Marisa Tomei — The Bare Magazine

“I contain multitudes.” The phrase from an 1855 Walt Whitman poem creeped into our social media vernacular around 2020 and was promptly overused by the extremely online. Looking at actress Marisa Tomei’s interminable list of acting credits (95, and that’s just on screen) it’s hard not to come back to that meme-fied phrase because she does, indeed, contain multitudes. She has worked alongside giants like Gena Rowlands, Al Pacino, and Sissy Spacek; vaulted easily from big budget Marvel movies to tiny indie productions; and become known for quietly commanding our collective attention from her frequent position in supporting roles (see The Wrestler, In the Bedroom, among many others). For fellow GenXers like myself, Tomei was cemented in our cultural iconography early on thanks to A Different World, Untamed Heart and My Cousin Vinny. It’s hard not to be struck by the easy beauty and sparkling warmth Tomei radiates (even via grainy Zoom, I should add), something that miraculously hasn’t dulled over the course of her forty year career. This year Tomei continued her stretch of vital, attention-stealing supporting roles in High Tide, a beautiful film set in Provincetown and directed by her friend Marco Calvani (she also executive produced), and the uproarious criminal caper Brothers on Amazon Prime, alongside Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin and Glenn Close. Lakota Nation vs The United States, the powerful documentary she co-executive produced with Mark Ruffalo also earned an Emmy this year. As of this month Tomei is back home in New York and starring in BABE, a play by The New Group that deftly delves into generational divides and misogyny, topics that feel more relevant than ever. Performances begin October 29th. Tomei and I talked storytelling, healing, and leaning into the divine feminine.

Fiorella Valdesolo: So I want to talk immediately about your new play Babe. I looked up the description online and it said you play a music producer who has had to make compromises in her career dealing with a sexist and credit hogging boss. Which all feels very relatable. What drew you to this role?

Marisa Tomei: Well, first off a great producer, Mandy Greenfield, and I love Scott at The New Group. I had been looking post pandemic to do a play as it’s been a while [The Rose Tattoo in 2019] and I was getting antsy to get back on stage. And I wanted to come back to New York because my parents are getting a little bit older. I also knew the election was coming and I wanted to know that I had a place every single day that I would be going to so I could be disciplined in my thoughts and be in a safe kind of container.

FV: Sounds like what we all need right now. And what about thematically?

MT: In terms of theme the play is about the generation gap too. There’s a younger character—what is the youngest now, millennial or Gen Z?

FV: Gen Z

MT: So there’s her and there's the said guy who is in that description you read. She comes into the workplace and she gives a completely different perspective and kind of upsets the apple cart. And it highlights this generation gap that I notice people have been talking about more. I mean, I think often our perspective is the same, but our execution is a little different. And every generation has their strengths and their blind spots and every person has their strengths and their blind spots. So it's more like a human condition and we’re all in this system that fucking sucks for everybody.

FV: Was there anything you related to about the character you’re playing?

MT: I don't work in a corporate situation, but other than that I can relate to the constant subterfuge of oneself. Of this idea of how shall I placate this person who has more power in society than any female does? Or what are the ways that I lie to myself? What are the ways that I, being Abby, the character, let myself off the hook and don't push because there's something comfortable about it? When does one get tired and just capitulate to this bullshit? And then when does the ire come up again, and the fight for freedom and equality come up again inside one's own soul? And I think it's a mixed bag too.

In this case, this guy is someone who's really mentored her as well. I mean, it's almost like when there’s someone you don't agree with within your own family, you love them and there are layers. The play’s a comedy so hopefully people find it funny too and also heartbreaking.

FV: Maybe cathartic in a way also?

MT: Hopefully yes that too.

FV: And it sounds like the regularity of the production schedule has been a refuge for you.

MT: A routine is good for me because basically I'm a freelance person. I'm actually staying diagonally across the city from where I need to be; I’m on the far Lower East Side and I’m going up to the Theater District. And so I get up, I have a bus ride, I take my bike early in the morning. I'm so happy with the routine.

And there's something about that bus ride that's very good for me. It’s the beginner's mind, which is what I really like about doing plays too. There's just something about the blank canvas, the empty room, the wood floors, that rehearsal space, it's just empty until you come in and start playing around. And it's always starting back at the beginning.

And a little bus ride feels that way to me. I'm super excited. I'm like, I'm going to catch my bus. I feel like a kid going across town. I love it, I love it. I wasn't expecting that. And I need something regular for this insanity over the next month because my nerves are shot.

FV: Same. Our situation feels very existential right now. But your stamina for the work you do and continue to do is amazing. I mean your IMDB credit list is enormous! Is there something that continues to keep you motivated and inspired?

MT: Yes. Women's stories. Women’s stories and trying to bring voice to those stories keeps me very inspired and motivated. I have a hard time speaking up and kind of catching things in the moment, so I feel like being able to tell women’s stories as an actor is the one way I can contribute. And it’s personally cathartic to be able to articulate some of the things women go through, and also to give them a space to feel with freedom.

