“… how having a free spirit is so important for young people to feel that today there are really no boundaries… ”
By Moonah Ellison
Images by Jim Wright
I purposely remind myself before my chat with actress Jessica Capshaw that the images from her photoshoot look phenomenal. A reassurance before I dive in. In all seriousness, her pictures are beautiful. I can’t help but see the uncanny resemblance between Jessica and her mother, the actress Kate Capshaw. But this is about Jessica and her journey on some of the roles that she’s played, from leaving Grey’s Anatomy to coming back again this year, to her hit podcast with fellow Grey’s star Camilla Luddington, a podcast all about New York City.
Capshaw’s major roles on screen came in the form of long-running television series: The ABC law drama set in Boston, The Practice, which ran from 1997-2004, and the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, now going on its 20th season. In 2009, Capshaw became a regular on Grey’s in 2009, joining the cast as pediatric surgeon Arizona Robbins, a role she would leave in 2018 only to return again this season. Like Capshaw says, “It’s a long road.”
Capshaw was born in the Midwest, Missouri, which is “a very unique place with unique cultures and customs and being born to two very young parents, who actually were very interested and, hungry for, something different, which is sort of atypical in the Midwest.” Her parents moved to New York City when she was about three years old, and her mother started modeling, and her dad started working on Wall Street as a day trader. It didn’t work out and they divorced a year or two after making the move. Her mom started working in film and television, grabbing a role on the soap opera series The Edge of Night, then a lead role in 1982’s A Little Sex produced by Bruce Paltrow, a longtime family friend and Gwyneth’s father.
She went wherever her mother’s job took them. Her whole life and the landscape of their lives changed when her mother did Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where she met her husband, director Steven Spielberg. Capshaw was around 6 or 7 when her mother shot that film and met the director where it was “love at first sight, just the most amazing man and incredibly generous human. Why I valued him was because of how he made me feel. And that was just very cherished and very loved and adored.” After filming, they went back to their lives in Los Angeles. Spielberg and Kate Capshaw would marry soon after.
At that point, Capshaw was everywhere, 13 or so different schools before she was 13 and Capshaw was ready to put down stakes and not move around anymore. Los Angeles was it. She entered middle school. Because of the constant moving around so much, she was a shy kid, always right next to my mom, “right behind her skirt. I had far better luck relating to adults than I did children at that point in my life,” says Capshaw. “Because I’d been around adults so much more. So
seventh, eighth and ninth grade were very uphill for me. And I didn’t quite fit in and I didn’t quite know socially how to find my people. And it was just hard. It was also a switch to a much more academic school, and it was just hard. All this on top of just being at a time in your life that I think is uniquely and directionally hard.” After high school she went on to Brown University in Rhode Island and after college, she circled back into being the child of two people that were so deeply rooted in storytelling, film, television and Hollywood in general. She ended up coming back to Los Angeles and knew that she wanted to be an actress.
You would think nepotism would be a deterrent in her pursuit of a serious acting career. But Capshaw was hardened by her experiences growing up in showbiz. “I was very adaptable because, again, you’re going back and forth between two homes and life, between this Midwestern world and culture and then this New York City world and culture and then this Los Angeles world and culture,” insists Capshaw. “We always say about our kids, by the way, that when we only had one child, it’s like one kid’s an accessory, a handbag you can just take him and that becomes a different set of luggage that you love to have. But it’s more than that. And so I was very precocious, very pragmatic because I had been in adaptable survivor mode for most of my life. And I was like, this is not going to be a good story if I want to be an actress. I’m the daughter of these people, and if I go out into the world and I completely suck, it’s going to be a really bad story because it’ll be embarrassing because there will be eyes on me. There will be people paying attention. There will be people that are right there for you or against you because of that connection. And I was just very mindful that if I was going to show up, I was going to show up ready and have some kind of assurance or at least a vote of confidence that I actually had talent.”
Neither one of Capshaw’s parents were in the theater so she took a huge interest in that; started studying plays in high school; started doing summer workshops. By sophomore year at college, Capshaw was doing plays and taking acting classes and after college, moved back to Los Angeles and hit the ground running.
“It sounds way too fancy to describe what I felt, all the doors were closed. I knew it could be done. I knew people who did it, but there was no feeling that it was a foregone conclusion that I would have any success, or that anyone would hire me or that I would be any good. None of it. So I did what everybody does, and I struggled to find an agent. I struggled to find a manager. And then you get a good team behind you, and then you just literally go on every single audition. And at the time everybody was trying to get movie jobs and within the first three months, which of course seemed like an eternity to me, I decided that I wasn’t going to get hired in film, like they just weren’t going to hire me. And I said to my agent, I was like, well, there has to be something else. Like, is there something else that I could be doing? Because I have to make money. I have to be able to pay my rent. And they were like, well, you could go out for a [television] pilot. I didn’t even know what that was.
