Tamara Yajia, CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA: My Life as a Failed Child Star
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:45]Tomorrow, Yajah, is the author of Cry for Me, Argentina.
[0:48]My life is a failed child star, Tamara is an Argentine writer, comedian, musician, and
[0:53]ex-child star.
[0:54]She's written for Clay Cole, Funny or Die, and several TV series, including Acupocal,
[0:59]Miss Fool, and the upcoming Netflix series, Stripla.
[1:02]She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her dog, Odie.
[1:05]Welcome, Tamara.
[1:06]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book with Zibi to talk about Cry for Me, Argentina.
[1:11]My life is a failed child star.
[1:14]Thank you so much.
[1:16]I'm such a fan.
[1:17]I'm so excited to be here.
[1:19]Oh, that's so sweet.
[1:20]Well, I'm a fan too with this book.
[1:22]Oh my gosh.
[1:23]I read it every page I could not put it down.
[1:26]I was like, at times, pretty horrified, and yet kept going.
[1:31]But ultimately, it's such a great coming-of-age story and very funny to me.
[1:37]Thank you.
[1:38]It's a lot.
[1:39]I know.
[1:40]And I'm like, if I could go back and tone it down, would I?
[1:44]But then I wouldn't be honest, because that's how it went down.
[1:49]You would not tone it down.
[1:51]You would take a different person.
[1:53]That's the thing.
[1:55]It's so funny.
[1:56]I got a review that was something like, it's so shocking.
[2:02]It's something like, she confuses humor with shock.
[2:07]And I'm like, sometimes I'm not trying to be funny.
[2:10]It's just kind of the way my family is, which is no boundaries and a little horrifying.
[2:17]But I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't spill all the beans.
[2:22]Oh my gosh.
[2:24]I keep being haunted by your middle school experience.
[2:29]I think it was middle school when you were pressing the light.
[2:32]You didn't know you had to press the light to cross the street.
[2:35]And you just stood there.
[2:37]Oh my gosh, it was so sad.
[2:38]I think I dog-eared it if maybe, can I read this little passage to you?
[2:42]Oh, please, I would love to hear it.
[2:44]Let's see.
[2:45]So you're saying, you wanted someone to drop you off, but they couldn't.
[2:48]So I memorized the route and walked to school on my own.
[2:51]And Buenos Aires, the streets were always filled with people.
[2:53]But Irvine, because you had just moved to the States, was an effing, I'm not going to say,
[2:57]I'm not going to cross the effing ghost town.
[2:59]Unfortunately, no one had ever worn me that in the United States, you had to press the pedestrian
[3:04]buttons at crosswalks if you wanted the walk sign to turn green.
[3:08]When I reached my first major crosswalk, I waited for the light to change on its own.
[3:13]But it never did.
[3:14]So I stood at that intersection for 30 minutes until a Hispanic woman who was pushing
[3:19]a blonde baby in a stroller walk by and pressed the button for me.
[3:23]You may think it weird that I didn't just cross whenever I saw that no cars were coming.
[3:28]But I stayed in place out of fear that the cops would catch me crossing against a red
[3:32]light and deport me.
[3:34]Because of this, I was over an hour late to school on the first day and was written up.
[3:41]Oh, this is, I like, this makes me want to cry.
[3:47]This is one of those passages in the book that are truly sad.
[3:52]And I feel like so many people focus on like the funny or the gross.
[3:57]But like, I'm so glad that you read this one because it's, I can still remember myself
[4:05]as a, what was I 11 standing in that it was a cloudy day and it was just so sad and heartbreaking.
[4:13]Poor little me.
[4:14]Poor little you.
[4:16]I'm so sorry.
[4:17]And that wasn't the end of it either.
[4:19]You were so on your own, you know, and like, even the littleest asks were always met with
[4:25]nose and you just had to find your way through it and you didn't even understand the language
[4:31]at one of your schools.
[4:32]They were also being Hebrew and you're like, not even knowing the language and just, oh
[4:36]my gosh.
[4:37]And all these creepy men in your life and people like right, oh my gosh, you just, it
[4:42]was just like one thing after another and feeling so like other and not fitting in and
[4:47]just, oh my gosh, it was, it was kind of heartbreaking, you know, it is.
[4:52]And you know, my God, I'm like crying right now because for so long, I think even until
[4:58]I'm 41 now and before I wrote the book, I so thought this was all normal and I so thought
[5:05]that I had a totally, you know, healthy upbringing with, with healthy people that surrounded
[5:13]me.
