April 7, 2023

[dramatic music] - Hello, everyone and welcome to 'Amanpour & Company.'

Here's what's coming up.

- Mrs. Wang, Mrs. Wang.

Mrs. Wang, are you with us?

- [Christiane] Michelle Yeoh is suddenly 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,' from winning a Golden Globe to an Oscar nomination.

And now she's here talking about her extraordinary career renaissance.

Then... - You know we never really talk about ordinary citizens when we talk about the regime and the leaders.

- [Christiane] An insider's view of life in North Korea.

Sara Sidner speaks with the author Jihyun Park and her translator Seh-Lynn Chai about her hard road out of the Hermit Kingdom.

And boy, talk about 'Great Expectations,' how Eddie Izzard distills Dickens' massive masterpiece into a one-woman show.

[dramatic music] - [Announcer] 'Amanpour & Company' is made possible by the Anderson Family Fund, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, III, Candace King Weir, Jim Atwood and Leslie Williams, the family foundation of Leila and Mickey Straus, Mark J. Blechner, Seton J. Melvin, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

We try to live in the moment to not miss what's right in front of us.

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Additional support provided by these funders and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

- Welcome to the program everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Actress Michelle Yeoh is no fan of glass ceilings.

Neither her age nor her nationality, nor her gender can stop her from taking Hollywood by storm.

Fresh off a Golden Globe Award for her Virtuoso performance in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' Yeoh leads the list of contenders for this year's best actress Oscar.

Her star vehicle is an idiosyncratic movie about a Chinese laundromat owner thrust into a mission to save all possible universes.

So, no pressure there.

Take a look at this clip from the trailer.

♪ He's waiting in the wings - The universe is so much bigger than you realize.

[upbeat music] - Of all the places I could be I just want to be here with you.

- [Christiane] And Michelle Yeoh is with me here.

Welcome to the program.

- Thank you so much.

I'm so happy to be here.

- Well, it is amazing and you've got so many accolades for this remarkable role.

What I just literally can't believe, and I wonder how you feel about it, it is the first Hollywood movie where you have had top billing in a long and distinguished career.

When you saw the script and you saw your role, what did you think?

- First of all, I prayed and said, 'Please let these two boys not be certifiably insane.'

- Okay, the two boys are?

- The Daniels. - Who?

- Who wrote, this is the original screenplay.

It's come from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

And when I received it, you know, it's like, you receive scripts and as the years get bigger, the numbers get bigger, the roles seem to shrink with that. Right?

As you know, as a woman, as an aging woman, or whatever it is, somehow they start putting you in boxes.

And it's always the guy who gets to go on the adventure and save the world and you know, rescue your daughter.

And you think, 'Why can't I do that too?'

So, it was so overwhelming at that point to get a script that said, you know, this is a very ordinary woman, Asian immigrant woman, who's dealing with all the problems that we all can relate to.

Well, maybe not as a laundromat owner, but you know, the relationship with your husband, relationship with your father, relationship with your daughter.

I mean, there's the generational gap, that miscommunication between mothers and daughters especially, has always been more complicated.

And what I loved about it, it was like this is an ordinary woman who is being seen, who is given a role to play as a superhero.

And that's what we are.

Women, mothers, daughters, sisters are superheroes because we have a certain superpower, which is kindness, love, compassion, and the core of this crazy, wacky, messy, you know, frenetic story on the surface, the core is authentic, genuine love for family and never giving up on each other.

- I am going to play a clip where you don't look all lovey dovey and compassionate.

Where you're very, very, very out there.

Let's play this clip.

[metal pipe echoes] - Go.

[metal pipe echoes] - No, no, no, no.

[Evelyn screams] [metal clangs] [Evelyn grunts] - Oh!

[metal clashes] [man grunts] [metal clangs] [man groans] - What happened? - I think they lost - [Evelyn] Stop it. - powers?

[Michelle chuckles] - So in this madcap sci-fi, multi-genre film- - Five genres, at least.

- Okay, list the genres 'cause it is crazy.

- It is. It's sci-fi, it's horror, it's romance, it's drama, it's comedy.

It's like maybe I've been in rehearsing for 40 years for this ultimate role.

It is like just amazing to be able to have the opportunity to say, 'I can do this, please let me show you.'

- And you have done.

What is the compassionate mother there?

- She was protecting her daughter and the husband because these, I don't know what you call them, the agents have come from another universe and they are trying to destroy each universe systematically.

So what we have to do is to try, I have to do, is to protect my universe, my family.

- Okay and this is- - That's compassion.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

And this is the multi-universe thing that is the basis of the film. - It's amazing because what the Daniels have done is like, you know how we look at our lives and we look and we say, 'I wish I had done it differently.

Perhaps the outcome would've been better.'

And you know how, especially immigrant parents have a tendency to say to their children, 'I left a good life for you so you can have a better life.

I could have done things differently, but for you.'

