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Actor and musician Rita Wilson talks about what she learned from her parents

VPM | By Rachel Martin

Published May 15, 2026 at 9:18 PM EDT

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Rita Wilson had a successful career as an actor in Hollywood. But a few years ago, she got tired of being typecast in the same nurturing mom-type roles. So in her mid-50s, Wilson made the pivot to music. Her new album, “Sound Of A Woman,” is out now, and she says it’s about the many dimensions of being female.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

RITA WILSON: What is it like when you’re younger, when you have your life ahead of you, when you’re a little girl? What’s it like when you get married? What’s it like when you have a baby? What’s it like when you find your voice or you’re struggling to find your voice, and you’ve made compromises, and you get sort of lost along the way, and then you find yourself again?

PFEIFFER: Wilson spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin about her family’s courage.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

RACHEL MARTIN: What’s something your parents taught you to love?

WILSON: I’d say family. And that was a beautiful thing, but it was also this other interesting thing because I think they felt safer in their own familial group. My dad was born in Greece, raised in Bulgaria. He tried to escape Bulgaria so many times that he was caught and put into a labor camp. While he was in that labor camp, he was – it was a coal mine, and he was observing what the patterns were of this place. And he realized that if he worked at night, that’s when the trains would come in. And they would collect the coal, and they would take it away. So he bribed one of the guards with cigarettes, and he said, I would love to work the night shift.

While he was on the night shift one night, he said to one of the guards, do you mind if I go down and get some more firewood ’cause our fire’s going out? And the guard said, OK. And he said, can I take my friend – we’ll call him Richard – with me because it’ll make it quicker? So they said, OK. So Richard and my dad went down there. And the way the trains were set up, they blocked where the firewood was. So they were able to go down, pass in between the trains…

MARTIN: Oh, they got out (ph).

WILSON: …And hightail it out of there, and there was a river. So it was probably around 20 minutes or so before they heard all the dogs barking and the alarms and sirens going.

MARTIN: Oh, my God.

WILSON: And they both made it to New York, jumped ship, and that’s how he met my mom (ph).

MARTIN: Oh, my God, Rita.

WILSON: No, it’s crazy. These stories are – these are the most courageous people on the planet (laughter).

MARTIN: I mean, when you’re growing up with that kind of lore, do you just not complain about anything? You know, if you’re like…

WILSON: Rachel, I’m not kidding you. I mean…

MARTIN: …I’m having a bad day. I didn’t make the cheerleading team, and your mom’s like…

WILSON: That was the thing. They never talked about it. But I knew it. I knew it.

MARTIN: Yeah.

WILSON: I think about that a lot because their courage was, I mean, pretty extraordinary.

MARTIN: Yeah.

WILSON: So, you know, when it came to doing music for me, and I was like, I’m terrified. This is so scary. I was like, yeah, but…

MARTIN: Man, is it (laughter)?

WILSON: …Is it really?

(LAUGHTER)

PFEIFFER: You can watch the full conversation with Rita Wilson on YouTube by searching for NPR Wild Card. Her new album, “Sound Of A Woman,” is out now.

(SOUNDBITE OF AYANNA SONG, “GIRLFRIEND”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Rachel Martin

Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

See stories by Rachel Martin