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Amanpour

Interview With "The Uninhabitable Earth" Author David Wallace-Wells; Interview With "My Mother's Wedding" Director And Actress Kristin Scott Thomas; Interview with Mother Jones Senior Reporter Anna Merlan. Aired 1-2p ET

Aired August 08, 2025 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:00]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL HOST: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.

The consequences of Trump going fossils first. I speak to science writer David Wallace-Wells about official climate denialism.

Then --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, DIRECTOR AND ACTOR, "MY MOTHER'S WEDDING": It's incredibly exciting. And it's obviously something I've never done before.

So, it's a huge adventure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Actress Kristin Scott Thomas joins me on her directorial debut, "My Mother's Wedding," based loosely on her own life.

Plus, "The Plot Against Vaccines." Reporter Anna Merlan talks with Harry Rein about RFK. Junior's personal views becoming U.S. government policy.

Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiana Amanpour in London.

In Europe this week, a wildfire the size of Paris ripped across southern France, temperatures soared in Spain. And in Geneva, an extraordinary U.N.

meeting aimed at reigning in the global production and pollution of plastic.

But across the ocean in the United States, Trump's MAGA movement is rolling back plans to mitigate climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency

is moving to repeal the so-called Endangerment Finding, which says that fossil fuel emissions endanger human health and government can do something

about it, calling it possibly the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. And as we all know, what happens in America does not stay in

America. As the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, its actions impact everybody on the planet.

David Wallace-Wells is an expert who wrote the book, "The Uninhabitable Earth." And I spoke to him about this latest rollback from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: David Wallace-Wells, welcome to the program.

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, AUTHOR, "THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH": Really good to be here.

AMANPOUR: So, let's talk about something that's actually happening and in your most recent writing. So, there is a U.N. plastic pollution kind of

conference, anyway, talks underway in Geneva. And you recently wrote an op- ed in The New York Times about this problem.

And honestly, one of the most vivid and probably terrifying sentences is, there might be inside your skull the equivalent of a full plastic spoon.

Obviously, plastics are made of fossil fuels. What -- tell me how you came up with that and what actually that means.

WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, plastic concern has been rising for years now. And so, really since I've been writing about climate, I've been

seeing, you know, news and alarm about microplastics in particular, although there are also nano plastics, macro plastics. You hear about the

great Pacific garbage patch. You know, we talk about plastics in the ocean.

And the -- when you follow the science, it's almost like every week there's a new alarming finding everywhere they look there are plastics. So, there

are plastics in the depths of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. When a human submersible got there a few years ago, deeper than

anyone had ever reached in the ocean before, plastic pollution was already there.

When they look up into the atmosphere and the stratosphere, there's plastics there in, you know, rain clouds circling Mount Fuji, in raindrops

falling in the Amazon, in freshly sprayed, you know, ocean water coming off the beaches crashing against sand there's plastics there. Everywhere they

look on the planet we find some evidence of this kind of pollution.

And increasingly, we're seeing it inside us too. It's not just something that we can't escape environmentally, it has already penetrated our own

body. So, there are plastics in our kidneys, in our hearts, and there's an association with that buildup with increased risk of heart disease and

stroke. There's plastics in placentas discharged by new mothers. There's microplastics in the breast milk being fed to new babies.

[13:05:00]

And yes, most -- perhaps most alarmingly in the brain, so much so that not just does it add up to the equivalent of a plastic spoon in the brain, but

actually, that's about one-fifth by weight as much as brainstem.

AMANPOUR: Oh, my God. OK. You've fully terrorized me, and I'm sure you can go on and on about where plastics are. So, they're clearly dangerous to us.

So, what do you think any talks in Geneva or elsewhere? I mean, if this is so pervasive and it's everywhere and you cannot escape it, and it's in us

and in our food chain, how does that get reversed or does it?

WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, I come to this from climate change and it's a quite similar problem. It's basically a collective action problem, which

we often tell ourselves can be solved through individual action. In the case of climate, by reducing our carbon footprint. In the case of plastics,

by throwing out the wrong kind of spatula or making sure that we're drinking less, you know, single use plastic bottles, which by the way can -

- a single bottle of water can contain as much as 250,000 microplastics in it. But in fact, you know, this is a silly way of thinking about the

problem when pollution is already everywhere, including inside of us.

What we need to do is try to stop the -- you know, stop the flow at the source, and that means producing less plastic than we are now. Probably not

zero plastic anytime soon but dramatically reducing the amount that we're producing. And that's an uphill battle as it is with carbon and climate

because, you know, we've produced as much plastic since about 2005, 2006 as in the entire history of plastic production before then. We're now at

something like 400 times as much plastic being produced every year as was produced in the years after World War II.

And so, this is a huge booming global business, which does need to be really reformed. And for about 30 years now, the companies that produce

plastics, petrochemical companies and the fossil fuel companies have sort of sold us this story that we could actually solve this problem, or at

least address it through recycling, because they want to distract us from how -- you know, from the real problem, which is reducing the production in

the first place, and that's ultimately where we need to go.

AMANPOUR: OK. So, again, doubly depressing because certainly all of us who've been busily recycling think that we're doing a decent job for us and

for our future, but clearly not enough. Now, you said that's in the sea, but then you have carbon and all the rest of it in the air, which obviously

also affects the seas.

