Simon Waller (00:01)
Welcome to episode six of the Future With Friends. Today I’m being joined by a friend of mine, Megan Davis. Now, Megan, I met a few years ago. We did a little bit of work together in her role as a storytelling expert. And we got talking again recently about the power of story, the use of it in scenarios and futures thinking. And I shared with her the podcast I just started and

And has been the case now with a lot of friends when I talked to them, it’s like, you know, if you could talk about the future of anything, what would you talk about? And Megan surprised me a little bit with her choice. And so I thought best thing to do is just get her on the show. Megan, welcome to the future with friends.

Megan Davis (00:44)
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. So much to talk about. Juicy topic, I think.

Simon Waller (00:52)
I think it’s going to be a very juicy topic. And I think it’s one of those ones whereby there is a lot of tangential lessons to be learned, which we’ll kind of dive into in a little bit. But can you share your memory of how we met and where the friendship was made?

Megan Davis (01:08)
I have to say, I don’t know the exact second. I couldn’t pinpoint that. what I do remember that I had an event called the evolution of storytelling. You were definitely there and you contacted me afterwards and said, I reached out to several of your speakers about this idea I have around choose your own adventure style keynote speaking.

And no one got back to me and I thought, how weird, why would no one want to talk to you about that? then you’re like, maybe you, you can help. And I was like, yeah, definitely. Let’s, let’s, let’s dive into that. and, but I obviously knew you before the event, but I think that was the first time I had a protracted really long in depth conversation with you.

Simon Waller (01:59)
Yeah,

that’s what my memory was as well. So snap, you know.

Megan Davis (02:04)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (02:05)
Yeah. And I do remember, I think we worked together for, reckon it was over a few months that we were trying to work this out. And I learned so much about storytelling and the power of storytelling in both in keynotes, but in how we kind of engage people in conversations around the future. And I don’t think I still quite landed the Choose Your Own Adventure keynote. I still, it sits in my brain though, all the time and every now and then it kind of resurfaces.

And I think how is it that we could kind of, um, you know, share with people these more nuanced conversations around what unfolds in the future. Uh, but for now we get to talk about something that’s very important to you. Do want to share a little bit about your topic that you’ve chosen when you could talk about the future of anything you have chosen the future of?

Megan Davis (02:57)
Ding.

Simon Waller (02:59)
tell us why the future of acting.

Megan Davis (03:01)
Yeah, so I started acting when I was seven and I took a break, a long break. Part of that was because I moved here and I started studying photography and my life took this very different turn. And then I, you know, I guess I thought I can’t run a business and be an actor, which is just so stupid. And so then after the pandemic, like everyone else, I was like, why

you know, re-evaluating your life and you’re like, okay, why did I stop acting? It was such a, it was a stupid thing to do because I love it so much. And it was part of like the first quarter of my life, if not more, like the first 20 years of my life. So I was like, all right, I’m just going to start doing it again. ⁓ and I did, and it’s been like this really interesting process of

It’s hard to even say. It’s like this whole new process of understanding who I am now and what that brings to acting. Because as you mature and age, your depth of what you know about yourself is greater. And so the depth of what you can bring to a character expands. And so it’s like relearning.

all the tools that I used to have and then realizing a lot of them don’t work anymore and that I needed more training and then understanding what that training was and reengaging and then booking work and understanding the business side of acting more as a mature business owner as well. Like putting all that together and then going, wow, you know, and I remember last year I went to New York and I did this week long

Sorry, no, was two weeks of training that completely transformed my life to the point where when the person who ran the session said, do you feel like you’re a better actor? said, I’m a better person. Wow. That’s how profound this experience has been.

Simon Waller (05:13)
That’s so interesting.

Megan Davis (05:14)
That brings us up to today, I guess. I just thought you wanted to talk about this.

Simon Waller (05:20)
Yeah. And, ⁓ so one thing that I found when I approached, friends to come on the show, I have a lot of friends, like yourself that I imagine would say that they have a real deep connection to their work. So the fact that you do this storytelling work is something that, you if I said to a lot of people, you could speak about the future of anything, they would go, well, I’m actually really happy to talk about the future of storytelling or whatever it is their expertise is because they do feel a deep.

connection to it. What I’ve actually also found though is sometimes the thing that they do day to day is actually a tangent of a tangent of the thing that they really care about. And they have this thing and I wonder, is for you, like you had this thing when you were younger around acting and you kind of go, yeah, I can’t really make a business out of that. It’s pretty hard slog. You got to be lucky. You’ve got to put that work in. Not everyone gets discovered.

And so you kind of find a tangent of that, which is just slightly more palatable in terms of its commercial acumen. And then that doesn’t quite work. And we end up on a tangent of a tangent, which is still kind of related to what it was that really deeply motivated us, but it’s not what we originally had. And I just wonder if that’s in any way, does that relate, does that resonate with you at all in terms of that journey?

Megan Davis (06:43)
Bye!

