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Amanpour
Interview with "The Uninhabitable Earth" Author David Wallace-Wells; Interview with "My Mother's Wedding" Director and Actress Kristin Scott Thomas; Interview with "Paper Girl" Author Beth Macy. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired January 02, 2026 - 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, AUTHOR, "THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH": We are adapting to that new future primarily by normalizing a level of disaster that a few
years ago we are horrified by. I was horrified by.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: From powerful storms to wildfires, the climate crisis is in full force. I David Wallace-Wells as the Trump administration brushes off
science in a landmark repeal of fossil fuel regulation.
And actress Kristin Scott Thomas on her directorial debut, "My Mother's Wedding," based loosely on her own life.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETH MACY, AUTHOR, "PAPER GIRL": Public school which are the foundation of our democracy are in really rough shape.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A portrait of poverty in America. Journalist Beth Macy speaks to Walter Isaacson about "Paper Girl," her memoir documenting the decline of
her Ohio hometown.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiana Amanpour in London.
From super typhoons battering Asia and destructive hurricanes plowing through the Americas to major wildfires ripping across Europe, this year,
the harsh reality of the climate crisis was felt all around the globe. Coral reefs are now facing a widespread die-off, the first in a series of
ecological tipping points that signal a level of degradation close to the point of no return. With nations failing to limit global warming to 1.5
degrees Celsius, the U.N. secretary-general has warned we must change course to prevent more devastating consequences.
And yet, the Trump administration has been rolling back on its climate mitigation plans in what's possibly the largest deregulatory action in U.S.
history, and it is pressuring other nations to do the same. The Environmental Protection Agency announced in the summer that it would
repeal the so-called endangerment finding, which says fossil fuels emission pose a danger to human health. And as the world's second largest emitter of
greenhouse gases, America's actions impact everyone.
David Wallace-Wells is an opinion writer for The New York Times who wrote the book, "The Uninhabitable Earth," and he spoke to me from New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: David Wallace-Wells, welcome to the program.
DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, AUTHOR, "THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH": Really good to be here.
AMANPOUR: So, let's talk about something that's actually happening and in your most recent writing. So, there is a U.N. plastic pollution kind of
conference, anyway, talks underway in Geneva. And you recently wrote an op- ed in The New York Times about this problem.
And honestly, one of the most vivid and probably terrifying sentences is, there might be inside your skull the equivalent of a full plastic spoon.
Obviously, plastics are made of fossil fuels. What -- tell me how you came up with that and what actually that means.
WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, plastic concern has been rising for years now. And so, really since I've been writing about climate, I've been
seeing, you know, news and alarm about microplastics in particular, although there are also nano plastics, macro plastics. You hear about the
great Pacific garbage patch. You know, we talk about plastics in the ocean.
And the -- when you follow the science, it's almost like every week there's a new alarming finding everywhere they look there are plastics. So, there
are plastics in the depths of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. When a human submersible got there a few years ago, deeper than
anyone had ever reached in the ocean before, plastic pollution was already there.
When they look up into the atmosphere and the stratosphere, there's plastics there in, you know, rain clouds circling Mount Fuji, in raindrops
falling in the Amazon, in freshly sprayed, you know, ocean water coming off the beaches crashing against sand there's plastics there. Everywhere they
look on the planet we find some evidence of this kind of pollution.
And increasingly, we're seeing it inside us too. It's not just something that we can't escape environmentally, it has already penetrated our own
body. So, there are plastics in our kidneys, in our hearts, and there's an association with that buildup with increased risk of heart disease and
stroke. There's plastics in placentas discharged by new mothers. There's microplastics in the breast milk being fed to new babies.
[13:05:00]
And yes, most -- perhaps most alarmingly in the brain, so much so that not just does it add up to the equivalent of a plastic spoon in the brain, but
actually, that's about one-fifth by weight as much as brainstem.
AMANPOUR: Oh, my God. OK. You've fully terrorized me, and I'm sure you can go on and on about where plastics are. So, they're clearly dangerous to us.
So, what do you think any talks in Geneva or elsewhere? I mean, if this is so pervasive and it's everywhere and you cannot escape it, and it's in us
and in our food chain, how does that get reversed or does it?
WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, I come to this from climate change and it's a quite similar problem. It's basically a collective action problem, which
we often tell ourselves can be solved through individual action. In the case of climate, by reducing our carbon footprint. In the case of plastics,
by throwing out the wrong kind of spatula or making sure that we're drinking less, you know, single use plastic bottles, which by the way can -
- a single bottle of water can contain as much as 250,000 microplastics in it. But in fact, you know, this is a silly way of thinking about the
problem when pollution is already everywhere, including inside of us.
What we need to do is try to stop the -- you know, stop the flow at the source, and that means producing less plastic than we are now. Probably not
zero plastic anytime soon but dramatically reducing the amount that we're producing. And that's an uphill battle as it is with carbon and climate
because, you know, we've produced as much plastic since about 2005, 2006 as in the entire history of plastic production before then. We're now at
something like 400 times as much plastic being produced every year as was produced in the years after World War II.
And so, this is a huge booming global business, which does need to be really reformed. And for about 30 years now, the companies that produce
plastics, petrochemical companies and the fossil fuel companies have sort of sold us this story that we could actually solve this problem, or at
least address it through recycling, because they want to distract us from how -- you know, from the real problem, which is reducing the production in
the first place, and that's ultimately where we need to go.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, again, doubly depressing because certainly all of us who've been busily recycling think that we're doing a decent job for us and
for our future, but clearly not enough. Now, you said that's in the sea, but then you have carbon and all the rest of it in the air, which obviously
also affects the seas.
So, the latest in the new MAGA fossil first, you know, climate policy is this proposal by the EPA last week to repeal what's called the Endangerment
Finding, that was issued by the Supreme Court apparently in 2009.
Now, look, I don't know, and I've never heard about it. Do people know what it is? What is it and why is it important and what would repealing it do?
WALLACE-WELLS: Basically, it was a finding that allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases without direct action by Congress. And that seems
increasingly important because it doesn't seem all that likely that in the U.S. Congress will be taking action to reduce carbon emissions or
greenhouse gases more generally anytime in the future.
Certainly, in the next few years under Trump. But I think, you know, given the way that the IRA has played out politically in the U.S. it's unlikely
that even a Democratic administration overseeing a Democratic Senate the next cycle would take meaningful action to reduce carbon emissions in the
way that the Biden administration does.
And when we think about the scale of importance there, you know, one way of calculating that is through something called the social cost of carbon,
which is a measure that economists come up with to tally in dollar terms just how much damage all of the carbon that's being put into the atmosphere
is doing, and they do it by measuring mortality and economic productivity and a huge range of other sort of ephemeral effects of warming.
The Biden EPA found that number to be somewhere around $200 a ton. And that may sound abstract, but what it means is that the U.S. production of carbon
every year, the Biden EPA calculated, this is not an activist group, it's not a climate lobbying group, it is the Biden EPA, calculated that the
damage being done by carbon emissions produced by the U.S. every single year was north of $1 trillion.
Now, that was a major update to the Obama estimate which was about $40 or $50, and a really large increase from the estimate made by the first Trump
term, which still had it at $7. But what the Endangerment Finding -- you know, what this action on the Endangerment Finding means is that we're
going all the way from about $200 a ton to functionally treating it as zero, as though there is no cost from carbon emissions at all, and the
government should do nothing at all to address our carbon problem.
AMANPOUR: So, as you know, there was a report that they came up with, the current EPA's justification, a Department of Energy report, apparently 141
pages long. The energy secretary, Chris Wright, said climate change is a challenge, not a catastrophe. Another climate science scientist who is very
famous, Michael Mann, said, if you took a chatbot and you train it on top of 10 fossil fuel industry funded climate denier websites, that's what it
would look like.
[13:10:00]
Another says they cherry pick data points that suit their narrative and exclude the vast majority of the scientific literature that does not. So,
it digests all of that and hopefully our audiences too. And now, listen to the current EPA director, Lee Zeldin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEE ZELDIN, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR: To reach the 2009 Endangerment Finding, they relied on the most pessimistic views of
the science. The great news is that a lot of the pessimistic views of the science in 2009 that was being assumed ended up not panning out. Hey,
that's great. We can rely on 2025 facts as opposed to 2009 bad assumptions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, he's obviously casting total doubt on the 2009 finding. What would you say about that? Because clearly -- and then also why do you think
they're doing this? Is it just a purely an anti-regulatory regime, you know, who think that they're spending too much money, they could save money
by doing all this climate mitigation?
WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, on the first point, it is true that some climate science has gotten more optimistic over the last few years. We
don't think that emissions are going to be as high in the year 2100 as many scientists were projecting back in 2009 or for that matter in 2015 or 2020.
A lot of that has to do with the world abandoning coal in a large-scale way. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're rolling out
renewables much faster than we thought. Beyond that though, when we look at actual -- the science of actual climate impacts, we're seeing things
happening faster and more intensely than were anticipated.
So, while emission -- the emission's future looks slightly rosier than we worried would be the case a few years ago, the actual climate story is, if
anything scarier. And there are a number of scientists, I wouldn't quite say the majority, who also think that we're learning things about the
climate system, which suggests that it's more sensitive to the perturbations of emissions than we expected a few years ago, which means
even if we're going to be doing better in terms of carbon output, it may well be the case that the temperature effect will net out to be as bad or
worse than we feared a few years ago.
So, I would say in general, you know, the science is not on the side of this argument with the EPA. And I think they're showing their hand by going
-- by eliminating the rule entirely. You know, as I said earlier, the first Trump administration set a social cost of carbon of $7. In theory, the EPA
could have gone back to that. It would've been a dramatic, you know, undercounting by my estimate, but it would've at least allowed for, you
know, an acknowledgement that there are real world consequences to global warming.
As you quoted the administrator saying earlier, perhaps he thinks it's not a catastrophe, just a challenge, but their move here is not to treat
climate as a challenge at all. It's to treat it as no issue for anyone that the U.S. government has to deal with in any way.
As for why they're doing that, I think yes, fundamentally it's a culture war issue. They're wanting to fight with the left -- the American left and
the Democratic Party. And I think what's really perverse and ironic there is that if you look at the way that the Trump coalition has evolved since
2015, 2016, and even 2020, one of the major developments has been the arrival of the tech right in that coalition. These are people who are
really obsessed with A.I. and engineering and A.I. future, and what they need to make that happen is much more abundant, much cheaper electricity.
