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t’s a pretty rare thing for someone to be so talented that you can be a fan of theirs for one thing, and then become a fan all over again for something else. Yet, somehow, Mara Wilson has amassed a two huge fan bases for two completely different reasons. At age six, she starred alongside Robin Williams and Sally Field in Mrs. Doubtfire. And two years later, she starred in Danny DeVito’s Matilda. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that at least one of those appears on many a list of favourite childhood memories. Yet Wilson left Hollywood just before she reached her teens. She has since majored in drama at NYU and is now an acclaimed writer. Her blog, Mara Wilson Writes Stuff, is filled with posts that are so thoughtful, so honest and so poignantly expressed that it’s hard not be taken by them – particularly some of her thoughts on why she left acting. I spoke to Wilson regarding some of these thoughts, and her play Sheeple, which got its first run at the New York Fringe Festival last August. Given that drama is not a million miles away from where she started, I asked Wilson if it was always part of her plan to follow that path: “When I was eleven, my film career was slowing down, thanks to puberty, and I started focusing more on school. My school offered classes in improvisation and sketch comedy – a sign I lived in Los Angeles – and taking them was one of the best decisions I ever made. Being onstage felt so much more real and alive than film had, and I started seeking out more opportunities to perform onstage. There wasn’t much theatre where I lived, so I had to make do with improv, school drama productions, and choir. After two years in a public school, I transferred to a boarding school for the visual and performing arts – Idyllwild Arts Academy – as a theatre major. I distinctly remember one of my drama teachers there saying ‘Film is a director’s medium, but theatre is an actor’s medium. All great actors start in the theatre and long to go back to the theatre.’ It seems a bit grand and hyperbolic to say ‘all’, but most actors I know who’ve done both do say theatre is much more exciting and rewarding. I loved Idyllwild, and I loved how we studied so much more than acting. We had classes in theatre history, music, dance, stage management, directing, building sets, making costumes ... I soon realised I loved being backstage as much as I loved being onstage.” While it seems that Wilson was perhaps always destined for the stage, she said that she had terrible stage fright when she was a child:
“Being onstage was so much different than working with a crew and a camera: onstage, you’re on your own. It seemed terrifying, but also exhilarating.” Wilson, however, started to find film acting tedious as she got older: “I was the one child in the world who was in Hollywood but wanted to run away and join the theatre!” Wilson’s play Sheeple centres on that uncertainty in a teenager’s life when they are not quite sure of their place in the world. Given that it’s supposedly very common for playwrights to place even a small bit of themselves in their work, I thought it was obvious to ask if Wilson put a bit of herself in the play: “There is definitely a lot of me in Sheeple. I was a stubborn, cynical teenager, and while
Matilda was in post-production. Given the guidance she has missed from her mother in those life decisions, Wilson suggests that perhaps she should have stopped acting after Matilda: “It would have been a good idea to give me time to relax and work through my grief. Instead, I went straight to A Simple Wish and continued acting more out of inertia than passion.” While Wilson is definitive about how certain she was in her decision to choose drama and to become a writer, she isn’t so confident about her actual work. Although she finished Sheeple in 2010, it wasn’t entered into New York’s Fringe Festival until last year. Of course there are a multitude of reasons for delays in any major project – but I wanted to know if there was some hesitation on her part: “There definitely was some hesitation on my part. I’m an anxious person by nature, and being in the public eye comes with so much baggage. My first few years after NYU were spent trying to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to do, whether I wanted to continue acting or pursue writing or do something completely different. I worked on a lot of small theatre productions and met with a weekly writing group before deciding writing was what I really wanted to do. In late 2011, I finally started my blog and Twitter account. It was nerve-wracking, but my friends were very supportive, and I soon acquired a kind of online cult following.”
People often accuse me of running away from my past, but it’s really just that I’d like some acknowledgment for my adult achievements, too. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, I was convinced I was smarter than everybody else. Watching Sheeple was a bit like seeing the various voices in my head come to life and argue with each other. There’s also no way I could have written Sheeple if I had not grown up with three older brothers. The main character is a teenage boy, as are most of the others. I know it’s a bit strange coming from a female playwright, but consider that from the time I was five until I was fourteen, there was always at least one teenage boy in the house. It’s what I heard and what I know.” While it didn’t happen overnight for Wilson, she did seem to go from having no idea what she was going to do with her life to finding success as a writer. She seems to have found her path to success relatively quickly. Although she talks about the support she got from her family – with whom she’s close – the path sounds like it was a bit solitary, but not all that difficult or long: “Ultimately, though, it was my decision, and not a very difficult one; I had always loved writing and felt drawn toward it all my life, even when I was acting. When people asked me if I wanted to be an actress when I grew up, I would say, ‘No, I want to be an author.’” Speaking of family: Wilson’s mother died from cancer while she was young – while
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Since 2011, Wilson has amassed 70,000 followers on Twitter. Wilson is remarkably funny on Twitter, although many of her tweets stem from a faux-frustration about people bringing up things from the movies she was in so long ago. Commenting on this, Wilson said: “The frustration is played up for comic effect, though I think anyone would get annoyed answering the same questions over and over again. It’s why I wrote the FAQ on my website. I just wish people would think before they tweet, really. But that probably will not ever happen.” I myself came across Wilson through Twitter, and have since started reading her pieces regularly. Given that Twitter is proclaimed as this kind of new media that is changing pretty much every landscape there is, I wondered how much of an impact Twitter has had on her work: “I’m pretty sure only a small fraction of my