Jamie Lee Curtis wants entire film sets to know that she “gives a s–t” about everyone, so she encourages everyone to wear name tags.
“There’s something really uneven about our position on a set, on a movie, in this arena. You guys know our names, we don’t know yours,” Curtis, 65, said during the Thursday, August 8, episode of Kevin Hart’s “Gold Minds” podcast. “There’s something inequitable to me about that.”
She continued, “On a movie set, if we were all working together, we would all be wearing name tags so that tomorrow when we came in, I would be able to then say, ‘Good morning, Sabine,’ without even a thought because I’ve learned her name.”
Curtis further said that she feels strongly about a set being “equitable” for all involved.
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“It’s an important thing,” the Oscar winner explained. “It’s art; there isn’t hierarchy in art. It’s supposed to be a group of people. We can’t do our jobs without the crew.”
Curtis compared making a movie to Hart recording his “Gold Minds” podcast, noting that in both scenarios stars need camera and lighting professionals to handle the behind-the-scenes tasks.
“All of those people conspire with you to make a show that’s called ‘Gold Minds,’ which is your name there but you can’t do the show without all those people,” the Halloween star said. “I believe that is the gorgeousness of the collaborative art form.”
Curtis learned the importance of equality from her stepfather Robert Brandt, a former Marine turned stockbroker who was married to her mom, actress Janet Leigh. (Leigh shared daughters Jamie Lee and Kelly Lee with ex-husband Tony Curtis.)
“He was a businessman and he started a company with his partner. They had an idea and they started it with a card table, telephone books for every major city in the United States,” Jamie Lee recalled. “Anyway, it was about big amounts of stocks being traded. … All day long at a card table, [dialing] every big institutional company in the United States. At one point, he was talking to Wells Fargo in Nebraska — this was before the internet.”
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According to Jamie Lee, Brandt took those same skills home and the Freaky Friday actress “watched [her] parents” prepare to meet every guest at the dinner parties they hosted across the country.
“For three days, my parents would sit with index cards at the dining room table and my mother would quiz Bob, and Bob would quiz my mother,” Jamie Lee recalled. “And he’d say, ‘Bob and Mary McMetchum’ and she would say, ‘And their children are Carol and Steve, and Steve goes to the University of Wyoming.’ So that when they went to Boston and they hosted the cocktail party at the Hilton, and those people walked in with name tags, my mother would say, ‘Mary! How great to see you.’”
She added, “And those people left that gathering … going, ‘Janet Leigh remembered our son went to the University of Wyoming.’ That’s what I was raised with. … To me, that shows people that you care [and] that you’re interested, and that you want to let them know that they’re not just some financial number to you.”
