Welcome, friends. Back to we can do hard things today. My boss is here. Yes. Abby's boss is he's gonna call her boss. Oh, that's right. I was like me. I know that's what I thought me. Obviously I'm here. No.

Natalie Portman. She's Abby's boss because she's the big boss of Angel City. She's big boss. Yeah. The soccer team. Yeah. Angel City. Of which Natalie Portman is the big boss. Yeah. You're a little boss. I'm little boss. She's big boss. Yeah. So big boss is here today. Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman is an Academy Award-winning actress, director, author, and activist this summer. Portman will be on the big screen returning to the Marvel Universe as Jane Foster in Thor. Love.

Natalie appeared in Jackie in which she starred as First Lady Jacqueline F. Kennedy and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and one, the Critics Choice Award. Portman devotes her time to several humanitarian causes with an emphasis on supporting women and girls. She's also a founder of National Women's Soccer League Team Angel City Football Club Woot. Woot. Woot. Her book, Natalie Portman's

Fables is a New York Times bestseller. Portman is a Harvard graduate with a degree in psychology, and she studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Natalie, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We wanted to start with the story about Abby's speech at Times Up and your reaction to it, and how that played into your formation of Angel City. Can you just tell us that story from your perspective?

Well, thank you both for having me on. I love you both so so much, and you both added so much to my life already, so I'm so grateful to know you. I can't believe I know you as well as have you as my role models.

But I think there's an even earlier Abby Influence story on Times Up that you might not even be aware of, was that your Wolfpack speech at Barnard was circulated among all the women very early on, and everyone started calling us like each other, Wolfpack, within our group in Times Up.

That was probably why they wanted you to speak in the first place at our conference. That was already so influential and impressive, I think, just as just a way of thinking of other women and a new way of operating with other women.

I think after having been socialized for so long to see competition and different kinds of modeling of behavior between women, a way that we could compete together instead of against each other, was pretty exciting.

And then when I heard you speak, and we all heard you speak at the Times Up conference that year, it was mind-blowing to hear your experiences as Virtuoso star, best athlete in your field in the world, and your experiences when you retired of being uncertain about your future.

And how different that was for your male counterparts, and to understand that this very central cultural field, athletics, I guess, in general, could be.

So have such different valuing of male and female players really just blew my mind and really started me and a lot of other people thinking.

So anyway, thank you again for that. I said it before and I'll keep saying it forever, but it really changed so many of the way many of us have looked at the world.

And then two years ago, I get this random IG direct message from Natalie Portman, folks, she says, can I call you and I'm like, yes, Natalie Portman, here's my number.

And so then you call me and then you told me two years ago, and this must have been a year-ish later since the Times Up event.

And you tell me that you're starting Angel City FC in Los Angeles and you asked me to be a part of the investor ownership group and I just was floored.

I was so beyond and I just think it's so important for people to understand though that this is the first majority women own soccer franchise for girls, obviously, and women.

You also started it for boys. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, well, my son, who's 11 now, was an incredible influence and inspiration and wanting to create this.

He got so into the women's world cup, I think he was around seven or eight, and he had the experience of being nice.

He was like five or six at the men's world cup when France won my husband's French, so it was like the greatest thing that could ever happen to a French child.

And then a couple years later, the US women, when the women's world cup, and I mean, it was waking up in the middle of the night, all hours.

And I had to confront my own bias because the first time I saw him put on a women's game, I was like, oh god, he's going to realize it's a women's game because it was all on, I think it was like fubo or something that has like all the soccer games.

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