So, the latest in the new MAGA fossil first, you know, climate policy is this proposal by the EPA last week to repeal what's called the Endangerment

Finding, that was issued by the Supreme Court apparently in 2009. Now, look, I don't know, and I've never heard about it. Do people know what it

is? What is it and why is it important and what would repealing it do?

WALLACE-WELLS: Basically, it was a finding that allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases without direct action by Congress. And that seems

increasingly important because it doesn't seem all that likely that in the U.S. Congress will be taking action to reduce carbon emissions or

greenhouse gases more generally anytime in the future.

Certainly, in the next few years under Trump. But I think, you know, given the way that the IRA has played out politically in the U.S. it's unlikely

that even a Democratic administration overseeing a Democratic Senate the next cycle would take meaningful action to reduce carbon emissions in the

way that the Biden administration does.

And when we think about the scale of importance there, you know, one way of calculating that is through something called the social cost of carbon,

which is a measure that economists come up with to tally in dollar terms just how much damage all of the carbon that's being put into the atmosphere

is doing, and they do it by measuring mortality and economic productivity and a huge range of other sort of ephemeral effects of warming.

The Biden EPA found that number to be somewhere around $200 a ton. And that may sound abstract, but what it means is that the U.S. production of carbon

every year, the Biden EPA calculated, this is not an activist group, it's not a climate lobbying group, it is the Biden EPA, calculated that the

damage being done by carbon emissions produced by the U.S. every single year was north of $1 trillion.

Now, that was a major update to the Obama estimate which was about $40 or $50, and a really large increase from the estimate made by the first Trump

term, which still had it at $7. But what the Endangerment Finding -- you know, what this action on the Endangerment Finding means is that we're

going all the way from about $200 a ton to functionally treating it as zero, as though there is no cost from carbon emissions at all, and the

government should do nothing at all to address our carbon problem.

AMANPOUR: So, as you know, there was a report that they came up with, the current EPA's justification, a Department of Energy report, apparently 141

pages long. The energy secretary, Chris Wright, said climate change is a challenge, not a catastrophe. Another climate science scientist who is very

famous, Michael Mann, said, if you took a chatbot and you train it on top of 10 fossil fuel industry funded climate denier websites, that's what it

would look like. Another says they cherry pick data points that suit their narrative and exclude the vast majority of the scientific literature that

does not.

[13:10:00]

So, it digests all of that and hopefully our audiences too. And now, listen to the current EPA director, Lee Zeldin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE ZELDIN, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR: To reach the 2009 Endangerment Finding, they relied on the most pessimistic views of

the science. The great news is that a lot of the pessimistic views of the science in 2009 that was being assumed ended up not panning out. Hey,

that's great. We can rely on 2025 facts as opposed to 2009 bad assumptions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, he's obviously casting total doubt on the 2009 finding. What would you say about that? Because clearly -- and then also why do you think

they're doing this? Is it just a purely an anti-regulatory regime, you know, who think that they're spending too much money, they could save money

by doing all this climate mitigation?

WALLACE-WELLS: Well, you know, on the first point, it is true that some climate science has gotten more optimistic over the last few years. We

don't think that emissions are going to be as high in the year 2100 as many scientists were projecting back in 2009 or for that matter in 2015 or 2020.

A lot of that has to do with the world abandoning coal in a large-scale way. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're rolling out

renewables much faster than we thought. Beyond that though, when we look at actual -- the science of actual climate impacts, we're seeing things

happening faster and more intensely than were anticipated.

So, while emission -- the emission's future looks slightly rosier than we worried would be the case a few years ago, the actual climate story is, if

anything scarier. And there are a number of scientists, I wouldn't quite say the majority, who also think that we're learning things about the

climate system, which suggests that it's more sensitive to the perturbations of emissions than we expected a few years ago, which means

even if we're going to be doing better in terms of carbon output, it may well be the case that the temperature effect will net out to be as bad or

worse than we feared a few years ago.

So, I would say in general, you know, the science is not on the side of this argument with the EPA. And I think they're showing their hand by going

-- by eliminating the rule entirely. You know, as I said earlier, the first Trump administration set a social cost of carbon of $7. In theory, the EPA

could have gone back to that. It would've been a dramatic, you know, undercounting by my estimate, but it would've at least allowed for, you

know, an acknowledgement that there are real world consequences to global warming.

As you quoted the administrator saying earlier, perhaps he thinks it's not a catastrophe, just a challenge, but their move here is not to treat

climate as a challenge at all. It's to treat it as no issue for anyone that the U.S. government has to deal with in any way.

As for why they're doing that, I think yes, fundamentally it's a culture war issue. They're wanting to fight with the left -- the American left and

the Democratic Party. And I think what's really perverse and ironic there is that if you look at the way that the Trump coalition has evolved since

2015, 2016, and even 2020, one of the major developments has been the arrival of the tech right in that coalition. These are people who are

really obsessed with A.I. and engineering and A.I. future, and what they need to make that happen is much more abundant, much cheaper electricity.

Now, if the Trump administration took that imperative, seriously and indeed took their campaign promise to promote energy abundance seriously, they may

be doing much more to promote fossil fuel production than the Biden administration did, but they'd also be trying to promote solar and wind and

geothermal and other clean sources, particularly because those are now cheaper and faster to build than any of the fossil fuel infrastructure than

the Trump admin is now pushing.

Of course, they're not doing that. In fact, they're doing the opposite. They're trying to drown any of that green energy development at -- you

know, for the sake of promoting fossil fuel development. And that just shows you how unserious they are about energy abundance, how unserious they

are about making America an electro state competitive with China, how unserious they are about artificial intelligence beyond all of the climate

implications, which for me are larger, but even taking their own stated goals at face value, they're failing their own test here.

AMANPOUR: So, we know, because you've told us what an impact in general will have on the world, but also what an impact it'll have on not just the

health of Americans but the health of people around the world. So, I guess, you know, obviously it was 1965 Lyndon Johnson's government that started

talking about the effects of climate on people's health and to try to mitigate it. Then it was in the '70s, it was a Republican President Nixon

who created the EPA. So, it really has had a bipartisan kind of history.

What is the impact on individual health, do you think, if this is allowed to continue with this current Republican MAGA president, given what you've

just said is underway?

WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I think the biggest impact on human health from this problem is not directly the result of climate change but the result of what

we do to make climate warm, which is to say, burn fossil fuels that produces air pollution, that kills globally perhaps 5 million, perhaps 10

million people every single year.

[13:15:00]

And in the U.S. estimates run as high as 350,000 people a year, which is to say, as many Americans may have died in 2020 from the effects of air

pollution produced from the burning of fossil fuels as died from COVID in that first pandemic year. And that is not an exceptional year. The

statistics, the modeling suggests that we are doing that in an ongoing way, which means the direct health consequences of leaning into a fossil fuel

near-term future are quite grim and devastating.

There are other effects too. There are effects on heat mortality. There are effects on infectious disease. You can go down the line. I think

unfortunately, you know, we've trained ourselves to look away from these consequences and think of the system that we have today built around fossil

fuels as a kind of a neutral status quo. But it isn't. It's killing many Americans every year. And if we were in a greener, cleaner future, we would

be killing many fewer of them. That's true not just in the U.S., it's true around the world. But in the U.S. I think it's particularly grotesque given

that we are such a rich country, we are so well endowed with public land, we don't need to worry about land use issues.

We have an opportunity here. And indeed, the Biden administration was trying to engineer a kind of a, you know, revolution in energy production.

It would've brought us at least into league with our great geopolitical rival China. And in fact, the Trump administration is just, you know,

cutting ourselves -- shooting ourselves in the foot, cutting off that project at the start.

And I think, ultimately, when we pull back from the question of human health to the flourishing of human societies, we should be really ashamed

to see the great lead that China has taken over the last few years. 10 years ago, climate diplomats would've said China was a climate problem and

now it's U.S., the petrostate that is really the global climate problem.

AMANPOUR: And of course, China, as you say, is making massive headways in this, particularly with EVs, the, you know, replacement of dirty emitters.

You know, you wrote that book, "The Uninhabitable Earth," and I interviewed you in 2019 when you published it. And your first line is obviously

poignant today, it is worse -- much worse than you think. You acknowledge that you might have come off as alarmist then. You write, fair enough,

because I am alarmed. So, six years later, what is the scale of uninhabitable and alarm?

WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I think a lot of that answer for me has to do with my own personal journey and, you know, bouncing around through new science and

getting quite alarmed and then kind of readjusting and taking a new assessment of the landscape. I would say personally I'm less scared of the

future that we're heading into, but more depressed because I think that we are doing not nearly enough to limit warming and maybe more conspicuously

not doing nearly enough to adapt to the future that we know is coming.

I think you see the impact there when you think about the Texas floods, the tragic Texas floods, and maybe most dramatically when you think about the

horrible fires that swept through Los Angeles Palisades and Altadena just six months ago, destroying whole neighborhoods in some of the richest, most

well-connected parts of the world. And yet, these are stories that we have already moved on from and are treating as background noise and wallpaper.

I think we're seeing that pattern play out more and more in the future. We are not just not mitigating climate change sufficiently, we are adapting to

that new future primarily by normalizing a level of disaster that a few years ago we were horrified by, I was horrified by, but now seeing like

just like, you know, more daily news that we can move on past and ignore.

AMANPOUR: And that is really the challenge and it's unbelievable to think, because just a few years ago with the Greta Thunberg movement there was

such awareness. Just quickly, why are you less scared if you're more depressed?

WALLACE-WELLS: I've started to see this as more continuous with a pattern of human history where there's more suffering than needs to be, more

suffering than we should conscience as people of good conscience, and yet, a world in which we will navigate, thinking that it's relatively normal.

It's a kind of an indictment of our moral imagination that we can look around at something like the Texas floods and see it as no big deal. And

yet, the fact that we are seeing it as no big deal tells us something about how we will live in the future world, one pockmarked by more disaster and

considerably more suffering that was necessary, and yet, one in which most people will probably live their lives thinking -- you know, looking around

and thinking everything's kind of fine.

That's the role of the alarm raisers to say, let's not accept that. Let's try to fight for a better future. But I do think that the geo -- the

evolving geopolitics show us an unfortunate next few decades in which we see many more disasters, and yet, we put climate on the back burner rather

than the front burner.

AMANPOUR: Well, you keep raising the alarm and we'll keep talking to you. David Wallace-Wells, thank you very much indeed.

