Up your box. The new cheerios. Oh crunch almond at your local grocery store. Welcome to nobody told me. I'm laura owens then i jammed black and we've wanted to talk with our guest on this episode. Actress author filmmaker. Natasha gregson wagner for a very long time. Natasha is the daughter of the late actress. Natalie wood and film producer. Richard gregson and. She's also the stepdaughter of actor. Robert wagner and the co producer of the recent documentary that we'd loved called natalie wood what remains behind. Natasha is also the author of the book more than love an intimate portrait of my mother. Natalie wood natasha. Thank you so very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. You write in the book that over the years when someone would ask you for comment on your mother's life. You usually declined so what happened. Why did you decide to write the book. And then do the documentary about your mother. That's a great question. Well prior to becoming a mother myself. I think that i felt very protective of my family. And also a little unsafe in the world and not really a grownup even though was by age standards grown up Once i met my husband berry watson and we started a family and i gave birth to my daughter clover in two thousand twelve. I really started to feel much more. Gravity within myself. And i i began to feel like a woman an adult and i even started to feel a bit like my mom's mug her. I turned forty three. Which was the age that she was when she died and a lot of hard work that i had done in therapy everything started to coalesce. And so i. I was working on a fragrance in her honor. As sort of just you know like a creative outlet. I was interviewed for the new york times. The style section. It was the first time that i had spoken publicly about my mom in that great detail and win the article came out. It was on the cover of the sunday style. Section katie rodman was the journalists. And i read the article. My heart was beating so fast thinking that i was going to feel really small and really defensive and really out of control but the opposite happened to me. I felt really empowered. I felt very much in my skin. And i felt liberated was completely shocking revelation. And i realized that speaking about my mom in my childhood and my grief in my shame and all of that messy staff made me feel better so that was really what what started me on this journey. How did it feel to be her daughter during that time when she wasn't alive. Was it more of a feeling like she was. Just this figure that you've heard about through friends or on. Tv just this fictional figure or did she actually feel like your mom. You know my mom. And i were very very close. And even though i only had her for eleven years we had a deep intimacy and we spoke about so many things and she talked to me a lot about feelings about getting my period. One day about boys about her own mother her childhood and so for some reason that left an indelible mark was able to differentiate natalie wood the movie star the address the beloved yvonne. But that never touched my personal connection to her. Which was that she was my mother and i don't know if that it was a defense mechanism that i learned early on or if that was just a gift that she gave me or maybe it was just the way i'm i'm built as a human but it has been the thing that has carried me through and helped me get through her death and and get through my life and you write that new. Learn to protect yourself from her memory. Why do you think you you did that. And how did that impact you. Well you know. Grief is such a complicated emotion and it. It isn't linear at all And the way my parents all three of my parents were was that they saved everything so we had every letter a ton of photographs. Lots of video gifts from people. I had letters from my mom's at times it felt like wave like an avalanche of of her almost like smothering me. No her love her her devotion her presence and but that was gone and so sometimes i needed to push it aside because if i dwell too much in the domain of of her maternal love it was more than i could bear the pain of missing her was more than i could bear. And so you know and then i was also living in the past and i need to be in the president in the president was i was in high school or i was dating or i was starting my acting career. You know and she was not alive for those things. So i needed to push. Push her away to find myself. I know that she was really involved in a lot of causes that were relevant at the time and when i was thinking about me too and all these social justice movements that are going on now. I wondered how you think your mom would have gotten involved in thinking about that. Makes you feel a closeness to her. I think think my mom would really gotten involved in the me too movement. Absolutely i mean there's a lot of speculation about what had happened to her during during her years. Hollywood and obviously. I don't have the answer to that because i would have been too young for her to discuss it with me. And when i spoke with my with my dad's and my godfather mount mark crowley. They said that she had never shared any of those experiences. But we have to imagine that certainly inappropriate. Things probably happened to her. To what extent will never know. But my mom was definitely somebody who fought for the underdog and she very much believed in equal equal rights among gender equal rights. You know for the lgbtq community. Obviously it wasn't called that when when she was up and coming so i think she would have you know i think she understood that her name held a lot of value and so she would put her name to the causes that she believed in because she knew that it would have made a difference. And i'm really proud. I'm proud that she was little firecracker this five foot two spitfire..