Welcome back to 5AM StoryTalk’s podcast, a place to talk about stories in all their forms, the craft that goes into them, and the role that art plays in our lives. Today, I'm joined Amber Tamblyn – actress, writer-director, author, poet, Substacker, and activist. Let’s just sum her up this way: one bad-ass artist and human being.
The best way to enjoy this free conversation is to click on the podcast play button right now and just listen to an unabridged version of it in all its incredibly intimate detail. If you prefer to read these chats, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered; scroll down to the article below, which has been trimmed for length and edited for clarity.
Amber and I are going to cover a lot in this conversation such as:
Amber’s perspective on the self-doubt and anxiety that racks all artists
How her uniquely bohemian childhood shaped her into the artist — and person — she is today
Trying to creatively focus through the distractions posed by social media, endless political crises, and the general noise of life today
The complicated dissonance between the hope of her 2019’s non-fiction Era of Ignition Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution and the explosive culture war that has taken over the United States since Donald Trump’s re-election
The role of persistence and perseverance in allowing your art to become its most authentic self — including Amber’s feature directorial debut Paint It Black (2016) and her concept book of poetry Dark Sparkler (2015) — but also as we fight for social change
Nostalgia as both a form of solace and a way of mourning the loss of communal experiences
Her Substack Listening in the Dark with Amber Tamblyn, which you should absolutely subscribe to, like, right now
A bonus episode with Amber is available, too. In it, Amber and I discuss a critical scene from a seminal piece of art from her life – Ridley Scott’s fantasy film, Legend (1985).
Today I’m joined by Amber Tamblyn. I've been a huge fan of hers for a long time now, which you'll read about at the top of the conversation. That's because Amber is one of those artists who can seemingly do anything and do it fucking brilliantly, too.
You probably know her best as an actress. She starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Films and “Joan of Arcadia” and shown up in so many other film and TV series, including “House” and more recently, the canceled-too-soon “Y: The Last Man”. In fact, “Y” is how I was introduced to her. Eliza “Eli” Clark, the creator and showrunner of “Y”, thought we’d it off — and she wasn't wrong.
On top of her acting work, Amber is a writer-director; her debut film, Paint It Black, adapted with Ed Dougherty from the Janet Fitch novel was released in 2016. She's an author of non-fiction and fiction books, including 2019’s Era of Ignition Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution, which we're going to talk a bit about in the context of what's happening in 2025. She's also a poet with multiple books of poetry out there, including Dark Sparkler from 2015, which we'll get into a bit, too. And if all that wasn't enough, her essays and opinion pieces have a habit of appearing in some of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the United States, she writes the Listening in the Dark with Amber Tamblyn Substack, she was a co-founder of the Time's Up nonprofit in the wake of the Me Too movement, and she's a longtime political and social activist who has never shied away from using her name, reputation, and time to try to make this world a better place. You can read more about Amber at her website and her Substack.
If you're wondering why I wanted her to join me for one of my artists on artist conversations here, I couldn't pick just one. All of them? Probably all of them.
We're going to cover so many great, important subjects. But at the heart of this chat, I think is what it's like being an artist — and being an artist in the 21st century in particular. The self-doubt, the anxiety both conventional and political, the distractions posed by everything, the desperate need to create creative space to focus, and…well, you get it.
Spoiler: It's fucking hard.
In the bonus episode, Amber will be back to continue the conversation for 5AM StoryTalk’s paid subscribers. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, she and I are going to dive into a seminal piece of art from her life – Ridley Scott’s 1985 film Legend. In between laughing our asses, we’re going to discuss dancing with evil, forbidden sexuality, Tom Cruise, unicorns, story versus vibes, the film’s multiple cuts and their differences, and one of the scariest monsters ever put on screen. This is a wonderful opportunity to contemplate how and why films imprint themselves on us as children, but later, in retrospect, explain so much about the people we become.
Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let me introduce you to my new friend — Amber Tamblyn.
COLE HADDON: Thank you so much for being here today, Amber. I'm a fan, but I think I'm also incredibly intimidated by the breadth of your work. You're one of those artists that just does so many things that I think you kind of make other artists look like they don't have enough ambition in their life. [Laughs] But I'm really excited to be having this conversation with you.
AMBER TAMBLYN: Thank you, Cole, for having me. I also feel like I am an artist who looks at my own repertoire, and I have feelings about my own self and my work from the past. So, yeah, it's the artist's way, it's the real artist's way. Not the book. It's the real artist's way – self-loathing, self-inquisition, all of it.
