Lifestyle

This Storybook cottage's native plant wonderland shows how gorgeous no grass can be

Published

2 years ago

May 8, 2024

This Storybook cottage's native plant wonderland shows how gorgeous no grass can be

Water-hungry lawns are symbols of Los Angeles’ past. In this series, we spotlight yards with alternative, low-water landscaping built for the future.

Once upon a time, under Universal Studios’ watchful Minion eye, there was a Storybook house in Studio City with a steep, sagging roof, a towering, tottering chimney and a yard so boring and prone to flooding that its charm was pretty much negated.

The front yard was mostly dead grass; the driveway was cracked and broken from runoff whenever it rained; and the funnel-shaped backyard was overwhelmed by a rotting wood pergola.

Succulents in the front yard grow in an alcove built into the chimney.

A planter under a window spills over with succulents

A planter spills over with succulents in Michael Solberg and Khoi Pham’s home garden.

No longer. Today, the yard of Khoi Pham and his fiancé, Michael Solberg, is a wonderland of native plants, water-conserving bioswales, a patio mosaic made from recycled concrete and permeable gravel paths with a delightful crunch. And throughout the garden are little riots of succulents spilling from pots, baskets and even the fanciful nook built into their chimney, dotting the garden with jolts of color like fancy embellishments on a cake.

There are lots of little signs identifying the plants too, to feed Solberg’s vision of educating passersby about the beauty, practicality and sustainability of native plant landscapes. The signs “make you feel like you should stop and pay attention,” said Solberg.

But they’re also helpful because this yard, designed and built by landscape designer Isara Ongwiseth of FormLA Landscaping, is one of three featured gardens during the Garden Conservancy’s San Fernando Valley Open Days Garden Tour on April 28, and the only one featuring a landscape devoted to California native plants. (Tickets are $10 per garden.)

Two lands holding a green metal plaque reading "Certified Wildlife Habitat."

A dog peers over the half-open Dutch door looking at her owners sitting nearby at a table outside.

The landscape is lush for one so young — it was installed in February 2022 — and features multiple plantings of a few varieties of native plants, such as the red-berried toyon, which Solberg is trying to espalier along one wall of his garage, dark-green ceanothus shrubs mingling with the silvery leaves of white sage (Salvia apiana), rings of Douglas iris (Iris douglasiana), earth-bound wisps of blushing coral bells, a.k.a. Wendy alumroot (Heuchera ‘Wendy’) and two Western redbud trees (Cercis occidentalis) — one in front, one in back — that bloom in deep violet clouds each spring.

For the record:

9:24 a.m. April 15, 2024An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the landscape was installed in February 2021. It was installed in February 2022. A photo caption incorrectly said the house is in North Hollywood. It is located in Studio City.

Out front are islands of fragrance that bloom in varying shades of purple — coyote mint (Monardella villosa), Cleveland sage (Salvia clevelandii) and bee’s bliss sage (Salvia ‘Bee’s Bliss’), along with clumps of deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens), Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) and the deep-throated flowers of Margarita BOP penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Margarita BOP’).

Basically, Solberg said, except for the creeping fig lacing the chimney and the giant camphor tree on the parkway in front, any plants in the ground of their new landscape are California native plants; others, like his succulents and dwarf lemon, are planted in pots. And he hopes their plantings encourage more of the same.

I wanted to get the word out that native plants are a great way to have a sustainable garden that doesn’t require too much water, is good for wildlife and insects, is easy to care for and looks great too.

— Michael Solberg

“You just don’t see a bunch of California native gardens in our neighborhoods. What you see is lawn and standard shrubs, or fake turf or people who just paved everything over,” Solberg said. “I wanted something unique and different for our landscape, but also responsible with water and nature, and education was a really big part of that. I wanted to get the word out that native plants are a great way to have a sustainable garden that doesn’t require too much water, is good for wildlife and insects, is easy to care for and looks great too.”

This was Solberg and Pham’s second foray into creating a native plant landscape. Before they bought their Storybook home in late 2019, they’d taken out the lawn in front of their former home in Sherman Oaks and, inspired by gardens they’d seen on the Theodore Payne Foundation’s Native Plant Garden Tours, decided on a water-conscious landscape that relied on native plants instead of cactus and drought-tolerant plants from other countries with Mediterranean climates.

Khoi Pham, left, and Michael Solberg relax in chairs with cups of coffee outside in their leafy backyard.

Solberg — the gardener of the family — said he learned a lot in that DIY project: what native plants grow quickly and slowly, which he liked the best and which ones he should have placed somewhere else (such as a Matilija poppy that rapidly outgrew its location).

When it came time to finally landscape their new home in Studio City, Solberg said he wanted to continue the same theme, but he was concerned about dealing with the property’s special problems — a small, weirdly shaped backyard dominated by an aging pergola and water that ran off their Hansel-and-Gretel roof in sheets, creating runoff and flooding.

So in addition to an all-native-plant landscape, Solberg wanted permeable surfaces that would trap water in the soil instead of sending it out into the street — but he didn’t want any gutters to ruin their roof’s unusual lines. He wanted gravel walkways and drives that wouldn’t require constant maintenance. He wanted year-round color and interest, shade and privacy from the tall apartment building behind their house and plants that would attract birds and other pollinators.

Birds fly around a hanging feeder in Michael Solberg and Khoi Pham's front yard.

Birds fly around a feeder in Michael Solberg and Khoi Pham’s front yard.

A bee noses among the pink blooms of a spray of coral bells.

They also had lifestyle considerations: Both men work from home — Solberg full-time overseeing corporate retail operations for a chain of tool stores and Pham at least two days a week as a research and development scientist for medical devices such as hospital sterilization equipment — so creating a serene and cheerful work environment was crucial inside and out.

And then there were Pham’s concerns. He was happy to leave the plant decisions to Solberg, the green thumb of the family. “I do the budget, but when it comes to gardening, I’m more of a cheerleader,” Pham said. “I was thinking more about the parties I’m going to throw in the backyard, and how they have to flow a certain way.”

A collection of small, colorful succulents in a variety of containers on a patio table.

Solberg grew up around plants and gardening, but Pham said they were never a part of his life until the two met in San Diego in 2011. “When we first met, he had a beautiful succulent garden on his tiny patio that was really impressive — I had plastic succulents I bought from Crate & Barrel,” Pham said, laughing. “I just dusted them every once in a while.”

So there were lots of things to consider in creating their new landscape, Solberg said, plus he already knew how much work it was to take out a lawn and create a new landscape. So in the end, they called FormLA Landscaping, because they had admired the firm’s native landscapes in the past, and began laying out their wish list to Ongwiseth, the lead designer.

It took a few tweaks and persuasion — and $60,000 — but in the end, Solberg and Pham said Ongwiseth made their vision better than they had dreamed.

But there were a few bumps along the way.

One of the first decisions was removing the raised wooden deck in the backyard, Ongwiseth said. Pham and Solberg were reluctant not to rebuild, until they saw how much space the removal created. “It put everything at ground level, so you feel like you’re part of the garden instead of above it,” Solberg said.

Solberg was adamant about not wanting gutters to clutter up the roof line. Ongwiseth used French drains around the house perimeter — basically a trench filled with gravel and a perforated pipe to capture the runoff and direct it to the bioswales in the front yard. Ongwiseth finally convinced Solberg to add a small section of gutters on the south side of the house, along the driveway, where they were nearly invisible.

The two bioswales in the front are like planted indentations in the ground that fill with water after a heavy rain and hold it long enough that it sinks in. The gutters help direct rainfall into pipes that drain into the swales. Once they removed the broken concrete driveway and replaced it with ¾-inch crushed angular gravel, they found the rocks helped trap water coming off the roof as well, so that it sunk into the ground instead of pooling and flooding in spots like the old driveway. They also installed a subterranean drip irrigation system, which automatically waters two days a week for 10 minutes. The system uses sensors to skip watering days if it’s raining.

FormLA lead designer Isara Ongwiseth poses in the front yard he designed.

An overview of Michael Solberg and Khoi Pham's backyard, with gravel paths and patio edged with broken concrete.

The swales are edged with meandering paths of smaller, 3/8-inch angular gravel, and mostly hidden by the plants. Gravel was high on Solberg’s wish list, partly for sentimental reasons. His grandmother had gravel paths, he said, and he always loved the way they crunched when he walked on them. There’s a security aspect too, Ongwiseth said: “You’ll always know if somebody has wandered into your garden.”

But creating permeable paths and drives is more challenging than you’d think, Ongwiseth said. “Gravel and decomposed granite sounds good, but then you start tracking granite into the house and scratch the floor, so what do you do with that?” And round smooth gravel may look nice from afar, but your feet sink into those rocks when you walk on them, and they tend to scatter everywhere when children or dogs scramble by. (Pham and Solberg have two rambunctious dogs — Lucy, a goldendoodle, and Teddy, a terrier mix.) Because the kind of gravel Ongwiseth chose locks together, the small rocks stay in place when you walk on them, and your feet feel supported instead of sinking.

A goldendoodle laps at a rustic fountain next to a spray of coral bell flowers.

Preparation was important too. After they tore out the old driveway and created the paths, they removed any weeds, added another drain at the end of the driveway and laid down a geo-textile fabric that suppresses weed growth while allowing water to soak through, before topping off the areas with two inches of gravel.

“Choosing the right type of weed barrier is very important, because so many will start to degrade over time,” Ongwiseth said. “The geo-textile fabrics don’t do that. I have many gardens I’ve installed in the last 15 years where the weed barrier is still holding up.”

Another point of concern was Ongwiseth’s plan to frame the gravel seating area outside the back door with a mosaic of broken concrete. “Broken concrete doesn’t sound very nice,” Pham said, “It felt a little too DIY, but once it was installed, I was like, ‘Oh, where else can we install it?’”

In fact, Pham said, you can still see a portion of rebar in one of his favorite pieces of concrete, “because it shows that it was reused. It truly is an art; they had to chip away at pieces of concrete to put the puzzle together to make it fit into the space.”

The finished design does look artistic, but it was all part of Ongwiseth’s practical considerations about transitioning between yard and home. He wanted a design that basically cleans your shoes of any dust or debris before you step inside. He grew up in a traditional Asian family where everyone takes off their shoes before they enter a home, “but not everyone practices that, so creating a landing or space even with concrete provides that transition.”

He also wanted to honor Solberg’s vision of having permeable surfaces throughout the garden, so instead of big concrete slabs there are spaces between all the small pieces of concrete to allow water to sink into the ground. Those spaces can create uneven places for chairs and tables, he said, so he made the main seating areas all gravel rimmed by the decorative pieces of concrete.

Broken concrete provides a walkway around planting areas and pots of succulents.

Broken concrete and gravel creates a walkway between planting areas and pots of succulents.

Details of succulents, with a colorful statue of a bird peeking through the greenery.

Michael Solberg’s pots of succulents add jolts of color around the home’s native plant landscape.

Ongwiseth also considered the fantastic Storybook design of the house in creating his design. As visitors will see, there is a sense of mystery and exploration as you walk from the front to the back.

“I wanted to create a meandering garden experience, where the whole garden is not revealed right away,” he said. “When we first arrived, we noticed the awkwardness of the shape of the backyard, and that old shade structure [the pergola] just emphasized that awkwardness. Once we removed all that we came up with a design that was more fluid, something that makes you want to explore the richness of the foliage, and the sense of many destinations throughout.”

There was a final and unexpected challenge, when Pham and Solberg were forced to remove a large camphor tree that provided privacy and filtered shade in their backyard. The tree had grown into their neighbor’s garage so it had to be removed, exposing their yard to the multistory apartment building behind them.

Two men and a dog sit on a step in their backyard

Ongwiseth softened the privacy issue by installing a large sail-shaped cover stretching from the house to the detached garage, which provides welcome shade during the summer but allows enough sunlight to filter through to keep the plants happy. They planted another redbud tree in the space where the camphor once stood — freeing up some additional space for their barbecue as well — and a bank of hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) at the very back that are already tall enough to block out a large swath of the apartments.

All in all, Pham and Solberg are still pinching themselves about how well it all came together. “There’s a healthy water table under our house now,” Solberg said, laughing. “And maintenance-wise, there’s not a lot we have to do. I have a blower to get rid of excess leaves once in a while, and sometimes, when it gets a little overgrown, I have to get out my clippers, but for the most part it tends to itself.”

These days, they can work outside at a large round table, with its small pots of colorful succulents, or drink coffee in the seating area nearby. Those places are separated by only a few steps, but they feel like a journey, admiring the tall abstract Dustin Gimbel sculptures of salvia whirls, next to real salvias blooming nearby, or the pots of blooming De La Mina verbena (Verbena lilacina ‘De La Mina’) and fragrant pitcher sage (Lepechinia fragrans).

This lovely space is where they’ll host their wedding reception in July, for about 50 people, the wide driveway functioning as a seating area as well as a way to drive in and out of their garage. Pham has his party flow, and Solberg has his vision of a landscape both beautiful and sustainable, visited by pollinators and birds.

“My advice is, just trust the process,” Solberg said. “Normally I would want more control, but I gave up creative license and learned a lot, like the Palmer’s Indian mallow (Abutilon palmeri) — I never would have chosen that for our garden because I didn’t know about it. So I learned, if you trust in the process, you can end up with something incredible, better than if you had done it on your own.”

Lifestyle

A glimpse of Iran, through the eyes of its artists and journalists

Published

9 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

A glimpse of Iran, through the eyes of its artists and journalists

Understanding one of the world’s oldest civilizations can’t be achieved through a single film or book. But recent works of literature, journalism, music and film by Iranians are a powerful starting point. Clockwise from top left: The Seed of the Sacred Fig, For The Sun After Long Nights, Cutting Through Rocks, It Was Just an Accident, Martyr!, and Kayhan Kalhor.

NEON; Pantheon; Gandom Films Production; NEON; Vintage; Julia Gunther for NPR

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NEON; Pantheon; Gandom Films Production; NEON; Vintage; Julia Gunther for NPR

Few Americans have had the opportunity to visit or explore Iran, an ethnically diverse nation of over 90 million people which has been effectively shut off from the United States since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Now, with a U.S. and Israeli-led war on Iran underway, the ideas, feelings and opinions of Iranians may feel less accessible. However, some recent books, films and music made by artists and journalists in Iran and from the Iranian diaspora can help illuminate this ancient culture and its contemporary politics.

These suggestions are just a starting point, of course — with an emphasis on recent works made by Iranians themselves, rather than by outsiders looking in.

Books

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising, by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy

There are quite a few excellent titles that deconstruct the history of Iran from ancient times through the rule of the Pahlavi Dynasty to the Iranian Revolution. But there are far fewer books that help us understand the Iran of 2026 and the people who live there now. One standout is the National Book Award-nominated For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising by journalists Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, which chronicles — almost in real time — the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that began in 2022, during which Jamalpour was working secretly as a journalist in Tehran. In 2024-25, Jamalpour (who is now living in exile in the U.S.) and I spent a year together at the University of Michigan’s Knight-Wallace fellowship for journalists; her insights into contemporary Iran are among the best.

Gold, by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

If Americans are familiar with Persian poetry at all, it may well be through popular “translations” of the 13th-century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi done by the late American poet Coleman Barks, who neither read nor spoke the Persian language and detached the works of Molana (“our master”), as Iranians call him, of references to Islam. (Instead, Barks “interpreted” preexisting English translations.)

In 2022, Iranian-American poet, performance artist and singer Haleh Liza Gafori offered the first volume of a corrective, in the form of fresh Rumi translations that are at once accessible, deeply contemplative and immediate. A second volume, Water, followed last year.

Martyr!: A Novel, by Kaveh Akbar

This 2024 debut novel by Kaveh Akbar, the poetry editor at The Nation, is an unflinching tour-de-force bursting with wit and insight into the complications of diaspora, the nature of identity in a post-War on Terror world and the inter-generational impact of the 1979 Revolution on Iranians. The protagonist, the Iran-born but American-raised Cyrus Shams, has struggled with addiction, depression and insomnia his whole life, and is trying his best to make sense of a world at the “intersection of Iranian-ness and Midwestern-ness.” As with so many other of the titles here, fiction and fact are woven together: the story centers around the true story of the U.S. downing an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war.

The Stationery Shop: A Novel, by Marjan Kamali

Marjan Kamali’s 2019 love story is the wistful tale of a young woman named Roya and an idealistic activist named Bahman, who meet cute in a Tehran store in the 1950s, but whose planned marriage falls apart due to turmoil both familial and political, as Iran’s democratically elected government falls in a U.S.-British lead coup that ends with the installation of the Shah. Roya flees to the U.S. for a fresh start, but the two reunite in 2013, wondering: what if life had spun out in a different direction?

Movies

Coup 53

This 2019 documentary directed by Iranian film maker Taghi Amirani and co-written by Walter Murch recounts Operation Ajax, in which the CIA and Britain’s MI6 engineered the removal of Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, and installed a friendly ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in his place. (The Shah was ousted in the 1979 revolution.) As Fresh Air critic John Powers noted in his review, “What emerges first is the backstory of the coup, which like so much in the modern Middle East is predicated on oil. Shortly after the black gold was discovered in early 20th century Iran, a British oil company now known as BP locked up a sweetheart deal for its exploitation. Iran not only got a mere 16% of the oil money before British taxes, but the books were kept by the British — and the Iranians weren’t allowed to see them.”

YouTube

Cutting Through Rocks

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s film Cutting Through Rocks is up for an Oscar this season after premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. This inspiring documentary follows Sara Shahverdi — a divorced, childless motorcyclist — as she campaigns to become the first woman elected to the city council of her remote village, and who dreams of teaching girls to ride and to end child marriage.

YouTube

It Was Just an Accident

The latest film from acclaimed director Jafar Panahi — who has officially been banned from making films in Iran — is 2025’s It Was Just an Accident. Panahi, who has been jailed multiple times for his work and was recently sentenced again in absentia, has said in interviews that his inspiration for this brutal – and shockingly funny – thriller was people he met while in prison: an auto mechanic named Vahid finds himself face-to-face with the man who he is fairly certain was his torturer in jail, and eventually assembles other victims to try to confirm his suspicions. Fresh Air critic Justin Chang called It Was Just an Accident “a blast of pure anti-authoritarian rage.”

YouTube

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

This 2024 thriller — shot in secret by director Mohammad Rasoulof — centers on a family whose father, Iman, is appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran. But it soon becomes clear that his job has nothing to do with actually investigating. Iman, his wife, and two daughters come to suspect each other in our age of mass surveillance, as the city streets below erupt into the real-life Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

YouTube

Music

Kayhan Kalhor

One of the primary ambassadors of Persian classical music has been the composer and kamancheh (an Iranian bowed-instrument) virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. Although music, like poetry, has been central to Iranian culture for centuries, all kinds of music were initially banned after the 1979 revolution. Since then, however, Iranian classical musicians have ridden many looping cycles of official condemnation, grudging tolerance, censorship and attempts at co-option by the regime.

Despite those difficulties, Kalhor has built a thriving career both inside Iran and abroad, including winning a Grammy Award as part of the Silkroad Ensemble and earning three nominations as a solo artist. Back in 2012, I invited him to our Tiny Desk to perform solo. “Didn’t know I could have goosebumps for 12 minutes straight,” a YouTube commenter recently wrote; I couldn’t put it any better.

YouTube

Saeid Shanbehzadeh

Among Iran’s 92 million people, about 40% of come from various ethnic minorities, including Azeris, Kurds and Armenians among many others. One of the most fascinating communities is the Afro-Iranians in the Iranian south, many of whose ancestors were brought to Iran as enslaved people from east Africa. Multi-instrumentalist and dancer Saeid Shanbehzadeh, who traces his ancestry to Zanzibar, celebrates that heritage with his band, and specializes in the Iranian bagpipe and percussion.

YouTube

The underground metal scene

Despite ongoing restrictions on music — including the continued ban on female singers performing in mixed-gender public settings — Iran is home to a thriving underground scene for metal and punk. Though it’s fictional, Farbod Ardebelli’s 2020 short drama Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran — which was secretly filmed in Tehran, with the director giving instructions remotely from the U.S. via WhatsApp — gives a flavor of that real-life scene and the dangers those artists face.

YouTube

Lifestyle

Sen. Thom Tillis Rips Kristi Noem, Compares ICE Killings To Dog She Killed

Published

10 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Sen. Thom Tillis Rips Kristi Noem, Compares ICE Killings To Dog She Killed

Sen. Tillis To Kristi Noem
ICE Killings Are Like Dog You Killed

Published
March 3, 2026
6:20 PM PST

Fireworks on Capitol Hill … Sen. Thom Tillis ripped into DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a congressional hearing … comparing American citizens killed by immigration agents to a dog she killed.

Check out the video … the Republican Senator from North Carolina says Noem has shown terrible leadership and decision-making as Trump‘s DHS Secretary.

012426_minneapolis_shooting_across_street_cnn_kal_v2

Tillis says the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE and Border Patrol remind him of a passage from Noem’s book … where she recalls killing a dog she brought on a hunting trip.

Noem said the 14-month-old dog, Cricket, was misbehaving … so she led the dog to a gravel pit and shot her.

X/@DHSgov

Sen. Tillis told her straight up … “Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis. We’re an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you’ve demonstrated anything but that.”

Lifestyle

For filmmaker Chloé Zhao, creative life was never linear

Published

21 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

For filmmaker Chloé Zhao, creative life was never linear

In 2021, Zhao made history as the first woman of color to win the best director Oscar for her film Nomadland. Her Oscar-nominated drama Hamnet has made $70 million worldwide.

Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

It took a very special kind of spirit to make Hamnet, which is nominated for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Chloé Zhao brought her uniquely sensitive, mind-body approach to directing the fictionalized story about how William Shakespeare was inspired to write his masterpiece Hamlet.

Zhao adapted the screenplay from a novel by Maggie O’Farrell, and for directing the film, she’s now nominated for an Oscar. She could make history by becoming the first woman to win the best director award more than once.

Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, in setting an intention, a mood, a vibration for any event. Before Hamnet premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, she led the audience in a guided meditation and a breathing exercise.

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in Hamnet.

Zhao also likes to loosen up, like she did at a screening of Hamnet in Los Angeles last month, when she got the audience to get up and dance with her to a Rihanna song.

She, her cast and crew had regular dance parties during the production of Hamnet. So for our NPR photo shoot and interview at a Beverly Hills hotel, I invited her to share some music from her playlist. She chose a track she described as “drones and tones.”

Our photographer captured her in her filmy white gown, peeking contemplatively from behind the filmy white curtains of a balcony at the Waldorf Astoria.

Director Chloé Zhao at the Waldorf-Astoria in Beverly Hills.

Zhao says she believes in ceremonies and rituals, and makes them a part of her filmmaking process.

Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

Then Zhao and I sat down to talk.

“I had a dream that we were doing this interview,” I told her. “And it started with a photo shoot, and there was a glass globe –”

“No way!” she gasped.

It so happens that on the desk next to us, was a small glass globe — perhaps a paperweight.

I told her that in my dream, she was looking through the globe at some projected images. “We were having fun and it was like we didn’t want it to stop,” I said.

“Oh, well, me and the globe and the lights on the wall: they’re all part of you,” Zhao said. “They’re your inner crystal ball, your inner Chloé.”

“Inner Chloé?” I asked. “What is the inner Chloé like?”

“I don’t know, you tell me,” she said. “Humbly, from my lineage and what I studied is that everything in a dream is a part of our own psyche.”

Dreams and symbols are very much a part of Zhao’s approach to filmmaking, which she describes as a magical and communal experience. She said it’s all part of her directing style.

Chloé Zhao used painting and dance to connect with actors on the set of her latest film Hamnet.

Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

“If you’re captain of any ship, you are not just giving instructions; people are also looking to you energetically as well,” she explained. “Whether it’s calmness, it’s groundedness, it’s feeling safe: then everyone else is going to tune to you.” Zhao says it has taken many years to get to this awareness. Her own journey began 43 years ago in Beijing, where she was born. She moved to the U.S. as a teen, and studied film at New York University where Spike Lee was one of her teachers. She continued honing her craft at the Sundance Institute labs — along with her friend Ryan Coogler and other indie filmmakers.

Over the years, Zhao’s film catalogue has been eclectic — from her indie debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set on a Lakota Sioux reservation, to the big-budget Marvel superhero movie Eternals. She got her first best director Oscar in 2021 for the best picture winner Nomadland. Next up is a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“A creative life,” she notes, “is not a linear experience for me.”

The Real 'Hamnet' Died Centuries Ago, But This Novel Is Timeless

Zhao still lingers over the making of Hamnet, a very emotional story about the death of a child. During the production, Zhao says she used somatic and tantric exercises and rituals to open and close shooting days.

She also invited her lead actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley to help her set the mood on set. They danced, they painted, they meditated together.

“She created an atmosphere where everybody who chose to step in to tell this story was there for a reason that was deeply within them,” actress Jessie Buckley told me.

Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare's wife in Hamnet.

Buckley is a leading contender for this year’s best actress Oscar. She said that to prepare for her very intense role as William Shakespeare’s wife, Zhao asked her to write down her dreams “as a kind of access point, to gently stir the waters of where I was feeling.”

Buckley sent Zhao her writings, and also music she felt was “a tone and texture of that essence.”

That kind of became the ritual of how they worked together, Buckley said. “And not just the cast were moving together, but the crew were and the camera was really creating dynamics and a collective unconscious.”

Filmmaker and Hamnet producer Steven Spielberg calls Zhao’s empathy her superpower.

Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

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Bethany Mollenkof for NPR

That was incredibly useful for creating Hamnet — a story about communal grief. Steven Spielberg, who co-produced the film, called Zhao’s empathy her superpower.

“In every glance, in every pause and every touch, in every tear, in every single moment of this film, every choice that Chloé made is evidence of her fearlessness,” Spielberg said when awarding Zhao a Directors Guild of America award. “In Hamnet, Chloé also shows us that there can be life after grief.”

Zhao says it took five years and a midlife crisis for her to develop the emotional tools she used to make Hamnet.

“I hope it could give people a two-hour little ceremony,” she told me. “And in the end, I hope that a point of contact can be made. That means that there’s a heart opening. But it will be painful, right? Because when your heart opens, you feel all the things you usually don’t feel. And then a catharsis can emerge.”

As our interview time came to a close, I told Zhao I have my own little ritual at the end of every interview; I record a few minutes of room tone, the ambient sound of the space we’re in. It’s for production purposes, to smooth out the audio.

In 'Nomadland,' Discover The Joy And Sorrow Of The Road Less Traveled

Zhao knew just what I meant. She told me a story about her late friend Michael “Wolf” Snyder who was her sound recordist for Nomadland. “He said to me, ‘I don’t always need it, but just so you know, I am going to watch you. And when I tell that you are a little frazzled, I’m going to ask for a room tone … just to give you space.’” she recalled. “‘And if you feel like you need the silence space, you just look at me, nod. I’ll come ask for a room tone.’”

I closed our interview ceremony with that moment of silence, a moment of peace, for director Chloé Zhao.