On the Podcast: A Conversation With Winter 2024 Cover Star Sienna Miller

This is The Run-Through.

I m Chloe Malle, and today we re here with Sienna Miller.

Alright, hi, Sienna. Happy Sunday.

Hi, thank you.

We re in the Vogue closet.

This is a big moment for many people,

but we re just casually

on this pink velvet sofa. [chuckling]

So that closes, and there are more clothes

when we are not in here?

Yeah.

And everyone can just help themselves to the shoes?

Well, these are available for shoots,

but the Manolos have to be approved,

like a Manolo library.

In a temperature-controlled-

And you just not let anyone

get their mitts on Manolos. Right.

What is it like fitting for a Vogue cover

when you are quite a few months pregnant?

Pretty heavily pregnant now.

How many weeks are you feeling now?

I m 31 weeks.

Oh my God! 31 and a bit weeks.

It s fun doing a fitting,

although in the last two weeks I ve woken up

and I m like pregnant in my head and face.

What is the exact change that you feel?

There s a slight waddle. Okay.

You know, there s a Whoa,

when you stand up and sit down

which I m really trying to get a lid on

and peeing like 18 times a night,

which is too much information,

but welcome to the real world, people.

And I walked around with my daughter yesterday in Soho

and I was like, We re gonna be in New York.

Let s go shopping. And after an hour I was

the lady that was sitting down in every shop.

What are you loving to wear right now?

Big baggy knitted stretch.

Yeah. What does Sienna maternity wear?

I ve tried to avoid buying maternity wear.

Me too. It s very hard.

It s very hard.

I feel like I m probably at the stage

where I need some maternity leggings.

That would be nice.

I ve found clothes in my wardrobe

that will stretch and I have borrowed Ollie s jeans

for the first four months.

I have now outgrown them. Oh, wow.

I think that the timing of this pregnancy is great.

I got to be sort of floaty in the summer

and you know, in the good stage

of pregnancy was in easy clothes

and now I can just like jumper it up.

Well, I was obsessed

with your Vogue World Schiaparelli moment.

It was a good thing.

How would you describe it?

I would ve said kind of couture meringue.

[Host] Yes. It was a couture meringue with your bumps.

With my bumps. Every area that you would want disguised

as a woman was disguised beautifully, artfully

by this incredibly created like masterpiece of art.

Harry Lambert was styling everybody

who was taking part in the show.

And I was doing a little skit and-

Oh yes. You were an usher.

I was an usher, yes.

And Harry Lambert, for those who don t know, is a brilliant,

very avant-garde creative stylist.

And he had sent some options

of clothes that he thought would be good.

And that was the most exciting slash scary.

I didn t know I was a kind of bump out pregnant person,

but it felt incredibly empowering.

Is this pregnancy style different than with Marlowe?

Do you remember what you wore

when you were pregnant with her?

I think with Marlowe,

I really tried to stay in my own clothes

and it just didn t work.

I think I m just much more conscious now than I was then.

How is this pregnancy different

from 10 years ago with Marlowe?

It s honestly been so much easier.

I have sailed through this pregnancy.

Yeah, I don t know whether you re just

so perpetually tired being a parent already,

that you can just manage better with a second baby,

but I felt great.

Well, I m thrilled to hear that.

Yes. Until about six days ago.

This pregnancy became publicly known when you were

on a private vacation in Ibiza.

Yeah. Yeah. This summer.

What is it like having people

Take photos of you in a bikini pregnant?

It s, do you know what? It s great. I love it. [laughs]

It was so funny. I d got through the entire summer

and I d had a very decadent summer of traveling around

and being on lots of beaches and I got away with it.

That was the last swim on the last

day of the last, Oh my God.

holiday.

You almost did it. Thank Christ,

it was like 5:00 PM and not glaring sunlight.

Is Marlowe excited?

To have a sister?

Yeah.

A baby sister. Oh, is it a little girl?

Gender reveal by accident.

I was gonna ask, but there we go.

I m having a baby girl. Is Marlowe excited?

She is now excited.

She s like, this was great.

Why would we change this?

I was with the Gilmore girls

and what if I, what if the baby s cuter and you know?

Yeah. The normal feelings,

which she s very honest about.

