GP: You told me earlier that you spent quite a bit of time in Wyoming recently filming some big secret shit. What's Wyoming like?

LMD: Wyoming is absolutely beautiful, but we spent most of our time working. The schedule was so tight, but we managed to do some tourist kind of stuff when I did have days off. I was there with one of my best friends who is also my manager. You know this, but he's also a black man and one thing that I have learned over the last couple of years is that there are places that are safe and welcoming for me as a cis-gendered white male that will never be safe for him or basically people who don't look like me. So it was important to me that we went to places that he would feel comfortable and in Wyoming that meant staying on the beaten path.

GP: I get it. Despite achieving success, at the end of the day, I still know that I am an Korean-American man and there are some places where people don't like seeing people who look like me. Maybe I'm not giving people a fair chance.

LMD: Look, it's not an indictment against Wyoming. But for all the shit you went through, I bet growing up Asian in Southern California was a lot different than growing up in Kentucky or something. We met amazing people there but the fact remains that 70% of them voted for Donald Trump just last year! I'm down with the other 30% though, you know.

GP: Dude, you know I fucking know. I love how involved you were and continue to be with BLM and Stop AAPI Hate. Trinity said you have a permanent invitation to the cookout. Were you concerned about how this would impact your career?

LMD: Man, I fucking love your wife. Will her mom be making the cornbread though?

GP: My wife fucking loves you and her mom is still enamored by the skinny white boy who unapologetically ate almost every piece of bread on the table that day.

LMD: I was stoned and hungry, dude.

GP: Per usual.

LMD: Per usual, man. I knew it could possibly impact my career, but I wasn't concerned about it. I didn't care. I don't want to be a career in a world where racism and hatred are tolerated. I don't want to live in that world either, so that's why I speak up. God, I hope that no one spins this into "White actor Lennox McCarthy-Deconnick opens up about traveling while black, cornbread, and what it's like to be Asian in America." You know Josie [Josie Benson is McCarthy-DeConnick's publicist who he asked not to be present for the interview] interview) will lose it when she hears everything I am saying today.

GP: Josie makes me nervous too. Let's talk about something lighter. Even though you proclaim to not care about fashion, we both know that's not true.

LMD: It's not true at all. I don't care about clothes as a material possession, but I deeply care about fashion. Fashion is a form of art and self-expression and I am glad to lend my body as a canvas. Especially to you, my dude. I can't wait to see your new collection in January. I wear that jacket you made for me almost everyday, including today but then I got self-concious about looking like a fanboy.

GP: Besides my jacket, what are your wardrobe essentials?

LMD: You know, if anyone else asked me this in an interview, this would seem shallow.

GP: But you are shallow and you are constantly texting me to show me what you're wearing or buying.

LMD: Fair play. Okay, so a black ankle boot with a slanted cuban heel. You can't go wrong with Saint Laurent, like ever. But I also picked up a pair from Acne recently. Grandpa sweaters which Gucci never disappoints with though my sister walked Loewe earlier this year and I have been obsessed with their sweaters ever since. Bold suits too which everyone has been doing and I absolutely love it, but no one does it quite like Haider Ackermann. Like I said, having a great jacket does all the work. No one does outerwear like you, Grayson. And Prada. I love their nylon re-issue stuff, but their tailoring is so beautiful too.

GP: My mom was a tailor. Good tailoring can make any piece of clothing looking custom and incredible. And that leads me into the next question. Let's talk about your family. Your grandma is Bonnie McCarthy who is a Broadway legend. Your mom, Shannon McCarthy, has like five Oscars and is beloved by basically everyone. And Patrick DeConnick, your dad, is easily one of this generation's best directors. Oh, and McKenna McCarthy, one of your sisters, has walked every major fashion house and shows no signs of slowing down.

LMD: That's very kind of you to say about my dad.

GP: What's it like growing up with that much talent surrounding you?

LMD: I don't really like talking about my family much which might seem disingenious because they genuinely are the most interesting thing about me and the only reason I even have this career or this life. But I will say this, and I told a friend this recently, my dad is the most brilliant man I know. He's devoted his entire career and life to building this cinematic style that's somehow both very visually stunning and technically competent. He's masterful at telling stories. I can't speak for him or his process, but I see his style of filmmaking as built on the idea of putting the narrative first. I see that even in his earlier work. Even though his more recent work has been varied as far as blockbusters and more personal stories, my dad is committed to a style that allows the audience to see the most important aspect of the story.

