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Amanpour
Interview With "Peacemaker" Author And Grandson Of Former U.N. Secretary-General U Thant Thant Myint U; Interview With Award-Winning Filmmaker And "The Future Of Truth" Author Werner Herzog; Interview With "Mother Mary Comes To Me" Author Arundhati Roy. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired October 10, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
Despite a ceasefire in the Middle East, institutions stumble in the face of other wars. Learning from a golden era of diplomacy and a true peacemaker,
U Thant. His grandson, historian Thant Myint U joins me.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WERNER HERZOG, AWARD-WINNING FILMMAKER AND AUTHOR, "THE FUTURE OF TRUTH": Fake news are spreading very, very fast and they are omnipresent. And by
the way, the blatant lies, we have measured it, spread five times as fast, is something that's true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- in this age of disinformation, legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog tells me why we must never stop fighting for the truth. Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARUNDHATI ROY, AUTHOR, "MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME": I just remember feeling that I need to get away fast, you know, in order not to be destroyed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Reflections on a fugitive childhood. Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy joins Hari Sreenivasan with her latest work, a searing
memoir.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Joy, celebrations, and above all hope in the Middle East that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold and that it will end two years of utter
devastation. But still war rages in Europe and Africa. Conflict brews in Asia. Economies falter and hatred and division permeate our lives, thanks
to the internet.
Tonight, a look at the search for truth and for peace. First, as world leaders struggle to address the wars of our times and the United Nations is
increasingly paralyzed. It's important to reflect on a time when peace did feel possible.
Back in the '60s, the U.N. was still seen as the world's best hope. And one man in particular played a pivotal role in ending the many international
crises of that time. From the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Vietnam War. U Thant was the secretary general of the U.N. And his was an extraordinary
rise from a school teacher in a tiny town in Burma to the hallowed halls of diplomacy.
Here to tell us more about him and what today's leaders can learn is his grandson. The renowned historian Thant Myint U, who's just written a book
about all of this called "Peacemaker." So, welcome to the program.
THANT MYINT U, AUTHOR, "PEACEMAKER" AND GRANDSON OF FORMER U.N. SECRETARY- GENERAL U THANT: Thanks very much.
AMANPOUR: And I have to say that we go back to when you were a U.N. spokesman during the Bosnia war. So, I know that you are steeped in U.N.
history. But first, tell me about what did you find out about your grandfather that you might not have known and his utter lifelong commitment
to peace?
MYINT U: I mean, so much because I knew the broad outlines of his life, having grown up with him as a child and working for the U.N. But it was
only when I started looking at the archives, which had been declassified, digitized over the past few years, that I realized it was an entire story
that people didn't know. A missing piece of the puzzle in terms of not just the 1960s, but how the world that we have today was actually created.
AMANPOUR: It was a time, as I said, when it -- you know, the U.N. secretary-general was a major figure on the global stage. That just using
the bully pulpit, so to speak, even if he couldn't actually be, you know, a political leader, carried a huge amount of moral and, you know, executive
weight as well. So, how did he rise from that fairly humble start in that village without electricity in Burma to where he ended up?
MYINT U: Yes, it's an extraordinary story. I mean, he was from a well-to-do family, but suddenly impoverished, so he couldn't finish university. Until
he was almost 40, he was a schoolteacher, then headmaster in this little town that was a day's steamer ride away from Rangoon, which was then part
of the British Empire.
And at almost age 40, he decides on a midlife career change. Within 10 years of government service in Rangoon, he finds himself the Burmese
ambassador to the U.N. Burma just become independent in the middle of this new global politics living in midtown Manhattan. And within just a few
years of that, he becomes the only human being in the world that Kennedy and Khrushchev can agree on to save the U.N. at a time of deep crisis and
Cold War conflict.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: And he was the first Asian secretary-general. And this is important because he came at a time when Asia, Africa, as you call it in
the book, was emerging as independent, newly decolonized nations and that he was considered really somebody who had their back and who understood
what they need to do.
I'm going to get to Kennedy, Khrushchev, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam. But since it is today, the day after this whole ceasefire has been
announced, let me ask you about a key chapter in your book slightly later on about Thant, your grandfather, secretary-general, trying to intervene to
bring peace in the Middle East. At that time, it was between Israel and Egypt. It was the 67 --
MYINT U: Six-day war.
AMANPOUR: -- six-day war. Yes. So, what happened? Because it was very difficult then.
MYINT U: Yes, absolutely. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether he was to blame, actually, for, you know, these decades of conflict
that we've had ever since.
AMANPOUR: Why so?
MYINT U: Well, because the six-day war ended with the Israeli occupation of Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights, and set the stage for the Yom Kippur
War in '73. And really all the half century of tension, conflict, displacement, everything else that we've had up until that point. So, I
went back to that that origin, the six days of the war and the weeks leading up to it. And he played a very decisive role because he pulled out
U.N. peacekeepers from the front line. So, many blamed him for that. Blamed --
AMANPOUR: Why did he do it?