FV: Obviously there's a long way to go as far as getting more women in positions of power in Hollywood, but women have started to get more agency behind the scenes with director roles and in studio jobs. Are there women’s stories that you haven't seen told yet that you feel like need to be told?

MT: Yes. I think there are stories about women and medicine, stories about how our bodies have been completely ignored by the whole medical field, a field that hasn’t accounted for a different set of body parts that aren’t male. There are sadly plenty of women’s stories in that world.

FV: Isn’t it staggering that for years medical research wasn’t even being done on female bodies?

MT: Yes, and how about all the women not being believed by their doctors? And the percentage with women of color goes up even higher that they have a complaint or a pain and they're not believed or taken seriously. And the medical people don't even have much time to spend with us to tease things out.

FV: I remember reading that you were interested in doing something on death doulas. Did I make this up?

MT: No, you did not make that up! Thank you for bringing that back around. There’s another women’s story to tell about how women have carried a deep spiritual knowledge. The death doulas topic is something that I keep hoisting the flag for.

FV: What got you interested in that?

MT: I feel like it's almost maybe getting to be a cliche now, post-pandemic when somehow doulas became a thing, but I actually got interested because I was blessed by a few friends to be able to attend their home births. And I felt very comfortable in that space. Then I was in a dance class and someone came in and was saying, ‘Oh, I'm sorry I'm late because someone was on the runway.’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she said, ‘I'm helping someone pass away.’ That was the lingo.

I wound up taking a class from this person who had the most hilarious stories about what she had to go through to help people have a good death between the different religions, ethnicities, family feuds, talking about medical systems that don't know that you have a right to stay home and pass away.

Like sometimes she had to spring people out of the hospital… really, like capers were involved! So I thought, oh my God, this is such a different perspective. And I had felt ill-equipped when my grandma passed away. And it always kind of stuck with me that I wished I had just the right words at the right time, so I was curious about exploring that because I'm also the eldest of all the kids in our family too. I don't think we know how to do death as a family. It's going to be on me, which is such an eldest child syndrome, so I better figure this out.

FV: The time is right for this topic. There seems to be a growing discussion, particularly with some books that have been released recently, about grieving and grief.

MT: We don't have a way in this culture to deeply move through this or just have it be part of the fabric of our lives. I'm also really interested in Keening. I just got an email about a Keening class and I would like to take that, but I'm rehearsing now so I can't…

FV: I don’t think I know what Keening is.

MT: It's like wailing. This particular one is from a Celtic tradition, Scotch and Irish lineage. But in every tradition there would be women that would show up and wail at a funeral. It was a job. I never experienced it, but I imagine it's a way for other people to feel comfortable joining them and wailing too. Now it’s all too tidy.

FV: Wailing would feel like such a profound release.

MT: A release for the voice, and what we keep in our throat and our solar plexus. If I feel nervous to express something, I can feel my throat clam up and clamp up and it's freeing that space and all of it. So in Keening, it really has to do with catharsis again, but also vocally dropping into our soul connection, I suppose.

FV: Which ties back to your play…

MT: Yeah, even the theme of the play really is how this younger person is giving a woman my age her voice to speak about what she has gone through that she couldn't vocalize. There are all those sociological studies that Carol Gilligan did about what comes through the voice. And how the pitch goes up at a certain age when you're 14 and you start saying things like, I don't know. And you start to lose the voice of truth… of your truth.

FV: We’re all holding so much that the release of our voice seems like something we collectively need. Does this all tie back to your belief in the divine feminine? I’ve seen you post about that on Instagram and I wondered what the divine feminine principles mean to you and perhaps how they guide you in your life and work?

MT: I always hesitate to talk about these things because I could wind up sounding so corny. And plus how do you really discuss the ephemeral?

FV: But it's such an important conversation, and funnily enough my partner’s mother, who is in her seventies and going through a real period of change in her life, and getting in touch with a part of herself that’s been quiet for a long time, brought up the divine feminine with me recently. Which made me more interested to get your perspective!

MT: It's something that came to me when I was playing Salome with Pacino and starting to research the dance of the seven veils and things like that. It all led to this whole understanding of the repressed voices of the feminine. I never knew anything about anything before 5,000 years ago. So I started reading about Maria Gimbutas's work and I went down a whole trail of that a couple decades ago.

We don't have that image of a divine female around so much in many cultures. I mean, it's there, but it’s kind of been nudged to the side. And so part of the divine feminine is just seeing it and knowing that you are a sacred being in this world, and that therefore you have a right to be here and a right to take up space and a right to have a voice. So it kind of all leads to something quite tangible in society.

But for me it's also a perspective. It's a perspective of the value of the feminine, the value of our bodies, of the knowing we have inside our bodies. And not everything having to be intellectual, I-think-therefore-I-am bullshit, because that was really, to me, a lot of the beginning of the end. I guess it's all part of a package of just valuing who we are because we are here.

FV: A way to be here now. That’s incredibly valuable. Well, my final question for you is what Tina always asks: what are your five bare essentials, and they can be anything… a book, a feeling, a place, a skincare product, anything.

MT: