New Jersey’s own Meryl Streep was the guest of honor at the 2018 Montclair Film fundraiser, where she chatted with The Late Show host and self-proclaimed “laugh harvester” Stephen Colbert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The initial idea came about when Colbert’s wife, Evelyn, who is the president and an original board member of the organization, asked if he could get her on as a guest. Skeptical, Colbert was pleasantly surprised by the acting legend’s swift response. Streep responded 10 minutes after his initial email ask: “I would love to come back to New Jersey!” It was an overall love fest for the Garden State. Governor Philip Dunton Murphy introduced Colbert after announcing a new filming tax credit, and officially welcomed Streep back to her home state. The two talked about politics, New Jersey, movies and Streep’s iconic performances becoming memes. Right before “Mamma Mia” blasted from the speakers, concluding the festivities, Colbert began the final question: “Someday, someone will play Meryl Streep… if they want to get Meryl Streep right, what can they not leave out physically and what can they not leave out in terms of intention?” Streep paused and smiled, “Silliness, can’t leave that out; and what’s the word for opinionated? I guess opinionated, yes.”

On watching her own films: I don’t even want to see them really. I’ll come upon a movie, and I’m in it, and I’m really young and very beautiful, and I’ll think, I was so unhappy, I thought my nose was too big, I thought I was fat, because these are the things that people tell you, in a review. And I’ll think, ‘What was I thinking?! She was gorgeous, back in the day.’ When people that are in the movies, watch movies, they don’t watch the movie, they’re thinking of all the stuff around it, the people that were there, their dress, the people that have died, people that are gone, the location, where they stayed, what the food was like. When I see the movies on TV, I recognize them like a little portal into the past.

On portraying real-life characters: You pull up a thing that exists in you, that also exists in this character. So you’re not letting go of anything, at the end of the day, just ’cause you don’t talk like that or wear that wig. The thing you pull up from the bottom of your fundament… is the same thing. You’re not jettisoning anything. You don’t have anything but what you already know. And the audience that empathizes with you, that understands something about Margaret Thatcher that they didn’t understand before… it’s because they have that, too. Katharine Graham, Margaret Thatcher, Karen Silkwood, Isaac Denison, these women are so much more than I could ever be. It’s just such an honor, even people I disagreed with, to step into shoes of people who were of such capacious mind, bravery, courage, and they left a mark on their world. I feel very lucky to have been a translator for their lives and what mattered to them.

On empathy in acting: We stop imagining so quickly in life, and we stop imagining what it’s like to be other people and it’s harder and harder I think, in the world in which we live where social media mediates in that encounter between people. It’s so much harder to empathize. I think that’s why we kind of have a real problem with empathy.

On advice for young actors: When I entered the entertainment business… it was a different time. Everything’s been changed by social media. I recently talked to a very wonderful casting director, and he said that he was casting the second iteration of “Spring Awakening,” which is a very young cast, and that they had been asked not to see anybody who didn’t have more than 5,000 followers on their Twitter site. … In my day, the way you would break in (to acting) is to be seen in a play. You’d do anything. You’d wait on tables, sleep on the floor of your friend’s apartment. Now, apparently, if you want to be in a play, you, I guess, do something on YouTube that makes people want to look at you. This is a world that I don’t understand. My best advice, though, for people who love it and want to do it, is to just find other people that you think are doing good work, and that you admire. And to gravitate towards them, and do anything: Pass out programs, do anything in their theater. But if you find the person who’s doing work that you love, and that you admire, and that feels important… go to the source.