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Amanpour
Interview with "The Theatre" Author James Verini; Interview with "Oedipus" Actor Mark Strong; Interview with "Oedipus" Actress Lesley Manville; Interview with Rebecca Winthrop. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired June 12, 2026 - 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 ANCHOR: Hello everyone and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES VERINI, AUTHOR, "THE THEATRE": To this day I think it's the worst siege of the war and it will go down in history with Leningrad and Guernica
and place names like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The battle for Ukraine, now longer than World War I. As Ukrainians endure Russian atrocities, painful memories of Mariupol with
journalist James Verini.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Mothers of Kherson, a new opera tells a story of three Ukrainian women and their fight to bring their abducted children home. My
report on the families torn apart by Russia.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LESLEY MANVILLE, ACTRESS, "OEDIPUS": It was an extraordinary thing to do every night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A top Tony gong for Lesley Manville. For her captivating performance in "Oedipus." I spoke to her during its acclaimed run-on
Broadway.
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REBECCA WINTHROP, DIRECTOR, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION CENTER FOR UNIVERSAL EDUCATION: When you use A.I. to brainstorm, it short circuits kids' own
creative ideas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- as more and more students use A.I., do the risks outweigh the benefits?
Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in Paris this week.
Day after day Russia furiously pounds Ukraine as Putin tries to claim that he's winning this war now in its fifth year. But increasingly audacious
long-range Ukrainian strikes are challenging that narrative. This week they struck an arms factory and an oil refinery deep inside Russia. Ukraine also
hit the Russian occupied port of Mariupol leaving the site severely damaged.
Mariupol is strategically important of course. It was taken by Russian forces early in the war and became one of the first major sites of Russian
horrors. Many people scrambling to survive took refuge in a theater. They wrote the word children in huge letters in Russian on the ground outside.
Still, on March 16, 2022, Russia bombed that theater. The exact number of fatalities is still unknown.
And this critical episode of the war, a defining atrocity, is the subject of a new book, "The Theater," by journalist James Verini. And he is joining
me now from New York. James, welcome to the program.
JAMES VERINI, AUTHOR, "THE THEATRE": Thank you, Christiane. Good to be with you.
AMANPOUR: So, we all remember this, those of us who were paying very close attention to the horrors unfolding shortly after the Russian invasion. Very
few of us were there. You weren't there. What made you decide to focus on this as the subject of your book?
VERINI: Well, I'd been reporting in Ukraine since before the war started. And when I returned with the full-scale invasion, we tried to get to
Mariupol because already within the first few days of the war, it was clear that Mariupol was being the hardest hit. It was the worst siege of the war
to that point and possibly to any point.
And so, we tried to get into Mariupol in those first days of the war, but it was already encircled and completely embattled by the Russians. So, we
camped out outside of it in a city called Zaporizhzhia, trying to make our way in, we being journalists and others. And we watched on our phones and
on the news as the city was besieged. Everyone remembers the images of the bomb maternity hospital and the indiscriminate shelling of the residential
buildings.
To this day, I think it's the worst siege of the war, and it will go down in history with Leningrad and Guernica and place names like that. I know.
AMANPOUR: I mean, I'm just visualizing it in my mind's eye and remembering. I mean, it's taking me back all those years, remembering
watching from afar and being horrified that even a site with children written in huge letters was not immune. It turns out apparently the
Russians dropped about 1,200 kilograms of explosive on this. And you spent a long time traveling around Europe to see whether you could track down all
the survivors. What did you find?
[13:05:00]
VERINI: So, the bombing was on March the 16th of 2022, and I started interviewing survivors shortly thereafter as they got out of the theater
and got out of Mariupol. And eventually, as you say, I spent years tracking them down, first doing an article for The New York Times magazine and then
this book.
What I found was an assortment of people who had reacted to the bombing of the theater in different ways. Some of their lives had been absolutely
shattered. And they will never recover. Others of them made it out of Mariupol and they've built new lives in Ukraine or in France or Germany or
Italy. And they've built new lives outside of Ukraine.
But of course, for all of them, being in the theater when it was bombed, the defining atrocity of the Ukraine war, I would argue, was the formative
experience of their lives. And of course, none of them will ever forget it. Some of them will never survive it mentally.
AMANPOUR: Yes. I mean, you call it the formative atrocities. Absolutely was. And then, of course, more and more was unfolded in Bucha and
elsewhere. But this one was particular because, again, so many civilians, children and their parents had taken refuge there. Tell me about how this
theater, which was the cultural hub of Mariupol and probably a lot of southern Ukraine. How did it become? Because it was transformed into a
shelter before the bombing. And you write about that very compellingly.
VERINI: Yes, that's right. Thank you. So, yes, in the very first stage days of the siege of Mariupol, the government of the city published a list
of hundreds of buildings in the city where people could take refuge in the event of a siege. The problem was very few of those buildings actually had
adequate basements to serve as bomb shelters. They were mostly apartment buildings. There were only a few buildings in the city that had adequately
secure and spacious basements. And the theater was one of them.
