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Leighton Meester on Single Parents, the Myth of the Work-Life Balance, and Getting Equal Pay


To say Leighton Meester is excited for her new show, Single Parents, is an understatement. Not only is the cast and crew “super funny and super nice,” but she gets to wear jeans and sneakers on set—a big departure from the regular two-hour fittings she did on Gossip Girl years ago.

But most important, the ABC comedy is about a subject matter she knows well these days: the challenges of parenthood. The show is about single parents specifically, yes, but Meester—who has a three-year-old daughter, Arlo Day, with husband Adam Brody—still finds ways to relate. “Angie is a paralegal and a mom and has very little time to do anything,” Meester says. “We use comedy on the show to explore co-parenting and being single parents. I can only imagine it is the hardest job in the world, because being a parent is the hardest job in the world.”

That said, she knows every parent’s experience is different. “Nobody can tell you what parenthood is going to be like,” she says. “You think you know, and then it’s just so hard. I feel so, so lucky that I have help and a husband. I feel stable, but there are so many people who don’t have that. In a really tender way, Single Parents explores how parenting is an emotional roller coaster.”

Here, Meester opens up her own experience, how she’s seen Hollywood change since her time on Gossip Girl, and more.

PHOTO: Mitch Haaseth

Meester on ‘Single Parents’

On Single Parents, Taran Killam’s character is the type of dad who makes Play-Doh from scratch. What kind of parent are you in real life?

Leighton Meester: I have so much respect for people who do that, but no. People don’t get paid to raise their children; if they did, they’d be making a lot of money doing all the secretarial work, grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking…even just listening. For me, being home is amazing and being at work is amazing. But I don’t think there’s a balance. I’m lucky I can breathe between each project and appreciate both.

You bring up an interesting point—the trope of how women balance it all. Men rarely get asked that.

LM: I’ve never heard a man get asked that question. I’ve been in interviews with male co-workers who are fathers, and I get asked that question and they don’t. I was doing the pilot of a show and, harmlessly, once a day someone would say, “Who’s taking care of your kid?” I asked my husband, “Do people ever ask you that on set?” He said, “No. No one’s ever asked me one time who’s taking care of my kid.” It’s not offensive; I completely understand the instinct, because it is typical that moms do the majority of the child-raising and housework. Even though men are working the same amount, if not at times less. [Laughs] And women are making less! Parenting is more than a full-time job. You don’t get a day off. But my paid work is getting hair and makeup done, being creative, talking to adults, sitting down to drink coffee instead of chasing somebody…it’s like a vacation.

So what do you say then when people ask how you balance it all?

LM: I don’t think there is a balance. That term is not real. We still aren’t forgiving enough of mothers, of working mothers, which is the majority of the population. I think as a society, particularly in the United States, we need to realize that mothers need to work. We don’t have an option most of the time, because one parent working isn’t enough. Most people can’t afford to stay home, but you have to pay a lot to put your kid in daycare. I consider myself so lucky in every way in life, and playing this role definitely enlightened me.

How method did you get for this role? Did you ever say to your husband, “Go take a vacation for three days so I can be alone with our daughter?” [Laughs]

LM: I would never say that, are you crazy? [Laughs] No, we both try to work when the other one isn’t working as much as we can. Inevitably you end up with your kid alone, and it’s hard to do anything beside watch your kid. You can’t shower, you can’t eat, you can’t clean. You don’t go to the bathroom alone. You go to the bathroom with a person looking at you. Every time.

You’ve been in this business for a long time. How has Hollywood changed?

LM: The last couple years everything has boiled over. It took us the entire existence of humanity for people to sort of, kind of, say women demand respect and dignity and equality in every way. We’re still not there, but we’re seeing more women who aren’t in their twenties just have scenes talking about other men. We see women who have flaws that aren’t just superficial or quirky or cute. They have deep flaws, like any other male character that leads a show. I think [television today] reflects society a lot more. It’s important to use that to send a message. It starts with casting, with the writers’ room, with the people working on a show, and what you put out there.

The Hollywood Reporter reported a few months ago that your cast is all getting paid the same. Is that correct?

LM: We’re all getting paid the same. It helps that a lot of us have the same agent, but of course it’s a good thing. They were like, “It’s only fair.” I don’t know if that would have been the case three years ago, five years ago. It isn’t unheard of now to talk about what you’re making with the other women you’re working with. And men! A couple years ago I was working with Adam Pally, who I love, on Making History on FOX. Right off the bat he was like, “How much are you making? I’m making this much.” It’s the same thing with this cast. It’s about being transparent.

Your first TV role was Law & Order. What do you remember about that?

