For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up.

'The Leftovers' takes place three years after 2% of the population has gone missing. And it's about how that changes society. Cults form as a result, and it drastically changes home life for a lot of people, including the Garvey family, which is the family I belong to.

People are apprehensive about finding 'The Leftovers' funny because it's such a dark circumstance, but I think, really, what the show is about is examining how different people deal with loss. There are elements of humour and levity and irony in that... just like in real life.

My mother had her dresses made. In those days in Chile, the early '70s, people had dressmakers make their things. With the leftovers, my sister and I always had a matching outfit. She had an outfit, we had the mini version. That was the very late '60s, early '70s way to dress your kids.

There's a song called 'Live Blogging the Himmel Family Bris.' I kind of went for it here in terms of - it was really fun to be explaining ritual circumcision in Nashville - a lot of brises are done in hospitals, but many are done in people's homes, and there's a lot of food, and a lot of leftovers.

I rarely get recognized, and whenever I do, it has to do with 'The Leftovers' because it came into someone's life at a particularly important time for them - if they were dealing with grief or loss or whatever tragedy - and they just caught it. And there is no rhyme or reason to the kind of person it is.

I love cooking and eating - I'm a total foodie. It started off as a survival thing as a student, when cheese and potato pie was all I could afford to make. My most successful results come from concocting something with leftovers. Any chef will tell you that you should taste as you cook, so I might make it a bit more spicy, yogurty or eggy.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

Share This Page