Paul Giamatti
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What Does It Mean to Become Someone Else?
Award-winning actor and producer Paul Giamatti joins Joanna Ebenstein for a wide-ranging, eerie, and often amusing conversation about monsters, performance, and the porous boundary between life and death.
From childhood fascinations with werewolves and classic horror to the uncanny psychological states accessed through acting, Giamatti reflects on a lifelong obsession with transformation—of bodies, identities, and consciousness. He recounts a genuinely unsettling ghostly moment during a production of Hamlet, explores the idea of acting as a form of possession, and considers why theatre can feel more spiritually charged than film.
The conversation weaves through late-night radio and the hypnotic voice of Art Bell, Giamatti’s cult television series Lodge 49, esoteric book collecting, and the strange intimacy of voices in the dark.
Thoughtful, curious, and quietly uncanny, this episode asks what it really means to inhabit other lives—and what those experiences might reveal.
📢Listeners! You are invited to share your own offerings: voice notes on death, dying, ritual and the beauty of finitude. Include your first name and location if you want them shared- you might be featured in an upcoming episode. Send your offering via WhatsApp to +44 2921 690468.
💀 Memento Morbid is produced by Overcoat Media in partnership with Morbid Anatomy.
Host: Joanna Ebenstein
Series Producer: Jess Gunasekara
Studio Engineer: Fernando Velazco Vargas
Additional Production and Sound Design: Katie Hill
Production Coordinator: Janice Jardine
Executive Producer: Steven Rajam
Artwork: Lauren Seeley