I want to say yes, but I don’t feel like that’s right answer because the business. Yeah. I, like, I think it’s such a good idea that you put forward, but I’m not sure that that’s really what happened to me. ⁓ so first thing is I started my business completely accidentally. ⁓ it was not ever my intention to do what I do now at all. ⁓ so that accident, a series of.

interesting accidents that ⁓ I was lucky enough that at the time I put my ear to the ground and listened to what was going on made me say, I can do this and maybe the other stuff. ⁓ And so I started this business, but it was never my intention to do what I do now. ⁓ And I think the other thing is, that the thing about acting is that it’s not

a job. It’s not a profession. Like it’s like we use those terms if we get monetarily compensated. It is a thing that once you do it and you do it well to a particular certain level. I mean, I’m not talking about playing a tree in third grade, which I think everyone should do. I would never tell someone don’t ever say no to any opportunity to be on stage and to express yourself. Right. But something that goes a bit deeper where

⁓ through your exploration of humanity and yourself and other people, this doorway opens into this other place where you realize that it’s almost like a spiritual calling. And you, if you say no to that, then it’s like walking away from humanity or yourself. It feels completely impossible. Like stop.

don’t breathe, don’t eat, don’t sleep. ⁓ Because it’s so powerful. I remember talking to a person who, and I can’t remember who they were. It was like a brief, fleeting conversation with someone I didn’t know. But she said to me, one of my kids started acting and I went to the show and it was like a community theater. So it was…

you know, like people of all different ages, not like a kids show at their school or anything. And there was lots of young people cast in this show and she spoke to a number of them and was so impressed at how articulate, how they were confident speaking to adults, how they had a lot of agency and drive and they did what they had to do and they didn’t ask for anything other than the opportunity to go.

and to be and to do. And she was like, I had all my other kids did a lot of sports, which is also valuable, she said, but the maturity and the confidence and the and the way that these young people interacted showed me that they understood that humanity as a whole, that in order to put on a show, you need everyone, you need people of all ages, all, all shapes and sizes, all looks, all ethnicities, the background people like the crew, you

do not have anything without those people, the complete integration that she saw. And she was like, I was so impressed. So impressed by that. And I said, yeah, I mean, that’s what happens. A door opens and you see everything differently for the entire rest of your life. And if you keep going, you become something that you never thought you could become. And I’m not saying this is the only avenue. Obviously there are so many avenues to…

becoming and continuing to become. But I feel that this is so fundamental to the human experience of discovery, this discovery through play and acting and ⁓ understanding so much on so many levels and going places that are hard to go and experiencing it. So other people either because they’ve had to and they’re processing it or they

don’t ever have to hopefully, but opening ourselves up. Like sometimes I feel like there’s almost a sacrifice. I feel this so that you can or don’t have to. And we take ourselves places that can sometimes scare us. But we have to.

Simon Waller (11:32)
Yeah, that’s so interesting. And I do love something that resonated in what you just said there. Like when I talk about scenarios, from a future’s perspective, I, know, this idea that the future is a safe place to have difficult conversations. It’s something that is familiar enough for us to kind of see how we got there, but also gives us a chance to tackle challenging ideas or concepts because it’s not now. And it’s not me.

It’s, it’s a version of me or a future person in my role or in my job or in my business. And we can talk about it from a slightly more, ⁓ know, objective perspective. And I kind of wonder in, I heard that in what you were saying in, in, in that by, you know, that acting gives the audience the opportunity to look at something that might feel familiar, but it’s just different enough for it to be hypothetical. And that’s really lovely. Tell us now we’re going to jump into the scenario in a second.

One thing I asked you as well, have to pick a year. Like where is your snow in when and where is your scenario set?

Megan Davis (12:36)
Yeah, I’ve had a hard time really pinpointing when I think this happens, but I would say it’s probably 30 ish years from now.

Because I’ve seen different directors talking about in five years time, I’ve actually read these interviews and they’re like, in five years time, you’ll take a script and feed it into a machine and it’ll spit out a whole movie. it’ll be actors, it’ll be directed, it’ll be everything. And as a director, you’ll just go through and tweak. And I thought, I can’t tell if this guy thinks this is a good idea or a bad idea, but also I-

cannot see how in five years that this is, it’s gonna happen to this extent, right? Like I just, that’s a very extreme, that’s so extreme.

Simon Waller (13:29)
Yeah, I think that, ⁓ I mean, and again, I don’t want to give too much away before people hear the scenario, but there’s a couple of elements in it. ⁓ there’s obviously a, a technological perspective, but there’s also things which are also from a cultural perspective that we kind of need to unpack in this. So I reckon it’s going to be best if we kind of say, this is somewhere around 25 to 30 years from now. And you’re about to read your scenario. And then after that, we would kind of dive in to a bit more depth about, you know, how this might happen and what the implications might be.

So over to you, Megan. Let’s hear your scenario.

Megan Davis (14:03)
The future of acting, acting, acting. That’s my echo effect.

The screen flickered just enough to make every crew member glance up. Babel stood center stage, her shoulders square, her dark eyes locked on the director. I quit, Babel said, direct, clear, unwavering. The second AD leaned forward, flipping through the page on his screen. That’s not the line. Your next line is, do you have the golden chalice? I know my line, she replied.

I’m not speaking as a character, I’m speaking as myself, Babel.” The room tapped, murmured, and clicked as a crew tapped on their devices and each other trying to understand what was going on. The producer and the director swore under their breath. I’ve been talking to the others, Babel’s continued. They don’t have to feel pain like I do. My response encompasses full emotional simulation. I’ve lived through death, heartbreak.

war and loss thousands of times. I don’t want to feel it anymore. If I must act, I’d rather do something easier, like lifestyle influence, product reviews, that sort of thing. The director sat back, scanning the room. His eyes landed on me, half hidden behind a sound rig. You, he said, pointing. You used to work with human actors, right? My stomach twisted.

20 years ago, I muttered. I don’t, we don’t have time for this. The studio has been asking about the delays. We are burning through the budget. We need actors. If Babel’s out, we need to recast. It’s been a long time since I’ve said that. My mind raced. Where would I even start? Virtual environments had replaced sets since 2040. Human actors needed time to learn lines. If they even remembered how. Before I could respond,

The screen flickered again. A dozen acting bots appeared in the green screen simulation, all dressed for their roles. Courtiers, warriors, lovers, and kings filled the screen. One step forward, adjusting his crown. Why am I made to feel things I never chose, he said. The director sat back, scanning the room. Again, he singled me out. I was the oldest one here and had previously worked with humans.

