Talk Fifty To Me

Actress Andrea Bendewald (Suddenly Susan, Friends, The Morning Show) walked off the audition treadmill in midlife and founded The Art of Circling, a women's-circle practice she has led in Los Angeles and online for more than a decade. She tells Heidi and Constance what actually happens in a circle, why it works on women our age and how it grew into a second career, including her podcast Circle This. Her prescription for midlife disorientation skips the supplements and the retreats: a room of women you trust and a structure that lets you tell the truth.

Follow Andrea: @andreabendewald
Follow us: @talkfiftytome | talkfiftytome.com

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Dating after fifty is a trip, and Luna Lauren Vélez minces no words about it. The Brooklyn-born Afro-Latina actress and identical twin has spent three decades in HBO prison dramas, Showtime crime thrillers and animation: Oz, New York Undercover, Dexter, Power Book II: Ghost and American Rust, plus the voice of Rio Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. She was recently on stage in John Leguizamo's The Other Americans, has performed her one-woman show about the Cuban singer La Lupe for twenty years and wrote, produced and starred in a film with her twin sister in her sixties. She is still booking leads and still, in most rooms she walks into, the only Afro-Latina. Midlife, dating and menopause from a woman who is aging into her roles.

Talk Fifty to Me is midlife unfiltered: honest, often hilarious conversations for women over 50, hosted by Constance Zimmer and Heidi Clements. New episodes every Tuesday.

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Omisade Burney-Scott took the lack of language for what was happening to her body and built the language other women now use. The 59-year-old Durham, North Carolina, mother of two is a seventh-generation Black Southern feminist, storyteller and reproductive justice advocate, and the founder of The Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause, the first Black-women-led platform normalizing menopause through art, ancestry and activism. She also hosts its podcast, now in its sixth season, wrote Messages from the Menopausal Multiverse, writes the Substack Hippolyta's Journal and is the convener of Iranti Ẹ̀jẹ̀: Remembering Blood, the first gathering centered on the menopause experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people. Beautiful words about midlife from the conscience of the menopause movement.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Month gets personal. Constance Zimmer shares her DCIS (stage 0 breast cancer) diagnosis, which she kept private through her very public "Love Story" press tour and Emmy nomination. Most doctors pointed her toward a mastectomy; breast surgeon Dr. Kristi Funk, founder of The Pink Lotus breast center and author of "Breasts: The Owner's Manual," was the first to say, "I think we can try a lumpectomy." Three surgeries and radiation later, Constance is cancer-free.

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"What people think of me is really none of my business." Nyakio Grieco turned a family coffee business into a beauty empire. In her 50s she founded 13 Lune, the biggest BIPOC-owned beauty marketplace in the US, and launched the clean, inclusive skincare brand Relevant. A former chronic people pleaser, she explains how she learned that no is a complete sentence.

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Board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Jessica Shepherd, one of the most-booked menopause doctors in American media, joins us on her own perimenopause journey as she heads toward 50. We talk midlife, perimenopause and menopause, why all women in menopause aren't treated equally, and one of the hardest things for women to find: self-compassion.

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Jennie Garth is building a brand around three words her 90210 character Kelly Taylor said in the '90s: "I choose me." In her 50s she has become a New York Times bestselling author with her memoir I Choose Me, launched the QVC line Me by Jennie Garth and hosts her own podcast. She talks reinvention, her blind spots and why she's anti-anti-aging.

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Prepare to say "wait, what?" a lot. Missi Pyle, the character actress and cult sci-fi icon from Galaxy Quest, once played a character named Constance Zimmer in The Artist. In her 50s she's two years sober, working nonstop and reigniting her country-rock band Smith & Pyle after 14 years. Hilarious and inspiring.

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Ming-Na Wen on midlife, family and Star Wars. She became the first Asian woman named a Disney Legend at 56, got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 59, and has argued for the "Tom Cruise effect": long careers built on craft, not age. She also talks about turning her family history into the cookbook Have You Eaten Yet and landing some of her most iconic roles.

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Amy Landecker, Sarah Pfefferman on Transparent, wrote, directed, produced and starred in her first feature at 55 and released it at 56. Her film For Worse is a midlife romantic comedy about a newly divorced sober mom, made while most actresses are asking "Am I too old?" A conversation about defying the narrative on aging in Hollywood.

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