MYINT U: Well, Nasser, who was the leader of Egypt at the time, it was a time of growing tension with Jordan, with Syria as well. The Israelis felt
threatened. But some on the Israeli side also felt this was an opportunity, not just to sort of settle scores, but to kind of expand Israel's military
presence in the region. If -- even if just for defensive reasons at the time. And now, we know that the Lyndon Johnson administration had green
lighted the Israelis in attacking Egypt.
But the Egyptians, not really fully aware of this, thought they would rattle their sword and move tens of thousands of Egyptian troops up to the
front line. So, they demanded these peacekeepers withdraw. I mean, the peacekeepers were lightly armed. They wouldn't leave anyway. So, there was
not much my grandfather could do. But he was a useful scapegoat by those who wanted to say they had no alternative but to take military action.
AMANPOUR: And you fast forward to when Nasser was dead and Anwar Sadat was president and it was the rumblings of a new war, the '73 war. And you talk
about how Thant -- U Thant got some kind of agreement from Sadat to not, you know, become another warrior in terms of -- but there was -- Israel
disagreed with that, right?
MYINT U: Yes. And not just Israel, because, I mean, Richard Nixon actually wanted --
AMANPOUR: And America, yes.
MYINT U: -- the U.N. at first to play a role in this. So, U Thant, with his mediator, engaged in this sort of shuttle diplomacy and basically pulled
together an agreement where Israel would actually withdraw from all of the occupied territories. And in return, there would be airtight security
guarantees for Israel, a huge peacekeeping force of maybe 30,000, including Soviet and American troops surrounding Israel to protect it. And that would
be the basis of a permanent peace.
And at the last minute, it was Henry Kissinger who undermined it by basically advising Golda Meir, who had just about accepted it, to go
against the plan that was there --
AMANPOUR: And she was the prime minister at the time.
MYINT U: And she was the prime minister of Israel at the time.
AMANPOUR: And here we are all these decades later --
MYINT U: Yes. And that was a lost chance. And he felt that. I mean, Kissinger felt the Israelis and the Egyptians were sort of part of a
chessboard, a global chessboard of Cold War diplomacy. I think U Thant felt, together with many others at the time, that if there was peace in the
Middle East, the Arabs, the Egyptians themselves would probably eject the Soviets. They didn't want to be under anybody else's influence anyway. So,
I think he prioritized peace in the region rather than trying to see everything as part of sort of broader geopolitics.
AMANPOUR: So, let's rewind now to the whole Khrushchev-Kennedy period, U Thant playing a role that I had no idea about. I thought it was all Kennedy
and, you know, the 13 days, the film, all the history about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And yet, we find that your grandfather, Secretary-General U
Thant, played a very, very significant role.
So, in a nutshell, first of all, did you know before you went looking for all of this? And what would you say his pivotal role was?
MYINT U: I mean, there's been a little bit of scholarship over the past few years, but in general, no. I mean, I watched probably the same film that
you watched, and I saw, you know, an extra kind of sitting where he sits on the Security Council and thought, oh, there he is. And I didn't -- I wasn't
really aware of how critical his intervention was. I think one thing was from the moment that Kennedy went on television and announced the blockade
and the crisis was public, I think he realized, I think probably in a way that Kennedy and Khrushchev did as well, when the world was on the brink of
a nuclear holocaust, that this wasn't really a military crisis, it was a political crisis.
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And what he had to do as secretary-general of the U.N., even without a mandate from the Security Council, from anyone else, is he had to craft
that intervention, that series of secret messages, public messages, to give both men the time and the space, the political space, they needed to take a
step back.
AMANPOUR: Yes, and we have some incredibly, you know, amazing video that our producers have discovered.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is here to confer with U Thant before the acting secretary-general left for Cuba to arrange the dismantling of Soviet
missile bases. U Thant met separately with both Russian and United States representatives to iron out some preliminary details before his conferences
with Castro.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, that was a meeting with the deputy Soviet foreign minister and the American minister, and he was off to Cuba. From the book, you know,
he had done this directly through messages to the three heads of government in his meetings with Castro, in the many days of discussions with the
others, first apart and then together, often over an amiable meal in the secretary-general's dining room. You know, those were the days where he
could actually convene the major players and then be given, actually, a major role. And he did go to Havana, and he did basically, I mean, not in
so many words, but read Castro the Riot Act.
MYINT U: I think, I mean, in many ways, you know, yes, he -- I mean, he read Castro the Riot Act, but he did something else as well. I mean, he
said to Castro, look, you come from a small country, I come from a small country, you have every right to have foreign military bases or missiles,
it's your sovereign right. But I'm trying to paint you the bigger picture. The world is on the verge of a nuclear war. We all need to take a deep
breath and take a step back. And Castro accepted that.
