旁白: Love now and you fall in love. Love was stronger than anything.

旁白: For the love of love.

旁白: And I love you more than anything.

旁白: You're still love.

Anna Martin: From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. And today on the show, I'm talking to actor, producer, and director Elizabeth Banks. Elizabeth starred in some of the most iconic series of my teenage years. We've got Pitch Perfect, the movies that put AC capella on the map and maybe even did the impossible, which is make AC capella cool. Also, The Hunger Games, which transformed a book series I loved into a series of movies I loved even more. On screen, Elizabeth's characters are kooky. They can be brash. They're very big, which is why her new TV show, The Miniature Wife, is so intriguing to me because her character is very small. And I mean this literally. She's tiny. She plays a woman who was shrunk down to a minuscule size by her scientist husband. It's absurd, but it tugs at a very real relationship problem. This idea that our partners can make us feel deprioritized and unimportant. They can make us feel small.

Anna Martin: Today, Elizabeth tells me how she and her husband have avoided this dynamic from their start as college sweethearts who met on the very first day of freshman year to now after 33 years of marriage. Elizabeth Banks, welcome to Modern Love.

Elizabeth Banks: Thanks for having me. Hi. Hi. Um, okay. I'm going to start off this conversation by sharing something perhaps a bit vulnerable, which is I was in an ac cappella group in college and not only that, but I was the beatboxer. So, I will say your work on Pitch Perfect is deeply deeply personal to me. So, thank you so much for that.

Anna Martin: Wow. And and I have a feeling, you know, Pitch Perfect helped make AC capella kind of cool, right? Before that, if you were doing it and you were beatboxing, I have to say you probably were you were on an island with other ac capella people.

Elizabeth Banks: Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Martin: And a great having a great time, but it's like akin to going to band camp. Don't you think?

Elizabeth Banks: I was going to say you are doing a thing where I was like, she's insulting me upon first meeting me, but you really did turn that ship around. You did.

Anna Martin: You know, to each his own. And you really found your people. It sounds like

Elizabeth Banks: I did find my people. The beatboxing was actually sort of more out of necessity. I wasn't getting any solos, which was obviously it was hurtful at first and then I was like, you know what, I'm pretty loud. I can make sounds with my mouth.

Anna Martin: Yeah.

Anna Martin: Can you tell me a little more about why you wanted to explore this world of a capella? Then I promise we'll move on from this again sort of personal interest point of mind, but what about that world was so intriguing to you?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, I think we find any group of people who take something incredibly seriously in their own little world to be funny, right? It's what Christopher Guest does so well in all of his comedies. A big part of it, too, is you're on this team and you don't want to let the the team down. I should probably reveal at this point that I was like not that good of a beatboxer. So, I'm like, if my yak capella group is listening, they're like, I mean, you did let us down.

Anna Martin: Oh, jeez. But, you know, that's the the great thing about when I went to school, there were no videos. You there's just no evidence. Like, it just doesn't exist. You know, no one's going to know. You can say you were fantastic. A very small group of people are going to say you weren't.

Anna Martin: Um, let's talk about your video list college experience. Who who were you in college?

Elizabeth Banks: Who was I in college? Um it's funny. I was thinking about you were asking, you know, this is Modern Love and um my husband and I met my first day of college.

Anna Martin: Wow.

Elizabeth Banks: And I remember going to him and and asking I was thinking about, you know, trying to figure out like, okay, what do I do with my extracurricular time? Like, who am I? It's kind of the exact question you're asking me. I was trying to figure that out for myself. And in high school, I sort of was like a cheerleader and I did I did the play and I loved working, you know, musical theater, but I just was like, is that who I am in college? Am I doing musical theater or am I going to try to be a little more popular, you know? And

Elizabeth Banks: I was like, I'm thinking about going out for either the play or the the cheerleading team. And my husband was like, the play? Like for sure the play. And I thought, "Oh, he's so cultured and that must be why he wants me to go out for the play." And he simply thought that if I made the cheerleading team, I would stop dating him.

