To the strains of "All Apologies" by Nirvana, as "I wish I was like you, easily amused" rang out, I realized I had nailed the perfect background track for this launch. It wasn’t just because Rooney frequently cites Nirvana as one of her favorite bands, mentioning them in the playlists of her most iconic characters. It was also due to the myriad layers of meaning shared between one of the Seattle grunge band’s emblematic tracks and Rooney’s personality. Her voice, steady and resolute, tells us one truth, while her restless, expressive hands seem to want to tell us another. She's a tough type, a fighter who knows what it means to be an underdog—an "Anima Fragile" (fragile soul), to borrow a phrase from legendary Italian songwriter Vasco Rossi. A mountain flower covered in snow, melted only by the radiant, constant rays of the sun. In a candid conversation between women, Rain Phoenix touches the right chords, unveiling Rooney's timeless wisdom and experience to the audience.
Rooney is strong, determined, and highly demanding. Perhaps she is her own harshest critic. She possesses the righteousness of the just and the innate maternal aura of someone who understands that being a mother means letting go of selfishness, being aware that from that moment on, there's a more important project to care for—an adventure that, as she herself notes in a brief yet poignant exchange with Rain, "sounds like a cliché, but maybe it's a cliché because it's true." Her successful journey (and by success, I mean the ability to do what one truly wants to do) is built with methodical dedication over the years. This is evident in her careful selection of roles—"if I don’t feel they’re mine, I won’t play them"—which has often led her to wait patiently for the right project at the right time. From her challenges with Valentine's Production to her activist initiatives like Suay Sew Shop by Lindsay Rose Medoff, launched in this very episode. Reflecting on my conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist during my recent visit to Serpentine, as we walked together through Hyde Park: I began, "I always find it immensely enriching to interview artists when they have no projects to promote, in those dead moments, when they are in the limbo of nothingness, on pause." He concluded, "Of course, because only then do you end up talking about what really matters—the essentials of human existence.”
Rooney Mara photographed by Thomas Whiteside