So, sometimes it's that miscommunication into feeling and then the younger ones go like, 'You don't have to do things for me, I can do it for myself.'

So, I think what this movie, when it came out, it appealed, it resonated with different generations.

It was like shining a light on them to say, sometimes we just have to step back.

The motivation is really from love, it's from care.

And what I really love is sometimes people walk up to me in the streets and say, about my age and say, 'I didn't really get your movie because you know, it gets a little crazy for me.'

- Yeah, I was confused too.

- Yeah, but my estranged young daughter that I have not spoken to for- - In the movie.

- No. - No, in real life?

- Came to the mother and said, 'I've watched this movie and I think I understand what you are trying to do for me.'

So it's healed certain relationships, it's opened up conversations, and I think that's what we need to do is have conversations.

'Cause the last few years have been so difficult on so many levels. Right?

With the pandemic, with things, with tragedies, and things like that.

It was nice to have a movie where it's like.

- Embrace it. - Yeah.

- How does some of this play into or play off your own experience?

You also are an immigrant, you know, from Malaysia.

- That's right. - But nonetheless you left in order to have a better life.

You came from a very, I guess upper middle class family, your father was a lawyer.

Does any part of your experience resonate with the film character?

- It resonated tremendously.

I think what it resonated with was the relationship.

You know, like with the older generation, understanding.

I have, unfortunately, too many conversations, luckily not from my parents, where my father was very forward thinking, never told any of us that, you know, daughters were next behind the son.

So, in that way he empowered me to believe that if you believe you can do it, you should go for it.

And that was how it always has been with myself, my career in that way.

So, I felt it was very important to shine the light of someone who didn't have that kind of privilege, who didn't have that kind of support. Like Evelyn Wang.

Her father- - That's you in the film.

- That's me in the film.

Literally just said to you, 'You're a complete failure.'

Right? 'I tell you not to go off with this man, look where you end up.

In a failing laundromat, bad business, with a daughter that looks like a mess.'

But I think at the end of the day, it was like, I remember, I think at that time when my dad said to me, 'I wish you enough,' I didn't quite get it.

But I think with this movie what resonated was, she told her daughter, 'It doesn't matter what you are, or how you think you're not living up to my expectations, you are enough.'

- You and just about everybody to do with this film have been nominated in all your categories.

I was just staggered to read that actually Jackie Chan might have been chosen for the lead role that it might have gone to a man and somebody much older than you, obviously.

- It was written for a man.

When the Daniels set out to do this.

You know, I think whenever filmmakers tell the story, they also have to be mindful, it is show business.

I have to write something that somebody will make it into a film.

And so they wrote it like that way with Jackie and me as the wife.

So, it was completely, the role was reversed.

- Yeah. - And I remember Jackie text me and say, 'Congratulations.

You realize that your boys came to see me first.'

And I'm like, 'Thank you, bro.'

- I mean, seriously. - He did me a huge favor.

- Yeah. [Michelle chuckles] - Did he turn it down or did the Daniels decide that it should- - No, no, I think it was mutual.

Because you know, Jackie is very, very busy and he's got so many things going on.

And I think the Daniels also stepped back and said, then we are doing something that's already been done before.

We should do something differently.

And they both have very strong women in their lives.

Whether it is their mothers or the wife and their partners.

So, they are very inspired.

And they're not afraid of strong women.

I think that is the most beautiful thing about these boys.

It's like they celebrate strong women.

- And you are an exceptionally strong woman.

Not just on screen, but it's manifested on screen, because I did not know that you do your own stunts and you have done for a long, long time.

So, this is a film with Jackie Chan back in your pre-Hollywood days, I guess, in the Hong Kong film days.

And I just wanna play a clip from this.

- Oh boy.

[motorcycle engines revs] [Michelle grunts] - Seriously, I mean, I thought it had to be a body double, but it's you. - Yes.

- What were you thinking?

- Not thinking straight, obviously. [chuckles] No, those were the days.

I mean, in Hong Kong, Jackie, Jet Li, all these great action actors, they did their own stunts.

And I remember saying, I would like to be part of that because I don't want to be a damsel in distress.

I believe that we should be allowed to protect ourselves, protect our families.

And sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

But these guys did not get it handed on a silver platter.

They worked their and they got hurt, they got injured and they belonged in that caliber of great heroes.

So, to join that club, I worked very, very hard with them.

But I also was very blessed because the stunt people, the stunt team, they protected me.

They were fascinated that a silly little girl wanted to do something as crazy as that.

- And you got hurt? - I got hurt, yes.

You know, there was sometimes almost no way out of it.

But in a certain sense, like in 'Super Cop,' I could have broken my neck.

I was very, very lucky 'cause I rolled off the van onto Jackie's car and the glass did not shatter as it should and there was nothing to hold me.

And I started sliding off the car. And I did.

And if I had slid down the wrong way, I would've landed on my head or my neck.