So, first, dozens and then hundreds and then eventually thousands of people started gathering at the theater. At the same time, the government in Kyiv
announced that it was -- that it had agreed with the Russian government to evacuate people from Mariupol in a humanitarian corridor. You'll remember
at the very beginning of the war. And the government announced that everyone who wanted to get out of Mariupol could meet this convoy of buses
at the municipal drama theater, one of the biggest buildings in the city.
So, thousands of people arrived at the theater. The problem was the evacuation corridor never really was created. And all the buses that the
government had assembled to get the Mariupol out, all of the buses were bombed by the Russians. So, suddenly, on March 5th, hundreds and then
thousands of people found themselves at this theater that had never been prepared to be a refugee shelter, wasn't prepared for anything, really.
But the people who worked there, the actors and the artists and the administrators who worked at the theater saw all of these people gathering
in their place of work. And they realized they had no choice but to help them. These people had nowhere else to go. Their homes had been destroyed.
They couldn't get out of the city.
And the lighting director of the theater, a woman named Evgenia, took charge. And in the course of a few days, she and her husband, an actor, and
a number of other volunteers created this remarkable refugee shelter that, at its most crowded, slept about 1,500 people a night and fed about 3,000
people a day over the course of about two weeks before it was bombed by the Russian bombs.
AMANPOUR: And you can imagine these people thought that they had a refuge. They thought they were protected because it was clear that civilians were
inside there. You describe how it was turned into a shelter. I want you to read a passage on page 72 of your book.
VERINI: Yes. So, it is, what faced them, them being the people who worked at the theater and made the shelter, what faced them but a challenge of
grand improvisation. And wasn't that what they did here every day? They began with an improbable scenario, an extraordinary situation on the page,
and they made it reality. They'd been doing this together, night after night, for nearly two decades in a state-funded regional theater, becoming
expert at working on the fly and on the cheap, at teasing unknown talents out of the untrained. The difference now, granted, was that the scenario
was beyond extraordinary, the biggest war in the world, and their talent pool, as well as their audience, was a mass of desperate, petrified people.
[13:10:00]
AMANPOUR: Yes, I mean, James, it's so vivid. Theater people are known for improvising, right? Do you think that helped with all of this? What did the
-- you know, those who you tracked down, who survived, what did they tell you about how it became a refuge, at least for a couple of weeks before
being bombed?
VERINI: Yes. There were many different types of people. There were the people who worked at the theater, who were masterful at improvisation, as I
say. But then there were just other ordinary people, none of whom had any professional training in aid work or caregiving. But all of the volunteers
had some sort of talent that could be harnessed in a way that helped their country people and helped the people in the refugee shelters.
So, there was a team of what were called the hunters, the scavengers. And their job was to go out throughout the bombed city and scavenge through the
ruins of the supermarkets and the pharmacies and the shops, finding stuff to be eaten and used that could be brought back to the theater. They had a
talent for spotting things in the rubble, you could say.
There was one doctor in the theater, only one, Dr. Elena Matushin, who had been trained in the Soviet medical system and had worked in multiple public
hospitals. She had a talent for treating people with, again, minimal resources in southeastern Ukraine, not terribly well-resourced hospitals.
She had an excellent bedside manner and a talent for stretching few medicines and few provisions a long way. And she created an infirmary in
the theater.
And remarkably, during the two weeks that the refugee shelter existed in the theater, not a single person died, thanks to Elena's efforts as a
doctor. There was also a former Army chef who was able to rig up a field kitchen and feed thousands of people every day.
On and on, small things like this where people's talents in their previous lives turned into talents in a refugee shelter that could help save and
solace many of their country people.
AMANPOUR: Yes, and it was a really heroic operation. But you also write and report about inherent tensions amongst these refugees, amongst these
people seeking shelter. Some of them actually bought the Russian narrative that it was NATO's fault or that Putin was just trying to liberate. You
know, and they were up against Ukrainians, very nationalistic Ukrainians there, who obviously were on the other side of this conversation.
How did that continue? I mean, were they able to find common ground with these tensions? Did they last as long as they were in there?
VERINI: Well, you've been to Ukraine, so you recall that before the war, Ukraine was a place very much divided between nationalists, patriotic
Ukrainians, and more Russophilic Ukrainians, some of whom even said outright that they wanted to live under Putin, wanted to live under Russia,
even if it took an invasion. Those people found their way into the theater, all of them.
Mariupol is right on the Russian border, and it was a particularly Russophilic city before the war. But all of them found themselves, whether
they were Russophilic or nationalistic, in the same situation, which is to say homeless and under siege. They found themselves in this theater,
thousands of them, and they had to find a way to get along with one another, even if they had wildly variant ideas about the origins of this
war and the justice of the war.
So, the directors of the refugee shelter laid down a rule that none of the people taking shelter there were to discuss politics or the politics of the
war. Of course, that didn't exactly hold. People did end up discussing it, but for the most part, they got along.
But even after the siege of Mariupol and even after the theater was bombed, I met Ukrainians, including Ukrainians who had been in the theater when it
was bombed, who still buy the Kremlin line, the Kremlin line being that the theater wasn't bombed by Russian bombs, but rather by Ukrainian saboteurs,
and that this war wasn't started by Russia, but rather by Ukraine and NATO. There are still Ukrainians living in Mariupol and other parts of eastern
Ukraine who believe this.
