Jim Carrey Doesn’t Exist (According to Jim Carrey)

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2018

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a young boy, Jim Carrey got in trouble for staring in the mirror. He didn’t do it because he was vain; he was practicing the comic skills that made him one of the great impressionists of our time, a man whose face seems to be made of some pliable alien material. Yet that malleable face is as capable of portraying deep and complex emotion as it is of making us laugh. As a result, Carrey’s career has been one reinvention after another. These days, he’s been lighting up Twitter as a political cartoonist—his way of drawing Donald Trump is particularly grotesque—and starring in the television series “Kidding.” He plays a children’s entertainer, in the mold of Mr. Rogers, who is struggling with the death of his own son. Carrey sat down with Colin Stokes at the New Yorker Festival in October, 2018. He spoke about his reverence for Fred Rogers and the inspiration he takes from Eastern philosophy. “I don’t exist,” Carrey says. “There’s no separation between you and me at all . . . I know I’m sounding really crazy right now, but it’s really true.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Land Rover.
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0:15.5	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour,
0:19.4	a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC
0:22.4	studios.
0:25.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnik. I hope you're enjoying the holiday
0:30.4	weekend, and if not, cheer up because we've got something special for you. One of the great
0:35.8	comic performers working today, the inimitable Jim Carrey.
0:40.2	Carrie was cast as the lead in a sitcom when he was just 22. He was on the groundbreaking ensemble
0:46.3	show in Living Color, and he was the whitest guy in a mostly black cast. In the 90s, he became
0:52.8	an almost ubiquitous figure in film comedy,
0:55.9	and he returned to television in 2018 with a dramatic role on kidding on Showtime.
1:01.3	In the past couple of years, Carrie has also been lighting up Twitter as a political cartoonist,
1:06.5	with a particularly grotesque way of depicting Donald Trump.
1:15.7	So maybe it's appropriate that when he came to the New Yorker Festival in 2018, he was interviewed by the New Yorker's associate cartoon editor, Colin Stokes.
1:24.8	So we're going to start at the beginning of your life.
1:28.8	Oh, my life, okay.
1:29.7	Yes, yeah, yeah.
1:31.3	If that's all right.
	...

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