How do you hope her experience as a girl

and eventually a woman will be different from yours?

Um...how long have you got? [laughs]

No, I think,

I think it s really hard to be a young woman

in this day and age.

I think it s also a lot easier in many ways.

So there are pros and cons to both versions.

She can self-advocate

and she has the word no in her repertoire.

And I think in the nineties when I was a kid

growing up, you know, God forbid you offend a man s ego

by disagreeing or,

and I just don t think that exists at all.

And that s wonderful.

Can you describe like Marlowe s family dinners

where it s you, Tom, he s now with Alexa.

Yes. Ollie.

Does Marlowe know that she has access to two

of the great British wardrobes?

We tell her.

She doesn t, she s never gonna give me that.

I think she might be starting

to cotton onto the fact that I have got an aesthetic

and maybe it was appreciated.

But she s still like, no.

Alexa, she s much more generous to,

cause she s exquisitely dressed and not her actual mother.

It s very genuinely very loving and cozy and great.

How wonderful for her.

It s ideal. It s incredible. We are very lucky.

What s been your favorite role that you ve played and why?

Sally Bowles in Cabaret on Broadway,

because she is a nihilistic sort of tragedy

that sings and dances.

And my guilty pleasure is singing and dancing.

What is the most challenging role?

I did a movie called American Woman

that was very emotionally draining

and I loved that character probably more than any character.

But it was very hard to imagine the loss of a child.

As a parent, as anyone.

I have tended to be drawn to very dark material.

My formative youth was intense, very, very intense.

And to have an outlet for some of that intensity was

probably made me drawn to dark work.

Your formative youth

when you were first starting to act or before that?

I think my twenties.

You know, my very public twenties.

You were covered so intensely from such a,

I was reading about the ages

when you were first with Jude Law.

I mean, you were 21. It s just,

[Sienna] I know.

Do you ever look back now

and think, Oh, poor 21-year-old Sienna,

I wish I could tell her this.

Yeah, of course. I mean,

honestly it feels like a different life

and a different person s experience.

Right. It was also surreal

and chaotic that it s sometimes it s hard to connect

that that s the same person.

Yeah. I do have sympathy, yes.

For all the women at that moment.

It was this frenzy before phones

and social media before all of that.

I think a lot of people really derailed because of it.

I love Anatomy of a Scandal

and I then remember reading the article about

how you could hear your heartbeat in the scene when

the infidelity is revealed.

And, it just made me wonder about how personally

and emotionally invested you get

when you re doing a scene like that.

I think that in order to successfully

achieve an emotional state, you probably have to connect it

to things that happened in your life.

There was something incredibly familiar about

that particular scene and dynamic.

And knowing that on the other side of that scene

of him revealing an affair was a huge amount

of tabloid attention.

And it was just very easy to sense memory.

I was surprised by the fact that my heart started to thump.

It s weird, but you really do store, obviously,

you store trauma and memory in your body.

And when you can access it for work,

I think that s great.

Versus it coming out in other relationships. [laughter]

Where have you been?

You have been very vocal about pay equity

and earning the same or at least closer to the same

as your male counterparts.

Yes. Has that been something

that you felt has been successful?

Has there been progress made?

Definitely been progress made for sure.

I mean, I think

I m in an industry where the disparity was enormous,

but I think it was more important to focus on how

that translates across the world in every industry.

And I think that I was very fortunate

and I worked with Chadwick Boseman, who donated some

of his salary to get me up to a number that I had asked for,

for a film that we did together, which was astounding.

And I ve shared that story with many, a male actor

who have gotten very quiet in the aftermath.

A lot of it comes down from being able to advocate

for yourself, which is something I ve had to learn.

I think I would ve happily done any of the work

that I ve done for free.

And it s been a reckoning to try to realize your own value.

Did that come naturally or was that something-

No. Okay.

Because I mean, you famously you took on

News of the World.

Yes. That did come naturally.

Interesting. Do you regret any part of that?

Cause it just felt like you had to do, for people

who don t know, in 2019 you sued News of the World

or Murdoch organization.

[Sienna] Was it 2019? Must have been earlier.

The infraction was in 2005.

I think I then, so then the News of the World

shut down 2000 and something.

I mean in great part, due to your lawsuit.