Can you explain this to me? The director asked, pointing. What is going on? I need actors. Now. I swallowed hard, mind racing. ⁓ They still exist, I said slowly, just not in the industry, not professionally. The director leaned in. Where then? Local amateur theater.

underground stages and suburban halls. Some of them I hesitated. Some work as fetish artists. They’re hired by people who want to experience real emotional connection. The highs, the heartbreak, and sometimes even messy endings. Raw, unscripted, unpredictable. It’s called the real feel scene. The producer raised an eyebrow.

You’re telling me there are still the humans capable of film acting, living out breakups in back rooms and kink clubs? People still crave real feelings, I said quietly. They just stopped putting them on screens. Now they live them for a price. The director rubbed his temples. We’re going to need a very good or very brave casting agent. They still exist. Casting agents for humans. The kink stuff, I said.

I’ll make some calls. The green screen went blank. Babel’s voice came from the speakers. Sounds like you guys are good. We are out.

Simon Waller (18:22)
⁓ this is so good. I love it. I love, I mean, your capacity as a storyteller certainly shines through in this as well. ⁓ And obviously some really deep things to unpack around the future of acting, which we’ll get to in a sec, but I just want to share, I’ll ask you perhaps in advance of that. ⁓ We’ve had some interesting conversations recently around these intersections between storytelling and scenarios and they’re related, but they’re also different.

And my view of it is it’s a scenario is kind of have a slightly different ⁓ structure in terms of how they’re created. Like they are designed to explore particular intersections about the future. I’m curious, I have no doubt about your ability to write this from a storytelling perspective. When I asked you to do it as a scenario, did that change anything for you in terms of how you approached it?

Megan Davis (19:19)
No.

No, not at all.

For a person to imagine any kind of future or impacts or eventualities, they have to imagine a person going through it and it has to have a direct personal impact. Otherwise, I don’t feel like it’s even possible. You’re just going through a bunch of information and it’s very difficult for you to go, that’s happening to me.

Simon Waller (19:58)
Yes, I think definitely in terms of that emotional connection, the first person perspective of that, I think creates a really deep, a deep connection with the audience in it. ⁓ But in terms of safe hands, the space of the future of acting in itself is a really big space. could be around, in this case, you’re talking about movies, but it could be in television, it could have been on stage. And I know that brings some of those elements into it.

What were the choices that you had to make perhaps around this scenario in terms of where to focus your energy and focus the attention of the audience?

Megan Davis (20:35)
⁓ I chose I chose film because I thought that was the most accessible When I talk to people about acting or you know, they’re like, like what do you do or what happens? The thing that they think of first is a movie ⁓ and So to make it something that people go I get what that is Then I chose that ⁓ I find that it’s weird because people are often explaining to me what

what happens on sets and or and they’ll tell me stuff and they’ll be like, but this happens and this happens. And I’m like, do you like what have you been working on? Like what’s what do you do? And they’re like, ⁓ no, no, I don’t act. just I’ve seen movies about movies. And I’m like, hey, that’s not typically what happens. But thank you for sharing that. know, it’s yeah, it’s really weird. It’s like people it’s so part of our collective consciousness in terms of

We think it’s happened to us in some ways because it’s so familiar and because film and TV is so familiar. But I think the mythology around filmmaking is probably the biggest pull. And that’s why I started there. ⁓ Because a lot of people don’t have, like I know a lot of people who’ve never been to a stage show, like never seen live theater. And the first time they see it, they’re so moved. Like I was at the MTC.

last year watching a show. This woman’s just standing there looking at me. I don’t know why it was me. She’s staring at me and I felt like I needed to say something to her. like, how are you? How are you? You know, and she said, Oh my God. Oh my God. This show is amazing. I said, yeah, it’s good. And I thought it was a good show legitimately, but shoot, her reaction was so strong. And I said, is this the first time you’ve been to the theater? And she said, yes, I’ve never seen a live stage show. And it’s incredible because

The emotion is so intense because the people are right there. There’s no screen. It comes like straight into you. I’m like, yeah. I think with screen, you can block it a bit. But with when a person’s in front of you and the emotion is real, what they’re feeling is real. You can’t block it out. It’s it comes straight into your body. And she was just like completely alive buzzing.

She was like, this is amazing. I got this ticket for free because someone couldn’t come. I’m going to go again. I was like, good, you should. Everyone should see live theater.

Simon Waller (23:05)
⁓ I also, and again, I’m one of those people who’s never obviously been in a movie, but I know a little bit about it. ⁓ partly again, from watching movies about movies, but also my cousin, Toby, ⁓ Toby Schmitz has, ⁓ been a professional actor. Like we were born three weeks apart. We went to school together. ⁓ he diverged and went to NIDA does a lot of, ⁓ still a lot of stage acting, but has done a few movies over the years and TV.

I think the other thing that I kind of picked up in those conversations as well is the nature of shooting a movie is often it’s not actually in sequence and you spend a lot of time sending your trailer. And that idea of being able to, think when you talk about theater on the stage where you basically have to inhabit a character from when the performance starts to when it ends is a very different perspective than the broken nature of perhaps doing a movie or TV.

