Books
One Nightstand With Julia Louis-Dreyfus
When it was her turn to choose her book club’s next read, Julia Louis-Dreyfus chose a novel that left her “crying uncontrollably.”
In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.
Some 5% of Americans now belong to a book club, though few, one suspects, are quite as elegant as the one Julia Louis-Dreyfus has with her friends in Santa Barbara. “I do it with my husband,” says the 65 year-old Emmy-winning comedian and actor. “It's a couple's book club, and I think there are 12 of us. Whoever’s chosen the book, we go to their house and then we have dinner and talk about the book.”
When it was Louis-Dreyfus’s turn to choose which book they would discuss, she opted for The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, a novel she also selected as one of her favorites for Bustle One Nightstand. She is, by her own admission, a big reader, though work doesn’t always allow for it. “If I'm working and I'm trying to memorize lines, I don't always have the brain space, but recently I've been doing a lot of reading,” she says, noting that her mother, who is an avid reader, will always begin a book by reading the final sentence. “Isn't that quirky of her?” (Louis-Dreyfus does not join her.)
Louis-Dreyfus is in town to promote The Sheep Detectives, a comedy adapted from the 2005 novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. She voices Lily, an on-brand sharp-witted Shetland sheep who leads her flock in trying to find out who murdered their shepherd, played by Hugh Jackman. They're hampered in this pursuit by the fact the sheep are able to dispose of any bad (and perhaps useful) memories — all except one, Mopple, who alone carries the burden of everything left behind. It's an interesting concept, not least since many of the books Louis-Dreyfus chose deal with traumatic subjects, so I'm curious if she would partake herself.
“I'd love to get rid of them, but unfortunately, it doesn't work like that,” she says. “Uncomfortable memories are exactly that, and I think the human brain is sort of set up to go back to them a lot. There's a reason that negative memories stay longer than positive ones.“
Keep reading to discover three of Louis-Dreyfus’s favorite books.
Louis-Dreyfus’s first pick is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, a collection of interconnected short stories that follow the titular Olive, an unfiltered, curmudgeonly retired math teacher. “I think with Elizabeth Strout, what appeals to me so much is that she is so kind and so sympathetic to her characters, even the ones who aren't necessarily likable,” she says.
The actress brings the same kind of generosity to her own characters, including the foul-mouthed Selina Meyer of Veep. “Even if you're playing somebody who's an *sshole or misbehaved externally, internally, you can't come at it that way,” she says. “You have to come at it from a sympathetic place — or an empathetic place, even, to understand the inner-workings of why a person is misbehaved. You're not judging.”
Within the book, OIive reckons with her relationship with her son and the challenges that come with transitioning from parenting a child to parenting an adult. It's something Louis-Dreyfus, mother to two adult sons, including 28-year-old actor Charlie Hall, has dealt with herself. “The relationship between a mother and a son is incredibly unique, needless to say, but I come from all girls,” she says. “There's a physical closeness that I can still have with my mom and my dad or my stepdad that I think, to a certain extent, is not available in the same way with a boy. And it doesn't mean we're not close. I'm very close to both of my kids, but it's unique.”
Her second choice is Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, which follows coal merchant Bill Furlong in 1985 Ireland as he uncovers systemic abuse at his local convent. “He exercises such bravery — he’s stoic,” she says. “He barely speaks in the book. It's his actions that are so remarkable, including the very end. He knows the right thing to do,” she says.
Portrayed by Cillian Murphy in the 2024 adaptation, Bill’s quiet heroism feels especially relevant now, Louis-Dreyfus says. “It feels as if there’s a dearth of morality right now and moral courage. And it's nice to read a story about somebody who really does the right thing against an institution that is so baked into the culture that it feels as if you are underwater and can't get out.”
Her third and final selection is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that follows a young Black boy in Jim Crow-era Florida who is wrongfully sent to a reform school. “It's a crushing story, but what I think he does so deftly is he allows the reader to have hope,” she says.
She continues: “The first time I met him, I'd just finished reading this book and it knocked my socks off. And I went up to him to say, ‘I have to tell you, I've read this book,’ and then I started to cry uncontrollably. I could barely get the words out because that's how moved I was by his writing.”
The film adaptation starring Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2025. “A good friend of mine, Hamish Linklater, played the bad guy in Nickel Boys,” she says. “And I watched it and the only way I could get through it was knowing that Hamish is not a bad person in real life. And I had to sort of keep looking away and thinking, ‘Oh yeah, Hamish is a good guy. He's a good guy.’ It was rough.”
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