And I remember 'cause Stanley Tong, the director, he worked with me from when he was a stuntman.

And so, when he graduated to being the director and he said, 'One day when I have a good film, please promise that you will be in it.'

And I said, 'Yes.'

And this was the movie.

So, we trained together.

He understands my capabilities.

And I remember sitting there and Jackie, poor Jackie, he was like running out of his car going like, 'Okay, that's it, that's it. No more, no more.

This is crazy.'

And I was going through your head going, 'Why did it go wrong? How did I not do it right?'

Because a lot of the times we don't rehearse, we shoot the rehearsal because you're gonna do it anyway.

Right? - You might as well.

- You might as well do it.

- And then in your breakout role, I think you would agree, right?

Your breakout film was, I always get it wrong, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'

I always wanna say hidden tiger, but anyway, phenomenal, phenomenal film. - Ang Lee.

- I wanna play a clip because here you are again expressing yourself in this incredibly physical way.

A little reminiscent to that clip that we did from the latest film.

[women grunt] [swords clang] [women grunt] [swords clang] [women grunt] [swords clang] I mean, you've had no formal training like that, no martial arts training.

That is a, you have to be seriously precise there, otherwise you're gonna get something wrong.

And many say it's one of the best fight scenes ever filmed.

- Yeah, it was, it really was.

But you know, I did that after having ACL surgery, knee surgery, and it was [Michelle laughs] the first action sequence where I was running on the rooftop, coming down and having that big very, I think one of the most interesting fight sequence that I've done on screen.

And on the last night of the shot, and it was just an overhead shot where I was literally doing the kicks and jumps, by myself, and the masked double was doing it by himself and we were not supposed to touch.

And somehow when I landed it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and whacked me on my leg and I just fell. - Yeah.

- And I looked up at him and go like, 'Why did you kick me?'

And I felt so bad.

I'm like, 'Sorry, sorry you didn't kick me.'

Nobody kicked anyone.

So, Master Yuen Woo-ping, I mean, the director is Ang Lee, but Master Yuen Woo-ping is the stunt coordinator.

He was so frustrated.

He was like, 'Nothing should have happened.

You know, you two, this is easy, peasy piece of cake for the two of you.'

So he went back and went frame for frame to try and understand.

And he saw that as he was doing his side split jump, I was doing my front jump.

On landing, I just brushed on his, and it just, - So, it's literally millimeters or centimeters of precision.

- Yes. - It's really incredible.

I read that you were not allowed to do your own stunts in the Bond movie you played with Pierce Brosnan. Right?

Do you think that may be because you would've been better at your own stunts?

- To be fair, you know, the insurance is so, and they have to be so strict because it's not just about you, it's about the whole production.

And these productions are big.

I mean in Hong Kong our productions are much more, you know, much tinier and we can make adjustments.

Like Ang he could have replaced me 'cause I had only done this action sequence at the beginning, then I had to go away for surgery and come back later and he rearranged his whole schedule so that I, fortunately there were only two major fight sequences.

The one that you just saw, right at the end.

So in the interim of filming, I literally had this brace and I was trying.

And Ang would be like, 'You have to walk without a limp, Michelle.'

I was like, 'I'm trying, I'm trying.'

But with the Bond movie, there was no way any risk would be taken.

But what they did do was they brought my entire team from Hong Kong.

So, when we had the fight sequence you know, it was all with my own team and I was very grateful for that.

That they had a chance.

- Well, I didn't expect this interview to be so much about action because you are an action hero and it is rare to have a woman action hero like you.

Especially as you say, you know, we're at a certain age and stage of our life.

Let's get back to this film, 'Everything.'

It's about also visibility, right?

It's about bringing a whole culture.

- Yes. - Into prime space for visibility and acceptance.

- Yes, it is.

You know in the last few years we have been talking about diversity, inclusivity, representation, but you know, you get to a point where it's like, it's not lip service.

When we do it, you have to do it right.

You have to tell the story where it's authentic, where you really represent the culture and you go in depth into how you tell the story and what you embrace.

And I think times have really changed where it's not just about not only the audience, but the studio heads, the producers are championing the storytellers, writers, directors who come from a different ethnicity, you know, who have understanding of a different culture.

And if you look at globally, if you look at America, even Europe, we're all so multiracial.

And you know, when I first went to Hollywood, I must say the first thing when I arrived and to be suddenly told, 'Oh you're a minority.'

That word almost didn't... - What does it mean? - Right.

- Who are they talking to? - Yeah, exactly.

How did I become a minority?

It just didn't quite make sense.

But it's taken us a long time to, you know, like 'Crazy Rich Asians' was probably the first time.

- Phenomenal. - It lit the fire, to say, we have stories to tell that you will be interested and you will be fascinated with because you know, they could be your neighbors, they could be people that you go to school with, or work with, and things like that.

And it's so wonderful and it's so generous by nature when people embrace each other in this way and hear the stories of how it should be told.

- Well, you are telling them how they should be told and we wish you all the best.

It's an amazing role and you're a great actress.

Thank you so much. - Oh, thank you.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

- And it seems Michelle Yeoh will be everywhere for the foreseeable future as she's also filming the new 'Wicked' movie.

And now to another story of persistence and determination.

Coming from one of the most isolated countries in the world, North Korea, where for generations people have lived under the thumb of the ruthless Kim dynasty.

Jihyun Park was a teacher in her 20s when she decided to defect from the Hermit Kingdom after watching family members die of starvation.

Her escape became an epic story of rape, slavery, and imprisonment.

When Park finally found refuge here in Britain, she met South Korean translator Seh-Lynn Chai.

Despite initial reservations, fueled by prejudices, these neighbors had learned about each other, they came together to document Jihyun's astonishing story in a book called 'The Hard Road Out,' which they spoke about with my colleague Sara Sidner.

- [Sara] Jihyun Park and Seh-Lynn Chai, thank you so much for joining the program.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

- We're delighted to be here.

- Let me start with you Jihyun.

You were born in 1968 and that is at a time in North Korea when Kim Il-sung was the ruler.

Can you describe what you experienced there as a child and then as you got older?

Can you describe what it was like every day as a regular citizen living in North Korea then?

- Every day, life is kind of a timetable.

In the morning, it's 5:00 a.m., we wake up, all citizens the same time.

And the mothers go outside cleaning in road areas or apartments.

And then, after 7:00 a.m., the fathers started to work and the children go to school.

And in school, society, apartment, everywhere we're teaching about the Kim family educations and also it's the Workers' Party rules.

So, life is modern slavery life.

And we don't know what being human means.

And if we don't know freedom times.

We never heard about this word when I lived in North Korea.

- I read that, you know, there were things like children would be taken to places to see executions.

What were some of the things that you saw or that you experienced that is so abnormal for a child's life?

- This is traumatic issues and I still memorize that when I saw this execution.

So, in North Korea, usually there's public executions.

And then in the schools students and the citizens all over just sit down in front there.

So, this is kind of another, it's a punishment of the citizens.

So, I was scared, but I couldn't say about my emotions to my parents or my friends because I was really afraid if I said something, wrong word, it could be my whole family sent to a political prison camp.

- I wanna talk to you about having to live through the 1990s famine.

It began at that time the state called this the March of Suffering.

And the deaths estimation varies because obviously, we don't know what the numbers really are 'cause getting information like this out of North Korea is very difficult, but it's anywhere between 240,000 people and 3.5 million people died during that famine.

You were, I think, a teacher at that time.

And I wanna read to you what you tell of that experience and walking down the street and seeing one of your pupils.

You say in your book, 'Eyes wide in despair, I covered my mouth with both hands and held my breath: it was my pupil Lee Seung-chul.

The little boy who wanted to care for the children in the streets.

The boy who would never become a doctor because his life had come to an end at the age of 13 as he huddled against a wall.

The little barefoot boy who still haunts me to this day.'

Can you tell me about the haunting that you, do you still experience that thinking about what happened during the famine?

- Yes, yes.

That is still my vivid memories and still the trauma.

So, know that the North Korea government teaching to us: North Korea has nothing to envy and the socialism countries better than all of the capitalism countries.

And they mentioned that North Korea is top priority country in the world.

So, you know that in the 1990s, North Korea government stopped our food, but the government told us socialism country nobody died of starvation, they died of illness.

So, know that I saw many dead bodies in the street, especially my uncle and my student.

But we didn't say that they died of starvation because it's a socialism country and never allow this word.

- You weren't allowed to tell the truth and I'm so sorry to hear that you had to witness your own uncle's death as well as this student.

Seh-Lynn, can you tell me how you met?

- Well, we met completely by accident.

And it was back in 2014.

Amnesty International wanted to shoot a documentary on Jihyun's life and I was asked to help with the interview I translated English into Korean and vice versa.

So, I could see the horrors on your face, Sara, while listening to Jihyun.

You can imagine that my state of mind when I was listening to her all day telling me about her stories in North Korea.

On one hand, I was completely shocked by what I was hearing, the horrors about North Korea.

But on the other hand, I had great amount of empathy for this women sitting in front of me, somebody of my age.

And I was, you know, my head was saying something, my heart was saying something else.

I was clearly in a very confused state of mind.

And I'm bringing this up because the narrative of this book, 'The Hard Road Out,' of course, the content is about a North Korean refugee, but it is also about the trauma that South Koreans and North Koreans live today as ordinary citizens.

You know, we never really talk about ordinary citizens, we only talk about the regime and the leaders.

So, when you think about, you know, 70 years of division and the trauma that goes with that history, the fact that we're able to sit in front of each other, talk, discuss, and manage to get out of that brainwashing mode to be able to talk on a more neutral ground as if we had to get out of our sort of emotional stage to be able to see each other face-to-face and realize that maybe we were wrong about each other's perception.