LM: Law & Order is everyone’s first role! Every single person I’ve met from New York was on that show. That was a fun experience, because it was the first time I was ever on a set. I played a girl whose mother was battered, and I had a friend who died, and she was in an exorcism I think. [Laughs] It’s been a while since I’ve watched it. The truth is, if I’m being totally honest, a set by and large—at least for dramatic situations—isn’t really built for kids. But on Single Parents, we have a lot of kids and I’m amazed with them. They’re more professional than I am! I’m making stupid jokes, and they’re like, “Get to work.” [Laughs] On top of that, they go to school between scenes while I, like, take a nap in my trailer. They work hard, but as long as you have the right environment it’s OK.

BuzzFoto Celebrity Sightings In New York - February 06, 2012

PHOTO: Pablo Tomatis

Meester on the set of ‘Gossip Girl’

We can’t end this interview without talking about Gossip Girl. Do you look forward to the day when your daughter can watch it?

LM: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that. I meet young women now who are watching it for the first time, and I’m like, “Whoa.” It still speaks to a lot of people, so I’m proud of it. It was, in many ways, my college and a first job. It was my twenties, from 20 to 26. It was so much of my growth. I was working five days a week—15-, 16-hour days, every day. Many days I didn’t see the sun because we were in a studio from 5 A.M. to 8 P.M. or 9 P.M. But I was in New York, which is the best place to live when you’re 20, 21. And the clothes obviously were amazing. I will say, because of that experience, I’m looking forward to wearing jeans and sneakers at work. It’s definitely more Angie’s speed [on Single Parents]. It’s way more comfortable. On Gossip Girl, we’d do two-hour fittings every week. We’d be wearing ball gowns, but there was a blizzard outside and we’d have to pretend there wasn’t and wear uncomfortable shoes. [Laughs] But still, so beautiful.

If Gossip Girl came on TV, or you stumbled upon it on Netflix, would you stop and watch?

LM: To be honest, I didn’t watch it to begin with because I was making it. I just didn’t have the time. Now, I’m just like, “I don’t have time to watch an hour show.” It’s hard to keep up with a show that’s an hour. I’m better at bite-size pieces. Maybe when I get more free time some day. I don’t know when it will come, but it will come someday.

Single Parents airs Wednesdays on ABC.



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Margot Robbie Feels Your Work-Life Balance Pain


Margot Robbie knows that the Sunday Scaries are real. She’s right alongside us as we prepare to face the week ahead and wonder where on earth the long weekend went, and she knows how it feels to burn out and feel the huge hole of self-doubt and panic open up. Like you, she is a busy woman, what with acting (especially now that her Harley Quinn character in Suicide Squad is getting a spinoff because she was the best thing about the movie), and all the press that goes with acting, and with her side hustle that is very much A Whole Thing Entirely (that is, production company LuckyChap, which she co-runs). Then there’s also the matter of having a life—making time to breathe and go on vacation and hang out with friends.

And, OK, maybe we don’t have the same red-carpet appearances that she does, or the days on set shooting away from family and friends, or having to back to produce films at the end of all of it. But our problems are our own! And work-life balance is something that a lot of us struggle with. Robbie, however, can relate:

She opened up in an interview with Vogue Australia recently about just how hard managing all of it can be, and it was refreshingly realistic. “Having a business is stressful and time-consuming, but it’s incredibly rewarding,” she told the magazine. “There are obviously a lot of times where I’ll have a meltdown and go: ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ And you miss out on a lot of things, like you rarely go on holidays, you miss everyone’s weddings, everyone’s birthdays. I haven’t been home once this year, I haven’t seen my best friends, my nephew.”

See? It’s even hard for silver screen goddesses like her! Which is why it’s important to take time for self-care, in whatever form that takes for you. If you’re feeling as stressed as Robbie is—or hey, just stressed!—pull some of our tips. Or just heed fellow Aussie and actress Cate Blanchett‘s wise words:

“I quickly realized if you’re incapable of looking after yourself, you’re incapable of looking after other people. It’s about trying to find as much as you can of a balance.”

The balance will never be perfect, perhaps, but post-yoga Nutella and Netflix, in my opinion, totally help make it all work.

Related Stories:
–Harley Quinn and The Joker Are Getting Their Own ‘Suicide Squad’ Spin-off
–Margot Robbie on Playing a ‘Complicated’ Mother Who Puts Herself First



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Study Insists That Men Have Just As Much Work-Life Stress as Women, and I'm Not Here For It


Motherhood isn’t about finding a way to fit everything in or, god forbid, have it all. You learn that pretty quickly—say, two to three weeks into this mess. Trying to do it, you discover, will only lead to a cascade of tears in a restaurant bathroom where you’re shoving toilet paper into your bra to keep milk from leaking out onto the only “business-y” top you own that gracefully covers the band of tissue pregnancy left behind on your pelvis. Instead, you become a professional triage consultant, sorting through must-do’s and should-do’s and it-would-be-nice-ifs, and then cramming errands and activities into the brief flashes of “free time” that pop up between washing the last bottle and making the next one. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, but mothers are almost certainly the most stressed out demographic in this country.