CH: Yes, I think none of us ever escape it. I've learned it doesn't matter how successful you are, it doesn't matter how many awards are on your shelf, you seem to still regret it all.
AT: Oh, absolutely. Without question. That's the nature of what we are and what we do. That's the horrible truth of being an empath. Everyone who wants to be a writer, or a producer, or anyone who is a deeply feeling human artist, that's the other side of that coin.
CH: It is a strange thing. I’ve discussed this with others, that he role of the artist is to experiment out loud publicly, which involves so much risk. That's part of the joy of it, the beauty of it. But it also means those regrets are more pronounced than they are for other people. An accountant works out their job during that first year, but we spend 10, 20 years constantly evolving to maybe one day be a version of ourselves we don't hate.
AT: [Laughs] Boy, that is very true. I think it's so hard, and given the global climate, politically and otherwise, I think it's also extremely hard to lean in the parts of yourselves that artistically flourish – the parts of yourself that need to be deeply, imaginatively free – because we are so confined by political pain and by cultural pain and by everything that I think the world is going through. Things that feel both very much in our control and out of our control.
For instance, I think the collective conscience around climate change and the suffering and pain of the literal world is really hard to grapple with as a writer. As an artist, when you're trying to create an imaginary world, it's really hard to differentiate between those two things. And I think that sometimes lends itself to artists or writers. And then also sometimes it just freezes us and traps us in the moment of where we are. So, I think a lot of people I know are trapped in the moment right now and trying to – especially here, in the U.S. – I think people are really trying to figure out what their existential path is beyond the political engagement and the social engagement and everything else.
CH: So, I want to talk about boxes, labels, and such because you seem to have transitioned from a period of being an actress to having no labels. It’s almost like maybe the 21st century confronted you, shattered you a bit, but you threw off labels in reply. And so, I'm, curious if you were conscious of that happening, and maybe even what that has meant to you to be able to create not just as an actor, not just as an author or a poet. There are so many things that you do.
AT: Oh, I think it all starts with the foundation. I had a foundation in a very bohemian household in Southern California with a father who's a big Hollywood actor, Russ Tamblyn, who was in West Side Story and all these films in an era, the sort of golden age of the studio system of Hollywood – but who was also very much a part of a culture movement of the 1960s, and was living in Topanga Canyon with Neil Young and Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell. You know, I would call them dorks of that era because to me, they are – [laughs] – 'cause I grew up with them, so they were not cool.
And so, I grew up around that. My mom was a musician and a schoolteacher. They came out of this world of the arts and education and curiosity and the complexity that meets in the middle of all of that. My experience growing up as a kid was there was Hollywood, there was music, but the thing I remember the most, which is the most informative to me, was being around poets. And I would always describe myself as a poet first. I think most people – maybe not as much now – but most people know me as an actress. They know me from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or “House”, or Joan of Arcadia, or all these different things.
But that was not the beginning piece of my story. It really was being around poets. Those were people who came through my living room all the time as a kid. It was so essentially like, in a very quintessential way, a Bohemian household, in that I had extreme exposure to artists and artists' voices. I think in that way, I had this upbringing that was very much about one thing in the arts – about being a poet. But then also I happened to fall – because of probably my father – into his line of work. Acting. So that opened up a second door. Most people think that's the first door, but that was actually the second door for me.
For so many child actors, that ends up becoming the dominant force in your life. And it was very much for me, all the way up into my twenties. But writing was always a part of that. I mean, I had agents and managers who were constantly coming to my poetry reading at the Greenway Court Theater in L.A. or the Bowery Club in New York, who were just like, “Why can't you just go to the Chateau? Let me pull you out of a drug-induced coma at the Chateau. Why do we have to come to a poetry reading?” [Laughs] In those ways it was different, but it was just different by way of life. So, when you talk about having a life that transcended these definitions, I think that's extremely true and I am constantly trying to be proud of myself and to give love to myself for the fact that I came out on the other side of child acting, which is a really hard thing to do. It's really hard. Even though that wasn't necessarily the dominant force, it was the most public force for so many years of my life. But being a poet and poetry was – is – my center. My forever center.
CH: I don't know anything about being an actor or child actor, but I do know about Hollywood's ability to get into your head and tell you you're supposed to be this thing because you're only as valuable to them as what you can make them. That is your currency. And so, every time you want to be an artist on your terms, you're threatening that in way and they rebel.
