Natasha Gregson Wagner discusses losing her mother Natalie Wood at 11 and the silence she kept to protect her stepfather. She describes the public mask she wore as a celebrity's daughter, the therapy and mother figures that helped rebuild her identity, and how she now fosters a relationship between her own daughter Clover and Natalie's memory.
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So welcome everyone to week 3 of Motherless Daughters Community Calls. We are very lucky today to have a guest, our very first guest on the Community Calls. It is Natasha Gregson Wagner. She is the author of the book More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood. Natasha was 11 when she lost her mom, and she's here with us as a member of our community, as a motherless daughter, to talk with us about her story, and also about writing her book. But a little bit about Natasha is Natasha is an actress herself. She's acted in a number of films, including Another Day in Paradise, High Fidelity, Two Girls and a Guy, and Lost Highway. And she's also done TV work on Ally McBeal, House M.D., and Chicago Hope. About 5 years ago, she co-authored a coffee table book called Natalie Wood: Reflections on a legendary life. She's one of the producers of the HBO documentary about her mother's life. It's called Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. And she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, her 2 stepsons, and her daughter Clover. Welcome, Natasha. We are so happy to have you here today.
Oh, thank you, Hope. I'm so happy to be here and with all of you ladies talking about something that Means so much to me. So thank you so much for having me.
As I mentioned earlier, when we were in the, in the pre-call meeting, I spent the last 3 days reading the book cover to cover, rereading certain chapters and reading it. And it's just, it's so beautiful. It is such a behind-the-scenes look at your mother as a whole person, right? Because when you have a mom who's a public figure, I imagine everybody sort of superimposes their own idea of who she is onto the story. But you took us, you know, behind the camera, really, and let us see who she was as a person and a mom. And I think it's just a beautiful portrait of her. So I thought I would start by talking about some of the portions of the book where you talk about how close you were with your mom. You were a much wanted child. You were very close with her to the point where You tell us that you said that if she cried, you cried. If she panicked, you panicked. If she was here, you felt safe. And so I wanted to talk— maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, about your early childhood with her, the relationship that you had. And I imagine that was all the more devastating to lose someone with whom you were so aligned.
Yes, we were definitely very, very connected. I think that she needed me and I needed her, and that was never in question. My best friend Tracy, who I talk about in the book— I was at Tracy's house when I found out that my mom had died— her mom just recently said to me the other day, that my mom was always asking her, do you think Natasha's okay? Do you think this is good? Do you think I'm doing this right? And so I— what I gleaned from that is that, you know, it is so hard to be a parent and to know if you're doing the right— doing right by your children. And I think even for my mom, who, you know, to me appeared to be really strong and really in control of things, I think she was very vulnerable as a mother and uncertain at times if her parenting was in line with what my younger sister Courtney and I needed.
Mm-hmm.
And I think I picked up on her insecurities at times. And, you know, I became a little bit of a young adult with her, maybe a little before my time. We would have very grown-up conversations. And, you know, she, she didn't— I mean, she babied me in some ways, but she really, you know, talked about feelings and emotions a lot. That was what she loved to talk about, and I loved to talk about it. And so we were sort of a match made in heaven in a lot of ways, I think.
And you were her namesake, which is something that maybe a lot of people don't know, that your mother's given name was Natasha.
Yes, that's right. And, and my mom always said that, you know, way before ultrasounds or knowing the sex of your child, she always knew she was going to have a girl. And she always knew she was going to name me Natasha. So I, I proudly, you know, carry her name.
So, you know, you had said in the book that if you could no longer see yourself reflected in your mother's eyes, it was hard to know who you were. And I wanted to talk about that a little bit because you were so close with her. How did that affect your identity as not— I mean, certainly it changed your identity as your mother's daughter after she died, but how did it change your identity as a girl and then a woman as you came into your own?
I think having a mother, whether she's famous or not, but just someone who's powerful, you know, as a presence, and that's what I had with my mom, was somebody that had a She had such a powerful presence. So when she was there, I felt regulated and safe. And when she died, I felt very much like I had lost my skin, you know, like I just didn't know how to exist or move through the world. And for so many years, I always felt really Like I had no weight, like I had no weight on the ground, like I just almost was a ghost moving through my life. And that I would wonder a lot, like, does that person really see me walking down the street, or am I just an apparition? Because if she's not there reminding me that I'm here, I don't truly believe that I'm here.
You— there's this astonishing moment in the book where you say that losing your mom at 11 wiped away your developing sense of self, and you were left with only an outline. And I thought, I'm sure the women on this call can relate to that feeling. My gosh. So is that what you're describing?
Yes. And it's something that I, I think I hid it pretty well from people that I didn't feel that I was more than an outline. I know that when my Daddy Wagner read my book, he Had a lot of sadness about the parts that I speak about, my younger years. And, and I, I adopted different women to sort of help me find myself in the mirror. I was always searching for some type of a mother figure. Like, I always say that I wasn't looking for boyfriends or husbands, I was looking for a mother. And I just I chose these, these boys or men because I was after their mom, really. And, um, and, and so a lot of years in therapy, a lot of reading books. Luckily, I do feel that I have a sense of myself now, but it is something that I have worked ever since my mom died. I've, I've worked at finding that for myself.
You know, we have talked here in, in our first couple of calls about the importance of sharing our stories, and also about either being silenced or learning to self-silence. And I was really struck by that as a theme in your story, that you didn't talk about your mom, or you didn't bring her up, because you were so concerned about upsetting your dad, your Daddy Wagner, and the amount of grief that he was already carrying.
Mm-hmm.
Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because it seems like there was a cost to that silence to you. And then there's this remarkable moment in the book too, where you do talk about it for the first time as a teenager.
Yes, I'm very close to my stepfather, Robert Wagner. I call him Daddy Wagner because I have also a physical father who I call Daddy Gregson. But Daddy Wagner, my stepdad who I lived with and was raised with and grew up with, he was so devastated by the loss of my mom. And I don't know if you ladies felt this, but I was always so afraid that something was going to happen to him, that he was going to die too. So I didn't want to be the cause of that. So if I said anything that would make him feel sad or deeper in his grief, I thought he would just drop dead right, right there, you know, right on the floor, just die. Magical thinking of you know, this kind of— and so I hid my grief a lot. I cried only in the shower for a lot of my years. And I also felt a lot of shame because none of my friends had lost any parents. And we were like a public family. And I just didn't want to be— singled out in any way. And when a parent dies, you are so singled out, not by choice. And then if you have, you know, celebrity parents, you're also singled out, not by choice. So it was like a double whammy for me. So I just tried to— I didn't even want, you know, God to see me very clearly because I was just afraid that everywhere I went, something calamitous would happen to me. So I just tried to be really small and really quiet and, and really unseen.
And you wrote about the 1980s, you had a series of losses, right? And that made you even more— feel even more vulnerable. Can you say a little bit about that?
Yeah, I think so. I, um, I did have a series of losses. I lost, um, my, my parents were— had lots of very close friends that became very close to me. And I lost a godfather and another dear friend to AIDS. I lost my godmother, Ruth Gordon. She was older, but I still lost her. We lost somebody that my dad worked with, a little girl, Samantha Smith, in a plane crash. And, and it did feel in the '80s like everywhere I turned, death was around the corner. And so I was really afraid to— Turn the corner. I thought if I could just stay in my bed, you know, or in my room, nothing bad was going to happen to me. And so I think that I really held so much in and had a lot of shame about how big and messy my feelings were. Hmm.
And then can you share the story of what happened in high school when you did talk about it the first time? It's such an incredible moment, especially for a teenager.
You mean when I watched my mom in the movie? Yeah.
And when you talked about— when you told the class what grief is really like.
Oh, when Peter died, right. Well, I— so I switched schools in 10th grade. And went to a new school. And our senior year, there was a boy in our class who had a degenerative disease and he died. And we had a class, it was called Mysteries at the time, now it's called Life Skills, where you would sit in a circle and the teacher would light a candle and a topic would come up and they would pass the talking stick around and everybody would Have a moment to share how they were feeling. And so different people were talking about how they felt about Peter passing away. And I just, you know, unbeknownst to me, even knowing, I just told everybody that they did not know what grief was and that this is what it was like and this is how I felt. And, you know, It was a moment of complete euphoria and, and my whole body kind of vibrating, you know, because I had held it in for so long. And I finally, you know, spoke my truth. And it felt amazing. And I didn't know that it would feel like that, you know.
Right. Liberating in a way, it sounds like.
Truly liberating. And— but then I went through another long period of not speaking publicly about what had happened to me because I just wasn't ready to do it.
Yeah.
So I guess I did it in stages.
Is it OK with you if I read that little— that passage from the book? Because I'd like the women to hear how you expressed it. It's so beautiful.
Yeah.
You said that none of the kids had lost anyone close to them. And I remember thinking, these people don't know anything about grief, but I can teach them something about it. This was my moment. There in the flickering candlelight, I finally opened up about losing my mom. Grief rocks you to your core, I told my classmates. You feel unsafe, you feel afraid, you feel alone, and it never goes away. I surprised myself that afternoon by speaking so openly in class. I think I surprised my classmates too, as I I had always given them the impression that everything was fine with me. I was discovering how cathartic, how healing it can be to speak about your pain. Tentatively, I was finding my voice.
Yes, yes, very much. That was a huge moment, a huge moment for me. And, and I think that we definitely find our voice in stages, in phases.
Right.
A lot of times based on the ground, how firm the ground is that we're standing or sitting on at the time.
Exactly, because we cannot really grieve or let that— let those emotions out until we feel safe. We need to be in a safe environment. And this image of, you know, the kids sitting around in candlelight, it just felt cozy and safe and like a welcoming environment for that too. to come out. We're seeing that this year with the pandemic, you know, a lot of people last year were just in survival mode. And so there's a lot of postponed grief coming out or delayed grief, because people need to wait until they feel stable and safe in order to have what feel like destabilizing emotions.
Absolutely. I think that's really true. Because in a way, you know, in the beginning of grief or a trauma, you're in survival mode, you're just trying to cope. The trauma is so overwhelming. So you do have to— you need time. And then the gates can open, the floodgates.
I was also— I really appreciated too the way you talked about that public mask that you had adopted. Everyone thinking that you were fine, going through the motions of being a normal teenager to the best of your ability, but having this deep well of sorrow inside. How did you reconcile both or live with both? You know, how did you manage the struggle of that sorrow with trying to be a normal teenager or wanting to be one?
I think I managed it very clumsily. I think I was— I am by nature a private person. And so I think, you know, I had one or two girlfriends that I felt really, really close to, most of whom had been my friends before my mom died. So I could share with them. And then I, I had a boyfriend when I was in my senior year and I shared with him. But, you know, when I started college, for example, that was another time that I just, you know, I didn't— it was bad enough that people knew who my dad was, you know, I didn't want them to know who my— that I had— I just wanted to be anonymous. That's really what I wanted. And so I think when I started college, I definitely receded into the background and tried very hard not to get noticed and put that mask on.
Right.
So people would think, oh, her mom died and she's totally fine.
Right.
You know, which is the biggest lie ever.
In reading your book, I, you know, I really appreciated how difficult it is to lose a mom who's a public figure.
Mm-hmm.
And how strangers would come up to you when they realized who you were and having to balance that with your own bereavement needs. Seems like it must have created some, you know, complicated situations, as you outlined them in the book, you know, being at a public function and having, I think you said, middle-aged women just coming up and telling you how much they had loved your mom and how sad they were, when you're trying to grapple with your own bereavement needs, which were not being adequately met at the time.
For sure. I mean, you know, I think that People would come at me or my younger sister Courtney and everything, they would just let it all hang out. But I was the recipient of this outpouring from someone that I didn't know. And it just made me feel like, okay, so in this moment, I think I'm the one that needs to be comforting them because they're crying. But I'm a child, or I don't know you, or you're handing me, you know, your phone number to give to my dad.
There's—
it was just a lot of— the boundaries were not in place. I was not equipped.
Right.
My boundaries were not in place. Their boundaries were not in place. And so it was something that made me feel really ashamed. I just, I hated the feeling. And now I feel that I could— if I could swoop back in and, and, you know, guide my younger self, I, I would have supported my younger self in a much different way.
Right, from your adult perspective. As children, we don't— what do we know from boundaries as children? I mean, we're really dependent on the adults around us to be able to to give us that kind of guidance or protect us in that way.
Yes, and also, I mean, I was raised to be very polite to adults and, and very respectful of everybody and gracious. And so I would see these ladies coming at me and I was like, I know, I know what this is, I know how this is going to unfold. And it always did unfold the same way. Right.
And you said your parents were always very gracious to their fans, so that was the kind of modeling that you had, but then you learned to almost fear them after you walked away.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think for my Daddy Wagner too, he didn't know how to handle it either, you know. I mean, we were— I mean, oftentimes he wasn't standing with us when it would happen, but, but we were sort of like you know, you're kind of like a deer in the headlights. Like, and when someone is deeply emoting, you know, all you can really do is bear witness to that. You don't walk away in the middle of their, you know, but it scarred me for sure. And so I tried to make sure most people had no idea who my parents were. If that, you know, if people could not know who my parents were, then that was good.
Right. We've talked some about anniversary reactions here, too. And, and I know that, you know, on the anniversary of your mother's death, it's also a public spectacle sometimes, in addition to being a private occasion.
Yes.
How do you handle, you know, the anniversary of her death when it comes around every year, or those momentous ones, you know, like 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, the ones that hold more weight?
You know, my— now that my daughter is 8 and a half, I've started taking her to the cemetery where my mom is buried because I want her to have a connection to the cemetery and where her grandmother is. So now I'm seeing it through her eyes a little bit, and I, I never felt that the cemetery was a safe place for me to go because There were always so many fans there, or there were people there taking pictures, or it never felt— it never felt safe. But now when I go with my daughter and I have my adult boundary, I feel that we can honor the anniversary in that way. And so I guess I'm going as a mother, not just as a daughter. And that gives me some kind of strength.
You write so beautifully in the book about how meaningful it was for you to have your daughter and how healing it was. And also that it was really important for you that the 2 most important people in your life had a relationship. And I'm wondering, you know, for the women on the call who are mothers or who hope to become mothers, how are you fostering that relationship between your daughter and the grandmother that she never got to meet in real life?
So that relationship between my daughter and my mom is really important to me to foster. And I think with children, if you start to talk to them about something from the beginning of their life, they just accept it. And so my daughter has just accepted that her grandma Natalie is in heaven. and that she was in these movies and that I lost her. And, you know, I'll say to her sometimes, she'll say before bed, like, good night, Grandma Natalie. Good night, Foo Foo. Foo Foo was our dog who passed away. Good night, my father Richard Gregson, passed away in August of 2019. Good night, Rara. You know, so she starts saying good night to her. And I tell her, these are your angels. These are your people. They're your people in heaven that you can talk to. And so that has been very healing for me because I, well, I see it through her eyes. And I've also really let her see my own grief at times. You know, I've lost people and she's seen me be really sad.
Yeah.
But it has been something that's just been a very I felt so motherless for so many years, and now I feel so motherful. I really do.
Good.
And I feel also a bit like my mom's mom now because I'm taking care of her legacy, and so— and I'm older than she ever got to be. So I definitely feel very maternal towards my own mom, and still there are days that I feel deeply motherless and deeply— the depth of the loss feels really intense some days, you know, that still happens to me.
My mother also died in 1981. That's something that we share. And one of my greatest sorrows is that that was before our home movies had voice, so I don't have of my mother's voice. I'm wondering, what's it like, Natasha, to watch your mother's movies? What's it like to see her on the screen and hear her voice? Because you have so many opportunities to do that. She was such a prolific actress.
Well, when I watch her in our home movies, you know, I feel like, oh, that's my mom. I, I, I, you know, all of that, it's like in my body. It's so tactile. And then when I watch her movies before she became my mom, I just feel that she's this very familiar person to me, you know, like a friend or a sister, or I just, I recognize, you know, when you meet someone and you just think that person is, is cut from similar cloth to me.
Yeah.
I feel that a lot when I watch her films. I just recently watched I'm introducing a few of her films on TCM in March. And so we watched 3 of her films last week, and one of them, Inside Daisy Clover, I thought, yeah, I just— we would have been friends, you know? Like, there's just this familiar sweetness to her. I mean, she was such a sweet, kind, you know, warm person.
Mm-hmm.
I think she really gave me that as a mom. She was so warm. And then I see that in her work also. And that makes me feel— it just makes me feel proud of her.
You mentioned in the book that Inside Daisy Closer was one of your favorite movies that your mom made. Is that right? Is that part of why you named your daughter Clover?
Well, I mean, I don't know if in the back of my mind, you know, my daddy Wagner told— tells me that when I was a little girl, I always named all my dolls Clover. Um, and then in my 20s, I read a Zen Buddhist book called The Mind of Clover, which is a really beautiful book. And then I got pregnant when I was 40. So I felt really lucky that I was able to have a baby. So it was sort of all those reasons that I named her Clover. I mean, the character of Daisy Clover is a semi-tortured character, so I wouldn't want that for my daughter. But I love the movie because at the end, you know, my mom is such a survivor in that film.
Before we wrap, I want you to have a chance to talk about the opening scene of your book. And, you know, you come back to that because we have a saying at Motherless Daughters that Our mothers are more than a woman who died. They were also women who lived, and they lived for many more years before they, you know, before their, their, the event of their death. And we don't want to define them by how we lost them. We want to define them by how they lived. And it's such an extraordinary scene that opens your book, and, you know, how you came to know your mother as a full woman when you were an adult. So I was wondering if you could just tell the women about that a bit.
Do you mean when I heard about her death?
No, the storage unit.
Oh, the storage unit. Oh, okay. Yeah, right. So, so, um, my family has this very large memorabilia storage unit, and when I was working on the book, um, with Manoa Bowman, Reflections on a Legendary Life, um, we had to go in there, and I was scared, always scared to go into that storage unit because It was like I just piled high with files and boxes and photos and I just didn't even know where to begin. But Manoa, who's a film archivist, he said to me, I'll go with you and we'll tackle it, you know, in stages. So we went in there and we started to look through the scrapbooks that my grandmother had made of my mom's work in, in the 1940s. I mean, she had saved every, every magazine and every newspaper clipping, you know. And so it was like I— time outside stopped and I would read and learn about this little girl who was my mom or this teenager who was my mom or this You know, I found this journal that my mom was given to my mom by one of the actors in Rebel Without a Cause. And in the journal, she has all these journal entries about, you know, the beginning young love of her and my stepdad. And, you know, then I found some letters that she had written to my Daddy Gregson. So my mom did this thing where she would write out a letter and then she would write it on her stationery, so she kept copies of everything that she sent. So I found this very stern letter that she had written to my Daddy Gregson about why, you know, she did not appreciate that he didn't call me more, and he wrote back and said that he prefers the written word to the phone, and they had this like you know, sort of frisson between them about parenting. And so I just, I learned so much about— and then there was a piece that she had written for Ladies' Home Journal in 1966 that was never published. And it's long, it's like 250 pages. I just shared a bit of it in my book. Longhand, you know, 250 pages. And, um, but she speaks about her desire to be loved, have a really honest and real relationship with someone, and to be married and to have children. And, you know, when she wrote this piece, she did not know that she would reunite with my stepdad or that she would have my sister and myself. And so, you know, I read it and I was so moved by it because she got— her wishes, her wishes came true. And so as her daughter and also as her sort of surrogate mother in a way, I was so moved for her and so happy for her that this young girl who had all these dreams, that those— a lot of those dreams came true.
Mm-hmm.
And it just felt, you know, I would get back into my car and drive home to Venice, which was far from Pasadena or Glendale where the storage unit was. And I would just cry all the way home, you know, because I was— it was just so— I mean, I was discovering her life. Yeah.
That's a beautiful note for us to end this portion on. We're at just about half an hour, but I want to recommend the book More Than Love to everyone here. It's coming out in paperback soon. Is that right?
Yes.
If you order it now, it's hardcover.
It's coming out in paperback on May 4th. And I also read it on, you know, Audible.
Great. So there's many options available. You can preorder the paperback now or order the hard copy now— the hardcover now if you want to read it right away, or the ebook.
Yes.
Natasha, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And thank you for your beautiful book and for reminding us that every daughter who loses a mother, regardless of who their mother was, is a girl who lost her mom.
It's really so true. I mean, it's really so true. We are our mothers' daughters, no matter who our mothers were and no matter who we are.
Okay.
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