I know one woman who narrowly escaped the theater bombing, who, right after it happened, was cursing the Russians, as everyone else. But now she's
lived in Mariupol long enough, under the scourge of Russian propaganda and occupation, that she has had to convince herself that it was Ukrainian
bombs that nearly killed her, not Russian bombs. So, you see the force of the Russian information war in addition to the actual physical war.
AMANPOUR: And that's coming to play even more now because the theater has been rebuilt by the Russians and that there are new performances, or at
least a new performance. It's really sort of moved along fast.
[13:15:00]
But Ukrainians, some of them who survived the attack, are kind of, you know, outraged, as you can imagine. What do they tell you about that? One
of them said, you know, it's like dancing, you know, on the bones of our compatriots.
VERINI: Yes, I think that the Russians bombed the theater knowing perfectly well not just that it was a refugee shelter with, as you pointed
out, children and Russian written on either side of it when it was bombed. They bombed it also knowing that it was a center of Ukrainian culture, a
place of pride for people who are proud of Ukrainian culture.
And, of course, that was one of the larger aims, or the larger aim, of Putin with this war. Putin had said for years that he didn't think
Ukrainian culture existed outside of Russian culture, that there was no such thing as a Ukrainian language or an independent Ukrainian culture if
it wasn't part of Russia. And by bombing places like the theater, it was an atrocity on two levels, if you like.
It was a civilian atrocity, perhaps the most lethal of the war, but it was also an atrocity against Ukrainian culture and an attempt to eradicate
Ukrainian culture. And by rebuilding the theater and performing specifically very Russian performances there, I think beginning in last
December, it furthers that argument of Putin's and of Russia's, that there is no Ukrainian culture. There is only Russian culture.
AMANPOUR: And solidifies their occupation, not just of Mariupol, but other areas. James, thank you so much. James Verini, thank you very much for
joining us.
VERINI: Thank you, Christiane. It's been a pleasure.
AMANPOUR: Mariupol and other cities like Kherson were also a site of further harrowing atrocities. The abduction of Ukrainian children into
Russia, stolen from their families, from their country, from their lives. And now, an opera is trying to give voice to that pain, as you'll see in
this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): It's been one of the most heart-wrenching and despicable crimes of the war. Ukraine says around 20,000 of its children
have been stolen away and illegally taken into Russia amid the chaos.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Ukrainian children must be brought home.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): The Kremlin says it evacuated Ukrainian children for their own safety. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself has been
sacked with an international arrest warrant over the children's alleged abduction.
VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Nobody was going to separate those kids from their families.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): But four years after he invaded Ukraine, many of these children are still far from home. Some, the lucky few, have been
rescued by their parents from deep inside Russia. And it's that courage and love that are the stars of a new opera co-commissioned by New York's
Metropolitan Opera House.
Courage comes easily when you've got one foot in the grave, one character sings.
ANZHELINA SHVACHKA, NATIONAL OPERA OF UKRAINE (through translator): When I was preparing for this part, I could not hold my tears. Every single bit of
it is so heartbreaking. It brings up the feelings that every mother, every Ukrainian has.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): The work was given a preview in Kyiv this month before the Ukrainian First Lady and some of the very mothers and children
who inspired it. Even with her son Maxim safely back in Ukraine now, the pain of their six-month separation still haunts Yulia.
YULIA, MOTHER OF RESCUED CHILD (through translator): I feel I am guilty for what happened.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): This performance was a moment to step back from the war.
YULIA: We really liked it. We applauded and could have continued till the morning.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Although the trenches and the skies across Ukraine are still ablaze with missile and drone fire, art is beginning to take
stock of what the war has cost.
OLENA ZELENSKA, FIRST LADY OF UKRAINE (through translator): News will go away, our diplomats' and activists' voices will disappear, and art is here
forever. If we think about Picasso's Guernica and "Schindler's List" and "20 Days in Mariupol," we need such works.
YULIA (through translator): I had goose bumps non-stop. I had goosebumps. You really get a feeling of what happened. We lived through this again.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): As the pain and desperate desire to start living again in Ukraine takes center stage, one truth shines through. There is no
love like a mother's love for her child.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: Later in the program, Lesley Manville got her first Tony for her role in "Oedipus" this week. We revisit my conversation with the Broadway
plays lead actress and her co-star, Mark Strong.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Next, we turn to Broadway, and we congratulate the actress Lesley Manville, who took home her first Tony Award this week for her
starring role, along with Mark Strong, in the new play "Oedipus."
Now, you may remember Oedipus Rex from your college classics course, but this production, written by Robert Icke, reimagines this Sophocles tragedy
as a contemporary political thriller. As the play began its run, I sat down with Lesley with the "Oedipus" stars in New York for an intimate inside
view of this new old classic.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Lesley Manville and Mark Strong, welcome to the program.
MARK STRONG, ACTOR, "OEDIPUS": Thank you.
LESLEY MANVILLE, ACTOR, "OEDIPUS": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: I say Oedipus, some people say Oedipus. What is it?
MANVILLE: Well, we say Oedipus in the U.K., but I think mostly here people say Oedipus.