Anna Martin: No, Elizabeth. Oh my god. It was calculated. Really worried that if I became a cheerleader, I might not keep dating him. You met him the first day of school? That's remarkable. I did. Can you describe I mean, first impressions?

Elizabeth Banks: Yeah. What What What did you get from him? What What was he like? He was very confident.

Anna Martin: That's a very attractive quality.

Elizabeth Banks: He was very confident, clearly very intelligent. We talked a lot that first meeting. We went deep fast and the conversation was not small talk. It was really about many things including like the environment and uh what he was studying and sort of like what the world was like and you know it was really um interesting. And then all and then I was like do you want my number? and he said, "Nah, I don't have a phone."

Anna Martin: What?

Elizabeth Banks: And was that or was that another like

Elizabeth Banks: he'll tell you he really had not it was this was like day one of school, so he had not set up his phone yet. And this was before cell phones because I am old. And I just thought, okay, man, if you don't want my number, like that's cool, but you know, don't tell me you don't have a phone. Like, you can't figure out how to like. And he literally was like, I literally don't know a number. I wouldn't know. I'm like, I'm trying to give you my number. like I don't need your number. You call me. Figure out how to how to do it, man. And you know, and he it was just like a funny like

Elizabeth Banks: he's like it's impossible. We can't do it.

Elizabeth Banks: He basically was like it's not possible. Like I got to go. Uh I'm going to go flirt with other girls now cuz it's night one of college. And by the way, we had that like Facebook. I realized like the real one, the one that Mark Zuckerberg based Facebook on. The one that is your book.

Anna Martin: Yes.

Elizabeth Banks: It's like everyone's pictures, like the incoming class's pictures are in a book that you like flip through.

Elizabeth Banks: And I think he had looked at a couple other girls that he wanted to go try and meet that night. So, he was cocky and confident and intelligent and those are all very attractive things actually. And he was really handsome. He looked like um 90210 was very popular back then. He looked like Jason Priestley and he was very tan because it was like the end of summer.

Anna Martin: Okay. You're painting a you're painting a very intoxicating picture

Anna Martin: on the line.

Anna Martin: Well, not really though, right? Because you tried to give him your your number and he said, "Unfortunately, I don't have a phone." So, what happened next? How did you end up dating?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, I was, you know, it wasn't like my life was ending if he didn't take my, you know, I was like, I had I had it was going to be a fine night. I wasn't in love in two seconds and I was like, he's cute. And then I kept going with my life. And what happened was in that first week, we met each other again and again. We just kept running into each other. And so we met up again two nights later and he said, "Do you remember my name?" And I said, "You're Max. Do you remember my name?" He said, "Yes." And he said, "I even remember what you were wearing?" Which he did. And he still does. We still both remember what we were wearing.

Anna Martin: Okay. Well, tell me what both of you were wearing.

Elizabeth Banks: I had on um cut off jean shorts, like Daisy Dookies types of things. Um, and I was wearing a Boston Red Sox cap cuz I'm a proud Massachusetts person.

Anna Martin: That's cool. That is a cool ensemble. The hat really top. And what was he wearing?

Elizabeth Banks: He was wearing a vest with no shirt,

Elizabeth Banks: which he's endlessly been made fun of and now we're doing it on a New York Times podcast.

Anna Martin: A vest with no shirt.

Elizabeth Banks: But he and like jeans, which were and he looked great. I mean, as you as you kept having these crossovers, you're getting to know him more and more. What was your what was your connection like? How did you feel around him? How did you know that this was going to be something deeper than a hookup or a a fling?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, he took me on one of the best dates I've ever been on in my life. Um, we went to we went downtown and you know, I'm I'm from the country. I'm from Western Massachusetts. I I grew up in like the biggest city in western Massachusetts, which is a factory town surrounded by farms, but I remember taking a taxi with him. And he we got out and he said, "Uh, just give me three back or something like that." And I thought, "Oh man,

Elizabeth Banks: that was so hot." He like knows how to tip the taxi driver and he's like, "It just seems so cool."

