'The Interview': Chloé Zhao Is Yearning to Know How to Love

From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marchese. Chloe Zhao is an anomaly. At only 43, but just five feature feature films under her belt, she's already established herself as one of cinema's most distinctive and distinguished directors. And she's done it at a time when the movie business is increasingly averse to artistic risk and originality, qualities on display in all her work. She started with independent film, including the sparsely poetic neo western Nomadland, which won Academy Awards for best picture and for Zhao best director. She then tried her hand at an ambitious mega budget marvel movie, Eternals. And her latest is last fall's heart wrenching drama, Hamnet, an adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's historical novel about the death of Shakespeare's young son from the plague and the grief his parents experienced after. It won two Golden Globes and is up for several Academy Awards, including best director. So how has she done it? Because as I learned firsthand, Zhao is an enigmatic, even somewhat mystical presence in person. Not exactly the sort of hotshot personality we often associate with big time Hollywood directors. But as it turns out, Zhou isn't much interested in simple or straightforward answers. Here's my conversation with Chloe Zhou. Chloe, thank you for taking the time to come speak with us today. I appreciate it. For having me. So I wanna start with an award season question. Your eyes just glazed over a little. I'm sorry. No. It's excitement. Yeah. Yeah. That was a look of excitement. Yeah. Yeah. With the first animal in the jungle. There's obviously a lot of, award season buzz around Hamnet. And by the time this interview comes out, we'll know what nominations the film did or or didn't get. But right now, the thing that I'm curious about is sort of what, like, the whole awards rigmarole stirs up for you. Because I imagine it could involve feelings, like, of envy or competition or it involves salesmanship or or glad handing, which I feel like are not necessarily, like, kinds of feelings or ideas that are interesting to you or come naturally to you. So how do you deal with this moment? I love that that's almost like a form of compliment you just did. You think of me a lot more highly than I mean, maybe you like doing it. I don't know. But I think the all those quite basic emotions, none of us can escape it. Right? And especially artists, so many of us, majority of us started telling stories because we didn't have the easiest childhood. So when you're work, right, which is the only way that you can seek connection and validations since you're a little child is being compared and judged. You could go as far as feeling a rejection of that. It's a rejection of who you are and whether your ability to belong to a tribe or be safe or be loved. You could go …