AMANPOUR: This is -- I mean, it's a 2,500-year-old play by Sophocles made for the current moment. What is it that has brought it down to earth, so to
speak? It's the political angle, right, for this moment?
STRONG: Well, Rob makes the point, Rob Icke, who's the writer-director, makes the point that when this play was done originally 2,500 years ago, it
would have been contemporary. So, the idea of modernizing it and making it contemporary is not so outlandish. But what it suits is the political kind
of framework that he's put it in, because he makes Oedipus a guy who's about to win a landslide election, which kind of relates to the idea that
the original Oedipus probably had a little bit too much hubris.
AMANPOUR: And then there were, you know, references to him having to show his birth certificate, and people reacted to that because of the Obama-
Trump sort of thing. So, there are quite a lot of modern-day relevant instances there.
So, I want to read something from Vogue, which I thought was really quite good, and I want to ask you to comment on it. So, this is about the play.
They are or were the perfect couple. They'd been together for years. They have adult children. Why should a little quirk in the family tree only just
discovered mean everything has to change? Does a man really have to separate from his loving, supportive, gorgeous, funny wife just because she
happens to be his mother? I mean, it's put like that.
STRONG: Well, part of the joy of the play and part of the experience that people have is that there is a very strong love story at its core, and it
works because you want them to be together, and they can't help themselves at the end.
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, one of the things I read that you had said is that you insisted that it has to be -- the audience has to be rooting for
this couple to stay together despite everything.
MANVILLE: Yes, because, of course, at the beginning of the play, they are -- their knowledge of their own relationship is that they are a 23-year-
long marriage. It's a great marriage. They're not just sugary and cute, there's a depth to their relationship. They're a sophisticated, intelligent
couple who are very supportive of each other.
[13:25:00]
She's very politically astute in the same way that he is, and she's had a very interesting past. She's had a troublesome past, which is shared with
the audience throughout the play.
So, of course, you know -- it's only when you get to the end that you realize -- that they realize that they're a mother-son relationship, but,
of course -- and I think the audience are thrown into a chaos of their own because, on one hand, there's the moralist in you saying, well, that's got
to stop, but then other people say, well, but they've been doing it for 23 years. They've made a family.
There is an argument, but, of course, it's an argument that Oedipus can't live with because he is a truth-seeking missile, and that's been the
downfall.
AMANPOUR: And that is actually, I don't know whether that's in the original, it was because of your truth-seeking that you couldn't live with
it, but certainly that was a huge -- you know, the emblem for this play, and we live in a world, certainly for me, the idea of the truth is
sacrosanct, and even your, you know, merch says truth is a XX -- oh, excuse me, I X-ed the wrong word. Truth is a mother XX.
STRONG: XX. Yes, yes.
MANVILLE: I love that. That says a lot about you. You want to have a drink tonight?
AMANPOUR: That's my English coming out.
STRONG: But in the same way that you're asking the audience to think about how they feel about mother and son having that loving relationship, you're
also asking the audience how they feel about the fact that this man's need and search for the truth actually destroys everything that they have.
AMANPOUR: Which is another difficult thing because, I mean, I want to keep searching for the truth, but I don't want it to destroy us.
STRONG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Can we just actually, now that we've talked about it, just go back. Me, OK, I know about Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Me, I couldn't remember
all the details. It was like, OK, guy kills his father, marries his mother, but it's not like that. The story unfolds in a way, as you said, that
neither of you know who you actually are. And there is a ticking clock, an electronic clock, which is so -- it makes you so tense, actually.
STRONG: The great thing about this play, I think, is the fact that all the action has happened before the play begins. So, all the things that become
revelations have already taken place. He's already -- you know, his dad is already sick. In the original, it's a road rage incident. The two -- he
meets his father. Unbeknownst to him, it's his father in a cart, and they have an argument, and he kills the guy. So, in our version, it's a car
accident.
So, he's still culpable for the problem, but it's just -- you know, it's just been developed in a slightly different way, but it's still -- you
know, it's still in line with what the original intention was.
AMANPOUR: And your character, Jocasta, eventually, you all start putting it together halfway through the play, the bits of the puzzle, particularly
around the car crash. You know, you were married to Laius.
MANVILLE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And he was the one who was killed in the car crash.
MANVILLE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
MANVILLE: Yes. She decides to reveal this story, the real backstory of her life, her history with Laius. And then, slowly, the puzzle of Laius' death,
the truth of Laius' death, which makes him, puts him in a very difficult position. And of course, she's panicking because she knows that he is not
going to, in the clock ticking, in half an hour's time, make this speech as the new leader. It's a night of cataclysmic events.
AMANPOUR: All on the verge of winning an election?
MANVILLE: All with the clock ticking that in 24 minutes, 13 minutes, five minutes, he's going to be named the new leader. And he's saying,
eventually, I'm not going to make that speech until I know who I am. And that, for her, is -- you know. And then the final revelation happens. And
the clock's reached zero.
STRONG: It's all real-time. That's the interesting thing. So, the thing plays over two hours, between the polls closing and the results being
announced. But as I said, it's all happened offstage. All the things that become revealed have already happened. That's the genius.
AMANPOUR: And the genius, I think, of the production, certainly as an audience member, is that you actually do know what the story is.
STRONG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: You know, because it's a 2,500-year-old play by Sophocles.
MANVILLE: Well, surprisingly, though, not everybody does.
AMANPOUR: OK.
MANVILLE: I mean, I had somebody in the other night who had no idea how it ended.
STRONG: You hear the odd gasp.
MANVILLE: Yes.
STRONG: Yes.
MANVILLE: But I agree with you, it's more --
[13:30:00]
AMANPOUR: And yet, what I'm saying is, I'm still on the edge of my seat wondering what's going to happen. And actually, are they going to stay
together, are they not? When obviously I know that it's going to come to a very --
MANVILLE: And that really is the dramatic genius of Rob.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
MANVILLE: Because, of course, you know, you do -- you're looking at the clock, and you think, there's so much to find out, and there's two and a
half minutes left. So, where is this going to go? How is it? And then -- yes.
AMANPOUR: I almost don't want to get to where it's going to go, but we will.
STRONG: I was going to say, it's the way he's structured it, and the drip feed of information is handled so suavely that as an audience you literally
are just pulled forward into your seat, and you just want to find out what happens. And all the time, this drip feed of information is happening. This
clock is running down. So, there's half of your brain thinking, hang on, there's only a few minutes to go, like you say.
AMANPOUR: I was thinking that.
STRONG: And there's still -- I haven't -- there's more I need to know.
AMANPOUR: I was thinking that. And I was wondering, how are they going to get there?
STRONG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Obviously, I mean, you guys have been doing it for how long?
STRONG: Yes. Yes, yes. Then we get there. Well, we've been doing it for months now, haven't we?
MANVILLE: Well, we did that --
AMANPOUR: And in England.
MANVILLE: -- over 100 performances in London. And --
AMANPOUR: And have you got it down to a tee in terms of the clock, or is there any sort of wiggle room at all or do you sometimes think, oh, my God,
you know, I'm a little bit slower?
MANVILLE: Listen, the clock has to adapt to us.
AMANPOUR: Does it?
MANVILLE: That's all we're going to reveal.
STRONG: Although the truth is that the play never varies beyond about a minute.
MANVILLE: No, it doesn't. No, it's pretty much the same most evenings.
AMANPOUR: That's pretty good.
STRONG: Yes.
MANVILLE: Sometimes. But we never look at the clock and think, oh, I better speak quickly, because you could not possibly do that when you're
dealing with such emotional dialogue.
AMANPOUR: So, many, many scenes, but the one that was just, I mean, unforgettable is that when you have both realized what's going on, and then
at some point you've been given the -- you know, the announcement that you've won, and you're getting out of your sort of day clothes, and you are
getting undressed and dressed up again, I suppose, to go and give the victory speech. That is an incredible scene. No words. And you just --
MANVILLE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: It's incredible. Is that hard to play that one?
STRONG: It's not really, because you know that what's marinating at that point is the sum total of everything that everybody's seen during the play.
They've seen them as a family. They've seen them in love. They've seen Oedipus be, you know, vicious to her brother-in-law, you know, nasty to the
--
AMANPOUR: You were jolly horrible to him.
STRONG: He's quite nasty in the beginning. There's quite a sort of macho aggression at the beginning, but that's again part of the hubris element,
that he's sort of almost too high. He's overreaching. And I love the journey that takes him, actually, to where he just ends up becoming like a
completely helpless.
But it's that moment when we have to get changed is -- it's brilliant because it allows everybody to just work out in their own minds what's
happened, where they're at, how they would behave, what they're feeling, how is he going to make that speech, what's going to happen to them now in
their lives. There's so much going on. And to just do it in silence for that long is great.
AMANPOUR: I guess many people, if they haven't read Sophocles, they will have heard of Sigmund Freud and the Oedipus complex. Is that -- I mean,
what do you think about that and its sort of what people might be thinking about that? Because I think you did say -- I mean, let me just --
MANVILLE: You're going to quote me?
AMANPOUR: Yes, I'm going to quote you, actually, because in the play, you said sarcastically, as Jocasta, every man has the effing his mother dream.
MANVILLE: Yes, well, that is --
AMANPOUR: And then everybody giggles.
MANVILLE: That is actually one of the only lines in our version that's taken from Sophocles.
STRONG: Almost word for word. Exactly.
MANVILLE: Almost word for word.
STRONG: Yes.
MANVILLE: That's the only --
AMANPOUR: How do they say it in Greek?
STRONG: I don't know.
MANVILLE: Don't ask us. We're not --
STRONG: Ask the Greek.
AMANPOUR: We don't have to bleep it.
STRONG: Yes. But the interesting thing about that time of psychiatry and everything, and the fact that, you know, Freud took on the idea of the
Oedipus complex and made it one of the tenets of his psychiatry is it's just a theory, isn't it? It's just an idea.
MANVILLE: Yes.
STRONG: Do we believe it? I mean, genuinely, is that a real thing or not? I'm not so sure. I wonder whether it wasn't a clever Viennese guy just
thinking, hey, I'm going to go down that path.