Anna Martin: Totally so adult. And then we went into this beautiful like underground jazz club with a singer and like a two drink minimum. And they didn't ask for ID. Nobody cared. Uh we ended up sitting listening to this incredible singer and we drank bourbon and I'd never really had bourbon. And I thought like it felt very like my adult life was beginning. You know, I was leaving

Elizabeth Banks: really leaving childhood behind. Like I knew when I got to college I would feel that way, but I really felt that way with him. Like wow, this is like what adult adults do. I'm going to have an adult relationship with this person. It's going to be int deep and intense and we're going to do cool things together, which we did and and still do.

Anna Martin: Was that scary, too? Cuz I I remember a moment where I like met someone and I was like, "Oh, this is kind of the real deal, you know, like this is no longer like this is an adult relationship like you're talking And half of me was thrilled cuz it's fun to grow up. And I feel like the other half of me was like, "Oh my god, I really have to do this. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm scared. I've never had something like this." Was there any element of that for you?

Elizabeth Banks: To be honest, we were so young that I just felt like I was cool to be in I had been in love. I had a high school boyfriend that I loved

Elizabeth Banks: and um I was cool. I was like, "Yeah, love's cool. I I'll be in love with somebody and if we break up, we break out." Like, I was not in it for the long haul. I didn't meet my husband the first day of college. I met a really great boyfriend who over a long time

Elizabeth Banks: became the person that I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

Anna Martin: Can I like as it started to get more serious? How did you two talk about the future?

Elizabeth Banks: I'll be honest, I came at it pretty selfishly. I applied to drama school and I got in and it was in San Francisco. um which at the turn of the millennium was like the hottest place in the world to live cuz it was Silicon Valley. And it just so happened that I was going there for grad school. Uh and he was working in New York at that point already. And he's the one I can say it wholeheartedly. He made the decisions to kind of keep us together because he transferred to his job to San Francisco so he could come and be with me. And then when I went back to New York, he came back. And then I was like, I really don't want to ask him to leave New York again, but I think I have to go to LA and I don't know what to do. And he said, listen, I'll I'll apply to MBA programs. I'll apply to UCLA and if I get in, we'll go. And I think that's really important. like we just kept figuring out ways to like grow together, stay together, do it together, stay in a partnership, you know, like we kept trying to like build the life that we could see for each other

Elizabeth Banks: like on our own terms. But I think he was completely supportive of this dream that I had that I was going to go be an actor,

Elizabeth Banks: you know? We we were still sort of like playing it fast and loose and like is this is this really it because when we decided yeah really was it and I and we had that conversation in San Francisco in a bar one night where we were like everything that's come before who cares like from here on out are we in it? Are we doing this? Like we're not getting married tomorrow but like are we going to keep trying to stay together? and we had a really intense good conversation where we're like yeah let's do it like let's not like we're committing let's do it let's commit to each other and um since then we have can I and you can share as much as you want but at the end sometimes with these bigger conversations in my experience these big conversations it's kind of hard to know when the conversation is done you know what I mean it's like okay well there you go how did you um did you like take a shot did you kiss like when you how did you know that like okay we've decided

Elizabeth Banks: I'm sure that I got laid. I'm sure I got laid. No, you know, I we definitely we definitely got a little tipsy. I remember we were a little tipsy and you know, look, it's it's the it's called truth serum for a reason, right? It was like,

Elizabeth Banks: you know, and I think we were a little emotional and I was going to be leaving, you know, there was no doubt like I'm graduating, I'm leaving San Francisco, like I was not going to stay in San Francisco and he was going to have to figure out how to leave as well. And so it was really just I think there was a lot of unanswered sort of questions and that's a lot of pressure on a 25-year-old. Like I think all of that was brewing and came out in this moment of like let's commit. Let's get into a partnership agreement. You know, we're not signing any papers, but let's say these things out loud to each other so we know

Elizabeth Banks: so we can hold each other to it. It sounds like there were still so many I mean, you know, you had no idea, of course, no one ever does what was in the future, but it sounds like at that moment you were like, I'm committed to to you and to to going into this future, this unknown with you. Does that is that how it felt?

Elizabeth Banks: Absolutely. And I just had that a similar conversation now. It's 30 gosh, how many years into this are we 33 years into it? I just, you know,

Elizabeth Banks: after my um birthday last month had like a

Elizabeth Banks: okay so the next 5 years like it's going to you know we're going to have a lot of I'm preparing for a lot of loss. I am very lucky I have both my parents right now but that luck just time is going to

Elizabeth Banks: you know it's going to take them. My kids are going to leave home because that's that's what my job as a parent is is to make sure they can go live their own lives. So, I'll be sending them off. And I just was like, "Wow, I am I know what the next 5 years looks like." And it's there's going to be a lot of loss in our life. And so, we need to really partner up and hold hands and like we we got to get we got to we got to

Elizabeth Banks: I don't know, batten down the hatches, you know? I mean, it sounds like the foundation in a lot of ways of your relationship, of your marriage with your husband are these conversations, quite difficult conversations about what the next steps are, you know, planning on the future together, making decisions together.

Anna Martin: This to me is a big contrast from the marriage we see in your new show, The Miniature Wife. I'm going to set the scene a bit. You play Lindy, a Pulitzer surprisewinning author who has lots of success in her career in New York. She's married to a scientist played by Matthew McFatian who moved their family to the Midwest to work on his top secret formula.

Anna Martin: If you were in Lindy's shoes, how would you react to that move?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, I mean, similarly, I think to my husband and I moving across the country for each other, it's like you h I she in the show has to find her own reason to go and so she goes and becomes a professor at the you know WashU in St. Louis where they're going to live and

Elizabeth Banks: but she thinks it's very temporary. the the thing that goes wrong for them is they I think have a plan and they do talk about it and they do create sort of a um a partnership and how they're going to do something. It's just the way they do it is so messed up and then and then it it goes sideways because one of them's, you know, they're like, well, he's gonna support me while I do one thing, but then I'm going to take time away from my career and support him while he does his thing. And then his thing is like a 20 year like time horizon. And she's like, whoa, this this is taking way long. I'd like to get back to my thing. And he's like, no, no, no. I need you to support me so I can do my thing. And that's just completely unhealthy. So, the two of them just have h have they have a much less healthy idea of what it is to be in a supportive relationship. They're not each allowing the other to do their own thing and like come together on it. They're not really in a partnership. They're in a competition. And I see a lot of couples in competition with each other. A lot of couples

Anna Martin: Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of couples are doing um they're doing the the checking, you know, well, I did this and you did this and what did you do and I did this and I did this and what did you do? Well, I take all the tally sheet.

Elizabeth Banks: And I think if you're doing a constant tally sheet,

Elizabeth Banks: like are you in a partnership? Like are you like checking the like do you have the same list that you're both checking stuff off of or do you have two separate lists? It's a great question.

Anna Martin: a great question.

Elizabeth Banks: You know, it's like it has to be negotiated the in a healthy way. I think

Anna Martin: it seems like you and your husband have have really sort of worked out I'm not saying it's smooth sailing all the time of of course no relationship is but it seems like you've worked out a system. I don't know what you want to call it. You've worked out this dynamic where you don't have that kind of competition. You don't have that tension. And I want to really because I think you know like again I said I admire it and I really want to know what that means in practice. How did you arrive at that place? Is it like you have bi-weekly check-ins? Like what's the is there a secret?

Elizabeth Banks: The re my husband and I work together. We are partners in a production company and we do all like truly our 95% of our work life outside of the acting I should say we really try to do in some sort of partnership and honestly it was completely practical. What became apparent was I was going to be traveling all the time for the work that I was doing. It was already happening. Um, and so living in LA, being together, it was like he was graduating from business school and he was looking at jobs that were like, you know, you get two weeks off and, you know, maybe you get a vacation in the summer and, you know, you got to work, you know, 9 to 9 every day if you want to get ahead. And it was like, I'm never going to see this guy. And we've we've made all these decisions to to bring our lives together so that we can make a life together and have a family together and be each other's family and all. And suddenly it looked like it wasn't going to happen. And um yeah, it started from there. It was really practical. It was like how do we spend the time we want to spend together and not have me always be away? And we just figured we should do it. We should just like do it together and see how it goes. And it's gone pretty well. It's really sweet because I feel like it kind of flouts the conventional wisdom which is like never ever ever work with your significant other. And in fact, you found that the the way to spend the time that you wanted with your significant other was to work with them. It's like you've really kind of flipped the script here in a way that seems to have really worked for you guys.

Elizabeth Banks: We just work really well together. There are people all the time that say to us like, "How do you work with your husband?" And honestly, it comes very naturally. We are just there for each other to like vent and we don't take it personally and the business is like what it is and it's hard. It's really hard work but we have been able to build a lot of really cool things together. Stay with us.

Anna Martin: Okay, Elizabeth, we have been talking about how to keep a marriage working as you both grow and change over the years. And the Modern Love essay you chose to read today is about a couple who finds a very interesting way to tackle that problem. They go to Burning Man together. Why did you choose this essay?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, interestingly, I actually know several middle-aged 25 years in people who have gone to Burning Man kind of for the same reason. Like like gosh, we've been doing this a long time. Like how do we keep it spicy? and or one of them always wanted to go and you know I I find it f like I if I could transport there and then immediately transport out when I wanted to then yes I would 100% it's something I would want to take in but the whole notion of the buildup to it and the getting there and the getting out of it and the whole thing I'm like I don't it's not for me. I completely agree with all respect.

Anna Martin: Hey, what about those friends that went to spice up their relationship? Did it work?

Elizabeth Banks: It kind of did. It did. it did help them. And that's also why I thought this was a really interesting um interesting notion. And I also think there's so much in the zeitgeist right now about menopausal women just not having any [ __ ] left to give to their relationships. And I don't want to deny that feeling because it exist like you we're changing, you know. And I read this beautiful thing that was like the way to stay in love is you don't love the same person. You love the the person that changes and you keep learning them and learning how to love them over time because we do change. And I for sure feel, as I said, like 52nd birthday was like a moment where I was like, "Wow, the next this next little bit is going to be hard." And I want to I just wanted to check in with my partner and say like you you got like we got this, right? Because this isn't going to be easy for us. So you got to hold on to the people that are propping you up. Um because we really need each other right now.

Elizabeth Banks: And so

Elizabeth Banks: sometimes you got to go to Burning Man. And sometimes that's it. And sometimes that person wants to go to Burning Man and you got to go because that's what they need. That's what marriage is maybe.

Anna Martin: Okay. I can't wait to hear you read this essay. This essay is from a few years back, but I think it's still really resonant. Excited to hear you read it. Whenever you're ready.

Elizabeth Banks: Making space in marriage even as the walls close in by Deborah Joe Immoot.

Elizabeth Banks: It was a week before our 25th anniversary, and I wanted out. John and I were sitting in a tent pavilion as women in tiny thongs, platform boots, and pasties, snaked past us in a line for free ice cream, their behinds nearly grazing our noses. I glanced at my husband. He looked on affably as if trying to channel Fred Rogers. And even though I had been crying most of the day, I had to smile. When we were halfway through our virgin trip to Burning Man, the temporary metropolis that rises in the remote Nevada desert each summer. Taking part had long been John's dream and my nightmare. But now that equation had been turned on its head, and this voyage had become the inflection point of our marriage, 8 days that would save it or destroy it.

Elizabeth Banks: We had spent four nights camped out among dust devils. non-stop electronic music and some 70,000 utopia seekers, most of them closer to our son's age than ours. We had four nights to go. John first began lobbying for us to go more than two decades earlier. As a reporter, he had traveled to Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the famed Playa, to interview the events founder, Larry Harvey. John fell in love with the landscape, a flat white vastness rimmed by mountains, and was impressed by Harvey, who started this annual crucible of creativity when he built a wooden man and then torched it, a ritual he hoped would help him heal from a broken heart.

Elizabeth Banks: My husband is a shaggy-haired, polite Texan with a thirst for wide open spaces. He became convinced that seeing a massive artwork burn in the desert amid throngs of revelers was something he needed to do and he wanted to do it with me. As each year's late summer burn took place, he would sigh and say, "Someday we're going." Every time I would sigh and say, "No way." To me, an East Coast skeptic with a delicate digestion, it seemed a hellscape of extraversion, new age art, and portable toilets. Besides, our life together was already plenty adventurous. We had fallen in love as students amid the cornfields and dive bars of an Iowa college town, moved to Washington DC, spent 5 years in Europe, then relocated to New York, where our son was born. 15 years ago, we left the city for a small Massachusetts town. Every so often, John would bring up Burning Man, saying, "But you'd like it." Naked people tripping in the desert. I'd say, "You'd like it, not me."

Elizabeth Banks: Then our son, our only child, chose a university thousands of miles away. Menopause swept over me like a lightning storm. I'm not talking about hot flashes. I felt lit up. The comforts of cozy domesticity seemed diminished. I had freedom and space. I craved more. I noticed there were men beyond my husband and son and that they were noticing me. It was confusing and exhilarating.

Elizabeth Banks: Over a Sunday lunch, I told John that I needed to crack a window. I felt pressure building. "You want to have an affair?" he said grimly.

Elizabeth Banks: just some breathing room, a little give so the whole thing doesn't break apart. It felt like the hardest conversation of our marriage and ended in a bit of a stalemate. The outlines of our new deal, if that's what it was, were vague. He said he would try to give me space, but needed to trust that I wouldn't hurt him.

Elizabeth Banks: I I won't, I said. You can have space, too. He shook his head. I don't want it. I had no desire to hurt John or myself. I longed for our connection to be recharged, but instead it wobbled.

Elizabeth Banks: John seemed angry and sad. I felt distracted, drifting. Some days I felt real danger, as if I might actually just drift away. That dark part of me wanted to see it happen. It scared me.

Elizabeth Banks: Two years ago, as our 25th anniversary loomed, it dawned on me. Bold action was required. No nice dinner or overnight at a quiet inn.

Elizabeth Banks: We need new material, I told John. We need to do something seriously out of our comfort zone.

Elizabeth Banks: Burning Man, he said.

Elizabeth Banks: I said.

Elizabeth Banks: He found us tickets. I tried to imagine using oversubscribed portable toilets for 8 days. You want it uncomfortable? He said not that uncomfortable. He rented us an RV with a bathroom. When I told a friend about the plan, she said, "When I hear Burning Man, I think sand in vagina." Another told of a friend who had lost his wife there. Two days later, she straggled back to their camp, announced she had met her soulmate in a meditation circle, and left in the other guy's car. In the weeks that followed, we both waffled right up until we either had to confirm the RV or lose our big deposit. John lay awake all night. I mean, this was all his idea. What if it broke us up? What about those meditation circles? I woke with a thought. I had asked for freedom in space and he had offered an anarctic party in an endless desert. How could I not take him up on it? Let's go for it, I said. I was going to cancel. Then he shrugged, but you know how long I've wanted this. We rushed to gather supplies. Solar lamps, dust masks, tarps, also tutus, and fantastic hats. In Las Vegas, we loaded the RV with 36 gall of water, avocados for me, beef jerky for John. The scale of the Burning Man encampment was vaster than I had imagined. We ended up parking our rig amid a little village of fellow outliers, including a Nevada state trooper and his wife and two 20something nurses from Alaska. During the day, John and I would bike lazily through the heat or shelter under our juryrigged tarp. At night, we garlanded our bodies with rainbow LEDs and zoomed past glowing art installations. We danced and down countless free cocktails, surrounded by flesh, naked or nearly, shimming on top of cars that had been transformed in cathedrals and spaceships or lined up at the horrifying potties.

Elizabeth Banks: On the morning of the fourth day, with four to go, I dissolved into a mess of dust, sweat, and tears. I cried in our hot trailer filled with doubts about this dubious, desperate undertaking, about our relationship, about everything. Whatever I was missing, it wasn't here. I wanted to leave.

Elizabeth Banks: "If you want to go, we'll go," John said, holding me tightly.

Elizabeth Banks: He needed the catharsis of seeing the man burn.

Elizabeth Banks: Somehow I understood this. I took a deep breath and dried my dirty face on his shirt.