“Pilot season came and I read all the pilots and I went to all the auditions. And by the end of pilot season, I had booked a pilot. And then there I was at 21, on the Warner Brothers lot, making a TV show. Then it was just kind of off to the races, mostly doing comedies. But I didn’t feel like I’d arrived, but I felt like I was doing something that people were watching when I finally got on to The Practice, which was a David Kelley show.”
For now, Capshaw has her hands full with a return to Grey’s Anatomy and a focus on her podcast, Call It What It Is, that she co-hosts with fellow Grey’s actor, Camilla Luddington, our other Moves Power cover.
With Call It What It Is, Capshaw admits she got into the podcast game. She would hear people talking about their favorite podcasts and was originally overwhelmed by how many choices there were and then probably around the pandemic, She had some extra time and started listening to a number of them.
“There was something about doing this that wasn’t working [doing a podcast] alone. So Camila [Luddington] and I went to do this thing together, and we ended up spending like three days together. And so many funny things happened on this trip. And maybe a month and a half after the trip, something reminded me of a very funny thing that had happened. I called her, we were laughing so hard we were crying. My husband said nobody else makes you laugh that hard. It just stuck in my head. And then that was the summer. And then maybe three months later, that’s the podcast.”
The theme of Call It What It Is is that you can’t do it alone, based on their conversations and friendship. If you can offer anyone friendship and a connection and feel like they’re part of something. “They’re part of it because they’re calling in, they’re writing in, they’re emailing, they’re DMing. They’re a part of the conversation. Fuck. That’s awesome. And then the name of it really was born of the fact that whether it’s good or bad, Camilla and I are pretty good at making fun of each other. We just say how we feel. So we call it what it is.”
With Grey’s Anatomy, Capshaw felt like she made it. Originally slated for a 3 episode arc in Season 5, she wound up a series regular for 10 years. After leaving the show in 2018, her character has returned this season as a special guest…Season 24. “I do remember feeling instantly that there could be a future. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt instantly that I could stay in this world. In efforts to make this interview replete with my stories of being around women that are in power, I learned so much from the women around me on that set, and I adored the men that I worked with. The women are plus, minus, and neutral. Truly. Because that’s real life, right? It was incredible to have that kind of education at work. And also it was profound to respect and admire so many women around me. I remember just being in awe of what Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers [producers] did as well, how they manage that world, how they manage that success, what they were able to do with that success with regards to scaling it out and creating other shows, making unprecedented deals with huge companies for huge amounts of money, and being very forthright with their intentions.
“One of the biggest and most powerful shifts was that it became cool to see women supporting women. That’s how I was put together. I came from a single mom and I’ve always had an incredible group of women friends, that’s how I’m wired. Right? Like I’m going to be for women all day long.”
Next up for Capshaw is Miracle on 74th Street, a comedy with an ensemble cast that includes Jill Kargman, Jason Biggs, Justin Bartha, and Christine Taylor. It has a release date of 2025. “I got a script that was written by Jill Kargman, and it is just a parody of all things New York and sort of elite and Upper East Side, and it was so funny and made me laugh in so many ways and was sort of absurd. And I just thought, wow, I wonder how she’s even going to do this. And, I just said, yes, absolutely. I will play this, you know, this overarching Upper East Sider.”
With all these projects, Capshaw is used to the hustle and bustle. But surely, balancing motherhood (Capshaw and husband have four children) with work does raise the stress levels just a bit. “On the hardest days, normally I get in my car and I can’t wait to call somebody or listen to music, or listen to a book, or listen to a podcast or whatever. I would get into the car and I would then all of a sudden find myself pulling into my driveway and I would realize that I had listened to nothing. I had called no one, and I had just sat in silence after I had a pretty long drive. It was always when I would park, that I would realize that I didn’t turn on the radio or listen to music or call anyone. So I think I just on the hardest days, I needed to be alone and I needed to be silent and just, like, process, you know?”
We know all too well.
photography by Jim Wright
stylist Cannon
market editor Winnie Noan
hair Antonio Velotta
makeup Tina Turnbow
video Fabienne Riccoboni, Cristian Pena
location 40 East End penthouse yorkville, nyc