AMANPOUR: Could have been.
STRONG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Could have been.
STRONG: Possibly.
MANVILLE: I mean, I'm sure lots of men have had that dream, but it's -- as you say, it's a theory, isn't it?
STRONG: Yes, exactly.
AMANPOUR: It's a theory.
MANVILLE: It's a theory.
AMANPOUR: Where does this stand for you? I mean, I'm sure you love all your babies, all your performances, your films, theatre. I'm sure every one
of them has incredible meaning because they're all incredible experiences. But how does this for both of you stack up against some of the incredible
film work, for instance, that you've done?
STRONG: Well, for me, funnily enough, I would say my two favorite experiences and the things that I've probably got the most out of were both
plays. And one was Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" that I did about 10 years ago, also on Broadway, and this one. And the funny thing
about that Miller play is it's very Greek.
[13:35:00]
In the stage directions, it specifies Doric columns, and he's written it with a nod to the Greek tragedians. So, the fact that the two things that
I've done based on Greek tragedy, I don't know what that means. I mean, those guys obviously knew when they were writing what they were doing
because those are, I think, my two favorite experiences.
Film is great, you know, but there's nothing quite like a live audience and feeling the vibration and the moment when you hear an audience gasp or you
feel that silence and realize that their brains are turning over and they're finding things difficult or -- and there's nothing quite like it.
AMANPOUR: And for you?
MANVILLE: Yes. Well, I mean, listen, if you're going to say you're going to do 104 performances in London, probably the same number here, you've got
to know that it's something you really want to do. And I never tire of doing "Oedipus." And it is, like with Mark, it's absolutely up there for me
with a small handful of other plays that I've done. And that doesn't negate my work with Mike Lee, my work with Paul Thomas Anderson at all.
AMANPOUR: Great directors.
MANVILLE: They're just -- it's different and different skills are required of you. And for me, nothing beats the responsibility that is yours and
yours alone and your comrades on stage of going out there and you are responsible for that arc of the evening. You can't be edited if you're no
good. It's you and it's down to good acting. And that's thrilling.
AMANPOUR: And finally, finally, I want to ask you because you all came out very somber. Obviously, it's a really difficult play, but have you decided
how you're going to face the curtain call?
MANVILLE: Well, Mark -- Mark, you're Mark. Rob directed the curtain call. He thinks things like that are important. And I agree in the same way that
he's in a way, although it isn't directing, but he has certainly directed the front of house staff on how to conduct themselves during our play.
They're not allowed to just wander around. People aren't allowed to be readmitted. So, it's about making the whole event.
And he felt that if we're all grinning at the curtain call, you know, as if we've just done 42nd Street, it lets the audience off the hook and makes
them think, oh, well, they're all right. They're all happy now. You know, he wants us to kind of stay in that bubble that we've created.
STRONG: It's difficult. It's difficult, too, because Broadway audiences, they want to be involved. You know, this idea that you get around and come
on, that's not British or West End at all.
AMANPOUR: They did when you came on.
STRONG: Yes, well, they did it when the curtain went down.
MANVILLE: And we've now -- we've tried to crush that because I've always come on with a kind of big, taking off the coat, a big sigh, you know, oh,
thank God the campaign's over now. We can relax. We've cut the sigh. So, there isn't a kind of look at me moment, but they still do. But the thing
that annoys me the most is taking our photograph at the curtain call.
AMANPOUR: I saw you get annoyed last night.
STRONG: Yes, be warned.
MANVILLE: Just, you know, be in that moment.
STRONG: Yes.
MANVILLE: If you want to clap, fantastic. If you want to stand up and clap, even better. But let's preserve something. Let's not make everything
about cameras and Instagram and social media. This is theatre. Let it cook and feel it. Just let your soul and your heart have the emotions of the
evening without going, got to record this. And some people even walk to the front to do it.
STRONG: I mean, that's --
MANVILLE: I got to let it go. I know.
STRONG: You have. You've got to -- you know, it's going to happen. But it's about maintaining the spell, I think. And that's why Lesley's so
furious with the camera thing.
MANVILLE: Yes.
STRONG: And why we don't, you know, give it large at the curtain call. It's a spell.
AMANPOUR: It is. And it's gripping, really. It's phenomenal. Lesley Manville, Mark Strong, thank you both very much indeed.
STRONG: Thank you.
MANVILLE: Thank you.
STRONG: Thanks, thanks.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Now, the play has ended its Broadway run. Coming up, is A.I. doing more harm than good for students? Education expert Rebecca Winthrop
tells Michel Martin about what's at stake. That's after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: As the A.I. revolution continues apace, we're increasingly considering the impact it'll have on the future. Well, what about the
impact on students' ability to think creatively? A study by Georgetown University is looking into just that. And our next guest, a leading scholar
on A.I. in education, Rebecca Winthrop, discusses it with Michel Martin now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Rebecca Winthrop, thank you so much for joining us once again.
REBECCA WINTHROP, DIRECTOR, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION CENTER FOR UNIVERSAL EDUCATION: Thank you so much for having me back.
MARTIN: You literally wrote the book about "The Disengaged Teen," and this is something that I think a lot of parents and educators had been seeing.
They weren't really sure what to call it, and you kind of gave it a name, which is to say that you're concerned about motivation, sort of engagement
and learning. And this is something that actually predates the concerns that surfaced during COVID.
But before we even get to A.I. and the chat bots and all of this, remind us of what it is that you were seeing that caused you to sort of ask these
questions.
WINTHROP: My co-author and I, Jenny Anderson, did a deep dive on student engagement, which is their motivation, love of learning, paying attention,
doing effort, because we were just finding that so many kids didn't like school. It was fairly simple. That was our question. Why do so many kids
not like school when the human -- human beings have evolved to love learning? We are naturally programmed to love learning.
So, what is it that sort of squashes the love of learning, for lack of a better term, out of kids as they progress along their school journey? We
found that 75 percent of third graders say they love school, but by the time kids get to 10th grade, it's only 25 percent. It's flipped.
MARTIN: So, tell us how the concerns about A.I. intersect with that. And what is it, again, that you were seeing that made you want to ask these
questions?
WINTHROP: So, what we found was that it wasn't so simple as kids are either engaged or disengaged in education and learning. What we found is
they show up in these four different modes. So, passenger mode, kids have physically gone to school, but they do not care about learning. So, they've
dropped out of learning.
You've got kids in achiever mode. They're trying super hard. They want to be perfect. Resister mode is what we always think of as a disengaged teen.
These are avoiding, disrupting, chronic absenteeism, not turning in their homework. And then you've got kids in explorer mode. And that was less than
4 percent of kids who said they regularly spent time in explorer mode in middle school and high school. And that is the type of learning that
prepares kids for an A.I. world. They care about the learning journey, not just the outcome. They're putting effort. They're resilient.
If things are hard, they try again. They're curious and they're interested in asking questions, not just getting answers right. And with A.I. coming
on, I am incredibly worried about making kids into a lot more passengers.
MARTIN: Wow. The class of 2026 is the first generation to start and finish college with ChatGPT. This is, you know, according to the tools, parent
company OpenAI. So, what is the problem with using ChatGPT? I mean, your work identifies like specific things to be worried about. What are the
specific things to be worried about?
WINTHROP: So, the last year with my colleagues at Brookings, we ran a global task force. And we were really looking at what are the specific
benefits? What are the specific risks? How do they stack up against each other?
And part of why people feel worried is that ChatGPT or any, I would say, general purpose A.I. chatbot or A.I. companion or friend that is built on
these A.I. chatbots provides very, very easy answers, very easy ways to get work done without putting any effort or doing any of the thinking. And I do
hear parents say, well, I use it at work, so shouldn't my kids use it? Aren't they being efficient and helpful?
[13:45:00]
Isn't it helping them if they use it in their homework? The problem is that literally homework or any type of learning activity, kids have to do
themselves because that's how they build their critical thinking skills. You build critical thinking skills like you learn to ride a bike. You have
to practice it over and over. And I can't do it for my kids. You can't do it for your kids. No parent can do it for them.
Kids have to struggle. They have to make mistakes. That is how we learn. And if we give them a lot of shortcuts, we know from really interesting
research that even includes mapping neurological activity in the brain, that kids' problem-solving parts of their brain, their critical thinking
parts of their brain are just not engaged while they're using ChatGPT to do homework, to write, to come up with answers.
MARTIN: How does the ChatGPT affect kind of the thinking part? Because you can see the sort of advocates of the tool will say, well, you know, it's
the first draft, and you're going to refine the first draft, and you're going to edit. The second draft is the good part anyway, or the editing is
really where the magic happens. What's wrong with that thinking? And what did your study show about why that is not right?
WINTHROP: So, I love that you brought this up, because I've been having a big debate with my, you know, family members who have kids, as well as my
peers at work. Lots of people have been saying, well, it's OK to use generative A.I., could be ChatGPT, could be whatever model you're using, to
brainstorm, as long as kids then do the real work of actually writing.
And what we found in our task force work is that actually writing is thinking. It is a way that kids train themselves to come up with ideas.
It's not the only way. You could have long-form debates, but writing is a really good way to do that. And when you use A.I. to brainstorm, it short-
circuits kids' own creative ideas.
And we did find that there's lots of researchers out there, including those at Georgetown University who are leading this, who found that when students
use A.I. to write important essays, I'm not talking about, you know, emails -- logistical emails. I'm talking about really writing to come up with
ideas. It undermines their creative thinking. They are less creative. They come up with less creative ideas. In fact, humans have eight times more
creative ideas than A.I. if you just look at writing essays about something meaningful to yourself.
The problem is, though, that even though it undermines your creative process, and I would say you should brainstorm first on your own and write
your first draft, no matter how bad it is, and then at the end, use A.I. to help with your grammar and polish the flow. I think that's the right order
for really harnessing and exercising our creative thinking. But the problem is that even when you do use A.I. to brainstorm, it sounds better.
So, A.I. kind of tricks us that, you know, there was this huge data set looking at over 300,000 college essays for high school students.
MARTIN: Yes, I was going to ask you about that. Yes, tell us about that.