Elizabeth Banks: By that afternoon, as we ate ice cream among the throngclad beauties, I regained my mojo. Later, a veteran burner told me, "Everyone cries on the fourth day."

Elizabeth Banks: We stayed to see the man collapse into flames and then for the final act, the incineration of a huge wooden temple. As the hordes watched in odd silence, John seemed to float through these climactic moments in extreme happiness. And it wasn't drugs. He was as straight as a yard stick.

Elizabeth Banks: Watching him, I realized that I was happy, too. Not only had we made it through, we had entered the next room of our marriage. I had asked him to crack a window as a possible escape route, but the opening had instead led in oxygen. We had created for ourselves a bigger space. It felt exciting to think about exploring it together.

Elizabeth Banks: How deeply did we get into the spirit of that Bakanol?

Elizabeth Banks: Let's just say that one evening out on the fringe of the encampment, there was dancing,

Elizabeth Banks: two bare skinned bodies casting long shadows across the flats as if pointing toward the future.

Elizabeth Banks: Two years later, we're experiencing the opposite of Burning Man, hunkered with our son in our old New England house as the pandemic sweeps the globe. Yet, I think we internalized enough of that wide open space to know the need for psychic distance in our marriage. And we're better at maintaining it while still sharing love and support during a frightening time.

Elizabeth Banks: The year we burned feels like it happened in another eon, but it's less stuck and is maybe even more relevant now.

Elizabeth Banks: It takes fresh air to feed a fire. We'll be right back.

Anna Martin: What are some immediate thoughts while that's still burning in your brain?

Elizabeth Banks: Well, I love that it brings to mind these great conversations that you have to have with a partner about like where are we and where are we going and what's ahead for us and how do we get there and do we do it together and you know all those big questions and check-ins that you have to have. And I love that this couple had that check-in and then

Elizabeth Banks: figured out how to honor one of their dreams, you know, and somebody had to make a little sacrifice. And that's typically what has to happen. Somebody's got to make a little sacrifice. Both you and your husband have had to make sacrifices. I wonder if you can share like a a moment of that or a stage in your relationship where either you had to make a sacrifice or or he did for the good of the relationship, for the sake of the relationship.

Elizabeth Banks: Every time a big job comes up that takes me out of town, we have to have a conversation like this. So, we have them all the time, actually,

Elizabeth Banks: right? Because, you know, I got really good advice as a young mom uh when I was parenting my little toddlers and trying to go to set and do it all. And I remember someone saying to me like, you you think you need to be there when they're three, but really make sure you're there when they're 13.

Anna Martin: Huh.

Elizabeth Banks: Because they need that they're 13. I mean, we all remember 13. It's the worst. It's the hardest.

Anna Martin: It's the worst.

Elizabeth Banks: And it's also when you're getting wired to be a human, you know, in a real way.

Elizabeth Banks: They're contemplating really big things and the consequences of their decisions are so much greater. And so I now have a 13 and a 15-year-old and I really love I'm addicted to them and I love hanging out with them and I love being around them. It's so it's become, you know, really important, I think, for our family to recognize how little time we have together, the four of us together. And so, every time I get a big job now, it's like, well, what is the sac is what's the sacrifice and you know, and what do we need? It's been a really interesting series of conversations over the last few years. That feels like a really tough decision to make. Have you turned

Anna Martin: Have you turned down a job?

Elizabeth Banks: It isn't because at the end of the day at the end of the day, you almost I mean to to be honest like there are very few jobs that beat playing maong with my 15-year-old.

Anna Martin: Wow. Y'all are ma jang family. I like hearing that.

Elizabeth Banks: And we are a ma family. Yes. You know, in the in the essay you just read, the author

Elizabeth Banks: uses this metaphor that I really love. She says when she realizes she's happy with her husband again, she says it's like their relationship or it's like they have entered a new room.

Anna Martin: A new room.

Anna Martin: A new room. And and we're talking about your your two kids. Did parenthood feel like entering a new room for you and your husband?

Elizabeth Banks: Of course. I think it is for I mean there's no preparing. It doesn't matter who you are or what you know I mean I I grew up surrounded by little kids and I've babysat my little siblings and you know I'm