Now, if the Trump administration took that imperative, seriously and indeed took their campaign promise to promote energy abundance seriously, they may
be doing much more to promote fossil fuel production than the Biden administration did, but they'd also be trying to promote solar and wind and
geothermal and other clean sources, particularly because those are now cheaper and faster to build than any of the fossil fuel infrastructure than
the Trump admin is now pushing.
Of course, they're not doing that. In fact, they're doing the opposite. They're trying to drown any of that green energy development at -- you
know, for the sake of promoting fossil fuel development. And that just shows you how unserious they are about energy abundance, how unserious they
are about making America an electro state competitive with China, how unserious they are about artificial intelligence beyond all of the climate
implications, which for me are larger, but even taking their own stated goals at face value, they're failing their own test here.
AMANPOUR: So, we know, because you've told us what an impact in general will have on the world, but also what an impact it'll have on not just the
health of Americans but the health of people around the world. So, I guess, you know, obviously it was 1965 Lyndon Johnson's government that started
talking about the effects of climate on people's health and to try to mitigate it. Then it was in the '70s, it was a Republican President Nixon
who created the EPA. So, it really has had a bipartisan kind of history.
What is the impact on individual health, do you think, if this is allowed to continue with this current Republican MAGA president, given what you've
just said is underway?
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WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I think the biggest impact on human health from this problem is not directly the result of climate change but the result of what
we do to make climate warm, which is to say, burn fossil fuels that produces air pollution, that kills globally perhaps 5 million, perhaps 10
million people every single year.
And in the U.S. estimates run as high as 350,000 people a year, which is to say, as many Americans may have died in 2020 from the effects of air
pollution produced from the burning of fossil fuels as died from COVID in that first pandemic year. And that is not an exceptional year. The
statistics, the modeling suggests that we are doing that in an ongoing way, which means the direct health consequences of leaning into a fossil fuel
near-term future are quite grim and devastating.
There are other effects too. There are effects on heat mortality. There are effects on infectious disease. You can go down the line. I think
unfortunately, you know, we've trained ourselves to look away from these consequences and think of the system that we have today built around fossil
fuels as a kind of a neutral status quo. But it isn't. It's killing many Americans every year. And if we were in a greener, cleaner future, we would
be killing many fewer of them. That's true not just in the U.S., it's true around the world. But in the U.S. I think it's particularly grotesque given
that we are such a rich country, we are so well endowed with public land, we don't need to worry about land use issues.
We have an opportunity here. And indeed, the Biden administration was trying to engineer a kind of a, you know, revolution in energy production.
It would've brought us at least into league with our great geopolitical rival China. And in fact, the Trump administration is just, you know,
cutting ourselves -- shooting ourselves in the foot, cutting off that project at the start.
And I think, ultimately, when we pull back from the question of human health to the flourishing of human societies, we should be really ashamed
to see the great lead that China has taken over the last few years. 10 years ago, climate diplomats would've said China was a climate problem and
now it's U.S., the petrostate that is really the global climate problem.
AMANPOUR: And of course, China, as you say, is making massive headways in this, particularly with EVs, the, you know, replacement of dirty emitters.
You know, you wrote that book, "The Uninhabitable Earth," and I interviewed you in 2019 when you published it. And your first line is obviously
poignant today, it is worse -- much worse than you think. You acknowledge that you might have come off as alarmist then. You write, fair enough,
because I am alarmed. So, six years later, what is the scale of uninhabitable and alarm?
WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I think a lot of that answer for me has to do with my own personal journey and, you know, bouncing around through new science and
getting quite alarmed and then kind of readjusting and taking a new assessment of the landscape. I would say personally I'm less scared of the
future that we're heading into, but more depressed because I think that we are doing not nearly enough to limit warming and maybe more conspicuously
not doing nearly enough to adapt to the future that we know is coming.
I think you see the impact there when you think about the Texas floods, the tragic Texas floods, and maybe most dramatically when you think about the
horrible fires that swept through Los Angeles Palisades and Altadena just six months ago, destroying whole neighborhoods in some of the richest, most
well-connected parts of the world. And yet, these are stories that we have already moved on from and are treating as background noise and wallpaper.
I think we're seeing that pattern play out more and more in the future. We are not just not mitigating climate change sufficiently, we are adapting to
that new future primarily by normalizing a level of disaster that a few years ago we were horrified by, I was horrified by, but now seeing like
just like, you know, more daily news that we can move on past and ignore.
AMANPOUR: And that is really the challenge and it's unbelievable to think, because just a few years ago with the Greta Thunberg movement there was
such awareness. Just quickly, why are you less scared if you're more depressed?
WALLACE-WELLS: I've started to see this as more continuous with a pattern of human history where there's more suffering than needs to be, more
suffering than we should conscience as people of good conscience, and yet, a world in which we will navigate, thinking that it's relatively normal.
It's a kind of an indictment of our moral imagination that we can look around at something like the Texas floods and see it as no big deal. And
yet, the fact that we are seeing it as no big deal tells us something about how we will live in the future world, one pockmarked by more disaster and
considerably more suffering that was necessary, and yet, one in which most people will probably live their lives thinking -- you know, looking around
and thinking everything's kind of fine.
That's the role of the alarm raisers to say, let's not accept that. Let's try to fight for a better future. But I do think that the geo -- the
evolving geopolitics show us an unfortunate next few decades in which we see many more disasters, and yet, we put climate on the back burner rather
than the front burner.
AMANPOUR: Well, you keep raising the alarm and we'll keep talking to you. David Wallace-Wells, thank you very much indeed.
WALLACE-WELLS: Thanks for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: Later in the program, actress Kristin Scott Thomas tells me about trying her hand at something new, directing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, for decades, the actress, Kristin Scott Thomas, has been lighting up our screens from the "English Patient" to "Four Weddings and a
Funeral" and Apple TV's "Slow Horses." And recently, she's stepped behind the camera to direct for the first time, with a deeply personal story based
loosely on her own life. Of course, she's acting in it as well. It's called "My Mother's Wedding," and it is star packed. Scarlett Johansson and Sienna
Miller played two of the sisters. Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As the youngest and least celebrated of four of your daughters, I like to propose a toast.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, come on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mommy, tonight is your last night as a Munson.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're not going to change your name again?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Jeffrey Loveglove (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A beautiful name. It's not his fault.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To Mommy Loveglove.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You could take over from here, Sean. Dangerous mission tomorrow. I've got to get my mother down the aisle and deal with my
sisters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who is an usher?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where on earth can the bridesmaids be?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Me, me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jack.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank God you're here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everyone wishes it was you two getting married tomorrow.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are happy as a it is, mom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: When the film first released, Kristin Scott Thomas joined me here in our London to talk about this new venture.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Kristin Scott Thomas, welcome to the program.
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, DIRECTOR AND ACTOR, "MY MOTHER'S WEDDING": Thank you very much.
AMANPOUR: So, how exciting is it to be, well, selling your first directorial debut?
THOMAS: It's incredibly exciting and it's obviously something I've never done before. So, it's a huge adventure. A totally new world for me. And I
just -- yes, super exciting.
AMANPOUR: How much of it is autobiographic? I know the details are slightly different, obviously.
THOMAS: Yes. Well, it's inspired by my childhood events and how it affected my life and how I imagined it affects other people's lives. And
because it -- the -- because what happened to me as a child became a kind of -- it was like the title of every -- it was always mentioned in every
magazine article I did or anything like that.
AMANPOUR: That you lost two fathers --
THOMAS: That I lost my father --
AMANPOUR: -- not one.
THOMAS: -- and my stepfather. They were both pilots. They're both called Simon and they both -- there was something kind of fascinating for people
about that. And so, I just decided to kind of make it my story instead of just being a kind of footnote in somebody else's article.
AMANPOUR: You play your mother.
THOMAS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: You play the character Diana. Was she as emblematic in your life as your departed fathers?
THOMAS: Well, she was everything really. I mean, she died about two years ago, just after we finished shooting. But she was very -- she was an
extraordinary person. When you think that she brought up five children in these incredibly complicated circumstances where she kept getting pushed
back, pushed back by losing her partner and the father to her children.
So, she was incredibly resilient. And yes, she was definitely a beacon to us all. Definitely. You know, she was -- but she was just trying to do her
best. She's totally unprepared for this. When you think that she was -- by the time she was 32, 33, she'd lost two husbands and had five children. I
mean, I can't even imagine that --
AMANPOUR: And had to do all herself, yes.
THOMAS: Yes. I cannot even imagine that now.
[13:25:00]
AMANPOUR: We've got a couple of tips. I'm going to play the first one, because again, this is obviously about -- it's called "My Mother's
Wedding." So, it's about your mother's third marriage. And this is a hen party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to propose, ding, ding, ding a toast.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, come on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go for it, Georgie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. As the youngest and the least celebrated of all your daughters, far prettiest.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Definitely the drunkest.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anyway, mommy, tonight is your last night as a Munson.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What? You are not going to change your name again?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course, I'm going to take Jeff's name.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Jeffrey Loveglove?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, are you serious? I mean, really?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I am Mrs. Frost, Mrs. Munson and now, Mrs. Loveglove.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Loveglove.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The name -- it's a beautiful name. It's not his fault.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You made the name up?
THOMAS: Well, I looked for names that I wanted a really good crusty old name.
AMANPOUR: It wasn't the real's third father's name?
THOMAS: No, no, no. None of that is real. Rest assured. And I found this name and I thought, what a brilliant name, Mr. Loveglove. I mean, you'd
fall in love with somebody called, you know, Percival Jeffrey Loveglove. That is his full name.
AMANPOUR: You're talking to the girls. But they raise a point, don't they, that you've done all of this, A, you've had their names. And now, you're
going to give up that name. And what does it mean for you as a woman? I mean, there's so much in that scene.
THOMAS: Yes, yes. I think that's what we were sort of exploring in the film is, what is in a name? What it means to -- and later, one of the main
sort of arguments in the film is around a name, taking a name. And I think that that is very important to us. I mean, I've -- I'm an actress, so I've
taken on a million names, maybe not a million, but a good a hundred different names and I adapt to different names very easily. But the name is
who you are, you know, it is, and that's what she says. It's -- that's it, that's your name. And I think those are very important things to think
about and often things that we don't really think about.
AMANPOUR: What are you saying? What is your message to the people who see this film with this film? You've chosen various scenes. It's very bucolic,
it's very Pride and Prejudice-esque in terms of the look. Very, very English.
THOMAS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Very English countryside experience.
THOMAS: Yes. That's what I wanted. I wanted to reproduce the sort of glorious summers that we don't seem to get anymore. We either get a heat
wave or a torrential rain. But I wanted to take that idea of sort of perfect summers that we all have of our childhood, don't we? We all think
of the -- remember the summers running around in the fields or whatever you did as a kid. That's what I did as a kid. And so, that -- remembering that
time as being completely perfect and yet that time was stained by these terrible catastrophic events.
And so, I think a lot of it came from the fact that I was constantly being told that I had a tragic childhood. Did I? You know, yes. Terrible things
happened. But actually, it was all very happy. We managed to bumble along and we managed to find a way to be happy between the sisters, between me
and my brothers and sisters, for example.
And I think in our film, you can tell by the way these three actresses portray these three sisters with so much love and fun and teasing and
mockery and fighting and anger. And, you know, all the things that sisters do.
AMANPOUR: Were you the eldest in real life?
THOMAS: I was the eldest in real life.
AMANPOUR: So, you are the Scarlett Johansson character. She plays Katherine.
THOMAS: I think I'm a bit --
AMANPOUR: The eldest sister.
THOMAS: I sort of -- yes. So, Scarlett plays the eldest.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
THOMAS: And then Sienna Miller plays her sister, who's an actress. And then Emily Beecham plays the youngest sister who's the sort of -- who's
done everything right.
AMANPOUR: She's a palliative care nurse.
THOMAS: She's a palliative care nurse.
AMANPOUR: But I'm really interested to read your author statement, because you talk about growing up. And here you say, as a sullen teenager growing
up in Dorset, I'd burn the midnight oil to watch French films on our diminutive television screen. I've always been drawn to cinema that
celebrates the heroic, the tragic, and the uproariously comical aspects of our everyday existence.
And you talk about the films that you loved, "Hannah and Her Sisters," Little Miss Sunshine," you know, "Rome," (INAUDIBLE) story, "Little Women,"
et cetera. I love the fact that you use the word sullen. I do. I love that fact. You do have a certain shield around you in your acting, and maybe
even in your personal life. That's quite hard. Why were you sullen?
[13:30:00]
THOMAS: I think when you have had repeatedly these events that change your life and whip the carpet from under your feet and make everything
different, when your father dies -- my father died when I was almost six, and then my stepfather died when I was 11, like the character played by
Scarlett, you know, you do -- you're kind of braced for the worst.
So, you kind of -- if you are -- don't get too comfortable and you are always on the edge, you are always sort of prepped for disaster, and I
think that's what I meant by, you know, sullen, and trying to find pleasure in things that I could rely on, like films on a TV set, the smallest TV set
you can possibly imagine. But I would watch -- late at night I would watch these things that I shouldn't really have been watching, but my mother
couldn't be everywhere, obviously.
AMANPOUR: Your first film, I can't even believe this, but tell me, I can't remember the name, but it was directed by Prince.
THOMAS: You cannot remember the name.
AMANPOUR: No.
THOMAS: It's called "Under the Cherry Moon."
AMANPOUR: There you go. Thank you very much. It's written here, but I didn't want to read it like this. So, I figured you'd tell me. How
incredible is that?
THOMAS: That was incredible. That was really incredible. I've been doing a play in Burgundy in a field. I get a call from a casting agent who says,
will you come to Paris because Prince is doing a film and they're looking for local actresses who speak English. Well, at the time, Prince was at his
peak, absolute peak. And it was, what, sort of '83 or something. And you know, I listened to his albums, you know, nonstop, nonstop, nonstop. And of
course, I sort of went straight up to Paris and did this interview.
And in fact, they were looking for somebody to play the lead, but they didn't want to sort of announce that. And I got asked, would you be
interested in playing the lead? Yes.
AMANPOUR: And is he --
THOMAS: And then, that evening, I had to go and meet him, which was -- I mean, it was all totally -- I could not -- I had to keep pinching myself.
This is actually happening to me.
AMANPOUR: Amazing. And then, obviously, everybody knows you for "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and the "English Patient." All the amazing things
you've done. "Slow Horses." I mean, it's really brilliant.
THOMAS: It's good, isn't it?
AMANPOUR: What's it like working with Gary Oldman?
THOMAS: I love working with Gary. We've worked together before. We did a film called "The Darkest Hour," which was about Churchill. And I played his
wife Clementine Churchill. And no. So, it -- he's just -- he's so brilliant and so sort of flexible and agile and you never know what he's going to do
next, and that's what I like.
AMANPOUR: I want to play another clip from "My Mother's Wedding," and this is where the girls, the sisters, are having argy-bargy. It's basically a
fight. Here we go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every time I come here, I think that it's going to be better, but it never is. I'm just going to leave this -- little country and
take the (INAUDIBLE). All of his money and it's going to be your fault.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go again, just running off to get another little man.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you on your high horse?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at what you are doing to Jack.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Victoria.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, your son. What would daddy have to say about that? Poor little boy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You see by the end how close they are. I assume you are very close to your sisters and brothers.
THOMAS: Yes, very. Yes.
AMANPOUR: And I got -- one of the scenes that I really loved and I found it very smart and clever, and I assume your mother did this, you playing
Diana, your mother, went to the graves, it was your annual. You go to the graves of the two fathers and put flowers, and you told in the film your
girls to come with you. And you explain to them that all their lives they had hero worshiped this man -- these men who they probably still think of
as the young men who left them.
THOMAS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And she told them what to do. Tell me about that. Because I really found that very good.
THOMAS: Well, I just felt that we needed -- that scene, in fact, was written by my writing partner. John Micklethwait.
AMANPOUR: Did you mean your husband?
THOMAS: My current husband.
AMANPOUR: And how happy are you as a digression? This is my mother's wedding. But you got married again.
THOMAS: I know. It's completely mad, isn't it? It was all sort of -- yes.
AMANPOUR: And working together.
THOMAS: Yes. That was really, really fun.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
THOMAS: That was great. But anyway, so, he came up with this idea, but it -- because I couldn't really articulate it. I told him what I wanted to be
said, but he didn't -- you know, but so -- but I didn't know how to put it into a form. And so, this is his work. And actually, it's spot on, isn't
it?
AMANPOUR: Yes, it really is actually.
THOMAS: But it is -- but I did find that myself. I remember going to a cousin's wedding. And this -- when I was about, I don't know, 30. And this
chat wanders over to me and he's slightly portly and he's bald and he's, you know, 60 something and he says, hello. I was your father's best friend.
I said, you can't possibly be my father's best. My father was 30 years old. Beautiful.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: Did you actually say that or you thought it?
THOMAS: No, but I was thinking. How can this be? And I remember trying to keep my face from falling and sort of denying it. And there's another scene
in the film as well where they're reminded that actually if their father were alive today, he would be as old as that man over there. And I think
that sort of hero worshiping people who have left this earth is a very easy trap to fall into, especially when it hasn't been spoken about at all with
the children when the event -- when these events happen.
And so, I suppose, in a way, that this is a way of me saying, you know, that she should have spoken more to her children at the time, rather than
just getting on with it, which is -- I think is a pretty military type thing.
AMANPOUR: Military, British, you know, generational. That generation just got on with it.
THOMAS: Total generational, yes.
AMANPOUR: Especially a woman who's having to support a whole family on her own.
THOMAS: Yes, exactly.
AMANPOUR: I was struck by the way you depicted that, those flashbacks by the animation and it's an Iranian animator.
THOMAS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: I was really pleased to see that. How did you come up with that device? Because it was very effective.
THOMAS: So, in fact, the idea of making little animated films was my first idea. Because my brothers were both so small when their -- well, actually
one of my brothers was born after his father died, and then my mother married again and his father died and his stepfather died when he was four,
leaving also another little brother. They don't have any memory, nothing to hang their hat on.
So, I thought, because I was nearly six when my father died and 12 when my stepfather died, I would try and make little short animated films of the
memories I had with those men and leave them something, and then it just could of grew from there. But -- so, the animated sequences are actually
the root and the heart of the film.
AMANPOUR: I'm glad I asked you then, because it is amazing.
THOMAS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: It's very effective.
THOMAS: Yes, it is, isn't it?
AMANPOUR: Especially the amount of detail you put in and the detail that's left out of their faces and things.
THOMAS: And the emotion you get from the drawings is really quite powerful.
AMANPOUR: I think so too. It's the second -- third time you've worked with Scarlett Johansson. What's it like doing that?
THOMAS: I think it's -- yes, one, two -- third time I've played her mother. Yes.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Oh, third time you played her mother?
THOMAS: Yes, yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: Well, OK then, what's it like being an older woman in this business?
THOMAS: Well, I'm loving it, to be honest.
AMANPOUR: You're doing great. You're getting great roles, whether it's, you know, "Slow Horses," you're directing.
THOMAS: Yes, yes, yes. I think --
AMANPOUR: So no complaints?
THOMAS: Well, yes. I mean, some. I mean, there's still no King Lear.
AMANPOUR: Didn't Glenda Jackson do it?
THOMAS: She did. Yes, she did.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
THOMAS: She did. She did.
AMANPOUR: But now this is your audition. You want to do King Lear?
THOMAS: Why not?
AMANPOUR: There you go.
THOMAS: Not right this minute.
AMANPOUR: No. But after the film's out.
THOMAS: Yes. Quite --
AMANPOUR: OK. Well, you heard it here first.
THOMAS: Plenty of things to be getting on with.
AMANPOUR: Including you're a grandmother.
THOMAS: Including I'm a grandmother.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
THOMAS: Yes. That's busy.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Well, enjoy.
THOMAS: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: Thank you so much, Kristin Scott Thomas --
THOMAS: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: -- for being with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up, a portrait of poverty and polarization in America. Journalist Beth Macy on her new memoir, "Paper Girl," after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Now, to polarization tearing America apart. Beth Macy is the writer of the best-selling novel "Dopesick," and her recent memoir
investigates radicalization and the struggling education system in rural United States, through her childhood town of Urbana, Ohio. She joins Walter
Isaacson to discuss how these divisions have been stoked over the last decade.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Beth Macy, welcome back to the show.
BETH MACY, AUTHOR, "PAPER GIRL": It's great to be back. Thanks, Walter.