WINTHROP: So, this study, led by Adam Green out of Georgetown University, was a natural experiment. They started eight years ago, the team looking at
high school students who are applying to college and examining their college essay, their personal statement, and assessing how creative it was.
So, they have eight years of data.
So, they saw the difference pre-ChatGPT and post-ChatGPT. And one thing they know for sure from looking at this data set in many different ways is
kids are definitely using A.I. to write their essays because they look different. And they found that humans who were assessing the essays judged
them to be more creative because they had better, more sophisticated vocabulary.
But if you looked across all the ideas that young people were writing about, the ideas got a lot more similar, which is this really weird
paradoxical thing that A.I. is doing to our creative thinking. On the surface, it makes it sound good. It sort of surface sparkle masks
underlying sameness.
MARTIN: Did the sort of the A.I. companies respond to this study? What do they say about it?
WINTHROP: I mean, I have -- I talked to technologists. I interviewed technologists. I've asked technologists particularly about this idea of
homogenization worry.
[13:50:00]
And they -- the folks I've talked to have said, huh, they weren't super aware of it. And then they were also trying to grapple with, well, part of
the reason there's homogenization is, of course, they're trying to reduce the really terrible things that come out for safety out of A.I. chatbots.
So, they're trying to eliminate some ideas that we don't want. We really don't want kids going online and figuring out how to, you know, make a
chemical weapon and bring it to their school, right?
So, they say they're sort of caught between that. But ultimately what they say really when I talk to folks is they just don't know how the models
really work internally yet. And they don't quite know why it's doing this. But to me, I think the implications are exactly what you raised. I worry
about kids not being able to develop their own unique voice.
MARTIN: Let me give you the case from the A.I. companies. OpenAI argues that A.I. doesn't replace ambition, it amplifies it, allowing students to
learn new skills, prototype ideas faster, and contribute in ways that once required far more resources. I think what they're saying, in a way, is it
democratizes something that elites have always had access to, which is consultants, for example.
Because the use of consultants to help the most privileged kids get into these places, right, to sort of shape their journey as it were and, you
know, look at their essays and doing all that. And that's something that, you know, less resourced people don't have access to.
WINTHROP: Right.
MARTIN: What would you say to that?
WINTHROP: So, what I would say to that is that some ways of using generative A.I. can be good for learning. And it is the difference between
what I would call narrow A.I. use and wide A.I. use. And narrow A.I. use can indeed help level the playing field a bit.
So, for example, narrow A.I. use is when usually teachers or a tutor, though not always, sometimes students directly, are using an A.I. tool that
has a very, very specific purpose. So, assistive technology, maybe you have dyslexia or dysgraphia or aphasia. Aphasia is when you have communication
problems. One of the most moving examples of narrow A.I. use I've seen is kids with aphasia getting a synthetic copy of their voice, thanks to
generative A.I., and being able to communicate with their teachers and their peers in the classroom. Incredibly transformative narrow A.I. use.
The problem is that most kids we talk to are not necessarily just accessing A.I. that is sort of narrowly deployed. They're accessing what we would
call wide A.I. use, which is general purpose frontier model A.I. chatbots. So, your ChatGPTs and A.I. friends and companions. And those are not
designed for learning, not designed for kids.
And that is really where if kids are interfacing with them for a long period of time, like the kids going back and forth, developing their
personal statements for their college applications, they are undermining their unique voice, their critical thinking ability, and even their ability
to interact and relate to other people because the A.I. chatbots and friends are really programmed to agree with you all the time.
MARTIN: And before I let you go, parents who might be listening to this conversation and kind of have like this vague concern, don't know what to
do about it. What would you say? Like, how would you advise them to even talk to their kids about it?
WINTHROP: Well, this is a topic that we've gotten so many requests for that we don't usually do this with Brookings reports, but we're making
little parent tip sheets out of our Brookings report because so many parents are desperate for guidance. So, people can go. They're freely
available at the Brookings website.
But conversation starters, talk to your kids about A.I. first. Don't be hugely judgmental. See where they're at. See where their opinions are. A
lot of kids do not like A.I. and are quite skeptical, and that percentage is growing. Two, talk to them about where skills are built. In the effort
of doing hard things, you can become a master and face anything in life.
So, if you want to be a fully developed human being who can weather the changes that A.I. brings, you need to be a really good learner. And to
learn to be a really good learner, you can't just do everything outsourced to ChatGPT. And so, we have some of those conversation starters.
And then, you know, experimenting with A.I. if kids are old enough and they're using it, doing it side by side. There are certain things that
could be great. Maybe a young person has a great idea for a film they want to make.
[13:55:00]
Well, guess what? You can vibe code a film by talking to Gen A.I. in any of the creativity A.I. tool suites, and it will create a short film. You know,
I think of it as the next generation of when I was in school, we would cut out pictures from magazines, make collages. My kids are making little
documentary films with the iPhone. You know, these kids are vibe coding films just from their brain and speaking to it. But it's their ideas that
the technology is bringing to life. The technology isn't sort of subtly giving them ideas that they begin to interpret as their own.
MARTIN: Rebecca Winthrop, thanks so much for talking to us.
WINTHROP: Thank you for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And that's it for now. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from Paris.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