A recently released study claims that isn’t true. Dads, it argues, feel this stress just as much as moms. Allegedly, dads have long kept quiet for fear of stigmatization, among other things. After examining a compilation of 350 studies completed over the past three decades, the research team “found very little evidence of differences between women and men as far as the level of work-family conflict they report,” according to a report from Science Daily.

“The way this issue is presented in the media frames the way we think about it,” lead researcher Dr. Kristen Shockley explained, “and it creates a perpetual cycle. Women hear that other women are struggling with this issue, so they expect they will experience greater work-family conflict. There also is some socialization for it being OK for women to talk more about it than men.” In other words, Shockley is claiming that women know it’s acceptable to admit to feeling stress about their work-life “balance”; that openness then creates the perception that such stress is rampant, thus beginning a diabolical feedback loop. I.e. We’re doing this to ourselves.

“I do think it’s harming men,” she went on, “who are silently struggling and are experiencing the same amount of work-family conflict, but no one is acknowledging it.” (I read this line and then picked my jaw up off the floor and mopped where it had been, because that’s the kind of thing moms remember to do.)

Of course, it’s vital that we, as a society, consider the implications of the massively dysfunctional familial child care system we’ve created. And that doesn’t mean that we just hand women tissues as they tell their tales of woe and then wave banners demanding that men cower in a corner while we give birth in spa soaking tubs and demand paid leave until our babies are in Master’s programs. Advancing women’s causes without considering the roles men will play in that future is shortsighted. In fact, longer paternity leave has been proven to help close the gender wage gap and distribute child rearing responsibilities more equally.

But to argue that men are suffering in silence while dissolving under the same amount of anxiety as women not only misrepresents reality, it also dangerously implies that both genders need equal support in their mission to parent and work outside the home.

Earlier this year, on a trip to visit friends in California, we brought along our then-four-month-old to meet the couple, who don’t have any kids and aren’t entirely sure whether they ever will. The trip was a prime example of how equally we try to share parenting duties in our house. For the first two days I carted the baby around San Francisco, trying to cram art into her formative little brain in the hopes of making her a more cultured person, while my husband attended business meetings. Then we headed out of the city to meet our friends for a few days of relaxing in the redwoods, where my husband was planning on taking the lion’s share of responsibility for the weekend. One hour after checking in I missed a step and tore two ligaments in my ankle. I couldn’t even pick up the baby, let alone handle the (oddly physically demanding) tasks that come along with parenthood. But it wasn’t a problem at all. My husband knows all the baby’s ins and outs. He does all the routines. If I dropped dead tomorrow, he wouldn’t scratch his head and wonder where the hell I keep the baby’s pajamas.

But when our friends asked how much having her had changed our lives, my husband replied, “Really not that much!” Of course it hasn’t, I interjected in what must have appeared to be a verbal seizure, you go to work every day! Your whole identity hasn’t shifted! There isn’t still a weird band of flesh attached to your pelvis that only one work shirt covers! You don’t spend your whole day telling a tiny human what color everything is while you empty the dishwasher!

I may be extra rant-y, but I’m not alone. Study after study proves that not only do men do less, they also don’t know how to self-report about their roles in the home. This study found that women spend twice as much time on childcare in a week than their male counterparts. This one found that half of women do housework every day, while just 20% of men do the same. And this one, from the Pew Research Group, found that men drastically overestimate the amount of time they spend on chores, household affairs, and childcare. “After a birth,” The New York Times explained, “women’s total work — including paid work, housework and child care — increased 21 hours a week and men’s increased 12.5 hours. For women, but not men, child care did not substitute for any of their existing work; it was all supplemental.” In other words, we’re doing far more with far less time and the data backs us up.

Yet the biggest complaint from women when it comes to the division of work in the home isn’t that it’s merely unequal. It’s that the mental load of wondering exactly how all the tasks will get done falls inordinately on women’s shoulders. As Judith Shulevitz wrote in this spot-on piece, moms are “the designated worriers,” who “draft the to-do lists while fathers pick and choose among the items.” This clever cartoon—which was passed around among mothers this summer like cholera through Victorian London’s sewers—explains how fathers in heterosexual relationships view mothers as the managers, and asserts that “when we ask women to take on the task of organization, and at the same time to execute a large portion, in the end it represents 75% of the work.” When we see fathers plan and enact elaborate activities we consider it exceptional. When mothers do it, we consider it Tuesday.

Are men stressed about how to manage a thriving career and enriching home life? Surely. Do we need to fear that they’re bearing the same load as their female counterparts and yet no one will heed their silent cries for help? I wouldn’t add this your list of worries, moms.



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