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early thirties, I cared way too much what people thought of me. I know there are elements of peer pressure for them we well, but I’m just so proud of how they stand up for themselves and say, “This is who I am, and this is what I like.” Allison: I feel like girls today don’t suffer from the disease of politeness that our generation did. Jodie: Our generation learned from our mom’s generation. Again, it was very much like, “Girls don’t say that. Girls are polite.” Not until my mid to late thirties did I say, “Wait, I get to have boundaries? I get to say what I don’t like? I don’t have to hang out with people I don’t want to or go on a date with somebody because I don’t want to make them feel bad? I don’t have to be nice to somebody who says something horrible to me? I don’t have to do any of that? Oh wow, what a gift.” My daughters have very firm boundaries, and they are so wonderfully expressive in who they are. I give them the freedom to be that. Allison: Before your current relationship, how did you navigate dating as a single mom? Did you separate church and state like nobody meets my kids and all of that? Jodie: I didn’t do that as much, but I’ve learned over the years how to do it better. I’m a single mom but their dads are in their lives, so it wasn’t like I had them all the time. Allison: Let me correct that, we’re not single moms, but moms who happen to be single and dating. I don’t want to take that distinction away from single moms doing it all. Jodie: Right, a mom who is single. I think as my girls have gotten older, and my boyfriend and I have been together for four years now, and he really did an amazing job with it all. At first, we had a long-distance relationship too. He was in Brooklyn, and I was here in LA for 3 ½ years, and so it was slow and it was nice. He was very good at letting them warm up to him and not having to force a relationship. I think that is the hard thing as a mom. You’re thinking, “Everyone just get along. I really like this person.” I’m not sacrificing my kids, but how do I make everybody happy. At the end of the day, you’ll put up with your own kids’ nonsense. I can tune my kids out. The other day I was watching this show and one of them had the music super loud and my boyfriend said, “I can’t. I can’t. It’s too much.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right. It is really obnoxiously loud.” It was shaking the walls, so I thought “Yeah you’ve got to say something.” Allison: When was the first time your girls realized you were a public person? Jodie: My kids have always known it. Even when they were little, their birth announcements were out there in public. Just the fact that they were born, they can Google themselves, where most kids can’t really do that. They always knew mommy is a famous person. If anything, they are so unimpressed by it and really just feel like, “Uh, mom you’re not cool.” I’ll reply, “Oh, I know I’m not. It’s okay.” I luckily have grown old enough that I don’t need to be cool anymore. That pressure is lifted. But they love supporting me. They love watching me shoot something, but they love it more for the craft services. They don’t really care about what I’m actually shooting (laugh). They love the perks, and they are super grateful for the fun stuff we get to do because of it. I think sometimes it is hard for them because their friends say, “Oh My God, that’s your mom?” They’ll say, “She’s still a mom.” Allison: If you could travel back in time to any famous historical event and change the course of that event, where would you go and what would you attempt to change? Jodie: I feel like last year gave me so much material, just 2020 alone. Can we just skip 2020? I feel like the pain, the loss, and the death was awful. Also, the impact that it has had on our kids. On our families. On our politics. On everything. I think it has brought some things to the surface that needed to be, but I also think it has forever altered the course of our lives in a very complicated way. Nobody in our immediate family got Covid, but I can only imagine if as semi smooth sailing as it was for us, I can’t imagine what other people went through and