And only then we managed to have a truthful discussion, and that's how we wrote the book.

- It really stood out to me that you had to unpack your own fear of her because of what you learned from your education about how North Koreans are.

While she is also thinking, she's not sure you know, what you are all about because there's hatred that has been taught there.

And you say this, 'She looks 'normal' upon meeting her, not 'evil', but I am terrified.

What if she calls me a capitalist pig?

Or worse, what if I am the one who says something terrible?

My years of being raised to distrust North Koreans have left me with ingrained beliefs that I haven't ever really questioned.'

How did you undo some of that?

Was it literally just the conversation, seeing that she's another human being just like you who has suffered so greatly and you also have the capacity to love and suffer at the same time?

- It was not like that at all.

It took a long time for me to process all this information because how do you all of a sudden out of the blue change your mind about preconceptions that you've had your entire life?

It took us real confrontation, but soft confrontation to realize that what I had believed was wrong and what she had believed was wrong.

For example, Jihyun was, she was taught that the Korean War was a result of South Korea attacking North Korea.

Well, we talked about it and we said, 'Okay, now do you agree that that was wrong information that you had?'

And she said, 'Yes, I realize that.'

And then same on my side.

You know, I was always convinced that South Korea was a richer country than North Korea for the whole history.

Well, no, in the '70s North Korea was more prosperous and richer than South Korea.

A fact that I didn't know.

- You decided to leave, which takes an incredible amount of courage considering what could happen to you and your family if you do so.

Can you describe what happened once you left and were able to get into China?

- Yeah, my father's last wish was save my younger brother.

So, that is why I decided to leave North Korea.

But once in China I was human trafficked and sold to a Chinese man.

Because I never talked about my life was the same as slavery in China.

And they separated my younger brother.

But six years after I was sent back to North Korea.

The reasons that the Chinese government sent us back because they never accepted us as refugees.

- I mean, my God, I'm wondering what you thought because North Korea, you know, has always had things to say about other countries, and that North Korea will tell its citizens, brainwash its citizens that it's the best place.

And here you are being trafficked in China.

Did you start thinking that the North Korean regime was correct?

- No, it's the first time when I arrived in China a Chinese person gave me white rice and eggs and meat.

So, first time I was surprised because in North Korea when we eat white rice and eggs, it's only Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's birthday.

But in China, it's every day that people eat nice meals.

But that time I didn't change my mind.

And then after that, many Chinese people told us that Kim Il-sung, his story was fake and he never fight in the Japanese era.

But I was brainwashed on Kim Il-sung, everything.

But after, yes, after, a little bit changed.

The North Korean government has said something totally different to us and fake histories telling to us.

- So you tell me that you sort of broke free of the ideas that had been pumped into your mind, and all North Korean's mind by the government teaching.

You leave the country, you get to China, but then you are trafficked and then you are picked up and sent back to detention in North Korea and forced to leave, at that time, your son behind.

Where did you find the courage and how did you possibly escape North Korea again and go back?

- Yeah, the first when I arrived in China, separated my younger brother and my life was slavery.

So, first time I thought that I wanna give up my life.

But after I found that I was pregnant and then I changed my mind because this child is my last family and could give me more opportunity and happiness.

So, my strength was only my son, you know.

When I stayed in North Korea prison I only talked about my son.

One day I want to be reunited with my son and then be responsible for his future.

That is what I talked about in prison.

And I survived in prison and then I escaped again from North Korea.

- It is such an incredibly painful trip back and forth, a journey, but you had that mother's courage, that strength and love for your son.

Jihyun, I want to know what you have learned after you've gone through so much about the West and whether or not you feel that it has offered you a better life?

- You know that now I live in the UK, so my life is heaven.

And being a free person is the happiest life.

So, I usually say that I came from hell and now I stay in heaven.

But many Western people, they don't know about North Korea's totalitarian regime and many Western people don't understand what socialism and communism means.

So, that sometimes makes me very angry, but I am a survivor and a witness.

So, that is my duty now.

I wanna tell them what freedom is exactly and what is socialism and communist countries.

So, that is nowadays my work and my duty.

- Thank you both so much for coming on the show and I look forward to reading this book.

- Thank you very much. - Thank you.

- An incredible and important story.

And now turning to the theater and re-imagining an old classic.

Emmy award winner and Tony nominee Eddie Izzard is a standup comedian and actor who's performed across the world in four different languages.

Now, she has developed Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' into a solo show, playing all 19 characters in an epic performance.

Here she is with Hari Sreenivasan discussing her off-Broadway show and future projects.

- Christiane, thanks.

Eddie Izzard, thanks so much for joining us.

First off, I was fortunate enough to see your play and why this play, why now?