[5:14]You know, they were my family and I still love them, but it's so nice when I wrote
[5:19]the book to finally acknowledge that it wasn't okay, you know.
[5:24]And in the intro of the book, I talk about never, I never wanted to have kids because
[5:30]of the upbringing I had and I think the book was so healing that I totally just flipped
[5:37]on that wanting to have kids.
[5:39]And now I'm trying to be part two, the sequel exactly exactly when you give birth to a child
[5:47]star.
[5:48]Oh, my God.
[5:49]Oh, no.
[5:50]So the child star angle of it all was through this deep-seated need of yours for attention,
[5:58]honestly, which you are getting by performing.
[6:01]I mean, this is my therapist take on it, not that I'm nervous, but you know, this, this
[6:06]literally the cry, the cry for attention, the, and also because you were talented, right?
[6:11]Like getting out there and having no, like no filter when you were performing.
[6:16]No filter because that's all I learned.
[6:18]I come from a family with no filters and my idol as a what eight year old was Madonna
[6:26]during her erotic years of all of them, the most sexual of all.
[6:30]Yeah, but I have to say like, it's true.
[6:33]I did want attention.
[6:35]I did, but I also loved singing and dancing, you know, so I have this duality with performing
[6:43]now as an adult, which I'm so scared to get on a stage and I have so many conflicting feelings
[6:50]about it.
[6:52]But when I'm up there, I love it.
[6:56]Oh, yeah.
[6:58]There was the one scene where a creepy man was in the front row and you could tell he was
[7:02]looking up your skirt and then he passed you and like burned you with his cigarette.
[7:07]And you knew it was unfair, but you didn't want to tell anybody like, oh my gosh, this
[7:12]it sings after you all the time.
[7:14]Yeah.
[7:15]I think like victims of abuse in that way can, these kind of things can keep happening
[7:22]to them.
[7:23]I've learned it's a lot of the times, not just once that the abuse happens because I don't
[7:29]know what it is.
[7:30]I'm not sure, but I think you normalize it or there is this kind of need to please everybody.
[7:38]And if, you know, not complaining about a man looking up your skirt means that you won't
[7:44]offend the man that is looking up your skirt when you're 11 years old.
[7:49]Yeah.
[7:50]Lots of therapy was needed after this.
[7:55]You also had so much experience with different sort of socioeconomic statuses in your own
[8:02]family and feeling like your parents were finally making it and then things would completely
[8:08]change in being in private school and then not having enough money for anything and living
[8:12]in houses without any furniture and then getting your furniture and having it flood and
[8:16]then having nothing again.
[8:17]And this is like forced co-dependence with your parents and their parents.
[8:22]Perhaps as a result of the financial situation, but who even knows?
[8:26]Totally.
[8:27]Totally.
[8:28]Yeah.
[8:29]It's so crazy, Sibi, because I, for the first time in my life, I'm taking a break from
[8:35]my parents right now and it's been one week since I haven't spoken to them.
[8:41]And I thought I would be so bummed about this, but in a way I feel a weight lifted off
[8:48]my chest, like I needed to break this cycle of co-dependency because I was doing it.
[8:54]I was still calling my mom like three times a day and my parents were so co-dependent
[9:01]with their parents that they expected the same of me and I was just not willing to do
[9:08]that for my own mental health.
[9:11]So you know, I think it's a very Jewish thing.
[9:13]The co-dependency side of it, but I think the levels had become too unhealthy.
[9:20]And it's so funny because I keep thinking like this is a comedic memoir, but it's also
[9:27]not.
[9:28]Yeah.
[9:29]I mean, you have to laugh sometimes to get through anything.
[9:31]Isn't there some famous quote about that?
[9:33]Like, I'll paint, I'll laughter comes from pain or I don't know, something totally, totally.
[9:38]it was, it's the way to keep going for me, you know, is to find the humorous side.
[9:44]And I wouldn't take anything back.
[9:47]It was, that's how my life happened and I was able to write this book.
[9:50]And if this book can help even one person, you know, recognize abuse in their family or
[9:57]co-dependency traits.
[10:00]or I don't know, it just makes it all worth it.
[10:03]Well, your grandparents, I mean,
[10:05]sometimes I think my parents, you know,
[10:08]we all feel like we have to put up the boundaries
[10:11]when we become grown-ups, right?
[10:12]That is part of individualating and stuff.
[10:14]And so for anyone who feels like their parents
[10:18]might be crossing the line,
[10:19]all they have to do is read your book
[10:21]because your grandparents like literally moved
[10:25]and surprised you from Argentina to the US
[10:29]into the next apartment.
[10:30]So you could hear like your most intimate sounds
[10:33]through the wall when you left to like get away.
[10:36]I mean, how do your parents even think about this now?
[10:39]Do they acknowledge sort of the, you know,
[10:42]it's not like your dad got mad.
[10:44]Well, yeah, my dad couldn't stand his father-in-law
[10:48]in the same way my mom couldn't stand her mother-in-law.
[10:52]Yet there was just this investment.
[10:55]But you know, as a kid, I was thrilled that my grandparents
[10:58]had immigrated from Argentina to the United States
[11:02]to follow us.
[11:03]I had grandparents, but the reason my parents left Argentina
[11:08]was to get away from them.
[11:09]So I cannot imagine what that must have been like.
[11:13]And then at the end, when I'm an adult,
[11:16]we all sort of kind of all of us end up living together
[11:20]again with the grandparents, which again,
[11:22]I was happy about it, but not so much my parents.
[11:27]So you basically catch us up to now, right?
[11:30]When you start writing and going into writer's rooms and stuff,
[11:32]but maybe for people, because I just like jumped right
[11:35]into this book and like the things that most of the activity
[11:39]take us through a little bit of the overview of your story
[11:41]and what the book is essentially covering.
[11:45]Yeah, I mean, it spans my entire life,
[11:47]but it talks about my parents' immigrating
[11:51]when I was a child five years old from Argentina
[11:54]to the United States back to Argentina.
[11:59]And then when I arrive in Argentina,
[12:01]I have a small, I try to become a star, a child star
[12:06]and the moment that I make it and I get cast on this big,
[12:11]you know, kind of Mickey Mouse Club type show,
[12:15]my parents decide they are returning to the United States.
[12:19]And, you know, that leads us to part four of the book,
[12:23]which is adulthood and all the tribulations
[12:26]of moving back and forth and what that does
[12:29]to like a teenage child.
[12:32]And my, you know, issues I had with drugs
[12:37]and with self esteem, it's just kind of what does all
[12:41]of that moving and that codependency do to a teenage child.
[12:47]And it ends happy with me getting back to performing
[12:52]which I loved, but not in the way that I used to do,
[12:56]which was getting on a stage and doing like a Madonna
[12:59]in personation, but through writing
[13:02]and expressing my creativity through that,
[13:06]which is nice, more behind the scenes
[13:08]would suit me a little better, I think.
[13:11]If you've even had, when you were in Argentina,
[13:14]one time after you switched schools,
[13:16]you ended up Jewish in a school full of kids.
[13:19]You thought it'd be funny to like name their sports team,
[13:21]the Nazis and like drawing swastikas literally
[13:24]on their hands.
[13:26]And it was basically like this immigration
[13:27]of former Nazis, right, into Argentina at the time.
[13:31]Yeah, Argentina is a very interesting place
[13:35]because there are so many Jews in Argentina
[13:39]and there are so many descendants of Nazis
[13:43]and a lot of Nazis escaped to Argentina.
[13:47]And for me coming from, you know,
[13:49]going to Jewish schools for our Hebrew schools
[13:51]for so long, switching to that kind of public school
[13:55]full of kids that didn't know what they were talking about
[13:58]was so, so hard.
[14:01]And the shame and the feeling so alone
[14:04]and the confusion of it.
[14:05]But yeah, these kids were little assholes.
[14:09]I remember a birthday party where they had to name team names
[14:14]and these two, you know, they must have been 11.
[14:17]They were like, our team name is the Nazis.
[14:19]And I wanted to run into the bathroom and sob.
[14:23]It was just horrendous.
[14:26]And then even here, when you moved in with your family friends
[14:30]and you were like, we moved out because we didn't want
[14:32]to be in a position, but we absolutely weren't in position.
[14:35]Like you stayed with them for a week.
[14:37]And the girl, and the girl who was your age who,
[14:39]and this is another really sad moment
[14:41]when you get off the plane and you're like,
[14:42]oh yeah, I have my friend and you could tell immediately
[14:45]that she was just like not having it.
[14:47]And then her, all her friends in the room next to you
[14:49]were just maybe fun of you and not inviting you.
[14:52]It's so sad.
[14:54]It is so sad.
[14:56]It feels so good to admit that it was sad,
[14:59]so maybe, you know, yeah.