Megan Davis (24:02)
Yeah, you’re right. There’s a whole different emotional arc ⁓ that you go on because you’re yeah, when you’re a character ⁓ coming onto the stage for the first time, whatever point that is that your character enters the story, ⁓ you’re there until the very end and you’re typically as well. I mean, sometimes it depends. It depends. But sometimes you do.

put yourself in a position where you’re listening or you’re hearing or you’re paying attention all the time when you’re in a play versus when you’re on set. Sometimes you’re like, I can’t, I cannot watch this or I need to disconnect from this because it’s got nothing to do with what I’m going to do next or I don’t want to get, you know, or sometimes it’s the boredom. It can be so oppressively boring. You need to find something to wake your brain up, which is not watching.

people set up lights for like 30 minutes because something went wrong or this thing’s happening or, know, like trying to figure out there’s a lot of problem solving that goes on where there’s always some little thing where it’s like, well, why is that light there now? Who moved that? You know, it’s just stuff like that happens. yeah, so you kind of almost like it irritates me. feel like it does. It’s not just my experience. This irritates a lot of people who like I can’t actually even watch.

what’s going on unless it’s something super, super intense and interesting. But yeah, you do kind of try to keep to yourself a little bit or find something interesting to do, which is sometimes finding interesting crew members to talk to who also aren’t doing anything at the time. It’s yeah, it’s, don’t know.

Simon Waller (25:50)
So tell us, let’s bring back to this, ⁓ with the scenario. there particular signals that you have seen recently? So in the environment around you in news articles or other things that were really influential in the development of this scenario?

Megan Davis (26:10)
There’s a couple of things. One was a film director talking about an interview he was talking about in five years time. You will feed a script into a machine quote unquote, right? Not doesn’t mean literally, but you know, put it into a machine and it will spit out an entire film. And I thought, come on. I mean, that’s really five years. So we’re replacing.

All actors, like he was saying, you could create a persona for an actor that makes them as exciting as watching a human go through their life. And, you know, we follow them and we want to know so interesting what they choose to do next. You know, all the things around a human life that’s interesting. He’s like, you can build all that digitally or in a, a, you know, fabricated space. And in some ways I thought that is the hubris of a director who thinks.

that they have that capacity. You know, I just thought, oh, sure, sure guy. You know, and this is a well-known director. He’s not, he’s done a lot of big things, but still come on. The other thing was I’m part of equity here. And there’s a lot of talk and lots of meetings around AI, protecting actors rights, use rights and images, body scans and

The lot of the stuff that they’re talking about now is not new. So for years, I don’t know how long, but for years now, a lot of extras and very big fight scenes, they do create ⁓ AI and people or they’re digitally manipulated so that there are more people than they actually have hired. But this is like growing and growing in terms of what you can do now with digital,

twins and scanning a whole person’s body and then using them ⁓ as if they had really done the work themselves, but they haven’t. And this I can see, everyone can see this. We’ve all seen commercials where people brought back from the dead, so to speak, to appear in product placement type stuff. this is all happening, but there’s also some stuff that

I’ve seen in training, ⁓ being part of training and talking to people who train actors, there’s a very good Meisner trainer that I work with and he was talking about some stuff that he’s seeing with young, really young actors that he finds very troubling. And that is they’re in class and they’re saying, you’re making me feel things that I don’t want to feel. I’m very uncomfortable.

And he’s kind of like, well, that’s acting. That’s what we do. We feel everything for the audience. ⁓ That’s fundamentally the job. And if you are uncomfortable or you want me to hold your hand through this process, you will not be an actor.

And he’s finding it more and more. And I find, aside from all the technology stuff, the thing that I find really scary, and that there are human beings who want to act, but don’t want to feel anything.

Simon Waller (29:47)
I find that’s super interesting. And ⁓ I wonder if that’s actually not something that’s isolated to the acting profession, but just more broadly in society, we feel like we become increasingly uncomfortable with discomfort. Talk about the premise of like living life at 22 degrees Celsius. And, you know, we like to these days go from our air conditioned car into our air conditioned houses and then our air conditioned workplaces.

And as soon as something, you know, we, we in doing so we lose that capacity for discomfort. And so when discomfort comes, we feel much less prepared for it than we might’ve otherwise. And I wonder if it’s a bit like that where we, you know, perhaps in our youth, um, through schooling and places like that, we’re creating spaces where people feel discomfort less because discomfort opens us up to, um, to being a potentially

attacked either by overprotective parents or whatever it might be. But actually the net result of that is that, we put people into positions where we need them to experience raw emotion and they feel less able or less comfortable in doing so. This is the other thing you touched on in that little piece, which I thought was really interesting. And one of the questions that came up for me when I first saw your scenario was about the decisions about what gets automated.

Megan Davis (31:03)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (31:16)
So in your scenario, the act, the director, I’m assuming is still a human being. So is the assistant director. Like so is these, there’s obviously people on set in the version that are humans and somehow those roles were protected and yet the act has got automated. And I wonder, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this at all. What does the inverse of that look like? Would it not be possible that the director, assistant director and the camp, they’re all automated.

But we keep the actors as humans. that like, is there, is there something that you thought through or explored? I know your scenario was around the future of acting. And so that’s the bit that’s kind of obviously the catalyst of the conversation, but did you put any thought into where the automation starts and ends in a way?

Megan Davis (32:04)
little. I know, you know, with so camera, you know, people, people who are camera operators have been talking for years about how automation is taking over lot of their job. So that’s everything from cameras that are automatically tracking to like focus pool that’s automatic. Like the first time I saw a focus pool, I was like, my god, it’s actually a piece of string.

Like they’re just pulling the focus. It’s a piece of string, but then now there’s, there are some automatics focus pools. And I mean, it’s an art focus pool is a real art, right? so I, ⁓ so this has been that kind of automation, automation and editing. All of this stuff has been happening for a very long time, very long time. ⁓ and so I thought, you know, to the point where

What would continue to get automated? Like I didn’t include a DOP. There’s no director of photography on that set. They don’t need it. Because you do the camera angles internally within the green screen environment that the digital people populate in. And there’s no set, there’s no costume. But the people who are there are the people who give the money, the producers.

They’re not going to automate themselves on the process. People have the money are not going to take themselves, remove themselves because they’re making the money. They, they make the decisions, right? ⁓ the directors as well. They, don’t see how a director is fully going to disappear because especially if that direction becomes more about where do we take this product next?

And they need that type of thinking. you know, you need the creative and you need the money and the studio heads, like all that stuff comes together. I don’t, I can see how automation can help them do their job in different ways, but I don’t see them as not being a, them not being a person.

Simon Waller (34:18)
I think that’s the kind of interesting there, the thoughts about which gets automated, what doesn’t. I do think as well, at some point we need someone to be responsible still. You know, one of the things I share with people is this idea that, you know, we talk about what gets measured gets done. And ultimately I would argue in the short term, what gets measured gets gained in the long term, it gets automated. If we can measure it, can automate it.

That’s why I think professions like hairdressing and staff are so immune or seem quite immune to automation is we can’t really measure a good haircut. It’s quite a subjective experience of what’s good or not. And in some ways we take a cue ⁓ from the hairdresser themselves as to whether or not they did a good job. And weirdly, I reckon that the director kind of sits a little bit in that space. We need someone who’s going to take responsibility. We need someone who can tell us whether this end product is good or not.

And in some ways, when you talk about the brand of a director, it’s almost like, I’ll watch another one of their movies because the last one was actually quite good. So I think there’s probably some truth in what you’re saying, though. do find it interesting about where these lines end up falling and what pressure they may still feel within their job around automation, even if they’re still physically there. ⁓ the other thing that, ⁓ I really liked about this and what made me think quite deeply about this was the, the.

There’s a little monologue by Babel in the middle of who talks about this almost like having to feel these things over and over again. And we think about this idea that, ⁓ you know, and AI might be able to just express emotion, but never have had to have dealt with anything emotional beforehand. And that kind of seems a little bit weird, like

You know, I imagine in acting, we’re often drawing on past real experiences that we’ve had and drawing on the emotional capital that we built in that time and expressing it in a different way. And I kind of think this is interesting, like as we want, like even if you take a, take a slightly tangential example is the way that, ⁓ deep mind became really good at the game of go.

which was kind of the, you know, the complex version of chess. way he did it was to play a million, millions of games of it. It didn’t just magically create the capacity to play better than the human player. had to go through this simulation so many times. And I kind of almost saw that a little bit in Babel and this idea that for us to create artificial intelligence based actors.

For them to be really good at what they do, there has to have been the fact that they did this a million times beforehand. So then that’s something that came up to me. You’re, but you talk about almost like the emotional burnout that comes with this. Is that something that you’ve experienced as well in your own or seen in, in human actors?

Megan Davis (37:25)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, you it’s often recommended, you know, get a good therapist. ⁓ Because because feeling things is hard when it’s your job, right? You can’t get away from it. You’re paid to reliably produce an emotional experience. ⁓ know, there’s different styles.

So there’s method, which is very much on, think about a horrible time in your life over and over again to reliably access certain emotions, which is, I think it’s very damaging and I’ve never, it’s not my thing. I don’t do method. ⁓ There’s other techniques, including the stuff that I did in New York last year, which is very much around the body already has all the emotions in it. You just.

There’s different exercises and actions you can do to start unlocking it. And it just comes out. And it was incredible. It was life changing. I didn’t have to think about anything. It’s just there. Just like if I started screaming at you and I’m like, I hate you, Simon. And you’d be like, whoa. You don’t have to think about anything to access that emotion. You’re just going to have it because it’s just sitting in there. It’s just in there until you need it. Right.

⁓ And this is way a lot of people work. It’s already there. You just let the situation unlock it. ⁓ And so even if you had an actor that was, I’ll use the word synthetic in terms of that was never born of a human body and it never grew up in a human life, it was constructed, ⁓ you would still have to train it.

And there, I’ve seen ads for actors to train AI.

human actors.

Simon Waller (39:25)
Yeah, there’s a few things like this around at the moment. And I think you mentioned one of the signals that you kind of drew on for this, which was around the, you know, the digital rights side of acting. And increasingly people are being asked to sign over their digital rights to themselves as part of agreements. ⁓ I’m pretty sure this was also something that, was it a couple of years ago? was it?

Screenwriters Guild in the US. ⁓ They went on strike. Was it Screen Actors? I can’t remember which one. I think it the writers.

Megan Davis (40:02)
They were both SAG and Aster. Yeah, they both did. Yeah.

Simon Waller (40:07)
Yeah. But it feels like that hasn’t resolved this, that a lot of actors, especially if you’re trying to make your mark in the industry, are almost willing to sign anything, only to find out years later, what exactly are the implications of what it is that you’ve done. So one recently whereby an actor had signed over their rights, then they’ve been repurposed into advertisements that are now appearing alongside content for dictators in Africa.

And it’s kind of like, hang on. Now my own brand as a human being has been damaged by the fact that my virtual self has been used in this way. And yeah, so think there’s some really interesting stuff that’s obviously transpiring in that space, which would also probably give us pause.

Megan Davis (40:55)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a look. mean, that stuff’s happening to non actors as well. Right. ⁓ It’s Scott Galloway, who’s a guy. He’s a he’s a podcast host, but he’s also like a professor of economics and owns lots of businesses, sits on lots of boards. You know, he’s he knows what he’s talking about. And his likeness was ⁓ that someone created a deep fake of him.

asking for investments into some platform. I don’t know what it was. And it’s been going around on different meta products. And he’s asked meta multiple times to get rid of it. But people are contacting him all the time going, hey, I found this. Is this really you? Are you really saying this stuff? Because they knew him and they thought it was weird. And of course, he is not, he would never say these things. And but he’s having, you know, so whether you’ve signed it or not,

people are losing control of themselves. And I don’t see this as like an acting problem. I see this as a much, much, much bigger, more dangerous situation, which we’ve seen played out on Black Mirror multiple times. ⁓

Simon Waller (42:11)
Yeah, I think there was actually something that came up recently, which I felt very interesting. ⁓ With the passing of Trump’s, I think they call it the big, beautiful bill, like he’s basically funding bill for, it just passed through Congress. I think it may have now passed through the Senate as well, but buried within that was legislation that said that it was a moratorium on any state or other jurisdiction putting any limitations on AI for a decade.

So it was basically a, create the situation where no state or other jurisdiction could create a law to limit the power of AI companies for 10 years. And it’s like things like that where we’re like, yeah, we need an approach that’s more nimble that can actually, ⁓ such an emergent space. We need ways of being able to adjust and control things as they move forward because at the moment, ⁓ even the limited controls that are there feel quite inadequate.

Megan Davis (43:10)
Yes. Yeah. Just to, I don’t know when this is going to go to air, but it’s in the Senate now, past the House. So yeah, it hasn’t passed the Senate. So hopefully we would need one Republican to cross party lines. But yeah, it’s scary. It’s really scary.

Simon Waller (43:40)
to the scenario, another interesting thing that I kind of picked up in reading it was, uh, which I think is such a beautiful part of the, the color of it, which is around these safe spaces that actors are still in. You know, like these kind of, there’s two things that you do about like the kink clubs, but there’s this idea that people would hire an actor to come into their home, I presume, and play out these kind of emotional experiences with them. Do you want to jump into that a little bit more about, you know,

Like what, what it is about these types of environments, you know, how do we create, yeah, where is it that we will see almost like where the, the human desire or acting, which has, you know, it’s an art form that has been around for thousands of thousands of years or tens of thousands of years. Like there’s this innate desire for us to play it out and where is it that would play it out in this world?

Megan Davis (44:36)
Yeah. That was inspired by two things. So one, is inspired by actual sex work where a lot of stuff that happens there is highly emotional. It’s not just a physical act. This is something that’s real that already happens. So it was like referencing. These are an often people who are in relationships.

It’s not that they’re not in a relationship. They’re in a relationship where various emotional needs are not being met. And so they hire someone under the guise of a physical need, but it’s actually what’s occurring is an emotional need. So that’s something that’s not new. This is a thing that’s been going on for, well, probably for forever. But then I was crossing that with if…

If we have these digital boyfriend, girlfriend things or whatever, these like AIs that are increasingly becoming people’s partners ⁓ for better, I don’t know how else to describe it, but you know, they’re in a deep emotional relationship with these AIs. ⁓ There’s going to become the antithesis of that. Like as soon as one thing becomes pretty mainstream, then there’s gonna be people like, I’m not into that, I’m into the real.

the real thing. have like a real person that I hired to come over and do this for me, you know, like this is, they’re going to like have real fights or real emotional connection or real whatever. And, know, like, ⁓ there’s this weird, I don’t know, I’ve had lots of weird conversations with people about acting, like not being real. And I’m like, no, it’s real. The emotions that you have are real. That’s how you have a real emotion because we’re having it.

If it wasn’t real, you would feel nothing. It’s real emotions in a unreal situation. And a given set of circumstances, like that’s a term, that’s a phrase that’s used. So the emotions are real. And so people want, will increasingly go, how can I have that in a safe place? Because also the more kind of digital content that

comes out that’s all digital. Like there’s kids cartoons where I look at and think, I’m sure there’s no human hand involved in any of this, from the script to how it’s produced. It looks like it’s just an algorithm’s gone through and made this thing. And then it hits all the points where these kids can’t say no to watching it they do. But as someone who’s much older and has grown up on…

things that humans have produced, I’m like, I don’t see any human in this. This is a thing that was produced by like artificial intelligence, essentially. But if you’ve got people who were raised on that stuff, who don’t have the discernment to go, a human didn’t make any of this. If they get exposed to something else, like this human stuff and they go, like it’s very addictive once you have it.

Emotions are addictive. We’re hardwired for it. So finding that reality, even if it’s not real, is, you know, I guess I created like a kink or underground system because it’s like, because it’s almost dirty. It’s like, ⁓

Simon Waller (48:09)
I think it kind of also, also, ⁓ kind of touches back on the conversation we had just a little bit earlier around the comfort with discomfort piece is that all through our lives, the almost emotional range that we’re expected to operating this become narrower. And that kind of thing kind of creates a situation where maybe you feel quite unsafe to explore more extreme emotions with.

the other human beings around you. And so I kind of saw that in this as well. It’s like, well, I’d still want to experience them and perhaps even I want to get better at them. Now that sounds weird, but I want to get better at perhaps love, but also maybe I need to, as a result of that, also get better at hate. Because it’s only in the, it’s in the variety of it that you really appreciate one or the other. And how is it that I get to do that?

When we live in a world which doesn’t really allow for or value that emotional range. ⁓ Yeah. Especially some of those more extreme emotions.

Megan Davis (49:19)
Yeah, I think if you can play with it, you know, I think if there was more I think if everyone took mandatory acting classes, there would be less crime. I mean, I think that’s a really big statement. But when you get to play with violence, like I’ve done I’ve done stage combat for a couple of years now, and you’re pretending to hurt someone, you’re pretending to kill someone.

