A Better World

PEOPLE:

Let’s start with your gift. You’re hyperthymesitic. What does that mean?

FLYNN:

I remember certain trivial details with exceptional clarity. If you give me a date, I can tell you what I wore, what the weather was like, that kind of thing.

PEOPLE:

May 3, 1989.

FLYNN:

One of those days when you know spring has arrived. Blue skies, puffy clouds, the smell of things growing. I wore Spiderman pajamas. [Laughs.] I was five.

PEOPLE:

You’ve always been private about being gifted. Why?

FLYNN:

If I talked about it, that would have been the way I was framed. “Abnorm actor to star in blah, blah, blah.” It’s not that important to me, and I didn’t want it to be that important to anyone else.

PEOPLE:

Then why come out now?

FLYNN:

People are getting so worked up about norms and abnorms. It felt like by not mentioning it, I was part of the problem. I just wanted to say hey, you all thought I was one thing, and now you know I’m something else. And yet nothing’s really changed. So chill.

PEOPLE:

Your gift must make learning lines easier.

FLYNN:

I wish. It’s not a matter of memory. I lose my car keys all the time.

PEOPLE:

Abnorms are hot right now. What do you say to people who suggest you came out as a publicity stunt?

FLYNN:

That’s ridiculous.

PEOPLE:

Why?

FLYNN:

For one thing, it’s about the twentieth thing I think of myself as. I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m an American, I’m an actor, I’m a singer, I’m a Cubs fan, I’m a dog lover. On and on. After all of that stuff, it’s like, oh yeah, I’m also an abnorm.

PEOPLE:

What do you think of the growing conflict between norms and abnorms?

FLYNN:

I hate it. For me being an abnorm is no different than having blue eyes. I get that there are tier ones out there, exceptional people who are changing the paradigm. But there are a lot more folks like me. I mean seriously—I know that it was raining in Denver on June 9th of last year. Because of that, my government wants to implant a microchip in my neck?

PEOPLE:

When you put it that way, the Monitoring Oversight Initiative does seem a little silly.

FLYNN:

The problem is that the media portrays this like there are two factions, norms and abnorms, and we’re all supposed to choose sides. But really, it’s a spectrum. At one end you have President Walker murdering his own people because he’s afraid of what brilliants represent, and he wants the power to contain them. On the other, you have abnorm terrorists saying it shouldn’t be about equal rights, that brilliants should rule the world. The extremists are the problem. Most people just want to live their lives.

PEOPLE:

Speaking of lives, you and your wife, Victoria’s Secret model Amy Schiller, recently had a baby girl—

FLYNN:

Oh God. Not the name question.

PEOPLE:

It’s an unusual name.

FLYNN:

I don’t know what to tell you, man. We want her to be her own person, to not feel like she has to fit the world’s constraints, and we both really like Thai food, so . . .

PEOPLE:

Noodle Flynn.

FLYNN:

Won’t be any others in her kindergarten class.