AT: I think what's so horrible sometimes about the industry, too, is just that you can be truly the best artist, the best writer who has come up with the best thing, and as long as it financially fails and or otherwise fails, in their eyes you are nothing to them. And that's a reality, you know? So, it's not even actually about the work. Sometimes it's not even about the art. Sometimes it's not even about the craft. It's about the other things. And it is so centrally capitalistic that it harms all the other parts of it.
CH: This next question needs a proper set-up, so apologies for how long-winded I’m going to be. I read your book Era of Ignition a few months after it was released, then again recently to prepare for this conversation. It was a very rough revisit for me because we're talking 2019 here just before Biden's election. You defined an “era of ignition” as “an age when activism becomes direct action, when disagreement becomes dissension, when dissatisfaction becomes protests, when accusations become accountability, and when revolts become revolutions.” And you specifically cited the conversations we had started to have about identity, race, gender. At the time, I remember shouting with my inside voice, “Yes!” when I read that. But six years later, Trump's in the White House again, and things seem bleaker than ever. So, I'm curious, where do you think we are as a culture at the moment? Is there still a cultural revolution coming or are we all trapped in some kind of mutual suicide pact at this point? And most importantly, how are you surviving it all?
AT: I think it's a great question. I will start simply by saying we can't unknow what we know [now]. I think it would be wonderful for them, for the other side, to erase a lot of what's been done and to get rid of it – and they're certainly working very hard to move history backwards.
But it's interesting 'cause I had not read or thought about those words that you just said for years, and they have a different context now. Certainly, because so much of what we have been fighting for or have fought for has changed and will continue to change.
I think, ultimately, I'm not in the business of the piecemeal moments of just saying, “We went this far, we worked so hard, we had so much change, and now everything is being pushed back.” It is and it isn't, you know? When I directed and adapted the feature film based on the book Paint It Black by Janet Fitch, that was in an era in our business, in the entertainment business, in Hollywood where I was always told to manage my expectations.
AT (cont’d): Women did not really direct films – it was rare. Women were just not behind the camera in television – very rare. If you look now, we're in such a different dynamic with so many more women behind the camera. So many more people of color, so many marginalized voices, being able to tell stories. It’s not nearly enough or what I think it should be, but it's different place than when I wrote those words. Those words were happening at a time when no woman outside of Shirley Chisholm and Hillary Clinton had run for a major party ticket in the U.S. for the Democratic party. Now we've had many women. We've had Elizabeth Warren, we've had Kamala Harris. Things are changing. They are small, and that's part of, I think, the pain that we are experiencing – the pullback we are experiencing is because of some of that.
But that was just in 2016, ’17, ’18, those years. Era of Ignition was written around 2017, ’18, ’19, in those years. Here we are, we're five years past that and things have absolutely gone backwards. Roe v. Wade. There's so much more. But I do look at other parts of [our situation] and think we're winning in certain aspects.
It's a slow, hard push that really demands persistence and perseverance of a very particular kind. And while I hear those words that I wrote and feel saddened by some parts of them, because I feel like we could have gotten a lot further in some regards, I still think that a lot has changed since that book was written. So, it'll keep going forward. You can't unknow what we know about trans children and their reality in the world, and what a beautiful thing that is. To be accepted for who you are and to be, to become your authentic self at such a young age and not be pulled into the vortex of bullshit of adults. How lucky and how wonderful and how beautiful.
And so, we can't unknow what we know.
CH: You used the word persistence, which is one of the notes I wrote down about so much of your work as well. Part of what makes you intimidating as an artist is that you do seem to work on longer periods of time than most of us. You can spend six years writing a book of poetry, the effort you put into getting a film made, and even now when you're talking about this fight, the commitment to the arc of justice paying off in the long run…is that something your parents baked into you? Or that something that life taught you after breaking you at some point?
AT: No, I think that those are just parts of the fact of how long sometimes it takes to make something that is truly what you want it to be. What you have worked to make it, to be in its biggest, most authentic self. Dark Sparkler was the sort of break. I had published a couple poetry books before that, but Dark Sparkler really changed my life in many ways. It's a book about the lives and deaths of child star actresses, but it's also got a bunch of artwork by really complicated, complex male artists. David Lynch put a piece in there. Marilyn Manson has a piece in there. Marcel Dzama to my father. Just complex male artists. I was very curious to know what their artistic interpretation of my interpretations of the lives of these women would look like – just sort of like a meta rabbit hole. That book took seven years to be published, but it only really took maybe three, four years to write.