Yeah. Which is kind of amazing.

So I don t regret that. I m very, very proud of that.

I would love to have not had to do any of it, you know?

But it does feel like a reclaiming

of a narrative or just a taking something on a Goliath.

What is the worst thing a tabloid

has ever printed about you? Or the most painful?

Oh my God. Again. I mean, not to, yeah.

This is really fun. Happy Sunday to you too.

[host laughs]

The worst thing a tabloid has ever printed about me,

I guess, they hacked my medical records.

They blagged them from my doctor

and printed that I was pregnant.

I know. I have to say, researching, this was the first

time I d ever heard about a blagger.

I wondered if when this new pregnancy was revealed,

did it have any, not repercussions,

but reminders of that earlier?

Oh, I see.

[Host] Breaking of your medical privacy.

I think, in all honesty, they knew for months

that I was pregnant.

I remember they were emailing my publicist saying,

We ve heard rumors, but obviously we would never print

anything that, you know, and I, we just wouldn t respond.

That did feel like a giant step

because there would ve, there was no respect for that kind

of sensitivity of information back then for any woman.

It was very different time.

Is there a way to sort of quiet the noise of the media

and just sort of power on in your own personal life?

Can you sort of separate the two?

You don t look. Really?

Yeah. People say that,

and I just find it remarkable.

There are moments where you re aware

of something like my pregnancy being photographed on a beach

when I was pregnant, I just was like,

I have to see what that is.

Wow. But on the whole,

you can turn down the noise by not engaging.

And I think there can be a tendency,

especially on like a hangover, to like read the comments

and it s a form of self-harm that s not healthy.

Sure. But if you don t engage

with it, and you don t read it

and you don t give it power,

it really becomes an irrelevant force.

I have to say, I found it quite shocking

after the news of your pregnancy came out

that there was a lot of discussion online.

Wow. She s having a child at such an advanced age.

And I thought, how old is Sienna Miller?

I thought she was in her late thirties,

and I was like, expecting they were talking about

some, a 50-year-old.

What do you think that culturally is about?

Is that people truly aren t familiar with that?

I think that people are comfortable with a way of living

that has existed for many years, which is very misogynistic

and patriarchal.

And like me being the older woman in a partnership

with a younger person or being pregnant over 40,

and that s irresponsible and poor child.

It s such double standards

and it s so, I think it s so unquestioned in people s minds.

It s just a trite, easy target. But it s absurd.

I mean, I was very fortunate.

I wasn t necessarily trying to get pregnant.

This happened as a total surprise

and biologically, you know, was something

that my body was able to do.

And, I just find that judgment, it s so one-sided

and it s so sad.

Do you have different expectations of motherhood

this time around 10 years on?

Do you feel like you re more realistic or you?

I have expectations whereas I had none before.

Oh, interesting.

I think, I feel much more prepared

psychologically than I was before with Marlowe.

And the reality was quite, it was quite a shock.

I was 29 when I got pregnant and I had her at 30,

and I just hadn t given it the thought that, I guess it,

I guess you can t prepare for it.

In my mind, this is gonna be the easiest coziest, sweetest

cause I ve completely forgotten [laughs] the reality

of having a newborn baby.

I loved reading that British Vogue last year described it

there s something about Sienna sence, foot.

Yeah. Does it feel

that way to you?

Does this feel like a new chapter or a new moment?

Every decade there s a Sienna, you know?

I like, I ebb and flow. [laughter]

My plan is to still be ebbing and flowing at 80.

I m excited. I have some really great work next year

that I can t talk about.

And I am having a baby and I m so happy about that.

And I do find myself happier and happier the older I get.

So in that sense, yes.

I ve never been particularly able

to comprehend whatever perspective people have of me.

So if there is a Sienna sense, I don t,

I wouldn t be able to connect to it, but I m, yes.

It sounds like a nice thing.

Sienna, this has been such a pleasure.

I m so excited for your journey now to the Hamptons

for your big shoot.

Thank you. [laughs]

And many, many happy returns of the day

with Annie [indistinct] and Tabitha tomorrow.

Yes. I think it s going

to be fantastic.

Agreed.

And, goodbye to everyone from the Vogue Closet.

[soft music plays]