ISAACSON: So, your new book is called "Paper Girl." Let's start with the obvious question, what'd you learn from being a paper girl back in Urbana,
Ohio.
MACY: Well, you can't call in sick because they get really mad when their paper doesn't show up. And so, work ethic. And also, I always say it was
great training ground for being a reporter because you had to deal with all kinds of people and you had to negotiate when people didn't want to pay you
on collection day and just great skills all the way around.
ISAACSON: So, you talk about those skills and that's in the book in a way. You talk a lot about education, but you say education isn't just about
learning knowledge, it's about learning those social skills. Is that what we're failing to do now, especially in the towns like you write about?
MACY: Yes. I mean, my first call to a school counselor 40 years after I left that school, when I say, what is the biggest challenge today with
getting kids college ready or workforce ready? She tells me it's they don't know how to human. I said, what do you mean? They don't have the social
skills. They don't know the basic skills that I learned from delivering the paper every afternoon.
So, I thought I was going to write a story about -- and I did, about how we don't have the structure in place to allow poor kids to go to college,
which essentially saved my life. But after spending two years in Urbana, it's more a story about how our K-12 schools are declining such that people
are dropping out. They're not showing up. There's a huge attendance problem, particularly after COVID. And our public schools, which are the
foundation of our democracy, are in really rough shape.
ISAACSON: One of the things that struck me when you talk about education is that people, kids, are not going to school in great numbers. They're not
showing up. When did that start and why?
MACY: Well, it starts before COVID, but it really gets exacerbated in 2020 with COVID. And one of the main people I follow is a woman named Brooke
Perry, who is the school attendance officer. And she put something like 150,000 miles on her car in a couple of years, traversing the county,
picking up kids whose parents won't send them to school.
And one of the great shocks was how many families were, quote, "homeschooling," not saying that they're all not legit homeschooling, but
because homeschooling in the State of Ohio has been deregulated. You no longer have to have teachers sign off on lesson plans. This was a new law
enacted by the state legislature a couple of years ago.
It's possible now for a parent who just doesn't want to get up in the morning, perhaps doesn't have the capacity to get up in the morning, send
their kids to school, to pull their kids out from school to avoid truancy charges and say they're homeschooling. So, that was an unintended
consequence of that law, I would say. And it was really shocking to shadow Brooke Perry and to just see the level of trauma that she sees on a daily
basis.
I mean, people seeking dogs at her, assaulting her, teenagers assaulting her. It really brought the mental health crisis into view.
ISAACSON: Well, another aspect of the education crisis is people not being able to just seamlessly go to college or community college using Pell
Grants and other things. Is that something that we could solve?
MACY: Yes, if we invest in people, not corporations and billionaires. So, when I went to college in 1982, I went to a state college. It costs about
two plus grand a year. The Pell Grant covered my tuition, room and board, my books. It gave me work-study jobs so I could have pizza and beer like
everybody else.
[13:45:00]
Today, that same student, I follow a young man named Silas, he couldn't go to a four-year college because it would only cover 30 percent, right? So,
his dear mentor, his band director, his teacher talks him into doing a welding program at a community college. He gets full scholarships for it
and he doesn't really understand the money. It's rural America. So, if you live in a city, you might not know that we don't have a bus that goes from
Urbana to Marysville to Springfield to get Silas to his classes at the community college. And the kid goes through five clunker cars in the course
of a 10-month program, four full-time jobs. I didn't have to work full- time.
And the odds -- and then a family with so much trauma and chaos that they are a constant drag on his psyche. And by golly, the kid makes it. And it's
a great story. It's a story of resilience. And when I shared a stage with him just about 10 days ago for the launch of the book, I said, Silas, what
makes you so resilient? And he said, well, I didn't have a family I could rely on. So, I created my own out of teachers, of counselors. It's the
school. He's going to be a great success one day. But without a heartier education system, he's a unicorn.
ISAACSON: So, let's talk about this kid, Silas, who's one of the main characters in your book. His name is Silas James. And in some ways, you say
he was the counterpart to you. You all were both in the bAnd that sort of thing. How did -- tell me about his story, how you found him and why you
made him the central character?
MACY: Well, when I first started going home, I would cast about talking to teachers and counselors and the present band director, because I was
looking for a young me that would help me illustrate this data that I was finding. And they all suggested Silas James, because it's a small town.
They all knew him. They had all helped him.
And I just -- the band the marching band I was president of the band in my senior year, is really what kept me out of jail, kept me out of trouble,
and a great affinity for my band director, who's long since passed away. And I saw that Silas had that with Mr. Sapp, who he has entered as David M.
Dad in his phone. I mean, that's how important.
I had one stable parent. Silas had zero stable parents. I mean, for a time, he lived with a caregiver who molested him in his early teens while his mom
was in prison for drug-related charges, and his dad was on his way to an overdose death. So, he really needed the support of these folks. And you
know, when I met him, I thought, this is a kid that whose story really illustrates all the data that I'm finding on the ground.
ISAACSON: There's a sentence in your book that just, of course, hit me, as I think you would have expected. It's, my family had once been proud of me.
So, walk me through the family saga, and why you would write that sentence.
