June Diane Raphael Quotes

The only thing I really get snobby about is - not food or wine or certainly not television - I would say I get snobby about skin-care regimens and people taking care of their skin in the right way.

I think my real fear is that I will get to old age and think I spent too much time concerned about the way that I look and other bullshit. That's really a fear of mine.

[The Women's Room by Marilyn French] was in my house somewhere, blew my mind, I was changed forever. And then I continued to read it at various points in my life, and it sort of opens up in a different way.

That's one of my greatest strengths. I'm a Scorpio rising - we're very decisive. I'm very good at cutting things off that don't feel right.

Another thing I also recommend is washing your face with white towels, little white towels instead of your hands. Other towels have dye in them and, with water on them, I just don't mess around with that. This way you're not getting your hands back on your dirty face as you're washing it. You're going to see what's coming off.

I got so into moisturizing, my skin started overproducing oil. That's my story. There's a lot to talk about, for sure.

I'm not necessarily [into] pricey products, and I'm not recommending super-fancy stuff. It's more the consistency and the sunblock of it all, engaging in that process - I can be a little snobby about it.

[I think] everybody should see a dermatologist.

I really do. I don't see it as a kind of elite experience - it's our biggest organ. We need to see a dermatologist and have them really look at our skin and figure out what's going on.

There's a book called The Women's Room by Marilyn French that was a really big part of my personal feminist awakening growing up that I read.

I do a lot of coaching with my friends on how to get out of relationships with their agents, boyfriends, contractors, whatever, because that's easy for me.

It certainly wasn't taught in school beyond the idea of "girls can do anything that boys can do" - I understood that kind of pop culture feminism. I did not understand anything else about feminism.

[The Women's Room] was the first thing I read that explained a lot of the feelings I was having and a lot of the rage and the feeling uncomfortable in my body and knowing that I was feeling a certain way in the world, but I didn't have the language for it.

There were a lot of different things [in The Women's Room ]. I don't really want to summarize it in this way. It's about a woman's awakening, a woman who came of age in the '50s and is a teenager - actually, she's a little bit older - in the '60s and part of the women's movement and how she ends up there.

[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible.

[The Women's Room] is very much a white woman's piece of fiction, for sure. But for me, as a white woman, I related to a lot of it and continue to as I've gotten older, and especially at this moment in time, I want to read it again.

I feel like there's so much focus on the woman when you're pregnant, and it's amazing and beautiful and everybody's taking care of you, and then you have the baby and nobody's interested. And yet you are the most vulnerable you've been - I mean, I'm speaking on my own experience. Other women may have very different experiences.

One thing that I would like to do that I've seen them not do that well is take women all through the process of the postpartum period in a more meaningful way. That would be my agenda.

Writing pilots is such a specific thing. It's not even really writing TV shows. A pilot is its own beast.

I would spend the rest of my life inside The Golden Girls, of course. I feel like my dream is to just be retired and to really let it all out and to not give an F anymore, and so Golden Girls, to me, is that time in life.

I'm on Grace And Frankie, which is also about that time in life, I'm realizing. But I would - so I guess I am sort of in that show. But there's something about The Golden Girls and the sort of multicam set and Bea Arthur that I just want to be around those ladies all day long, and I want to be on those comfy couches and want to sit in that kitchen in those chairs in those pastels, and I want to wear Blanche's outfits and it's just really... and I want to sit outside in that weird little courtyard.

I remember watching that show [Golden Girls] with my parents and not totally understanding it. Like, a lot of comedy flew over my head, a lot of the sexual stuff I didn't know. But because there was a laugh track, I'd laugh really hard, and I'm now remembering the look on my parents' faces - I had no idea why it was funny. I was sort of, like, laughing along.

There was that moment of, "Oh, my parents are watching Columbo and I hate it" to "No, I love this show, too." And I feel like, for me, that was around 11 or 12, where I could actually join my parents in their viewing and wasn't so irritated that they were always watching Columbo.

I remember my dad watched a lot of TV that we watched, too. I remember watching Saved By The Bell because me and my sister watched it, and my dad kind of watched it with us, too, while he was cooking or whatever he was doing in the kitchen.

I think I know who my audience is. It's pretty satisfying, and I think we all need to take care of ourselves and laugh as well as do everything we can to fight back right now while being mindful of laughing and enjoying ourselves where and when we can.

Years later we were watching 90210 [with my sister].

I love The Golden Girls. I've watched recently, and it's sort of insane there's a chef that they're always referring to as "fancy" - the pilot's kind of a mess.

I'll keep this as nonpartisan and diplomatic as possible - but for those of us whose heads are kind of spinning off and are really engaged in what's happening right now and trying to effect change where we can, when we can, I think we also need to express ourselves and express our anger and also find joy in things like The Golden Girls right now.

You don't have to spend eight years of your life trying to get something done. You can get your answers very quickly, and there's something satisfying about that.

Unfortunately, this past birthday, my son was up the entire night before, very sick with that horrible - I think it was called the Norovirus or whatever the hell that was that was going around. So I got it. And then my husband [Paul Scheer] got it. We were both fighting it because he had planned this whole day for me, and we were both pretending it wasn't happening. We were literally driving ourselves to a massage and facial that he had planned and at one point, I was like, "I can't drive anymore. I need to get in the passenger's seat."

I feel I've learned a lot about [experience of giving birth], and I think it's amazing. Men and women who are ob-gyns are pretty amazing.

I know that it feels dangerous and scary and working without a net, so to speak. And working without a net, for me - maybe other women do it a totally different way - means being vanity-free. That's how, as an artist, I know that I need to work.

I think I certainly know that the space I want to work in is a fearless space.

It's very hard, I think especially for women, to not take it in and to not be super conscious of the way that you're being seen, which is of course completely antithetical to the work you want to do, which is completely free and bold and truthful and honest and brave.

I'm more focused or try to be more focused on my acting and writing and comedy and let the other stuff fall where it may.

I do use the F word a lot, unfortunately.

That's my big fear, and not enjoying things as much as I could and realizing actually how awesome life is right now.

I'm certainly much happier when I feel that the work is good.

It's a very hard line to walk, and I certainly am nowhere near having cracked how to do that, but I try to focus on being a brave performer and not worrying about my lighting or whatever, even though, then, sometimes I see myself on screen, and I'm like, "Why did you wear that, look like that, whatever," but I'm also more accepting that is what it is. There's this battle always.

[Paul Scheer] was kind of pretending to not be as sick as he was. And then we almost pulled into this spa when I finally called it and said, "I'm very ill. We need to go home." And he said, "I am, too." He said that he wasn't going to do his treatments, he was going to - by the way, these are great problems to have - he was going to lie in the men's relaxation room in between throwing up. I was like, "This is insane. We're sick, and we need to just acknowledge it. And it sucks that it happened on my birthday, but let's get back into bed."

I'm not a dermatologist, but I had someone explain it to me, and I've seen the effect on my own skin over the years. So I feel like we need to protect our faces, especially those of us who live in Southern California, from this goddamn sun that's on us all day.

I think, is a cultural thing, too. You know, everyone wants to see the baby. Everybody's bringing gifts for the baby.

I was early in my career and didn't understand that people were looking at me and critiquing me yet.

I had several moms who knew and didn't bring gifts for the baby and instead brought me food, candles, journals - the women who were like, "Actually, I know this is a tough time for you, and it's much more important that I show up here instead of to the baby shower."

I'm like, "You could not wake up in the sixes? Does it really gotta be in the fives?" Because the 5 really feels like nighttime. I don't like the day starting at 5.

I never sleep in. By the way, when we're like, "We alternate waking up for the kids," the other person's waking up at 7 a.m. It's not like you're waking up at 10. It's like, "I'm really going to give you a treat and you're gonna get your ass up at 7 instead of 5:59." Which is when our son wakes up.

I love being a mom. Being a mother is my favorite thing ever.

For me, I was the most vulnerable and needed the most in my postpartum experience and got the least. It was just kind of a drop-off. That would be my focus - on the woman, afterwards.

[Postpartum] is a raw time when you need your friends and family to swoop in in a very real way.

My perfect Sunday is waking up at 10 - which, you know, those days are over for me - but waking up at 10, breakfast with children, hanging out with well-behaved children.