GP: What about your mom and grandma?

LMD: Bonnie is a performer. Through and through. Her entire life is a show and we all love her for that. I could never be like that. And I have never not seen my mom in a film that didn't make me sob, even the ones that weren't sad. She's so beautiful and transformative that it feels like I am watching some sort of secret private life that I shouldn't be privvy to. She's a performer too, but in a different way than my grandma. And McKenna isn't a model to me, that's the one I can't wrap my head around. She's just my big sister and my absolute best friend. It's always going to be the two of us and our little sister, Amelia, against the world.

GP: What made you decide to move to Laurel Canyon?

LMD: The short story is because I was obsessed with Neil Young and he lived here in the sixties and seventies. The long story is that when those first two "big" films came out, I was still cultivating and discovering who I was which is really hard to do when there is so much attention on you. I think being able to share parts of who you are when you do this kind of work is imporant, but I didn't want that interest or my success to stunt my growth when I still have still so much of it to do.

GP: I would imagine if you did more interviews, you'd get a lot of questions about your dating life. How does that make you feel and is it a part of why you don't put yourself out in the world anymore than you have to?

LMD: Honestly, it feels awful. And part of me thinks that as long as I have this career, I have to be alone because subjecting someone you care about to this whole world where everyone feels entitled to know everything about you is really awful. I think the only people who would get it or be able to handle it are people who are also in the industry, but I don't want to date someone in the industry. But when I am into someone, I get really swept up and end up breaking all of my own rules. I'm going through that right now and it feels worth it.

GP: You're my friend, we have gotten very vulnerable with each other on numerous occasions. You don't have to answer this question if you don't want to, but what was it like to see photos of yourself [in a tearful fight with ex-girlfriend and gallerist, Charlotte Newton outside a friend's home] during and after what seemed like a very emotional and personal conversation.

LMD: It was humiliating and a little traumatic. My ex and I were together for three years and I was only twenty-one at the time so it felt like the kind of heartbreak you'd never recover from. I don't go to Ray's or Nobu or wherever. I don't court attention. I thought I was safe in that space, in that quiet little suburban neighborhood and hadn't really personally been photographed a lot up until that point. And it was a hard earned lesson to learn that because I chose this career, I will never really have a safe space again. I had a hard time reconciling that even though she hadn't chosen the career I chose, she would have to endure the consequences of it too. That fucked me up for a long time and I said I'd never do that to someone else again. Despite the pain and humiliation, I refused to be embarassed about crying though. I mean, it was just an outward expression of sadness in front of someone I loved who was no longer going to be a part of my life anymore. That's normal, right? It was supposed to only be a moment for us, but I see no shame in vulnerability.

GP: You went to Princeton for three years and studied art history. If you didn't start acting, what would you be doing with your Art History degree? Who are your favorite artists? And outside of film, how do you create?

LMD: Yeah, it was like two and a half years and I'd love to finish one day. I don't think I would have studied art history if it my family wasn't in the arts. I mean, careers in art history aren't exactly the most lucrative so I would probably have studied something more practical. But I would have wanted to be an art conservationist or a curator. I'm a huge fan of Smithsonian Folkways so Led Belly and Woody Guthrie because music is art too. Eugène Delacroix, Telfar Clemens, Archy Marshall, Umberto Boccioni, Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Outside of acting, I don't do much other than write. Mostly letters though, I'm more of a lover of art than an artist myself.

GP: Broad array of mediums and styles, man.

LMD: And Van Gogh who is everyone's favorite artist, right? At Eternity's Gate made me sob. First of all, I want a career like Willem Dafoe or Sam Rockwell or Sterling K. Brown. But yeah, At Eternity's Gate was a beautiful film and Van Gogh was a beautiful man. Oh, you know what else made me sob? The Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who. Like I had to lay down after. "He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world, no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived."

GP: You can quote Doctor Who?

LMD: Just that episode. Because the curator was right. I once read that there was a link between mental illness and creativity. I believe it, I believe that art and madness are joined at the hip and can't be separated. People used to say Van Gogh was crazy. They still do. But was it Van Gogh that was crazy or the world that is crazy?

GP: Probably both.

LMD: I don't know. If I could touch the face of God, I'd give both my ears.