play is a poignant yet darkly satirical study of one upper-crust family\u2019s attempt to come to terms with their own grief. Shawn\u2019s own father, William, was editor-in-chief of the New Yorker for over three decades and, for about as long, had a semi-public affair with one of its writers, Lillian Ross.<\/p>\n

Wallace Shawn in Louis Malle\u2019s My Dinner with Andre, 1981. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Shawn says he never picks up the pen knowing where it\u2019ll take him, and as to his Moth Days inspiration, points to the \u201cabsolutely true and well-documented\u201d facts of his life. I ask if he\u2019d heard Barbra Streisand\u2019s reason<\/a> for avoiding therapy (\u201cI\u2019m not that interested in myself\u201d), given the two were born a year apart. He laughs and says no. \u201cI think she doesn\u2019t care, perhaps, why she behaves the way she does. It\u2019s never gotten in her way. I understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markAcademic institutions have given in to their donors and into the evil administration of Trump<\/p>\n

Shawn has preferred to leave his motivations unexplored. \u201cIt\u2019s about being self-protective,\u201d he says. \u201cI think I avoided psychedelic drugs up until this point, and psychotherapy probably for the same reason.\u201d This makes The Fever\u2019s caustic, often hallucinatory wallop that much more surprising, in retrospect. Shawn describes the monologue as \u201ca very frank assessment of the role of that class of Americans\u201d \u2013 the bourgeois \u2013 \u201cas predators preying on the planet\u201d, where an unnamed protagonist, shivering on a hotel bathroom floor, considers their oppressive role in the world while visiting a developing country. Its existential gallows humor is Kafka by way of Marx, prompting a nausea of, as Shawn puts it: \u201cUh-oh, my life that\u2019s been very enjoyable has really come at the expense of people who have been crushed. If people in Sudan were prosperous, and if America hadn\u2019t had slavery and if there hadn\u2019t been a genocide of the Indigenous people, I wouldn\u2019t be able to be doing what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shawn began performing The Fever in apartments in 1990 before staging it at New York\u2019s Public Theater, where a New York Times reviewer savaged it as \u201ca musty radical-chic stunt\u201d. Does the artist mind the critics? \u201cI\u2019m afraid I read reviews, because I grew up in a print-loving household and I hate the idea that people are saying things about me behind my back.\u201d He kept it pushing, and eventually HBO produced a film version starring Vanessa Redgrave in 2004. Being unliked, as well as earning the kind of respect he feels Arthur Miller was afforded by his 30s, was a motivator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel bad talking this way now because people have been extremely nice since I crossed the line into being 80, maybe even 70 or 75,\u201d he says, almost embarrassed to acknowledge his writing career\u2019s delayed acclaim. \u201cBut, before that \u2026 I always had higher expectations for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shawn is attuned to the impression he makes; every word out of his mouth is as considered as a final written draft. Sensing I have more to discuss as he excuses himself for an appointment, we make plans to speak the following day. (Refreshingly, it doesn\u2019t seem he employs a publicist.) Over the phone, I veer our conversation from the battle between hunger for esteem and artistic certainty into how that might reflect itself in his politics.<\/p>\n

Shawn designed The Fever\u2019s time and place to be intentionally \u201cvague and abstract\u201d, but its rebel militias and warm climates evoke the mid-century destabilization of Central America. Wallace, who often visited the region, says it was \u201cwritten at a time when the United States totally dominated El Salvador [and] indirectly dominated Guatemala and Honduras\u201d. Its lack of specificity is helpful for the play\u2019s continued relevance (though less so for the state of humanity), and feels like a contemporary wake-up call from Shawn, who is also a longtime member of the leftwing, anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace. \u201cIn my social behavior, I tend to be quite bland and agreeable, but there have been times \u2026\u201d he trails off, hinting at moments where he hasn\u2019t shied away from confrontation.<\/p>\n

Wallace Shawn in The Fever, 2026. Photograph: Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

He was shocked when Columbia University, where his partner, Deborah Eisenberg, used to teach, penalized<\/a> its students for peaceful protests against the school\u2019s ties to Israel. \u201cInstead of defending these students, these academic institutions have given in to their donors and into the evil administration of Trump,\u201d Shawn says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been some consequences to my becoming politically aware,\u201d he adds. After the events of 7 October 2023, actors including Susan Sarandon and Melissa Barrera have described being blacklisted by Hollywood for pro-Palestine views. Has Shawn\u2019s open support of Palestine cost him opportunities? He demurs, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t know any people who are enthusiastic supporters of the genocide in Gaza. I know a couple who would rather not think about it, but I don\u2019t hang out with people who would be defending that.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndoubtedly,\u201d he notes, \u201cthere are criticisms of me that I, myself, haven\u2019t read.\u201d Shawn is set on his beliefs and his work regardless. Once Moth Days wraps, it\u2019s back to his particular duality: a voice role in Toy Story 5 then portraying the visionary 60s architect Buckminster Fuller<\/a> in the forthcoming drama The Man Who Changed the World. The few around him with whom he doesn\u2019t see eye-to-eye, he quips, \u201ceither they secretly know I\u2019m right, or they like me personally and they\u2019re capable of making the adjustments that \u2018Wally is odd and that\u2019s how he is\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

What We Did Before Our Moth Days and The Fever are at Greenwich House Theater, New York, until 24 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I ask Wallace Shawn how he cast his latest stage work, What We Did Before Our Moth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-678588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}