And the next day he went on Cuban television and said, U Thant showed us respect, and for him that was the key in also accepting U Thant as a
neutral arbiter in a way that Khrushchev and Kennedy had already.
AMANPOUR: So, Khrushchev had written a letter to U Thant. I don't know whether you want to read it, but why not? It's from your book, it's there.
MYINT U: Sure.
AMANPOUR: Do you have your glasses?
MYINT U: Yes. No, I can read it.
AMANPOUR: OK.
MYINT U: Dear, U Thant, I have received your message and have carefully studied the proposal it contains. I welcome your initiative. I understand
your concern over the situation which has arisen in the Caribbean, but the Soviet government too regards it as highly dangerous and is requiring
immediate intervention by the United Nations. I wish to inform you that I agree with your proposal, which is in the interest of peace. With respect,
N. Khrushchev.
AMANPOUR: I mean, it is extraordinary. I mean, can you even imagine, fast forward all these decades, you know, the Russians, the Americans over
Ukraine, for instance, or any issue in the Security Council, this doesn't happen, does it?
MYINT U: No. And also, I mean, again, you know, the Security Council was deadlocked, then as now. And so, we have this wrong idea that the U.N. was
frozen because of the Cold War. But the secretary-general wasn't frozen. The secretary-general then took action despite that and began to try to
unlock some of these tensions and to try to de-escalate crises.
I think it was also a different time. I mean, in the public, there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm for the U.N., which meant that presidents
even came to brief him in New York, for example, or he would spend a whole day with Khrushchev on the Black Sea to get to know one another. And I
think those personal relationships made an enormous difference as well.
AMANPOUR: And, you know, Castro learns, you know, that Khrushchev didn't consult him about all of this. And he's fuming. And then in your book, you
write, when the Cuban leader learned about the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal over the wire services, he was apoplectic with rage, smashing a mirror in his
home and calling Khrushchev a son of a bitch, a bastard and an arsehole. And also, you write that Castro at one point thought, why can't I just
launch a few nukes at the United States?
MYINT U: Yes. I think with my grandfather -- I mean, one of his -- you know, part of his style or it was his temperament, right, as well that was
so important. So, he led not by being the loudest person in the room. I think he led by showing a kind of moral imagination, a kind of sense of
what the others were thinking, listening, but also giving people a sense of what the other sides' opinions, sensitivities, prejudices, feelings might
be.
And I think with Castro, he also had this calming presence that neither the Russians up until that point, let alone anybody else, was able to have. So,
I think he had a decisive influence on making sure that Castro didn't become the spoiler at a time when Kennedy and Khrushchev were finally
coming together on a deal.
AMANPOUR: And on page 76, you write, the United Nations had for the first time mediated between the superpowers. So, that was amazing, which leads me
to the next bit. So, he had a good relationship with Kennedy. He started having a good relationship with LBJ, Johnson, after the assassination. But
it all came a cropper over Vietnam.
MYINT U: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: Which Thant, your grandfather, U Thant, just didn't believe was the right war that the US could win and that he saw that it was a war for
reunification rather than a war of aggression and a sort of a Cold War domino.
[13:15:00]
MYINT U: Yes, because I think even though he came from this remote town in Burma, he had had this amazing experience of living in a colonial country,
of traveling the world, meeting all kinds of different people. So, I think he could see something, even in '63, '64, that many people, Ivy League-
educated American top people in Washington couldn't see, which was that they would lose the war. And that what was important was a graceful exit
from Vietnam that would retain American prestige, allow for peaceful reunification, and that this wouldn't be a threat to anyone, that the
Vietnamese themselves didn't want to be under the domination of the Chinese or anyone else.
I mean, he wanted the U.N. to have a role, and he had this enormous falling out with Lyndon Johnson over many years of trying to convince him, but also
then publicly challenging the president on Vietnam as well.
AMANPOUR: So, his prestige also started to diminish a little bit after that.
MYINT U: In some circles.
AMANPOUR: In some circles, certainly in Western circles, because the reporters were busy writing about him as -- you know, that he had
overstepped his mark, and what did he know, and this and that. But then with Nixon, it got even worse. Nixon and Kissinger, because at one point
there was a chance that Ho Chi Minh had agreed to something that U Thant had proposed, right, around the peace issue, and Kissinger essentially
sabotaged it.
MYINT U: Well, in '64 there was a chance, even under LBJ in the very beginning, that the Americans could have done something. And I think what
I've learned from my research is that I'm pretty sure that Johnson's top advisers didn't even tell him that this door was open at that time. And
when Nixon took over, it was something very different, because I think LBJ and his people, like Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk, Dean Rusk especially,
didn't actually have anything against the U.N. per se. I mean, he was one of the founders of the U.N.