WALLACE-WELLS: Thanks for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Later in the program, the award-winning actress Kristin Scott Thomas, tells me about trying her hand at something new, directing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:20:00]

AMANPOUR: For decades, the actress Kristin Scott Thomas has been lighting up our screens from "Four Weddings and a Funeral" to the "English Patient,"

and most recently in Apple TV's "Slow Horses." Now, she's stepping behind the camera to direct for the first time. With a deeply personal story based

loosely on her own life. Of course, she's acting in it too. It's called "My Mother's Wedding," and it's star packed. Scarlett Johansson and Sienna

Miller played two of the sisters. Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As the youngest and least celebrated before your daughters, I like to propose a toast.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, come on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mommy, tonight is your last night as a Munson.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're not going to change your name again?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Jeffrey Loveglove (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A beautiful name. It's not his fault.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To Mommy Loveglove.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You could take over from here, Sean. Dangerous mission tomorrow. I've got to get my mother down the aisle and deal with my

sisters.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who is an usher?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where on earth can the bridesmaids be?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Scott Thomas talked to me about this new adventure when she joined me right here in our London studio.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Kristin Scott Thomas, welcome to the program.

KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, DIRECTOR AND ACTOR, "MY MOTHER'S WEDDING": Thank you very much.

AMANPOUR: So, how exciting is it to be, well, selling your first directorial debut?

THOMAS: It's incredibly exciting and it's obviously something I've never done before. So, it's a huge adventure. A totally new world for me. And I

just -- yes, super exciting.

AMANPOUR: How much of it is autobiographic? I know the details are slightly different, obviously.

THOMAS: Yes. Well, it's inspired by my childhood events and how it affected my life and how I imagined it affects other people's lives. And because it

-- the -- because what happened to me as a child became a kind of -- it was like the title of every -- it was always mentioned in every magazine

article I did or anything like that.

AMANPOUR: That you lost two fathers --

THOMAS: That I lost my father --

AMANPOUR: -- not one.

THOMAS: -- and my stepfather. They were both pilots. They're both called Simon and they both -- there was something kind of fascinating for people

about that. And so, I just decided to kind of make it my story instead of just being a kind of footnote in somebody else's article.

AMANPOUR: You play your mother.

THOMAS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: You play the character Diana. Was she as emblematic in your life as your departed fathers?

THOMAS: Well, she was everything really. I mean, she died about two years ago, just after we finished shooting. But she was very -- she was an

extraordinary person. When you think that she brought up five children in these incredibly complicated circumstances where she kept getting pushed

back, pushed back by losing her partner and the father to her children.

So, she was incredibly resilient. And yes, she was definitely a beacon to us all. Definitely. You know, she was -- but she was just trying to do her

best. She's totally unprepared for this. When you think that she was -- by the time she was 32, 33, she'd lost two husbands and had five children. I

mean, I can't even imagine that --

AMANPOUR: And had to do all herself, yes.

THOMAS: Yes. I cannot even imagine that now.

AMANPOUR: We've got a couple of tips. I'm going to play the first one, because again, this is obviously about -- it's called "My Mother's

Wedding." So, it's about your mother's third marriage. And this is a hen party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to propose, ding, ding, ding a toast.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, come on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go for it, Georgie.

[13:25:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. As the youngest and the least celebrated of all your daughters, far prettiest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Definitely the drunkest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anyway, mommy, tonight is your last night as a Munson.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What? You are not going to change your name again?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course I'm going to take Jeff's name.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Jeffrey Loveglove?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, are you serious? I mean, really?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I am Mrs. Frost, Mrs. Munson and now, Mrs. Loveglove.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Loveglove.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The name -- it's a beautiful name. It's not his fault.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: You made the name up?

THOMAS: Well, I looked for names that I wanted a really good crusty old name.

AMANPOUR: It wasn't the real's third father's name?

THOMAS: No, no, no. None of that is real. Rest assured. And I found this name and I thought, what a brilliant name, Mr. Loveglove. I mean, you'd

fall in love with somebody called, you know, Percival Jeffrey Loveglove. That is his full name.

AMANPOUR: You're talking to the girls. But they raise a point, don't they, that you've done all of this, A, you've had their names. And now, you're

going to give up that name. And what does it mean for you as a woman? I mean, there's so much in that scene.

THOMAS: Yes, yes. I think that's what we were sort of exploring in the film is, what is in a name? What it means to -- and later, one of the main sort

of arguments in the film is around a name, taking a name. And I think that that is very important to us. I mean, I've -- I'm an actress, so I've taken

on a million names, maybe not a million, but a good a hundred different names and I adapt to different names very easily. But the name is who you

are, you know, it is, and that's what she says. It's -- that's it, that's your name. And I think those are very important things to think about and

often things that we don't really think about.

AMANPOUR: What are you saying? What is your message to the people who see this film with this film? You've chosen various scenes. It's very bucolic,

it's very Pride and Prejudice-esque in terms of the look. Very, very English.

THOMAS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Very English countryside experience.

THOMAS: Yes. That's what I wanted. I wanted to reproduce the sort of glorious summers that we don't seem to get anymore. We either get a heat

wave or a torrential rain. But I wanted to take that idea of sort of perfect summers that we all have of our childhood, don't we? We all think

of the -- remember the summers running around in the fields or whatever you did as a kid. That's what I did as a kid. And so, that -- remembering that

time as being completely perfect and yet that time was stained by these terrible catastrophic events.

And so, I think a lot of it came from the fact that I was constantly being told that I had a tragic childhood. Did I? You know, yes. Terrible things

happened. But actually, it was all very happy. We managed to bumble along and we managed to find a way to be happy between the sisters, between me

and my brothers and sisters, for example.

And I think in our film, you can tell by the way these three actresses portray these three sisters with so much love and fun and teasing and

mockery and fighting and anger. And, you know, all the things that sisters do.

AMANPOUR: Were you the eldest in real life?

THOMAS: I was the eldest in real life.

AMANPOUR: So, you are the Scarlett Johansson character. She plays Katherine.

THOMAS: I think I'm a bit --

AMANPOUR: The eldest sister.

THOMAS: I sort of -- yes. So, Scarlett plays the eldest.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

THOMAS: And then Sienna Miller plays her sister, who's an actress. And then Emily Beecham plays the youngest sister who's the sort of -- who's done

everything right.

AMANPOUR: She's a palliative care nurse.

THOMAS: She's a palliative care nurse.

AMANPOUR: But I'm really interested to read your author statement, because you talk about growing up. And here you say, as a sullen teenager growing

up in Dorset, I'd burn the midnight oil to watch French films on our diminutive television screen. I've always been drawn to cinema that

celebrates the heroic, the tragic, and the uproariously comical aspects of our everyday existence.

And you talk about the films that you loved, "Hannah and Her Sisters," Little Miss Sunshine," you know, "Rome," (INAUDIBLE) story, "Little Women,"

et cetera. I love the fact that you use the word sullen. I do. I love that fact. You do have a certain shield around you in your acting, and maybe

even in your personal life. That's quite hard. Why were you sullen?

THOMAS: I think when you have had repeatedly these events that change your life and whip the carpet from under your feet and make everything

different, when your father dies -- my father died when I was almost six, and then my stepfather died when I was 11, like the character played by

Scarlett, you know, you do -- you're kind of braced for the worst.

[13:30:00]

So, you kind of -- if you are -- don't get too comfortable and you are always on the edge, you are always sort of prepped for disaster, and I

think that's what I meant by, you know, sullen, and trying to find pleasure in things that I could rely on, like films on a TV set, the smallest TV set

you can possibly imagine. But I would watch -- late at night I would watch these things that I shouldn't really have been watching, but my mother

couldn't be everywhere, obviously.

AMANPOUR: Your first film, I can't even believe this, but tell me, I can't remember the name, but it was directed by Prince.

THOMAS: You cannot remember the name.

AMANPOUR: No.

THOMAS: It's called "Under the Cherry Moon."

AMANPOUR: There you go. Thank you very much. It's written here, but I didn't want to read it like this. So, I figured you'd tell me. How

incredible is that?

THOMAS: That was incredible. That was really incredible. I've been doing a play in Burgundy in a field. I get a call from a casting agent who says,

will you come to Paris because Prince is doing a film and they're looking for local actresses who speak English. Well, at the time, Prince was at his

peak, absolute peak. And it was, what, sort of '83 or something. And you know, I listened to his albums, you know, nonstop, nonstop, nonstop. And of

course, I sort of went straight up to Paris and did this interview.

And in fact, they were looking for somebody to play the lead, but they didn't want to sort of announce that. And I got asked, would you be

interested in playing the lead? Yes.

AMANPOUR: And is he --

THOMAS: And then, that evening, I had to go and meet him, which was -- I mean, it was all totally -- I could not -- I had to keep pinching myself.

This is actually happening to me.

AMANPOUR: Amazing. And then, obviously, everybody knows you for "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and the "English Patient." All the amazing things

you've done. "Slow Horses." I mean, it's really brilliant.

THOMAS: It's good, isn't it?

AMANPOUR: What's it like working with Gary Oldman?

THOMAS: I love working with Gary. We've worked together before. We did a film called "The Darkest Hour," which was about Churchill. And I played his

wife Clementine Churchill. And no. So, it -- he's just -- he's so brilliant and so sort of flexible and agile and you never know what he's going to do

next, and that's what I like.

AMANPOUR: I want to play another clip from "My Mother's Wedding," and this is where the girls, the sisters, are having argy-bargy. It's basically a

fight. Here we go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every time I come here, I think that it's going to be better, but it never is. I'm just going to leave this -- little country and

take the (INAUDIBLE). All of his money and it's going to be your fault.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There you go again, just running off to get another little man.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you on your high horse?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at what you are doing to Jack.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Victoria.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, your son. What would daddy have to say about that? Poor little boy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: You see by the end how close they are. I assume you are very close to your sisters and brothers.

THOMAS: Yes, very. Yes.

AMANPOUR: And I got -- one of the scenes that I really loved and I found it very smart and clever, and I assume your mother did this, you playing

Diana, your mother, went to the graves, it was your annual. You go to the graves of the two fathers and put flowers, and you told in the film your

girls to come with you. And you explain to them that all their lives they had hero worshiped this man -- these men who they probably still think of

as the young men who left them.

THOMAS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And she told them what to do. Tell me about that. Because I really found that very good.

THOMAS: Well, I just felt that we needed -- that scene, in fact, was written by my writing partner. John Micklethwait.

AMANPOUR: Did you mean your husband?

THOMAS: My current husband.

AMANPOUR: And how happy are you as a digression? This is my mother's wedding. But you got married again.

THOMAS: I know. It's completely mad, isn't it? It was all sort of -- yes.

AMANPOUR: And working together.

THOMAS: Yes. That was really, really fun.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

THOMAS: That was great. But anyway, so, he came up with this idea, but it - - because I couldn't really articulate it. I told him what I wanted to be said, but he didn't -- you know, but so -- but I didn't know how to put it

into a form. And so, this is his work. And actually, it's spot on, isn't it?

AMANPOUR: Yes, it really is actually.

THOMAS: But it is -- but I did find that myself. I remember going to a cousin's wedding. And this -- when I was about, I don't know, 30. And this

chat wanders over to me and he's slightly portly and he's bald and he's, you know, 60 something and he says, hello. I was your father's best friend.

I said, you can't possibly be my father's best. My father was 30 years old. Beautiful.

AMANPOUR: Did you actually say that or you thought it?

[13:35:00]

THOMAS: No, but I was thinking. How can this be? And I remember trying to keep my face from falling and sort of denying it. And there's another scene

in the film as well where they're reminded that actually if their father were alive today, he would be as old as that man over there. And I think

that sort of hero worshiping people who have left this earth is a very easy trap to fall into, especially when it hasn't been spoken about at all with

the children when the event -- when these events happen.

And so, I suppose, in a way, that this is a way of me saying, you know, that she should have spoken more to her children at the time, rather than

just getting on with it, which is -- I think is a pretty military type thing.

AMANPOUR: Military, British, you know, generational. That generation just got on with it.

THOMAS: Total generational, yes.

AMANPOUR: Especially a woman who's having to support a whole family on her own.

THOMAS: Yes, exactly.

AMANPOUR: I was struck by the way you depicted that, those flashbacks by the animation and it's an Iranian animator.

THOMAS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: I was really pleased to see that. How did you come up with that device? Because it was very effective.

THOMAS: So, in fact, the idea of making little animated films was my first idea. Because my brothers were both so small when their -- well, actually

one of my brothers was born after his father died, and then my mother married again and his father died and his stepfather died when he was four,

leaving also another little brother. They don't have any memory, nothing to hang their hat on.

So, I thought, because I was nearly six when my father died and 12 when my stepfather died, I would try and make little short animated films of the

memories I had with those men and leave them something, and then it just could of grew from there. But -- so, the animated sequences are actually

the root and the heart of the film.

AMANPOUR: I'm glad I asked you then, because it is amazing.

THOMAS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: It's very effective.

THOMAS: Yes, it is, isn't it?

AMANPOUR: Especially the amount of detail you put in and the detail that's left out of their faces and things.

THOMAS: And the emotion you get from the drawings is really quite powerful.

AMANPOUR: I think so too. It's the second -- third time you've worked with Scarlett Johansson. What's it like doing that?

THOMAS: I think it's -- yes, one, two -- third time I've played her mother. Yes.

AMANPOUR: Yes. Oh, third time you played her mother?

THOMAS: Yes, yes, yes.

AMANPOUR: Well, OK then, what's it like being an older woman in this business?

THOMAS: Well, I'm loving it, to be honest.

AMANPOUR: You're doing great. You're getting great roles, whether it's, you know, "Slow Horses," you're directing.

THOMAS: Yes, yes, yes. I think --

AMANPOUR: So no complaints?

THOMAS: Well, yes. I mean, some. I mean, there's still no King Lear.

AMANPOUR: Didn't Glenda Jackson do it?

THOMAS: She did. Yes, she did.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

THOMAS: She did. She did.

AMANPOUR: But now this is your audition. You want to do King Lear?

THOMAS: Why not?

AMANPOUR: There you go.

THOMAS: Not right this minute.

AMANPOUR: No. But after the film's out.

THOMAS: Yes. Quite --

AMANPOUR: OK. Well, you heard it here first.

THOMAS: Plenty of things to be getting on with.

AMANPOUR: Including you're a grandmother.

THOMAS: Including I'm a grandmother.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

THOMAS: Yes. That's busy.

AMANPOUR: Yes. Well, enjoy.

THOMAS: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Thank you so much, Kristin Scott Thomas --

THOMAS: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: -- for being with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And the film is out this weekend in North America. Coming up after the break, RFK Jr. versus vaccines, what it means for the health of

the United States and for the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:40:00]

AMANPOUR: RFK Jr. is continuing to dramatically remake America's health system. This week he announced the United States will slash funding for

mRNA vaccine development. You'll remember that mRNA vaccines were vital in fighting COVID-19, and they're seen as a key tool to control future

pandemics because they can be manufactured quickly. Even Trump's former surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, said, this move will cost lives.

Anna Merlan, reporter from Mother Jones, wrote about RFK's war on these immunizations. And here she is with Hari Sreenivasan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Anna Merlan, you recently wrote a piece in Mother Jones titled "The Plot Against

Vaccines: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his allies have hit on a way to undermine immunization." First of all, let's start with the National

Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. I'm pretty safe in assuming that a majority of Americans don't even know what that is and how it works.

ANNA MERLAN, SENIOR REPORTER, MOTHER JONES: Yes, yes.

SREENIVASAN: Explain what it is.

MERLAN: So, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established in the 1980s after a scare over DTP vaccines, diphtheria,

tetanus, pertussis. Basically, throughout the 1970s, there were a growing number of personal injury lawsuits alleging injuries from DTP vaccines and

the amount of money being asked for -- from those lawsuits kept skyrocketing. So, by the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s,

drug manufacturers were increasingly reluctant to make those vaccines and indeed, to make vaccines at all. Despite the fact that most public health

experts and scientists who looked at these lawsuits didn't necessarily think that the injuries that were being alleged came from these vaccines.

So, there started to be a real nationwide concern over the vaccine supply endangering the vaccine supply, which of course doesn't just hurt the U.S.

it also hurts the rest of the world because a lot of major drug companies are housed here in the U.S.

So, basically, they came up with the system, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that went into effect a few years later that

essentially created what is called a no-fault system, where people who allege that they are their children were injured by vaccines go into this

specialized program that is set up to compensate them.

Most cases, about 60 percent of cases are heard without going into a courtroom, so to speak. The system is actually designed to compensate

people very quickly, even if the injuries aren't necessarily approved to be caused by vaccines, it's a pretty unique program. And then, the cases that

are heard in a courtroom of sorts are heard by what are called special masters, who are judicial appointees who are specially trained in vaccine

law, vaccine cases, the science around vaccines, the sort of established system about how some vaccines can, in very rare cases, cause some injury

to some people.

So, it is a pretty revolutionary system. And while it -- people who work within it, you know, like the attorneys who represent vaccine injured

people would tell you that it is in need of some updates, by and large, it has been working pretty well since the 1980s.

SREENIVASAN: So, what are some of the examples of people who have been in front of this system who get paid out?

MERLAN: So, if you look at hrsa.gov, you can see that there are so-called table injuries. There is a list of vaccines and the supposed injuries that

can, in some rare cases, be caused by them, right? And so, you can see that there are things like encephalitis. One of the most common injuries is

actually not an allergic reaction, it is what's called SIRVA, which is a shoulder injury that can happen if the vaccine is administered too high or

too low in the muscle.

So, these so-called table injuries not only say which vaccine could, in rare cases, cause which injury, it also gives you a timeframe that is

generally scientifically agreed upon for when these injuries could take place. Which is, again, an important counter to what Secretary Kennedy and

other people like him have claimed, which is pinning any number of childhood and adult syndromes to vaccines, even if there is no evidence

that that is the case and even if the vaccines were administered years ago.

SREENIVASAN: RFK Jr. seems to be incredibly critical of this court. He recently tweeted out, the VICP has devolved into a more asset inefficiency,

favoritism, and outright corruption as government, lawyers and the special masters who serve as vaccine court judges prioritize the solvency of the

HHS Trust Fund over their duty to compensate victims. Well, why is RFK so critical of this court, this process?

[13:45:00]

MERLAN: Secretary Kennedy has been critical of it for years, going back to his time as the head of the anti-vaccine organization, Children's Health

Defense. Well, I don't know what Mr. Kennedy's personal ire about the program is linked to. A lot of personal injury attorneys in the anti-

vaccine movement are critical of the program because they would like these cases to be heard in civil court. And indeed, Mr. Kennedy has been counsel

in some of the few vaccine cases that are heard in civil court, a series of class action lawsuits over the Gardasil vaccine.

So, I would say that in listening to the comments that Mr. Kennedy has made recently about this program, it is pretty striking some of the basic facts

that he misstates. He claims that the system is designed not to compensate people. He claims that it's a lot more adversarial than it actually is. He

doesn't mention that 60 percent of people are compensated without ever going before a special master. It is -- again, these are statistics that

are easy to find if you work for the federal government or look at a government run website. So, it's very surprising to me how many things he

says about the program that most people would disagree with.

SREENIVASAN: One of the lines of reasoning that Secretary Kennedy has used in the past is that, you know, courts like the one that deal with vaccines

are set up in a way to protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies. What's wrong with that thinking? If they had to go to civil court, wouldn't

there be the possibility that they would have to pay lots more to people who are suffering from vaccines?

MERLAN: So, there's a couple things wrong here. One is that, as anybody who's paid the slightest attention to the American civil court system

knows, it's adversarial, it's expensive, it takes a long time. So, we would be asking patients who may also be -- already be dealing with serious

injuries to go through a very long very expensive court system where, for instance, their legal fees are not paid for, which in many cases they are

paid for in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

They also stand a chance of losing. You know, this is something that is not often mentioned when Secretary Kennedy talks about this. This is a process

that does not have a guaranteed outcome. This was set up -- the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was set up for patients. It was set up

to make sure that they have a better chance. Civil Court is a lot more unpredictable. It involves people going up against juries who may or may

not side with them.

And so, overall, we need increased compensation in this program. These people are not getting paid enough. The caps are too low because they were

established a long time ago. There need to be more special masters hearing these cases, so they go through more quickly.

If Secretary Kennedy and the people he appointed talk to lawyers for vaccine injured plaintiffs, they would have a lot of suggestions for how to

overhaul the program. It wouldn't involve weakening or dismantling it in the ways that he seems to be suggesting.

SREENIVASAN: Let's take a look at, you know, a different kind of line of his attack on immunizations or vaccines. He has, as the secretary, the

power to help appoint people in positions who decide what sort of vaccines we should be pursuing, which ones should be taken off the shelves, which

should be suggested for use, et cetera. Well, who has he filled those leadership positions with?

MERLAN: Yes. One really noteworthy thing that happened recently that you probably saw the headlines about is that Secretary Kennedy removed all 17

members of ACIP, which is an advisory body that helps CDC decide what should appear on the vaccine schedule and the sort of guidance we give to

the American public about vaccines. So, if Secretary Kennedy removed all 17 members of ACIP and replace them with people who, in several cases, have

very distinct and long-term ties to the anti-vaccine movement and to other forms of medical skepticism and sort of contested medical advice.

