"The Secret Agent" Star Wagner Moura

Your Roots Don't Define You Author Chris Appleton

"Tell Me Lies" Star Jackson White

Air Date: Wednesday, January 21^st

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Photo Credit: The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean

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Preview Clip Airing Thursday, January 22^nd: Jackson White Reveals That His Girlfriend and Co-Star Grace Van Patten Was the First to Make a Move

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTv2LYEET83/

Drew: Do you know who actually has been here multiple times?

Jackson: Is it Grace?

Drew: Grace Van Patten who I'm so in love with.

Jackson: Me too.

Drew: It is public knowledge so I'm not spilling any beans or letting any cats out of bags that you are boyfriend and girlfriend.

Jackson: It's true it's real.

Drew: Did you guys kinda weigh the scales and have a conversation as like coworkers? How did that go?

Jackson: We ran through every reason why not to get together and then decided to kiss so it was like.

Drew: Can I ask and you can just wave me off, did someone lean in first?

Jackson: Yeah it was Grace.

Drew: I love that. I need that advice too as a woman sometimes I'm a little caught in another era where I think the man's supposed to make the first move and I didn't feel that way when I was younger.

Jackson: It's not true anymore. That's not what it is. I'm glad because four years later it's good. It worked out she's the best she's like sunlight, she's like walking sunlight.

Wagner Moura on Meeting His Wife of 25 Years Dressed as A Ballerina at Carnival

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/SZWD92YebjSa

Drew: Speaking of, I've never been to carnival, but is it true?

Wagner: It's a big thing. You should. It's so cool.

Drew: Well, seeing it in your film too made me like greedy to get there.

Wagner: It's amazing.

Drew: Just to let your body go and celebrate like that.

Wagner: Carnival is a moment where you just forget about everything else in Brazil we have this thing that, let's just wait till carnival when you have a problem, you know, the, the year basically starts in February, March because before that you don't really wanna deal with any problem or anything after carnival, then we deal with things.

Drew: But, did, did you dress as a ballerina at one of the carnivals?

Wagner: Because carnival, that's it. Carnival is very insane, Drew. You have to go. It's crazy. And then I was and people like, yeah, we dress in many different kind of, outfits, and I was dressed as a ballerina, in this particular one, and that's where I met my wife 25 years ago, and she seemed to like the ballerina thing, yeah.

Drew: So were you like, were you dancing? Where were you when you first locked eyes?

Wagner: Like, you know, that they, they we have in, in Salvador Bahia is my hometown that we had this big trucks, right, playing music, and, and she was my, I knew her because we were, we went to college together like to, we both, we both studied journalism and I knew her she was kind of my friend, you know, but, but not really, you know, she had a boyfriend and everything, but like I said, in carnival all the barriers like just, just so I saw her, she saw the ballerina and, and.

Drew: And I'm guessing the boyfriend wasn't in the picture. Isn't it funny how timing really is everything.

Wagner: And it's crazy because we spent the carnival together and carnival is like a rollercoaster of emotions and we spent the entire carnival together and right after I was already working in Rio de Janeiro. I was doing a play there and I was like, I do you wanna just go to Rio with me? And she was like, yeah, and she packed and went to Rio and you start living together. Like that's how we started to know each other like by living at the same apartment.

Wagner on Raising Three Boys and Being a Father Defining Him Above Everything Else

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/u3X4tvM6N2Py

Drew: And 3 teenage boys.

Wagner: We dudes, to be a father is one of the things that defines me most in life. Being an actor, an artist is the other one, but being a father is above everything else, you know, it's like, it, and it's an adventure, you know, it's sometimes you make mistakes. You do, you say things that you shouldn't have said. You take decisions that you shouldn't have taken, and I've, what I've been learning is like to, you really have to forgive yourself because you know, I've been, I was when I had my first kid, I was only 29, I was 30.

Wagner on Finding Forgiveness for Yourself In Parenting

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/CM3NOybBlfyG
Drew: How do we forgive ourselves?

Wagner: Oh, that's a hard question, Drew, but I think it's a very important thing. You know it's a very important thing which comes to love yourself and I think that the older I get, the more I like myself, the more I'm in peace with who I am and, and I think that that forgiveness comes with that and also my kids, I'm very honest with them sometimes I because I, I wish I, this is a thing like the fact that I, we as actors we have to travel so much so I'm not around many times in their lives and many moments of their lives, and, and I feel bad for them, but that, but then at the same point.

I look at them and they go like I, I get it. This is what you do, man, and it's like so it's a difficult, it's a difficult balance but I learned how to not to carry guilt in my life.

Drew: I think you might need to teach a course and a seminar, maybe a TED Talk to us women because I don't know a woman who's learned to let go of the guilt. It's like we have kids, we move into guilt city, and then we just live there and it's so nice to hear from a man about the concept of guilt, the concept of forgiving oneself. It's very gentle and speaks to the beginning of the conversation of affection and showing love is not a gender thing, it's a human thing and so thank you for that.