By the time we got to Nixon and Kissinger, they purposely marginalized the U.N., wanted to work with it in a couple of different ways, but also, I
think, wanted to drive political capital from bashing the U.N. in public as well.
AMANPOUR: And they certainly did. And so did -- Ronald Reagan did, especially got very exercised when China was admitted to the Security
Council with all sorts of racist language from Ronald Reagan, which I'm actually not going to repeat.
But I want to ask you, you know, you start your book with the farewell ceremony for U Thant. He completed his two terms, and very sadly, though,
he had cancer and he died several months later. I think you were only eight when he died.
MYINT U: I was eight. He was in his mid-60s.
AMANPOUR: Yes, it was very quick. But he did have a very interesting and fulsome farewell ceremony to which John and Yoko arrived without an
invitation.
MYINT U: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Tell us how that went and why you wrote about it to start the book.
MYINT U: Yes. I mean, in some ways, it was a time, you know, as you mentioned, I mean, Vietnam War was still happening, it was a time of deep
crises, but it was a time of actually a lot of hope as well, because all these countries had become decolonized, the U.N. was finally a global
institution, it was still peacemaking in many different places. And it was a particular moment, I think, in New York history and in kind of the social
history of that time, because there were so many Americans who were very much supportive of the U.N. There was a real internationalist spirit there
as well.
So, at this party, you had hundreds of the kind of usual suspects, U.N. diplomats and officials, but you also had people involved like Jackie
Kennedy, Thor Heyerdahl, Buckminster Fuller, Arnold Toynbee, Edmund Hillary. Pete Seeger was meant to do the music, and he did, and he sang.
And then towards the very end, John Lennon passed him a little note. Pete Seeger gave him his guitar. And John Lennon said, I'm going to play
everyone a song that you've probably never heard before, because I've never played it before in America. And he sang "Imagine" for the first time, and
this was at the lunch for my grandfather at the time, December '71.
AMANPOUR: That's amazing. That's really amazing. That's really, really moving. So, imagine, had U Thant continued, had the U.N. still had the
prestige that it did, had the Security Council not been always deadlocked in the last couple of decades anyway, is the world still a better place for
the U.N.? Does it still have a role? Trump questioned it at the UNGA this year.
MYINT U: I think we have to respect the feeling, the wisdom of the people who founded the U.N. 80 years ago now. And these were men and women who, in
their adult lifetimes, had lived through two world wars and killed 80 million-plus people with a Great Depression in between. And they knew that
we had to have something different. We couldn't go back to a world of just seeing strategic threats and arming ourselves and entering military
alliances and all that. That might have a place to some extent, but they also built this architecture. And that architecture is now worn, it's been
criticized, we've shown -- well, we know its failures as well as its successes.
But I hope in my book what I show is that there is this missing piece. There was this time when the U.N. was actually successful and it was almost
purposely undermined. And unless we go back to that history and understand exactly what happened, I think we'll be less able to imagine what's
possible today.
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AMANPOUR: And interesting you call it the untold story, in other words the untold successes of the U.N. Thant Myint U, thank you very much indeed.
MYINT U: Thanks very much.
AMANPOUR: And stay with us because we'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, we're firmly in the age of A.I. and when misinformation can spread like wildfire on the Internet it seems what's real and what's true
is constantly under dispute. That's the focus of Werner Herzog's new book, "The Future of Truth."
Herzog is of course the acclaimed German filmmaker who's made some of the most daring movies in history. His massive productions have taken him
filming on the Amazon River and even crossing a jungle mountain with a 360- ton steamship.
In this latest work the much-vaunted visionary argues that art and even lies can reveal an underlying truth. So, what does that mean exactly? Well,
I asked him when we spoke earlier this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Werner Herzog, welcome to the program.
HERZOG: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: I want to understand what you're saying in "The Future of Truth," because you are a writer, you're a film director and a lot of what you do
is about, what's the right word, imagination and contextualizing truth. What do you mean and what are you saying in this book?
HERZOG: Well, it's a condensed book but it has to do with my lifelong work and struggling with understanding what is truth, because when you do a film
in the background there's always a question of truth lingering and it's both in feature films and in documentaries and, by the way, it's also in
writing and it's everywhere in the arts. You have to deal with it in a way.
AMANPOUR: And how do you deal with it? Because we live in a very febrile current moment where truth over the last few years has become weaponized.
Many people say there's no such thing as truth, others who don't like what people are saying say it's not true, it's fake news. So, this book comes at
a very sensitive time.
HERZOG: I know that, yes, but it's a coincidence, but we should not be somehow brought down that truth has a hard time nowadays. It is a
historical phenomenon. We have fake news since the beginning of written documentation. Pharaonic times we had after the suicide of the second --
third Roman emperor, Nero. We had fake Nero's all of a sudden showing up in northern Greece and Asia Minor and we have had fake news throughout the
ages. So, it is nothing really new.