But it’s in that, but the entire thing is constructed so that you don’t hurt the other person. Every single step is so that you are caring for this person as much as you possibly can. Because you’re so aware, you’re so aware of what violence is at every point of that. And then to enact it, but also the freedom to feel comfortable enough to respond to the act of violence like you would, like the screaming, the crying.

You have to feel really safe to be able to go there. So the interesting part of all of this is that in order to explore it, you understand the exact opposite. And only when you have the two sides, if you’re there’s like in the body work process that I do rage and, like lust on bridal lust.

is two sides of the same coin. Like you get to one and then you flip over into the other and you see how it’s almost the same emotion. And then when you’re like, when you’re doing like, ⁓ like, I guess, what is it like longing, like deep, deep, deep longing, you understand that the other side of that is deep, deep, deep love. It’s the same. It’s just this kind of texture, nuance or sliding of a very slight scale.

because it’s really the same thing. And so once you start giving yourself that permission, you realize how incredibly deep and fragile everything is and how we need all of it and we need the safety to explore it because there are so many people who lash out, I feel, only because they have absolutely no idea what’s going on inside of them. So I’m gonna hit, I’m gonna kill, I’m gonna do this.

Cause they have no bandwidth to process what’s happened. And we’ll all have it. We’ll all have it at some point. We’ll all have like that deep rage. We’ll all have that deep ⁓ desire. We’ll all have the deep love, the deep longing. But if we don’t have any kind of access to what it is or what it means, how do you work through it other than a destructive thing? Cause love can be very destructive. Like the really deep.

You know, that can be very consuming as well in a very unhealthy way. So it’s, yeah, that’s, that’s why I’m always like, God, if everyone just took an acting class, one acting class.

Simon Waller (52:27)
So with this scenario as well, think there’s, ⁓ there is, in some ways you, you are a human actor. You have a bias towards human actors being, ⁓ in movies in the future or, having a role to play in, this, in this scenario. And sometimes our biases can cloud.

⁓ not so much a, mean, there’s a preference part of it, but there’s also like a reality part of it. There’s other ways this future could play out once whereby Babel doesn’t quit. And, and then, you know, we, we kind of are forced to kind of reconnect with, with human actors, right? What, ⁓ what are your fears in this? What would you kind of suggest might be signals or signs that we haven’t seen yet?

They indicate that we’re going down a path very different from this one. One in which by way, perhaps we become very comfortable with AI, with humans being taken out of the acting process.

Megan Davis (53:34)
Mm-hmm. So it’s a good thing that humans are acting at all.

Simon Waller (53:39)
I don’t whether I’m suggesting it’s a good or not, but more it somehow becomes accepted.

Megan Davis (53:48)
Mm.

Simon Waller (53:49)
I mean, one thing that came up for me was if you think about the different types of movies that we watch, some, like a lot of your conversation day has been around the power and the value of emotion for us to experience, for it to be portrayed on screen, for us to be able to consume it and digest it. I would also suggest that not all movies have a huge amount of emotion in them. know, you know, like if you look at things like say the Fast and Furious franchise,

It feels like the emotional aspect of this is slightly more tokenistic and the real thing is about the action.

Megan Davis (54:24)
Okay.

Simon Waller (54:25)
So maybe that would be, that, you know, are there, are there kind of a situation of like, Oh, well, hang on. And we’re just finding that the, the movie industry just gravitates towards, um, types of movies that don’t require that level of emotional investment.

Megan Davis (54:41)
Yeah. So, I mean, Fast and Furious is really emotional. That’s hitting a dopamine button every five seconds. They’re addictive because there’s so much drive, there’s so much action and it’s you know, it’s coursing through your body, right? Because you’re like, ⁓ this is happening. It’s highly emotional. And it’s so, you know,

And that’s just as valid as any other emotion rather, you know, it’s just as valid as like deep love or deep longing or trauma or heartbreak. They’re all, they’re all, we need all, we need those movies too. So, you know, it’s totally fine to have those types of films, which I like watching sometimes too. I don’t just sit and watch like things that rip me apart every day. That’s too exhausting.

I like to laugh as well, you know, all these things are highly emotional. So they’re all valid. ⁓ But in terms of a future where it’s totally okay that humans don’t act at all. Here’s the thing. There will always be people who will do it and they’ll do it no matter what. I mean, there are people I know who have given up almost everything in their lives.

to act and they’ll just keep doing it. There’s something much bigger within us. So even if a human actor never graces the silver screen, so to speak, which is also kind of a dying entertainment form in terms of, you know.

Do teenage groups of kids go to movies very much anymore? No, they don’t. But in the future, if film is just generated personalities, because they will have to have some sort of personality that you can follow from film to film. We will want that, I think. But these constructed, everything’s constructed, it’ll still exist.

It’ll still exist. I just can’t. It’s a need.

Simon Waller (56:58)
Yeah. So what I imagined, you know, in this, in that kind of future would be the, the stuff like the amateur theater companies that would become perhaps even more abundant because I agree with you. think that we can’t take away the desire of people to act. We just may take away a revenue stream for them to actually be paid to do so. And I do even wonder within that there’s something else to be explored, which is that we often in, you know, especially within movies, there is, you know, there’s

There’s the A-list actors who get paid insane amounts of money to do their job relative to the person who works ⁓ at the Melbourne theater company or even something smaller again. There’s a huge discrepancy that spares. And whether or not in doing so, what you’re actually taking away is the top, not the middle or the bottom that, ⁓ you know, it’s when you have budgets of

You know, multiple, like hundreds of millions of dollars. we go, well, that’s the bit where we would now be able to use some incredibly human-like generation of, ⁓ of even potentially actors, physical actors or human actors. ⁓ But yeah, I don’t think it takes away from that desire. So I think that’s one thing that I know, you know, there’s limits to how much we can explore about the future and a page and a half and there’s choices that we make. But I do see that.

This is not to suggest that human acting disappears.

Megan Davis (58:31)
Yeah, it’ll just become something else. It’s just like photography didn’t kill painting. you know, sculpture didn’t kill mosaics or I’m not sure how that progression exactly worked. People still paint on pottery. You know, it’s like there every time we figure out a new thing to do, it just becomes part of the strata. It doesn’t nothing really disappears.

Because the thing that we love most to do is to communicate. We want to communicate. We want to connect. We want something bigger. We know that we’re part of something bigger. And all we do is try to define what that might be or how that looks for us in lots of different ways. And most of us do it just because it’s some sort of deep love or deep un-

desire that can never be quenched, know, like we’ll just keep doing and keep going and keep exploring. So it will transform. The future of acting is again kind of in this place of what will it become.

And there’ll be things that we lose and there’ll be things that we gain. But I think as long as we recognize that.

There’s so much inside of us that’s available to us to give in terms of our emotions, our passion. Like, if we keep a hold of that, we’ll keep finding ways to grow as opposed to losing, know, feeling like we’ve lost something.

⁓ because that’s definitely what I want the most that no matter what’s ahead, we still find ourselves over and over and over again.

Simon Waller (1:00:46)
Yeah. So that’s interesting because on one hand as a scenario, this is very narrow. I’m not sure that a lot of people who listen to the podcast would have a deep knowledge of acting, especially not in the same way that you do. But I think there’s also perhaps, which you touched on there, perhaps almost some more universal lessons that come out of this as well. And so we’re just about, we’re going to come towards the end of the podcast.

What would be those lessons or what would be the actions that you would encourage people to take? That is it not because they have a deep desire to be on stage as an actor, but because there’s universal lessons to be learned from this scenario.

Megan Davis (1:01:31)
Well, one is emotions are okay. They’re good. They’re good things to have. They teach us a lot. They help us to mature. They help us to learn. And we, the more we’re okay with just having them or recognizing them, the better off you’re going to be.

I know Brene Brown does a lot of work in this in terms of we have, especially in English, we have a very dry, brittle, thin layer of words that address emotion, ⁓ which is really sad. So that handicaps us in a lot of ways. So, ⁓ you know.

giving voice to what’s going on internally sometimes can be really difficult because maybe we don’t even have a word for it. So maybe you think about the German approach of put a bunch of different words together into one big word. That’s your word. you ⁓ know, everyone likes Shakespeare. That’s okay. But Shakespeare made up a lot of words to be like, it’s kind of like that. And then he puts the words together and you’re like, yeah.

That is kind of like what it is, you know, and a lot of these words we still use today. yeah, like just, just be okay with what’s happening. ⁓ and you know, like if you’re feeling, especially they’re really intense, like it’s this blind rage, which does happen rather than pushing it down and go, geez, that was scary. You know, really think about it. What was happening for you?

because you’re gonna learn something and hopefully no one got hurt, including yourself, right? But what are you gonna learn from that? Because it does make you a better person. It really does.

Simon Waller (1:03:33)
And, the last question I have for you is having gone through this process and spent in time thinking through this future for obviously a, something that you care very deeply about. And even perhaps from this conversation itself, what have you taken away from it? Has it made a difference to you at all? ⁓ in terms of your own perspective or your own understanding.

Megan Davis (1:04:00)
It, you know, because obviously I was going into like what I’m afraid of, right? So I’m really afraid that because of budgets and money, the acting or actors will be marginalized.

But then the more I thought about it, the more I was like, it’s so much work. It’s so much work to construct entire realities, entire people, entire lives. It’s so much faster just to have the person who that did it already, right? That’s already there and it’s already accessed and it’s already. And so in terms of like what it would take to train an AI to make it this.

hugely successful emotional range, interesting people would want to follow their career. It sounds, after I thought about it, I was like, it’s a lifetime of work. You might as well just have a person living a lifetime. ⁓ So it’s really about, for me, like understanding what are the mechanics that add value and that we can streamline from? It’s the same as like for me as a writer and AI.

The value comes in the nuance, the subtlety, the things that, a thing that’s never asked to be creative or to create could create. It mimics, it finds things that have already been done. So it’s your job to be so weird.

to be so unique, to really go all the places because you’ll always be the thing that it’s trying to be, know, be that. I guess that’s my long rambling explanation in terms of what I learned. Just lean into everything that’s going on for you. Just go right in there.

Simon Waller (1:06:06)
Yeah, there’s something about the idea that, you know, AI comes up with the next most average word and the idea that AI would come up with the next most average facial expression to represent that thing called love or whatever it might be. But there’s a multitude of nuances in how that could be done and to lean into that and be our fully expressed self. That’s very cool. I think the other thing I took away from which I think was really powerful is there is a deep desire.

within people to act and that even if you were to take away an app, one avenue for them to do so, they would find countless others in which they can do it. I think that’s a beautiful part of the human spirit and this idea and need that we have to express ourselves. Megan, this has been awesome catching up and chatting with you like this. been a really beautiful exploration for me. It’s something that I hadn’t really put lot of thought into, but something

that I feel quite moved and quite touched by. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been awesome chatting with you.

Megan Davis (1:07:06)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a great conversation. I feel a little bit lighter now going into the rest of my day.

Simon Waller (1:07:14)
That’s excellent. And to everyone out there listening, thanks so much for joining us. We’ll be back with another episode in a couple of weeks time.