Hailee Steinfeld great to see you congratulations your back when you music first song in a minute afterlife sounding great I was just thinking you know you really you move so deliberately when it comes to music you really don't kind of hit us unless you're absolutely ready right that's definitely right I have another world in which I am equally as passionate about and that is my acting and so it's um the music isn't
something I want to do unless I can commit myself and fully commit myself and you know that unfortunately means not releasing music exactly when I want to because that would be every single day but yeah I I love when I can put it out when I have the time to talk about it play the song and and also when when a song can connect to a show or a film or a piece of acting that I'm doing that's like you know the best of my both
looks sounds like it's you know it definitely runs in parallel with a super exciting project coming out on Apple TV plus not to get a promo about it but we're really proud of this one we can't wait to see anything the first Atkinson I mean there are definitely connections between the music and the show right one of the things I love so much about this show is it is of course a period piece
it's about Emily Dickinson the great American poet and it takes place in the 1850s but the show is driven by contemporary and urban music which when I read the script for the first time that was one of the main things that stood out to me so this is the song afterlife one thing I love so much is sonically I feel it's very different for me and it very much sort of represents this direction in which I am headed what do
you see there what it where is that direction leading you I've obviously grown so much since I put out my first body of work in music and I love nothing more than to hear a song that is that like perfect pop song that is up-tempo and makes you feel good no doubt but I love that in a way this song it feels it feels grounded and it feels real and and it's fistic ated i think a little more so than than my previous records that I
put out for fans who want to hear it from the artists from from your own mouth you know what what are the themes that really connected you to the song much like the show Emily Dickinson and her poetry wrote about everything every every possible emotion that there is to feel and she writes a lot about death now she writes about death and the way I interpret it is that she looks at death as a new way of life
death is a place where there's freedom there's no one telling her she cannot be there's no one telling her she is worthless or she can't write or she shouldn't write I think there's another side to it where you know as an artist I think any artists greatest fear is is being forgotten and you know if your work if your work doesn't live on or make noise while you're alive then the hope of it at least doing something when
you're gone right is a hope that it lives on I think after having played and embodied this character and then flying back to LA after shooting this season one and getting right into my music writing my music I truly feel like I had this new fearless approach to my writing and and like you just said a lot of it a lot of it can be motivated by fear what can you tell us about who sort of involved in
the show and any sort of surprises that you can tell us it's been so incredible to be working with Apple on this project as it's a new venture for them and and for me as well I've really never done anything in the TV space so a lot of this and a lot of how this is working is all new to me too I'm executive producing the show which is my first time you know filling that role and and one main I mean the reason I wanted to
do that was because again going back to the first time I read the script it really felt like I'm unlikely thing I'd ever come across so I wanted to I wanted to show up in a way that wasn't just as as an actor I wanted to be a part of you know these decision-making processes and see things through from the beginning middle to the end and it's been a wonderful experience our cast is amazing we have some amazing
amazing guest stars wiz khalifa is in our show which which is crazy and weird and amazing and wonderful and it's so Nate's you've seen what people have to say about him being in the show because it just I think people are very confused but they're gonna be very very happy and I will say I just a wonderful person to be around and truly showed up I mean you know he he he has got some
big scenes in the show so he definitely came through did you have some real honest conversations during this process we had to say to you know it's out of the people involved in the production side of things no listen trust me we need to go down this road because this is what's gonna do it absolutely um Elena Smith our our writer and creator of the show her and I have been the whole I have to say the whole my whole
experience as executive producing the show has been everything is felt very collaborative which is wonderful and and there have definitely been very open and honest conversations especially when it comes to the the dialect the dialogue and Elena has been incredibly open to me and towards you know this this generation and how they how they speak how they feel about certain things and what's so what's so cool about this show
is is we get to look at the world through the lens of this of this character who was way ahead of her time and we see that you know when you watch this show you you forget you're watching a period please and I think that's one of the coolest and and and it's time sort of sad because we're looking at a world in which there were there were conflicts and struggles that we still deal with today which is partly shocking
so I think one one thing that makes the show so interesting where's your music going out to this I know how busy you are but you can't survive on one song every five years hey it's just not acceptable it's not acceptable behavior I know it is you're absolutely right I of course have have afterlife out to something I'm really proud of and I plan on putting more records out and and next
year will be the year of the project that I am so excited for again I do feel like you know I've been writing in a way I've never done before is this project an album because anything less is is going to be good I go as far as to calling it an album just yet but I'm getting there and and again very close to the part of the process where I start to narrow things down and figure out what what we what we call this thing you