However, since we have the internet and tools of communication in an extraordinary way that we have never had before in history, of course fake
news are spreading very, very fast and they are omnipresent. And by the way the blatant lies we have measured it spread five times as fast as something
that's true. It's very strange.
[13:25:00]
AMANPOUR: I just want to ask you about what you just said because you said, from the beginning of history we've had fake news, and then you obviously
compare it to the unbelievable exponential, you know, spreading of it now because of technology. So, are you hopeful for the concept of truth? You
say we shouldn't worry because it's been a historical fact.
HERZOG: Well, we have to bear in mind that it's nothing new. And of course, my book ends with a very clear statement, all the chapters are 10 12 pages
long. The last chapter is called "The Future of Truth" and it's only two lines long. And it says, future truth has no future, but truth does not
have a past either. But we will not, we must not, we cannot abandon the search for it.
So, we have to plow on, we have to look what we have at our disposal. The arsenal of things is in the internet for example is very, very fast. You
can verify or corroborate important news, for example. I would immediately go to not just to CNN, I would go to Al Jazeera, to the Vatican, to the
Chinese news agency and all of a sudden, you have a much more nuanced image of what is going on.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about your 1982 film "Fitzcarraldo," which was an incredible undertaking and a lot of people are just fascinated by what you
did to make that happen. It's the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald. He's an Irishman attempted to transport a whole steamship over a mountain in the
Peruvian jungle. This was -- he was a rubber baron and he wanted to fund an opera house there.
So, in the film you describe as having no clear separation between imagination and reality. And let's face it you decided to haul that model
of that ship all the way over that mountain. And tell me about no clear separation and why you did that and didn't disassemble it or CGI it.
HERZOG: Yes, it's interesting that you say a model that I hauled, a model. No, it was a 360-ton monster.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
HERZOG: A real ship, a steamship in one piece. In the film itself it's not for the sake of realism, it's like an event of grand opera. Very strange.
It transforms into something that we have in our imagination only. And I refused to have a plastic -- little plastic boat hauled over a little hill
in the botanic garden in San Diego. That was actually proposed by 20th century folks that were interested in it. And they said, we have to do it
in the good jungle. And I said, gentlemen, what do you mean by a good jungle? What is the bad jungle then? And they said, they are the real the
real jungle down in Peru at Amazon. So, we can't do it there. And I said, yes, I have to do it. It cannot be a botanical garden. It cannot be a
plastic boat.
And I moved it over the mountain. Of course, there is no real historical precedent in the history of technology that one piece of such magnitude was
ever moved over a mountain. But I did it because I knew it was doable. It was dreaming big. But do the doable. That's what I keep preaching. And all
of a sudden, the real event translates into an event of pure fantasy. It's a very strange very strange inexplicable transformation.
AMANPOUR: It is fascinating. Obviously, I saw the film a long, long time ago and I'd love to hear how many people and how long it took. But I want
to ask you this because since we're talking about truth and contextualizing. I read that the original, you know, Brian Sweeney
Fitzgerald did he not -- I mean, he did this right and -- in real life. But he but he disassembled the boat or the ship.
HERZOG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: So, he actually did break it down. Yes. But you didn't.
HERZOG: We know very little about Brian Sweeney. It was actually Jose Fermin Fitzcarraldo. An interesting rubber baron. A billionaire at his
time. But he moved once a ship which was only 30 tons or so. Had it disassembled. Moved it across an isthmus. In flat area. And engineers
reassembled it in the other river. But it's a regular simple technical feat. Nothing special about it.
[13:00:00]
HERZOG: But I always thought it was a very big metaphor that is dormant, sleeping inside of us collectively. The same way collectively we have the
white whale. The hunt for the white whales dormant in us. Moby Dick.
And because of the that, I had the feeling it should be one ship like a vision going over a mountain and then descending into another parallel
river. It's a great metaphor and I know it and I could articulate it. But if they've asked me a metaphor for what I can't even tell.
AMANPOUR: Well, it was remarkable.
HERZOG: I know it's a big metaphor.
AMANPOUR: Clearly, it stays with everybody who ever seen the film. But let me ask you about another example that you write about in your book and in
the chapter "Kidnapped by Aliens." You write about the time you were acting in Harmony Korine's film "Mr. Lonely." You were acting as a priest. This
was in 2007. And you say that you were approached by a man who insisted that you hear his actual confession. And you said, his filmed confession to
an actor playing a priest felt so much better than the real thing. So, again the sort of soft lines between reality and whatever.
HERZOG: Yes. It's -- there's also something in us to suspend disbelief. Sometimes we want to be cheated. We go to the magic show because we know
everything is a technical trick. But we want to be enchanted. We go to WrestleMania. Ten thousand people in a stadium.
WrestleMania. Everybody knows it is pre-arranged fake fights. But the emotions, the collective emotions come across and they're always somehow
truthful. And in case of me in the costume of a Catholic priest, I played a role in Harmony Korine's film, and there was a young man in Panama on a
little island and he had a wilted flower, a bunch of flowers in his hand. And I see him all day long and waiting for that one plane that would
arrive. And I engaged him in conversation, what was he doing there?
He was waiting for his wife to return. She had run away with the two children because he had cheated on her. And then he asked me, can I take
his confession. And I made it very clear. I'm not a priest. I'm playing a part in the film. The camera is out there at the airfield. So, he called
the cameras and confessed to me on camera. And he felt so much better than with a real priest. And that's stunning.
It's -- and he said -- and even on camera I had an inspiration. I told him, yes, you must have fornicated with at least another woman. And he said, no,
no, no. And wouldn't admit. And I had an inspiration. I said, you fornicated with at least five women at the same time. He said, yes, yes, it
was like that. So --
AMANPOUR: Oh, my goodness. Well --
HERZOG: What can I say, yes. But those are encounters with truth that have come throughout my life in my work all the time.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Well, let me ask you something which I don't know how you feel about this. But A.I., right. A.I. in film, A.I. in art. So, there's an
A.I. generated actress, Tilly Norwood, that was recently introduced to Hollywood. So, she's, you know, a 20 something year old character. She's
been given social media profiles. Obviously, there's been a lot of backlash, unions, et cetera, talent agents, all the rest of it.
Now, the producer created -- who created it said, it's not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work, a piece of art. So, what are your
thoughts about this kind of A.I. and the future of your particular filmmaking?
HERZOG: I have not seen the actress created by A.I., but I am not really interested. I think she, he, she or it will never be as lively as we are.
Even we are separated now by an entire ocean and only through airwaves. And yet, we have a real conversation. This actress in much of what I've seen,
even a film scripted and created the images by A.I., a short film, it's so less dead-on arrival and only a reflection, a mimicry of the most common
denominator.
[13:35:00]
So, my suspicion is that this young woman is some sort of a most common denominator of an actress or human beings. The same thing that you see
sometimes in airplanes when you get safety instructions and it's some sort of cartoon generated, not human beings, but figures. It's like that.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
HERZOG: In a way.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
HERZOG: Not interesting for me.
AMANPOUR: I -- you know, I understand, it's something that kind of scares me, and your voice has been used by A.I. anyway, to read certain -- so,
it's a very real threat to some people in the arts and in public life.
But I want to ask you something because you describe something called ecstatic truth. And you've said, I have always insisted that you need
stylization, invention, poetry, and imagination to locate a deeper layer of truth, one that can access a distant echo of something that can illuminate
us far beyond the reach of fact. What do you mean, and how have you done that?
HERZOG: Well, nobody of us knows what truth is. We had a survey of 2,000 philosophers, and nobody could give a clear answer. So, let's accept that.
But somehow, we have it in us to know there is something out there roughly in this direction. There must be something like truth. And we have to
struggle for it. We have to move for it. It's an endeavor. It's a voyage. It's a search.
And when I speak of the ecstasy of truth, it's like late medieval mystics that step outside of their existence, and they have insights, deeper
insights about faith. Same thing in movies, for example, by introducing invention, stylization, and certain things that all of a sudden point us
away from pure facts into something deeper where we feel a resonance, something resonate, truth, vaguely expressed like that.
And I have one good example. Michelangelo with his statue of the sculpture of Pieta. The Virgin Mary has Jesus in her arms. When you look at the face
of Jesus, it's a tormented face of a 33-year-old man taken from the cross. When you look at the face of Mary, his mother, the mother is maybe 15,
maybe 17 years old. So, does Michelangelo try to give us fake news? Does he cheat us? Does he lie to us? No, he does not. He modifies facts in such a
way that we are understanding a deeper essence, some sort of a truth of the Virgin and of the man of sorrows.
AMANPOUR: That is just such a beautiful way to end. I've obviously seen that statue many times, and it's so moving and impressive. And I'm really -
- I'm so happy to hear your observation. I will look at it in a different way next time. Werner Herzog, thank you very much indeed.
HERZOG: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: We'll be right back after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: Next to a literary giant, Arundhati Roy is best known for her Booker Prize winning novel, "The God of Small Things." She's also a
prolific essayist focused on exposing the injustices and suffering of the world. But now she's turning inwards with the release of her memoir,
"Mother Mary Comes to Me." Born from the flood of memories and feelings that were provoked by her mother's death. She lays out her fascinating
story from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi with Hari Sreenivasan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Arundhati Roy, thanks so much for joining us. You have a recent memoir out
called, "Mother Mary Comes to Me." And it is about -- what I can say, it's a tumultuous relationship between a woman and her mother. And for our
audience that doesn't know, your mom was a celebrated educator. She was an activist in her own right in India.
You write, she was woven through it all, taller in my mind than any billboard, more perilous than any river in spate, more relentless than the
rain, more present than the sea itself. Why write about this?
ROY: Well, I don't think any writer can answer that question really about almost any book, you know. But honestly, for me, it was just -- it's just
in every book I write, but I think especially in this book, it's almost like, that's all I could do. I couldn't write -- I couldn't do anything
else until I wrote this, you know, because she was such an extraordinary person in good ways and bad.
And I felt that a woman in that time, in that place, who unleashed all of herself, you know, her darkness, her light, her genius, her cruelty, all of
it, she deserved a place in literature, you know, sort of in a way where, you know, women are expected to be certain ways and especially mothers in
India, you know.
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
ROY: And on the other hand, they are vilified often in the West. And I just felt like, let me see as a challenge. Can I put this extraordinary person
out as a writer without labels, without wrapping it up, without giving -- you know, without sort of mitigating it in some way, because she was
confounding. And I wanted to know whether I could share her with the world in that same confounding way, you know.
SREENIVASAN: You know, you describe in excruciating detail how, you know, she berates and insults you. She beats your brother with a ruler till it
broke. She's a woman who shot and killed your dog, yet you describe being basically an external organ to her, inseparable and breathing your life
into her. And I just found that, you know, really kind of just -- every few pages, I was going back and forth like, wow, why is she doing this? What --
to this woman?
ROY: I mean, that part you described about it, she was a -- I mean, when she left my father and she came down -- back down South to South India, she
was a very severe asthmatic. She couldn't -- I was three years old, you know, and she would continuously be -- and you could see it, like life was
just one minute here and the next minute maybe gone and we would have nobody, you know.
And later, she would even say so to me, I might die any minute and what will you do? And where will you live? And that's when I was like, I'll
breathe for you, you know, I'll be your external lung, you know. And it was just a sort of, you know, just a way of trying to make sure that that one
person who was there for you wasn't going to leave.
But then when I became a teenager and I went to Delhi and to School of Architecture and I realized that I would survive on my own and I stopped
being that valiant organ child, as I call it. And that immediately -- you know, she sensed that independence and that sort of turned up the hostility
a little bit.
But, you know, I mean, those are terrible things she did, but also, she did the most extraordinary things. I mean, I keep saying people who have
passions, you know, people who are singers or poets or politicians often have sort of very risky relationships with their children, with their own
children because of their calling. But my mother's calling was other people's children, you know, the school she started and the generations of
students that she educated and put into the world, it's an extraordinary place.
[13:45:00]
And for me, as obviously someone who survived, I mean, if I had fallen off the high wire, I might not have had this -- I would not have had the same
view of things. But since I did survive, I cannot but see the extraordinary parts of her too, you know?
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
ROY: And to me, that was the challenge. Can I present the light and the darkness without kind of taking away from either?
SREENIVASAN: You write about your mom in a way that I think some people would really be startled with the types of things that she said to you. You
write that her insults bored into me like a volley of bullets. My metaphoric execution ended with, you're a millstone around my neck. I
should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born. I'd heard that many times before. It always made me feel drowsy. Airless. I wanted to
sleep for a long time.
And I wonder if that sank into you, that feeling of maybe being worth less than, and also to your brother who suffered kind of differently. But when
you went away to college, when did you figure out kind of your own identity was not those words, that, you know, you were more than that?
ROY: You know, I -- actually, the thing is that I always could see -- I don't know why, but I could always see her rage at me coming through when
she was suffering something, you know. In this particular instance, she had put on so much weight and she had gone -- because of her steroids that she
had to have for asthma. And she was in some ayurvedic resort or whatever where she was being starved, you know, and forcibly made to lose weight or
the insults of the community around her. So, I could see the process always, even from the time I was very young.
So, I don't know. I mean, I can't say that I ever felt worthless because of the things that she did and said to me, because I could just see that it
was coming from some place of anger and it wasn't -- I don't know, somehow it didn't make me feel like, oh, I'm nothing. And I didn't feel -- I don't
remember feeling that. But I just remember feeling that I need to get away fast, you know? In order not to be destroyed, I need to get away fast. So,
I was a plotter. You're like, I was plotting my escape all the time. I've always got my eyes on the exits, you know?
SREENIVASAN: Yes. You write also lovingly about the relationship that you had with your partner of both in work and in life, Pradeep. And you met in
his movie, "Massey Sahib." But, you know, eventually, the relationship falls apart. And you said, the price I paid for being Mother Mary's
daughter and the writer that I am was not prison or persecution, although there was some of that too, it was catastrophic heartbreak. What do you
mean by that?