- Why now? There is no particular thing on the now except for I am of a certain, I'm 32, and at this very ripe old age of 32 I am... Well, it hit me about four or five years ago, but I've never read a work of literature.

I am severely atypically dyslexic.

I got tested, so I've got half the dyslexic traits and half I haven't.

I seem to be like a high functioning dyslexic.

Spelling is all over the place.

Cat with a K, ceiling with an S, all that kinda stuff.

Writing is not very good.

Thank God, you know, typing came in and stuff.

But anyway, so reading is very slow, particularly, reading is very slow.

So great work of literature they tend to be larger books than smaller ones, I'm not gonna read that.

I'll watch the film, but I've never read one.

So I had this kind of brilliant, I think it's a brilliant idea, which I, you may not know this, but audio books are on the rise.

So, I said to my agents, 'Would any company out there in in the UK like to commission me to read an audio book?'

So, this is the way I was gonna get paid to read a book.

But you have to do it.

It's three months in the studio.

It's 20 hours of book is 'Great Expectations.'

And to answer this, why Dickens as the first one?

Because I'm exactly 150 years younger than Dickens.

He's 7th of February, 1812, I'm 7th of February, 1962.

And exactly what does that mean? That means nothing.

But I decided to run with it, go with Dickens.

I did the audio book and then I realized, using Richard Pryor's technique, which I use in my standup, Richard Pryor developed this, well he had this character, and he didn't do it all the time, but sometimes he would have guys go, 'Hey, what are you doing over there?'

'I didn't know-' 'Hey, just back up a bit.'

'Well, I will back up a bit.'

And he would just turn about a quarter turn and play these two characters together.

And I thought, 'Ah, I'll do that in my standup.'

'Cause I used to be a sketch comedian before I was a standup.

So, it's all through my standup, multiple characters talking.

And I realized I could take that technique and put it into drama as well.

And that's how we get to the stage.

[indistinct] had a frank and easy way about him that I found rather taking.

My father tells me that you are acquainted with Miss Havisham.

She sent for me once.

- [Hari] When you talk about this quarter turn, you make it sound relatively simple, but on stage, how many characters are you cycling through in these, what, two hours, 15, 20?

- It's 19, it's 19.

Some of them might say are two characters.

You know, when I'm right belly, ill at the end, I wake up, there's two people in the room who have one line each.

So, I'm saying that's one character.

But it's 19, 20, something around that.

- For people who might not remember what this story was about, summarize if you can, what you were trying to convey on stage. What is this story?

- 'Great Expectations,' I think it's almost like it might have come from a dream.

It's kind of what Dickens would have wanted to happen to him when he was a kid.

The idea of someone just turning up and saying, 'You have an inheritance, you're gonna come into money.'

And suddenly he becomes a gentleman.

So, it's the story of Pip, [indistinct] Pip, and he helps out this very tough, rough, threatening character in the very first scenes.

Who's a murderer or a thief or some sort of villain.

And he's escaped from prison.

And he's forced to help him by this guy scaring him.

He helps him and then that disappears.

The person's recaptured.

He just brings him pork pies, food and stuff and it all goes bad for that criminal.

And then life goes on.

He has to go to this strange woman's house, Miss Havisham, and she has a beautiful adopted daughter called Estella.

And it's this whole relationship with Estella and money and gentility and he wants to rise.

And as our play goes on, he realizes he's got it all back to front.

And then he hates his story.

It's him becoming a wiser person, rites of passage, learning to be a more mature person.

'Cause before he's just after money and advancement and having relationships with the most beautiful women and not being a blacksmith's apprentice and an orphan as he is.

His life is so tough at the beginning with only one person who shows him any love.

And he dismisses this person who's shown love and wants to go off to this flashy life.

So, he becomes a wiser person and it's a bittersweet ending.

And it's a great classic.

'Great Expectations' is a great classic from Dickens.

- So, I've gotta ask, I mean, two hours on stage is a physical feat in and of itself.

How tiring is it?

And I don't think most people in the audience know about your marathon-level energy.

So, what's harder doing something like this where you're mentally as tuned in and focused for two hours along with what you're doing on stage, or running marathons, which you are actually pretty famous for?

- Well, I have, I've run 130 marathons, and a lot of people have run multiple, but I do multiple marathons as you, which is... But it's 43 in 51 days in the UK and I did 27 in 27 days in South Africa.

So stuff like that it's for raising money and it's a good thing.

But each marathon, it has this, physically, massively draining.

A certain amount of mental draining.

It's the tenacity in your head that's what you have to keep going.

But on stage, physically it's not that much, but mentally it's huge.

I don't tend to notice it until I get ill.

If I ever get ill, get a cold, I find as you're trying to get better each day to help your performance and get through this cold, it just drains all this energy out of yourself.

And I haven't got Ill this whole run here in New York, so that's great.

But the metal energy is intense.