Wagner on Why He Wanted to Make His New Film "The Secret Agent"

https://app.cimediacloud.com/mediaboxes/f6f95ee9a9e74b3994806a8bd6eeff51

Drew: How did you decide to make this film that is so good and so extraordinary and I couldn't believe when you said that your wife and you at the time in college were both studying journalism. There's such a journalistic aspect to this film. In fact there are stories that are going on in the news woven in the tapestry of this story.

Wagner: It's a very political film, like it's, and I'm a political person, I'm drawn to political projects and this one came from a very personal thing where we, what it was to be in Brazil from 2018 to 2022 and we had a fascist president where both the director Kleber Mendonça Filho and myself were very vocal against him and we both suffered the consequences of that. This film is also about values, how to stick with your values when everything around you says the opposite.

Drew: It is master craft this film and it is timeless in its pursuit of justice.

Chris Appleton on How His Cancer Scare Changed His Book

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/1HrtmcgbUqqO

Chris: A year ago actually whilst I was writing the book, a cancer scare, which was quite nerve-wracking obviously because my mum had cancer, she had esophagus cancer and this was what they were worried about and my good friend Kim Kardashian, her dad died of it very quickly. You know, and so I spent a lot of time talking to Kim about it at the time and you know you go to the hospital and you kind of have these tests and you're waiting for them to be like, oh it's all good, you're just low on iron but I didn't get that reassurance, and it was a conversation of, kind of blank faces and silences, which was even more nerve-wracking. So test after test after test turned into me going under, for an operation and they needed to do more intense tests. But I was laying there and my daughter was there, which was very beautiful, she was, you know, almost like a parent to me in a way, and I sort of thought to myself, I've been writing this book and is it really an honest reflection of like me and where I'm at in my life, or is it this guarded sort of edited version that I've been putting out to the world, which really came from fear. It was all fear based, shame, fear, and I realized I'd been carried shame and fear my whole life, So the book got scrapped, the title got scrapped, and that's how we came with Your Roots Don't Define You, because I realized mine had been defining me for pretty much my whole life. I'd been put into a box at a very young age and I'd abandoned myself. So I think in that moment of the fear of losing my voice, I really wanted to own it before the possibility of that happened. I mean, fast forward to it actually ended up being cysts and certain things due to lifestyle and get into that another time, but thankfully it wasn't cancer, but with how far it went, it was a really scary experience and especially, I mean I guess I'm 42, so I was like, maybe this is that time. And I also realized that I think the original book I wrote, if I'm really honest with everyone, and I think it's a great place to be honest, is it was probably more from ego opposed to actually where I'm at in my life now, which is really wanting to help people, you know, and be able to make something that makes a difference.

Chris Appleton on Coming Out at 26 & His Suicide Attempt

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/ALdqQqjBWuKB

Drew: You were also living like a total double life, living as a straight man with a marriage and two beautiful children, and as long as I've known you, the years that I've known you, your kids are always present. You talk about them, you love them, you are a very all-in parent, and at one point in your life you too were realizing I might have a different truth and am I ever going to be able to live that truth? Will you talk about that, Chris?

Chris: Absolutely. I mean, At the age of 26, I came out as gay. And at the same time I tried to end my life because there was to an extent a process of going through understanding myself what was happening. Because a lot of people said, well you must have always known, and they generally didn't and I really found that very confusing, like why didn't I know, but also why can't I just go back to being straight, why can't I just go back to just liking girls and living a normal life. And obviously in doing work and opening that up, I realized at a very young age when I started to do hair. I was maybe 13, I got a job in a salon, I was doing my mum's hair at 9. But because of that, there was always this conversation at school where I was bullied for people who said I was gay. And it was a time before I'd even really could have got into sexuality. I hadn't really had time to explore like kids do, we make mistakes, we try things, we kiss people, we shouldn't, I don't know. I hadn't done any of that. So at a very young age, people weren't saying it in a, in a lighthearted way, it was a very aggressive way, like I was beaten up, spat on, you know, people set, tried to set fire to my hair, it was constant and it seemed like a very bad thing to be gay, so I very quickly at a young age thought well I don't wanna be that, that's definitely not something that I wanna be, so I'm gonna show everyone I'm not gay. I was also dyslexic at school, which is kind of fun that now I've brought out of this book cause that was a personal journey, but we'll get into that another time. But I was told at school I was stupid a lot cause I guess, you know, back then you learnt a certain way and if you didn't, you were classed as stupid. I mean I was put in a special needs class, it's quite a title. So I got very focused and very fixated on doing what society told me to do, to be normal, what was normal, what was OK, and I got so headstrong on proving everyone wrong. I realized at that age of 26 when I came out that I'd been trying to prove everyone wrong, but really what I did is just abandon myself at that young age. At that young age of 10 I left myself and I didn't let myself develop, I didn't let myself learn and grow.

I did what society told me to do, what people around me told me to do, I let my roots define me, fully. I was fully convinced that until I guess if you think about what I do for a job, I make people look and feel great, it's like a superpower, I love it.

Drew: And that's what you started doing with your mum at 9 years old.

Chris: At 9 years old, I was like, look in the mirror, see yourself, let me see the better version of you. And I realized I'd spent my whole life making people look and feel great, look in the mirror. I just never looked myself because that was too scary to do.

Drew: Well, thank God that you are because it is going to resonate with so many people.