Sumie Takashima

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: Gina is unwell. The Staircase series and The Staircase dramatization, the impact of having to hide one's sexuality,
Let Me Run This By You: Boz booked a national commercial! Jodi Sonenberg, Mickie Paskal, Tread documentary.
Interview: We talk to Sumie Takashima about the salvation that some people find in drama, The Hangar Theatre, Tisch, moms, hoarding, Chicago.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
2 (10s):
And I'm Gina Pulice

3 (12s):
The theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand

2 (15s):
It.

4 (16s):
Years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all.

3 (21s):
We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

1 (34s):
You know, what's going on? Oh, and you're in a new weight. You have a new thing in behind you.

2 (40s):
Yes, I am in my husband's office right now

1 (44s):
At his office away from the house

2 (47s):
I am.

1 (50s):
Oh my God. I bet. Do you want to tell everybody what's happening?

2 (55s):
Everybody's COVID in my house. Do you have

1 (57s):
COVID

2 (58s):
Well, I'm not testing positive for it, but I have symptoms. And when I tell you I didn't sleep one Wayne class night. I mean, like, I didn't, I, this is a level of tired that I haven't felt since I had a newborn baby. I, I, I think I took, I think I took one daytime cough medicine last night. Yeah. Well it said day or night.

1 (1m 24s):
There's usually a different,

2 (1m 26s):
Nobody had said day or night, like, but

1 (1m 31s):
Oh wait, that doesn't make any sense. Okay. Okay. Cause usually when they do that beans, they have

2 (1m 37s):
To keep you a little away.

1 (1m 38s):
They have two sets of pills. Is it, was it syrup or pills?

2 (1m 42s):
It was syrup. It was like a deli, right? Yeah.

1 (1m 47s):
No. They had some kind of crack cocaine in there.

2 (1m 50s):
Real surprise.

1 (1m 51s):
Was it that your family was keeping you up? It was that,

2 (1m 55s):
No, it was that. And I didn't cough, which was great, but I didn't sleep like not at all, but that's okay. Because I watched the staircase, the news,

1 (2m 8s):
Toni Collette. Yes. Yes. I think it's great. And it's way more interesting than the actual story. So I don't know, but like I've seen 40 million documentaries on the staircase and this one is creepier and more compelling than any of the dikes. I mean, she's just so good. And like,

2 (2m 32s):
She is so

1 (2m 33s):
Good. And

2 (2m 35s):
Tell me what you think about the whole story itself. Like where do you fall on the line of whether he was guilty or not?

1 (2m 42s):
You know, here's the thing before I saw this version, I for sure. Thought he was guilty for sure. And now I don't know. I don't know. I am. I am completely. I w I don't know. What do you think?

2 (2m 59s):
Well, it's, it's, it's the most, I don't have a word for it, but it's the most of this thing I'm about to describe it's the most. Oh, I definitely think it was not him. Oh, I definitely think it was him. Oh, I definitely think it was not

1 (3m 15s):
Because

2 (3m 15s):
Every little twist and turn that comes up, it's like really? I think it is. I think the reason it is so vexing and perplexing is because it is a one in one Google Plex chance that the same person would be there for altar. I really don't think he killed her,

1 (3m 41s):
But it's like, yeah, the lady in Europe and all that shit, it's like, wait a minute. He's so fucking unlucky. Or he's like evil. And he just draws evil near him.

2 (3m 54s):
I got to say, I mean, not like I know, but I don't get evil vibes from him. I really don't. I think he's like a nice guy.

1 (4m 2s):
And if you watch interviews of the guy, like, you know, he had some weirdness, but here's the thing. You fucking interview my ass after something like, you're gonna be like, lock her up. She's fucking bonkers. So like, you know what I mean? Like if they interviewed me and after something bad happened, like some God forbid something happened to miles, right. And they're interviewing me and they listened. They go back and listen to our fucking podcast. They're going to be like,

2 (4m 30s):
Oh, this is great. This is exactly. I totally wanted to ask you that we're

1 (4m 34s):
Going to jail. We're going to jail.

2 (4m 37s):
If you, for whatever reason, committed a heinous crime today. And we were watching the docu-series about you. What would be the things that the audience would be going to see? She totally did it. Like, what would be these,

1 (4m 50s):
The, the, the, well, I've just seen, like how I evaded the law with my student loans. And I was like, I have a lawyer, how we talk about how, like, basically you should get away with basically anything you can get away with because we're an end-stage capitalism. They're like, oh, she did it the way I talked shit about like my family. They're probably like, oh yeah, like she was, she had a traumatized childhood. So she's like getting re oh my God. It just never

2 (5m 17s):
Snap. She

1 (5m 18s):
Snapped. She couldn't take it.

2 (5m 21s):
Well, here's what people would say about me. Well, she was never very friendly. She was really pretty cold. Actually had people in my town would be like, I knew it. I knew there was something about her that I just didn't like,

1 (5m 38s):
That's the kind of, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because you have this way of coming off like that, even though it's not, it is not, it is not, I don't see it like that now. But when you talk about it, I'm like, oh yeah, I could kind of see. Yeah. But not really. I don't know.

2 (5m 54s):
It's that old thing of, you know, every, I used to always have the experience that people would say to me when I first met you, I thought you were a real bitch, but now, you know, now

1 (6m 4s):
Got it all. But I think I met you when you were really young.

2 (6m 7s):
We were really young and, and it just takes me a while to, to warm up to people. But anyway, yeah. Check it out. People, if you haven't seen the staircase series, I mean, I watched the documentary too, but the series is,

1 (6m 21s):
It's much more compelling and it's also just like art. It's like the story itself, the documentary is kind of boring. You're like, okay. And then this guy in his Vietnam history. Right. And that weirdness

2 (6m 33s):
Purple heart

1 (6m 34s):
Like that, maybe that, yeah. That's when I was like, oh, he's, nobody's just kind of a weird ego. He is, he's got us low self-esteem. He picks wives that are like, well, the second one, especially the high powered in some way,

2 (6m 49s):
I think too, we underestimate, especially now the impact of having to hide your sexual identity, that it I'll just say people who haven't done terrible things and have had to hide their sexual identity, deserve a purple heart because the aggression and the, and the

1 (7m 12s):
Self-loathing and the frustration and the, and the, it must feel torturous. Just torture us

2 (7m 19s):
Heartbreaks. Whenever I think about like the person, who's just like thi...