So, he's done that. That is ongoing. He has suspended the U.S.'s funding to Gavi, the vaccine alliance, which helps vaccinate children in some of the

poorest places in the world in developing countries against diseases like polio, Ebola, meningitis. He's installed a series of people throughout HHS.

There's been a number of actions and they're happening very fast.

SREENIVASAN: What's the response been from the existing medical community and does that break down along, I don't know, partisan lines? Is it just

Democrat doctors or Republican doctors that are either in support of this or in opposition to this?

MERLAN: No. This is broadly unpopular with the medical community. Another thing that HHS has done under Mr. Kennedy is kicked out long established

medical associations from the CDC working groups that talk about vaccines.

[13:50:00]

Again, this is like the American Medical Association and another half dozen really big medical bodies. The concern has been very widespread and it has

been nonpartisan. This is a serious concern for public health experts, scientists, doctors who study vaccination. And you know, the biggest

concern overall is that it's going to be confusing to the American public. You're suddenly going to have somebody in a position of extraordinary power

making contested and extremely questionable claims about the safety of the vaccination system that, you know, we've worked so hard as sort of -- the

U.S. public health system has worked so hard to build trust in these programs.

SREENIVASAN: You know, it's also interesting that we are already seeing a decrease in vaccinations. And that's accelerated post-COVID, right?

MERLAN: Yes. Yes, that's true. COVID was a really profitable and fruitful time for anti-vaccine groups. They were able to use people's fear and

confusion about what was going on to drive first skepticism about COVID vaccines and mRNA technology and then vaccines more broadly. As you're

saying, we've seen a decrease in the number of children getting vaccinated for school.

And you know, that has happened previously in other areas of history. It's always a concern, but it's a special concern right now because we're still

dealing with a devastating measles outbreak across the country that, again, HHS has not been speaking about as much as you might expect. Measles is

incredibly dangerous. It's especially dangerous for children and infants. And if those kids are not vaccinated against measles, it could be and has

been for at least two children in Texas so far, deadly.

SREENIVASAN: What's been the secretary's response to the measles outbreak?

MERLAN: Secretary Kennedy suggested that at least one of the children who died of measles was malnourished, which is not true. We do not have any

evidence that that is the case. And Secretary Kennedy's former organization, Children's Health Defense, has actually interviewed the

parents of the children who died in Texas and is sort of attempting to bringing them around to the anti-vaccination cause.

So, I think it's fair to say that a lot of public health experts, myself and my colleague, Kiera Butler, talked to, really expressed a desire for

HHS to do more, to reemphasize that people should get their children vaccinated against measles and to not muddy the waters and confuse people

about what is safe and what isn't.

SREENIVASAN: You know, underlying this notion that there could be different environmental factor, there's sort of a challenge, if not, outright denial

of kind of germ theory and science that we've established for 150 or 200 years at least now, right? And I wonder what is in place of that? What is

the secretary and the people that he works with who are part of this movement, what do they believe in if they don't think that measles spreads

the way that it actually does?

MERLAN: Yes. My colleague, Kiera Butler, has written about this in some detail. Secretary Kennedy, in one of his books, suggested a belief in what

is called miasma theory, which is basically, as he describes it and the way that he describes it as not quite accurate to the historical belief, but

essentially, the idea with miasma theory is that people get sick from things like dirty air and environmental factors, but they can be protected

from illness by better nutrition and by building up their own immune systems.

And while that was probably a useful idea before we knew what germs were, you know, several centuries ago, now that we know that germs and viruses

get people sick, you have to take that into account when you're thinking about how to protect people from illness.

So, we've asked several times if Secretary Kennedy still believes in and promotes miasma theory, and I would love to know more about whether or not

he still holds that to be true.

SREENIVASAN: From your piece, there's a comment from the department and -- from one of their spokespersons, says, Secretary Kennedy is committed to

restoring scientific integrity, transparency, and public trust in federal health policy, especially where it with concerns vaccines. Any suggestion

that his goal is to make vaccines harder to access or discourage manufacturers is completely false.

How are the actions that he's taking now, how would they decrease the interest of manufacturers to make these medicines?

MERLAN: Right. So, we can look at exactly what happened in the 1980s with the DTP vaccine, which is that as these civil cases and these enormous jury

awards started to rack up, drug manufacturers started to pull out of making vaccines. You know, this isn't something that they have to do, and frankly,

they often choose not to because vaccines, contrary to what a lot of folks in the anti-vaccine movement will tell you, don't make them a ton of money.

That is not a super profitable product for drug manufacturers or doctors.

[13:55:00]

So, they could simply choose not to make them, not to market them due to concerns over getting sued. And that is very much the place where the

public health experts that Kiera and I spoke to are worried that we will find ourselves if this type of anti-vaccine rhetoric from the federal

government continues.

So, it remains to be seen, and I would say, as I have been saying when I've talked to folks about this, if you need to get up to date on any of your

vaccines at all, talk to your doctor. Like, get that going as soon as you can.

SREENIVASAN: Anna Merlan, senior reporter from Mother Jones, thanks so much for joining us.

MERLAN: Thank you for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: A health and science skeptical United States is very worrisome, not just for the U.S. but for the whole world. That is it for now. And if

you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our

website, and all-over social media.

Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:00]

END