[15:02]Yeah, it was devastating.
[15:04]And like, thank God I got to write this book.
[15:06]I really, really needed to get all that stuff out.
[15:09]It just, it was relentless sadness.
[15:13]It's so bizarre because you seem like a lovely person.
[15:16]Do you know what I mean?
[15:17]Like, why was everyone always turning on you?
[15:20]Like, why did you find it so difficult?
[15:23]Do you feel like, or was it just a sense of other
[15:25]that you came, you know, that you were from Argentina?
[15:27]Like, what was, what do you think?
[15:29]Yeah, I think it was that it was constant change.
[15:32]And I do have to say, I mean, there were moments
[15:35]in Argentina that second time we lived there
[15:39]where I don't go into it in the book,
[15:42]but I felt, this was when I went into performing.
[15:46]I felt so happy.
[15:48]I was surrounded by, you know, my parents' friends
[15:52]and their kids who were my friends
[15:53]and my group of performing, you know, crew,
[15:56]which I write about a lot.
[15:59]And I guess I didn't explain that part in the book
[16:04]but I felt like I so belonged,
[16:07]which is why when we uprooted again
[16:10]to come back to the United States,
[16:11]it was just crushing.
[16:14]And, but I have to say, like,
[16:17]I just think that might be the experience
[16:19]of someone who immigrates.
[16:21]It's not easy, starting a new school
[16:24]with a new language, with no family.
[16:27]It's so hard.
[16:29]And I feel like the way your parents sort of parented,
[16:32]like no judgment or whatever, but it was very much
[16:35]like you figure it out.
[16:36]Like, okay, here you go, here's the school.
[16:38]And like, we're busy, like, you know,
[16:39]now we're gonna try to drive the fruit trucks
[16:42]and make a living.
[16:42]And like, you just have to deal with school.
[16:45]Yeah, and I think that that's a very immigrant.
[16:48]If you talk to most kids of immigrants,
[16:50]they'll say, you know, my parents didn't know what grade I was in.
[16:54]You know, there was no support when it came
[16:57]to like academics and stuff like that
[17:00]because they were figuring it out.
[17:02]But I did have this crazy talk with my dad
[17:04]after my book came out where he admitted to me
[17:08]that he was shocked that I had such a hard time
[17:13]adapting and he said, I thought you and your sister
[17:17]just laughed throughout this whole, you know,
[17:21]back and forth moving.
[17:22]And I was like, that just shows how, you know,
[17:25]your emotional intelligence is not that developed
[17:29]that you think that it was that easy for, you know,
[17:32]to small kids, we were laughing throughout all the moves.
[17:36]Now you can tell I have a little bit of resentment
[17:38]towards them wished, but I think that's healthy to process.
[17:42]Like, no, we were not laughing.
[17:44]And here's the things, maybe we were laughing.
[17:47]We were trying to make the best out of it,
[17:49]but like deep down, we were not happy kids.
[17:52]Yeah.
[17:53]Oh, I also, I'm not sure how happy they were.
[17:55]No, but I don't think they had time to even stop
[18:00]and ask themselves that, you know,
[18:03]there's also another layer to the book,
[18:05]which is the mental illness that runs in my mother's family, right?
[18:09]So, which is something I'm also coming to terms with,
[18:13]like having a, you know, very borderline personality
[18:17]narcissistic mother.
[18:18]And there was not much space for me and my sister
[18:23]because she kind of sucked all the air out of the room.
[18:27]And it was always her, her, her.
[18:30]So that's another fun little happening.
[18:35]But it sounds like you have a great new therapist, right?
[18:37]I have a great new therapist and I have boundaries now.
[18:44]And I have a wonderful husband who I don't talk about
[18:47]in the book at all because it's funny,
[18:49]my mother-in-law read the book
[18:51]and she had the same reaction as you.
[18:53]It was just like, how did you,
[18:55]how are you a functioning adult, right?
[18:59]And she said, I love that you protected my son
[19:03]and you didn't talk about him.
[19:04]You can tell that he's really precious to you
[19:07]and that you didn't need to talk about him.
[19:09]And it was totally true, you know?
[19:13]It's the family that I created now,
[19:15]which is also why I'm dying to have kids
[19:18]and start, you know, my healthy family of my own.
[19:22]Oh.
[19:24]Well, I think it's really great
[19:26]that you put this book out there.
[19:28]I mean, maybe the shock and the rawness
[19:32]of the like how you describe different senses
[19:37]being like body parts that are like all these things
[19:42]and like the bathroom pieces of it
[19:46]and the sexual pieces that are like pushing the boundaries.
[19:49]Like, I don't know.
[19:50]I feel like it's just in a way,
[19:53]just so it's just the cover, you know, just to get this.
[19:56]Yes, it is.
[19:57]And I think that's the part that if I could go back.
[20:00]now and tone those parts down. I guess those would be it, but at the same time, like,
[20:07]when I wrote this book, you know, I told it exactly like it happened. You know, and in my
[20:13]family, there are no boundaries. We talk about poop at the dinner table. We talk about sex super
[20:19]openly. I mean, my mom is an only fans model model. If you know, it is what it is. And I wouldn't
[20:28]have it any other way. That part of my mom doesn't bother me. Like, I think like, go for it. If
[20:34]you feel like selling pictures of your boobs and, you know, makes you happy, that's cool. That part
[20:40]doesn't bother me. It's the, you know, not treating us like with respect. That bothers me. Yeah. Well,
[20:50]I hope the distance helps. You know? Yeah, it's already helping. And it's not ideal, but for me,
[20:57]it's what I need right now. So. And when you wrote the book, did it all just come pouring out?
[21:04]Or did you have some sort of outline? Or did you like, how was that process? What was that process
[21:09]like for you? Um, I did have an outline. I think my first draft of the book was rough, and I had
[21:16]incredible editors that my one of my two editors is from Argentina. So they really helped me hone
[21:24]on a narrative. I think I was trying to do weird stuff in the first draft. Like, a lot of jumping
[21:32]back and forth from the present day to the past. And when I started telling it just chronologically,
[21:38]it just felt like a smooth narrative. And yeah, I'm, I'm really happy with how it came out. And
[21:47]you know, I want to say the book isn't for everybody in, in that it is very shocking and hard to
[21:52]read. But at the same time, you're peering into into the life of someone. And that was my life. So,
[22:01]you know, so what do you like to do these days when you're not writing, performing, working,
[22:08]like what's your, what are some of your happy things that you do? I love RuPaul's Drag Race.
[22:14]I'm a huge fan. I watch way too much of it. I read a lot and I've made it a point to start reading
[22:22]more. I'm currently rereading Middlesex, which I hadn't read since I for 20 years. It came out
[22:29]20 years ago. What else do I do? I love going out on walks and dinners. I love dinners with friends.
[22:37]It's awesome. Do you have advice? Let's say there's someone who's trying to write their story the way
[22:44]you did of their life using their life as material. But advice do you have? Do it.
[22:50]You know, it like comes down to just sit down and start writing it. And the excuses have to go out
[23:00]the window. And you need to write it, even if it sucks. At first, it'll get better and have
[23:08]something ready for when you find that literary agent or the publisher, you have to have something
[23:17]down on paper, even if it's like the first 25 pages. I think there's, you know, you can't skip
[23:24]around that one. And you mentioned this in passing in the book. So I just wanted to see if you had
[23:29]any more to say about it. But you did say, and by the way, I did want to spend all this time
[23:33]with Brad Pitt, like, oh, we get like, what? What happened there? I shouldn't have included that
[23:43]in the book because it's going to take over everything. But I did. I met Brad Pitt through a friend
[23:50]and we hit it off, not romantically. And I had a summer where I hung out with Brad Pitt,
[23:56]went to his house. We went play board games. We went to concerts. And it was crazy. I was just
[24:04]telling someone when I met Brad Pitt at his house. I was so so nervous. And he came up to me and
[24:10]he was like, hi, I'm Brad Pitt. Or hi, I'm Brad. And I was like, yeah. But it was wild. I will be
[24:24]telling this story when I'm in a geriatric home in my 80s. I will be saying, I was friends with
[24:31]Brad Pitt for a summer. Oh, it's too funny. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I really, this book
[24:40]really made me feel. And that is what I look for in books when you feel all the range of emotions.
[24:46]And number one, compassion and admiration that you got through all of it and you wrote this book
[24:52]and you showed them and you got to go back to Argentina and have that book party. And I was like,
[24:56]go you. So congrats. Thank you so much, Sibi. Thank you for having me too. You're welcome.
[25:02]All right. Best of luck. Thank you. Okay. Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to
[25:09]totally booked with Sibi. Formerly, mom's don't have time to read books. If you loved the show,
[25:14]tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens. And spread the word.
[25:20]Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.