It went in and out of a lot of different stages just because a lot of publishers thought, “Is this an art book or is this a poetry book? We don't know what the fuck this is.” And so, in that regard, it took a while because. It really had to find the right home. So, I think some works of art for me are like that.
AT (cont’d): Paint it Black took a long time to adapt and get made again because, speaking to the former, what we were talking about, I had so many financiers and people who just really didn't understand an adaptation of a book about a young man who kills himself, in which that young man doesn't exist, but it's about the two women he left behind. It didn't make sense to a lot of people, and those financiers primarily – respectfully – were men. So, when they don't see themselves in the film and they don't see their pain, that can be a hard sell. So, that was hard. And again, at a time when it was harder, I think, for a young woman who people previously had an understanding of as an actress. They would look at it and go, “I don't know why we should invest in her. She hasn't directed a film before.”
That's different now. There are a lot of women with no credibility whatsoever, who've done nothing before who just have an idea, and they go and they make a great fucking movie. And every time I see that, even if I don't love their movie, I'm like, “Fuck yes. That is so great!” And I'm so proud and I'm so excited for them. And I'm also excited for their failures, for their wins, for everything in between because I've wanted this chance for us for so long, for us to not necessarily have to be defined by the gender or who we have been, but to be able to say, “Yeah, I maybe don't have the experience, but look how fucking smart I am. Look at my ability to be able to learn on the fly. This is extremely long-winded answer—
CH: Keep going!
AT: —to give other than to say I feel, I feel a lot of emotions and feelings about the many versions of myself that I am. They are complex, they're wonderful. I am grateful and honored and feel very privileged to have all of them. And they also haunt me because they give no clear path, and sometimes I think for an artist a clear path is better because our brains are just big, you know – open attics waiting to be filled.
CH: The opposite side of that is that I sometimes worry that clear vision is limiting because in a time like this – well, it's not as if the 21st century is the only terrible point in history. We’ve had many where it feels like the world's ending. This one feels quite extreme. but the sort of fractal nature of that emotional reaction to it, it's not necessarily appropriate to just one medium. That medium might not be able to service the artist's emotional need. And so, in your case, to have a toolbox where you can go in four or five different directions to get that thing out, to exorcise it—
AT: This is what I love about talking to other artist! I feel the opposite in many ways. I wish I had one idea that I could stick with. Now I've got several that I know are very good, but they pull me in all different directions. And so, it's become a much harder game of trying to hone in on one thing, hone in on the Dark Sparkler, hone in on a film, hone in on Era of Ignition, on a memoir. I think that this is part of, again, the privilege – or the burden – of an artist. It takes a long time to create something. I'm in the middle right now writing a second novel, so I'm, like, deep in the feelings of all of this – and it's really hard.
CH: What are you doing to sort of fill up your cup of joy in these times? Are you watching your silly films at night, or are you destroying yourself with incredibly gritty, realistic dramas to just, you know, dig the knife in deeper?
AT: [Laughs] I feel like in the first Trump years, I was very much “I'll watch ‘The Handmaid's Tale’!” I mean, I had read the books and then watched the show and was like, “Dear God, this is so real!” as everyone would say. But now, I'm very much the opposite in a lot of ways now. I'm trying to leave space as much as possible for love and curiosity and all the things that I'm in tune with as an artist. I’m revisiting old films, things that I've loved, old books that I've loved. I'm rereading Ray Bradbury books. I'm rereading Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is one of my favorite books, which is also very deeply ingrained with the novel I'm writing.
CH: I've found I'm shifting toward watching more positive things, but I’m having a strange experience with nostalgia at the moment.
AT: Yes, me too!
CH: But I don't want to watch Terminator or anything like that that I grew up with. I'm nostalgic for TV in particular, but even films in which there's a world and characters I want to spend time with where community is at the center. So, I'm rewatching “ER”. I'm almost done with the first season of that. I'm started “Northern Exposure” again. And it's amazing the degree to which it is helping my mental health, watching disparate people just functioning together, trying to make the world a better place.
AT: I started rewatching “Quantum Leap”.
CH: Yes, an excellent show!