ROY: Well, what I mean is that after I wrote "The God of Small Things" -- "The God of Small Things" was written at a very crucial time in what was
happening in India. You know, just as very soon after the book came out, like it came out in '97, and by early '98, the right-wing Hindu government
had come to power. They did the nuclear tests.
And I was this -- you know, like I was just being paraded as this item of national pride and sort of Hindu national pride almost, along with the
nuclear tests and the Miss Universes and whatever. And I realized that if I didn't say anything, I would just be considered part of this. And so, I
wrote this very big essay called "The End of Imagination," which was about nationalism and nuclearism and Hindu nationalism and somehow foreseeing in
some ways what was the situation in which we are now, you know?
And from that, I just -- you know, I just became a person who had my eyes open to everything that was happening. And that home with Pradeep was a
very privileged place. You know, it was a place of inheritance and comfort. And it wasn't the life I had earlier with him because his parents had just
died and he had inherited everything.
[13:50:00]
And it was -- I mean, it wasn't judgmental. I was not being judgmental, but I just knew that I couldn't live in there and be the writer that I was
wanting to be, you know, the writer that I am, which is a little bit of a hooligan and a little bit of, you know, a person who's just walking on the
edge of things, you know?
SREENIVASAN: Hooligan would be one way to describe it, but look, your activism has gotten you into plenty of hot water in India. It is something
which as soon as they heard that part of your voice, they called you traitor. They said you should go off to Pakistan, right? I mean, I wonder
if -- was that in a way liberating because you didn't have to live as the Arundhati Roy on billboards representing Indian writers of the future?
ROY: It was liberating because, you know, if I had -- first of all, I must say that I don't think of myself ever as an activist. It was just what
writers do and have done, but nowadays, people want to say it's activism because literature is considered to be something tame or less political or
whatever. So, I don't think of myself as an activist, but that political writing that I was doing really kicked me off that literary fairy princess
Booker Prize winning person.
And yes, it was liberating because somehow from the time of my childhood, I've always dreaded being trapped in a space where I'm expected to be a
certain way, you know? And here it just blew open that gilded cage forever in a way.
And I walked through the villages and towns and forests and slums of India and I wrote what I had to write and I never wrote it for approbation. It
was almost the opposite, you know? A time when you did not have to be -- I did not necessarily want to be that person who everybody agreed with or
everybody felt comfortable with because what was happening in this country was deeply, deeply disturbing at the time. And now, it's far more so.
SREENIVASAN: You know, I don't know the exact update, and if you have them, please clarify, but are you still being held now in contempt of court in
India for something you said years ago? And if this is the case, I mean, why do you feel it's still crucial for you to keep using your voice this
way?
ROY: In India, there are, yes, cases of contempt of court against me, but they sort of go into the freezer and then they, you know, just stay there.
That's how the legal system works here. There isn't a case against me, but there's a permission to file a case against me, which is much more serious
than contempt of court, but also something from years ago.
But I don't know, you know, everybody's kind of caught in this sort of mesh of legal threats and police threats. Some people have been in prison for a
long, long time, held as examples to other people. You know, comedians have been put into jail for jokes they almost made but didn't. You know, all
sorts of people are in jail, activists are in jail, lawyers are in jail, students are in jail. And all of it was glossed over by everybody, because
at that point, it seemed like this was a very robust economy and a very big market. And so, let's just unsee the things that were going on with, you
know, human beings.
SREENIVASAN: Bringing it back to your mom for a last question here. You know, you write about your mom, it says, it was almost as though for her to
shine her light on her students and give them all she had, we, he and I, that's your brother, had to absorb her darkness. Today, though, I'm
grateful for that gift of darkness. I learned to keep it close, to map it, to sift through its shades, to stare at it until it gave up its secrets, it
turned out to be a route to freedom, too. So, explain, how is that darkness a route to freedom?
ROY: Well, because you learn very early in life, you know, that it's not as if all of us are entitled to happiness and all these beautiful things. The
world is a rough place, you know, and you have to find your way through it. And to me, I learned those lessons early, not just with her, but also in
the years I spent in Delhi, where I had nothing and no one and no money. And that was a great university for me, you know.
So, I don't think that I could be the writer that I am if I had had another mother or another life, you know. Of course, you know, it depends on what
you make of it, right? I mean, I could have gone down very easily, and then I would not be saying these things.
[13:55:00]
I could have gone down, but I did not go down. I turned it into literature, into art, into real writing, you know.
SREENIVASAN: The memoir is -- beautifully written, it's called "Mother Mary Comes to Me." Author Arundhati Roy, thanks so much for joining us.
ROY: You're so welcome.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: A reminder that behind so many literary geniuses is an extraordinary life and a rich tapestry of memories.
That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always
catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