And you have to do this very odd thing, which you would've noticed, which is, if you're playing Pip and he's getting really rather overwrought by a situation of trying to get through to Estella, Estella is not there emotionally.

She's just sort of blank.

So you have to flip to her, flip to him, flip to Miss Havisham, flip to Pip, and jumping these emotions is an odd thing.

You don't normally do that if you're acting a single role because you will probably go through an arc in a scene with one character.

You would not have flipped to the other character.

So yes, a lot of energy.

I don't how you'd measure it, but I just do know that if you ever get ill, suddenly I'm gonna, 'Wow, there's so much energy going into this.'

So, I have to be match fit every time.

And I have to look forward to gigs.

Because you know know, I do gigs in German and French and Spanish as well, my stand up.

[Eddie speaks foreign languages] So if you do those things and then you go back to doing something in English, it makes English like, 'Ah, that's easy.'

So, I've developed my own ninja training for acting and performing, which is make it as hard as you possibly can and then something else you'll do will be easier.

Anything in English has got to be easier than doing it in German.

- I also wonder about how jokes translate.

I mean, you can't literally translate something because it just might, right?

- No, they translate perfectly, but references do not translate.

- Right. - So, if you talk about Hershey bars, if you're talking about Twinkies, we don't have them, I don't think they exist.

I think they're probably in Canada, but around the world for some reason.

- Right, right. - Kit Kats, yes Kit Kat, I hit him with a Kit Kat, okay.

So, hit him with a Twinkie, no.

It doesn't work.

So, talk about human sacrifice, you go to France, [Eddie speaks French] Why did we do human, crazy.

If you think about human sacrifices, back in the day they used to go, 'The weather is bad, the crops have failed, the gods obviously hate us.

So, we're gonna kill Steve.

And then that'll be a lot better. We all agree?'

And Steve's going, 'Whoa, whoa, wait.'

'Well, Steve, it was a lottery and I didn't like you anyway.'

So, in fact, it's references that muck you up and the rest of it, humor is human, humor is human.

And you know, America's famous for immigrants coming in.

All around the world immigrants have come in and you know you can sit in a taxi with someone and you know they have an accent, they can make you laugh.

And you go, 'Well, how did that translate?'

And we don't analyze that.

We just go, 'Oh well, you're in America, you're making someone laugh and therefore, you've got American sense of humor.'

There is no American sense of humor, there's no British sense of humor, there's no Chinese sense of humor, there's only a mainstream sense of humor in every country.

- You very casually referenced how many marathons you do and how many you have done in a day, et cetera, but what is it in your mind that allows your body to complete such a task or frankly even start to take on these other mental challenges like doing comedy in different languages, like doing, you know, one-person interpretation of Dickens on stage?

I mean, what's the sort of the, how does the clock tick?

- I seem to have the determination gene.

I think it might be genetic.

I've had it since I was very young.

So, one could say, 'Oh, I'm determined and please give me a big thumbs up and a pat on the back for that.'

But I think it might be baked into me.

- Hmm.

- My mom died when I was six.

I think I started performing and acting because I saw the love of an audience going to someone who was doing very good at school, I thought, 'I need that kind of love injection.'

And so that's where it came from.

Which isn't it a bad thing to do, I don't think, because it's a conditional love from an audience.

If you do bad work on the stage, they will not get up.

They'll just go, 'Oh, that wasn't very good,' and walk out.

So, that's where it all started.

I think if you have a certain look, if you're a good looking young man or young woman, you will get into a green lighting position, say in films.

And so, hey, you're doing well.

You're a good actor and you think, 'Okay, we'll let you greenlight that.'

If you're not in that kind of standard character, and if you're trans as well like I am, then you better do some good work.

You know, you better do some work that bounces out of the thing.

So, there's a human political element to my running marathons.

That was me saying, you know, let's reach out.

Let's see if we can do good.

And then, my 27 marathons in 27 days, that was a salute to Nelson Mandela.

What a great person he was. What he did.

He was 27 years in prison, surely I could give him 27 days.

And that might resonate with someone else and they'll say, 'Oh, good.'

And it's also healthy.

And I look to do one thing that does multiple things.

The language is just because I don't agree that Brexit is a good idea.

I think they're pulling back and going back into smaller and smaller tribal groups.

That's humanity walking backwards.

So, I go out and I look to make connections.

You know, I wanna go into politics.

You probably know I've already stood to to be a candidate as a Labour member.

I didn't get in that time, but I'll keep going back until I get in.

But I look to make connections in this world rather than break connections.

I think everyone in the world has a right to have a fair chance in life.

And I came out as trans 38 years ago now and that was so hard coming out back in 1985 that it's made me very tough to take on sort of, kind of impossible things 'cause I had no one to talk to back then.

I just thought, 'I'm doing this, I'm coming out and I will take whatever's given to me in the streets.'

The abuse that's in the streets now, less abuse in the streets these days, more abuse online.

But I just, you know, I just push through that and say, 'I exist, I'm here.