AT: Yeah, there's a bunch. There's a whole bunch of them. I'm deeply with you. I think the nostalgia thing is extreme right now. I went on Etsy, and I bought a Blackberry phone, which I'm laughing at because I took it to a Verizon store and the guy was like, “What is this?”
CH: [Laughs] I'm finding – for me, it always comes back to the fact that I think we're nostalgic for community and I think technology and the world broke that, whether that was social media, whether it's how social media exacerbated things around the rise of Trump and this fascism craze. But I miss sharing things with other human beings, and that makes me sad.
AT: And yet here we are – sharing things.
CH: That’s true. When I emailed you about this podcast, I mentioned that part of my reason for doing it was I didn’t want to be the sexy podcast, trying to grab listeners with loud, flashy subjects. I just wanted to have really simple, real conversations.
AT: [Laughs] How dare you. Cole. How dare you.
CH: I wanted to return to idea of revolution through art because I don't think I've been as successful at you as using my art to sort of provoke and confront the world. I'm increasingly worried that social media and changes in media in general have fractured our culture. Is it possible we can no longer achieve creative revolutions because there's no way to disseminate art in a universal way?
AT: Again, I think I'll go back to the refrain that we can't unknow what we know. I think the fact that both you and I – who don't know each other at all – are tonight talking about nostalgia to some degree and the importance of that, and that we're both coming to that in our own way – that is a real feeling. I think that there is a globally a sort of sense of trying to return to a tangibility. Something that feels palpable and touchable and real. In the midst of a massive AI influx in our world, we are seeing these sort of two things converge. There is a reason that you and I were being pulled to feel more connected to community. I started my newsletter two years ago, right after the pandemic sort of ended slash never really fully ended. We just never really acknowledged it. But at that moment, having hundreds of thousands of followers on social media was like, “What is the point of this? It is dumb, it is meaningless, and I want to be able to write things and feel things and talk to people.” And I was not alone in that. And I think that the pandemic really did that to a lot of people.
So, my hope is that we are being woken up to a new resensitizing to our creative selves and to the things that we want out of the creative world, and maybe in that way there is some sort of revolution within it.
CH: I've begun to think it's possible the revolution is in intimacy. That maybe while we've been so consumed with “How do you have that billion-dollar box office weekend?” the reality is that the changes are perhaps more incremental today than they were 25 years ago. We’ve begun to distrust experiences the larger they are, leading to this need to communicate, to have more authentic experiences. So, yeah, I'm hoping intimacy is the future
AT: That's actually a great t-shirt. Let's make it, Cole. That's the offshoot of this podcast: “Intimacy is the future.” I'll wear it. I'll wear it and I'll post it on my social media. Let's bring it full circle!
CH: [Laughs] So, we're, going to be back in a moment to talk about Legend, a seminal film in your life, but one last question first. What was the last beautiful thing you encountered that reminded you the world isn’t as fucking ugly as it seems right now and is still worth fighting for?
AT: Oh, I will tell you right now! My husband's a standup comedian. His name's David Cross, and he's on a big standup tour. He has been for several months, which can sort of make you feel sort of very alone. I'm home alone with our daughter. It’s hard. I was having a tough day, and when I was putting her to bed, she started singing me a lullaby out of nowhere.
She's eight years old, and she was singing me a lullaby that was something like [singing] “Mommy, sleep so tight – go to sleep – tomorrow morning we'll do it again.” My daughter has a really beautiful, sweet voice, but I just thought she wasn't doing it to impress me or anything. She just was singing this song, and I kept hearing, “We'll do it again tomorrow, we'll do it again tomorrow.” And something about that when I left the room filled me with so many feelings. Because that's true. Whether you're eight years old or whether you're 41 years old. We'll do it again tomorrow.
Sleep tight 'cause we're going to do it again tomorrow.
CH: Beautiful, Amber. Thank you so much for that.
As for you reading at home, come back in two days to read/listen to a bonus episode with Amber in which she and I discuss a key scene from Ridley Scott’s 1984 fantasy film, Legend, in between laughing our asses off. This film has largely been forgotten by those who didn’t grow up in the ’80s and, hey, a lot of you might argue that’s warranted…but Amber is going to ask us to go to a dark, albeit glittery place with her — and I loved every minute of it.
If this article added anything to your life but you’re not up for a paid subscription, consider buying me a “coffee” so I can keep as much of this newsletter free as possible for the dreamers who couldn’t afford it otherwise.
If you enjoyed this particular podcast, these other three might also prove of interest to you:
