Natalie Morales knows there’s no right way to be herself

A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I’m going to start today off with an admission: I watch a lot of shows. Like, a lot of them. Mainly on the treadmill—which is sort of my excuse. It’s entertaining and it’s healthy! And I’ve been watching and running for like 30 years, which means I can trace a lot of actors’ careers.

And I have my favorites—actors who aren’t necessarily always the lead, but I look forward to seeing them in everything they do. I seek out their stuff. And Natalie Morales is one of those actors. And she has been in so many things: Girls, Parks and Recreation, Dead to Me, The Morning Show, indie movies like Language Lessons, and movies with huge names like No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence or Battle of the Sexes with Emma Stone.

And every time Natalie pops up in something, it makes me so happy. She plays these characters that can be wonderfully irreverent and wear their heart on their sleeve at the same time.

Her latest movie is called My Dead Friend Zoe, in which she plays Zoe, whose spirit is haunting her best friend from the Army, Merit, played by Sonequa Martin-Green (Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris co-star). It is a beautiful movie, with a message about how we care for one another and the long-lasting trauma of war.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: What activity gave you a sense of freedom as a kid?

Natalie Morales: I used to climb a lot of trees, which did give me a sense of freedom. We had this little shed in the back, and I would climb up there and just look at the highway behind my house and the sky and that definitely made me feel freer. I think I felt a little bit confined where I grew up. My mom was very protective of me. So I think that made me feel like I had some sort of freedom—just to be able to look out at the world.

Question 2: Does the idea of an infinite universe excite or scare you? 

Morales: Both. It’s scary and exciting. It’s scary to feel small, and it’s also liberating to feel small. I think there are so many things in life that are not explainable that you have to accept that you won’t know everything.

My dog Taco flies with me sometimes, and he sits on my lap and he looks out the window like he does in a car, right? And, as the plane is taking off and it’s taxiing down the runway, he’s looking at all the things as he would out a car window—other people walking around, other cars.

And then the plane takes off and everything gets smaller and smaller. And I can tell that it’s not making sense to him that everything’s getting smaller, and he just goes, “Eh, well,” and then gives up and then sits down. And I think about that all the time because I feel like he just moved on with his life. He went, “Well, everything shrunk, and I’m just gonna turn around because I don’t get that.”

Rachel Martin: I want Taco to be my spiritual leader.

Morales: That’s what you gotta do with a lot of stuff, like, “Yeah, I’m not gonna understand that. My small brain is probably never gonna get the idea of a completely infinite universe, but it’s there, and so I have to kind of marvel at it—and then decide what I want for lunch.”

Question 3: What truth guides your life more than any other? 

Morales: This is going to sound really super simple, but it was kind of life-changing for me. And it was something that I really came to believe in the last like five years, which is that no one is supposed to be anything other than what they are.

There’s no “supposed to,” there’s no “should.” There’s none of that. There’s no right way to be you—other than what’s already there.

Martin: Was there a big “should” in your life?

Morales: I think there were many, many big “shoulds” there. There was a lot of pressure, especially in my career—like, of what you should look like. But also in life. I think I wanted to do it “right,” and, then it was like, “Oh, there is no right way. There’s no right way. There’s just what you are.”

A flower just blooms. It just does what it does. It doesn’t look to the side to see how other flowers are looking and how they’re doing it. It just does it. And it faces the day, it just blooms the way it’s meant to. And that’s what I try to think about all the time.