This is my own body. I'm being my authentic self.

So, just keep moving forward.'

But the tenacity that I got, or the training I got from coming out back in 1985 has stood me in good stead to do multiple languages, multiple marathons, and coming up with unusual ideas.

My dad always said, well, you know, he once said to me, he said, 'You've always had crazy ideas, the difference is now some of them have worked.'

And that's kind of true. Not all my crazy ideas work, but some of them were kind of beautiful.

- Given that you have been trans for so long, what do you notice, how do you notice the changes, I guess, between when you came out and the kind of abuses you suffered then to now, when you were running for Parliament?

There were still pretty horrible things being said about you that were incredibly personal.

It was not at all about your policy, it wasn't about your plan for, you know, your campaign or your candidacy.

- I didn't read them, what they said.

But people would say, 'God, it was horrible though, wasn't it?'

I didn't read it.

So, yeah, you know, I've been truthful and honest and open.

I don't have all the answers.

You know, trans people have existed since the dawn of time, as we know LGBTQ people have existed from the dawn of time and they've been pushed back on.

I just exist, but I'm not going into politics to be a trans candidate.

I'm just, you know, being a human being who is a candidate, who happens to be trans.

Some of the people who are candidates they play piano.

Some of them, you know, I'm just trying to... You know like Barack Obama, he was an African American man, but he wasn't going to be a president of America and just deal with African American issues.

He was going to be someone who was a president for the country. And that's my attitude to it going forward.

Just want to do things that will help people in the country, help people with our continent, in the world.

Everyone has a right to have a fair chance in life and I wanna fight for that.

So when I came out, there were no arguments about being trans 'cause we weren't even people, we weren't even considered as citizens.

I felt that when I came out that we were real outliers and part of my job was just to exist, carry on doing, trying to, I had no career at this point.

Try and get my career and just say, I happen to be trans, but this is the comedy I'm doing.

I happen to be trans, this is drama I'm doing.

This is the political activism I'm doing.

My sexuality has got really nothing to do with this.

It just, I'm being honest about it.

- There's a line that you have on stage, I think Pip says, 'I cried myself to sleep thinking that my great expectations might have made good on someone else.'

And I wonder if that line resonates with you, Eddie Izzard, considering the conversation we're having?

- That's what I always hoped.

I had this idea that, it's kind of, friend of mine just said to me, 'It's kind of like a peloton in the Tour de France,' the very tough cycle races and all this, right?

They have these things called the peloton.

It's now a bicycle as well.

But if you're at the head of the peloton you're taking all the wind pressure, but people can slip stream behind.

So I thought, well, I'll go and take whatever pressure's coming in and if anyone says, 'Oh, I'm a bit like that person, that's kind of roughly where I'm going,' then hopefully I can try to be a positive example to myself.

I was trying to be my own role... This is my kind of technique.

I will do something positive.

So I go, 'Oh, that's great you run marathons for charity.'

That's nice, you're trying to help out and you're trying to be hopefully a decent person as well.

And you just try and do that and then people will like say, 'Well, I'm kind of like that.'

And then if people are saying, 'Eddie Izzard's okay.'

Then that's kind of where I'm going.

So, I did want that to happen.

But there are other people who have been actually straight up activists and I haven't done this and I kind of apologize for not doing that.

But I decided to do it this way where I would be like an unconscious activist or subconscious activist, where my activism was standing there going forwards and trying to overachieve in my career. That's it.

- You mentioned earlier that you got this bug to perform after your mom passed when you were at such a young age.

Do you think she'd be proud of you now?

- I hope so.

When I came out, my dad was very, very decent man.

He passed away now, unfortunately.

But when I came out, I was ready for never talking to my dad again.

I knew that that was the deal that you had [indistinct]. I was ready for, I told him, boom.

And he sent me back a letter saying, 'I'm okay with this and if your mom was alive, she'd be okay with it too,' which is a pretty great thing for your dad to write.

But as regards to performing, she was an amateur performer.

She loved to sing comedy songs, kind of light comedy songs.

She sang in choirs, she sang at the Albert Hall as part of a choir.

So, we know that she did that.

My dad talked about that. I never saw it.

But dad was the real comedian.

So, comedy comes from him.

The sense of crazy, kind of surreal humor comes from him.

But the performance comes from mum.

And my brother, my older brother Mark, he did the adaptation of the book.

Now the book is over 20 hours of book and he cut it down to two hours.

You have to cut out 90%. But then hopefully you still get the essence of the show.

And I think, I said this on, I think it was opening night, but I think mum would be very happy that both their kids were doing this and particularly in New York.

So, if something's happening in New York, and New Yorkers are going, 'Yes, come and see the show,' then you go, 'Well, this is pretty good.'

I think mom would've been very happy.

- Eddie Izzard, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- That's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up on the show every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/amanpour.

Thanks for watching and join us again next time.

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