MACY: Well, I was the first in the family to go to college. I'm much younger than my siblings. I was the midlife accident, and the only one to
really move out of state, and we're pretty different. And when I started achieving some success as a journalist, they were very proud of me. But, in
the teens, during Trump's first term, you know, my brother, who was my closest in age, who we'd been pretty close with, and he would come see my
kid when they were in place, unfriended me on Facebook because of quote, "all the liberal crap you post."
And I'm pretty careful about what I post. I post fact-checked articles, typically from the New York Times or the Washington Post, including some of
my own articles. And to sort of have my brother, you know, malign my profession, have my friends malign my profession, and say they hate the
media, I said, well, Joy, you still love me, right? Yes, of course I love you. Well, I'm the media, too. And when I write a piece for the New York
Times, they'll assign some Ivy League graduate, young fact-checker on it, who will spend three days on an opinion piece, making sure that my opinions
are based on real data.
And you know, she came back to me with, well, who fact-checks the fact- checkers? And really angry, in a way I hadn't seen before. Now, she later apologized. But, at some point, we have to be responsible for the truth
that we believe. And you know, I was just, again, really shocked at the level of conspiracy theories just running a roughshod over my home
community.
[13:50:00]
ISAACSON: That notion of conspiracy theories done in the recesses of the internet also plays into your ex-boyfriend, Bill, who you decide to call
out of the blue, I guess for the sake of the book. Tell me about that story.
MACY: It was definitely for the book. Walter. I wasn't trying to get back with my ex-boyfriend. No, but he was once the most liberal person I knew.
And we dated, like, for a year in 1985 or so. And he was a journalist. And as he described it, a NPR tote bag -- or PBS tote bag-carrying liberal. And
a mutual friend who would come to my events when I would talk about my other books in Ohio said, wow, you wouldn't believe Bill. He's gone from
Bernie to Jill Stein to Trump to, oh, he's even behind Trump. I said, what do you mean?
So, I got the idea. I texted him out of the blue. I said, I write books now. I'm doing this book on polarization. I'd love to talk to you about
your shift in attitude. So, we set up -- I must have 10 hours of recordings with him. And over the course of a year and a half, he just -- I saw him
get angrier and angrier. And until finally, he emerges as the lead spokesperson for the anti-Haitian contingency in Springfield, Ohio, in the
lead up to the '24 election where, you know, Vance says and Trump says, they're eating the pets, they're eating the dogs.
And there he is on PBS NewsHour. And there he is all over the news, on the front page of the Springfield paper. And he's leading rallies. And he's
posting things on Twitter about -- or X about the Great Replacement Theory.
And in February, I had finished the book, but I had to rewrite some of the end because he didn't believe in Obamacare. He was 61 when I first met him
again. He didn't have health insurance because he thought it was a racket on the middle class. And in February, he gets pneumonia. And he waits too
long to go to the hospital. And he dies.
And when I talked to his daughter some weeks later, she basically described the same thing Bill had described about how he felt the Democrats had
turned on him. And then his community turned on him when he wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton. And he found his community in the internet instead.
He would watch -- at the height of this, when I first met him, he was watching his news from Cyprus, a well-known Russian propaganda website. And
he was so angry. And his daughter says, the internet killed my dad.
ISAACSON: Your brother Tim is among those who unfriended you in Facebook. But one of the nice things about this book is that you finally have a
reconciliation with him. In some ways, it's a metaphor, perhaps, of how we can solve some of these grander problems. Tell me about that.
MACY: Yes. Thanks for understanding that. Yes. We hadn't spoken in a couple of years. And because I was going back regularly, I would spend --
for two years, I would spend about a week a month in Urbana. And I would visit with my family and interview my friends and all these other people
that I interviewed. And Tim and I started spending time together. And that's really important. Like, I get, at every book event I do, people go,
help, how are we going to get through Thanksgiving? And I say, you've got to spend time getting to know each other as people again.
And what are the things in your family, you might disagree on politics, but what are the things in your family that you remember fondly, that you're
proud of? And with my family, we loved to fish. We didn't have any money, but we could afford to, like, get our own night crawlers and go out to
Muzzy's Lake and go fishing. And that was something we did.
So, a couple years ago, my husband and I bought this modest little cabin up in the mountains. And Tim loves to fish. So, I invited him up. We started
spending time together. We started having these really moving conversations. Politics really factors in. At one point, I have a non-
binary child named Sasha. Tim has never known a non-binary person before this. And Sasha's a professional musician. And Tim has heard their music
and really likes it. They're in a band called Palmyra. And he starts coming to Palmyra shows. And he says, in a very tender voice, he says, tell me
about Sasha. Do they still date girls?
And because they asked such curiosity, I instinctively mirrored back his tone. And I said, yes, they're dating a young woman now. And I mess up the
pronouns too. So, meeting our relatives that might not have the same experience with diversity that we have, meeting them with grace, not just
judging them or blowing up going zero to 60 like I did with some of my other relatives.
[13:55:00]
You know, that taught me a lot. And Tim really helped me with that. And at one point, he brings up the fact that he's going to vote for RFK. This is
before Trump was, you know, the main candidate. And I just held my tongue. I said in my head, not my cup of worms, but I'm not going to say anything,
because I'm loving this moment with my brother. And we got each other back.
ISAACSON: Beth Macy, thank you so much for joining us.
MACY: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And 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
