JOAN: So I have some sleep aids I’m glad to share with everybody.

SHEILA: What are they? What are they?

JOAN: OK. I take a magnesium pill before I go to sleep.

SHEILA: How many milligrams?

JOAN: I think it’s 200 … no, it’s 450. I take a little potassium because of the old leg cramps, so you don’t wake up screaming with a charley horse at 4 AM. And I wear an eye mask, because I find that probably your eyelids get thinner or something, or maybe there’s more little points of light circling you. And if you really, really can’t see anything you stay asleep much longer. Me, it’s disgusting. I sleep eight, nine hours.

SHEILA: Theater people tend to be able to sleep late. Well, I don’t sleep. I’m an incredible insomniac.

JOAN: Really?

SHEILA: Yes. Incredible. Supposedly since I was a very little child, I was walking around the house, reading books and putting on the radio and annoying people and hoping people would wake up. I used to try to make noise so my sister would wake up so I’d have someone to talk to.

JOAN: The other version is calling California.

SHEILA: Oh, California’s great. Or Europe.

JOAN: And Europe. Once California’s gone to bed then you call Europe.

SHEILA: I am an insomniac and I use whatever pill comes out of a prescription pad, until it doesn’t work anymore. But I can fight any sleeping pill. I can pretty much stay up. I have a curious sleep disorder. I really do. Although I’m able to get much more done than most other people. I can come in the next day and everybody says, "Are there two of you? How did you do it?” Well, I didn’t go to bed until 2:30 and then I’m sort of up at six o’clock. But I’m really a major insomniac.

JOAN: If I don’t have my eight hours I’m a lame brain.

SHEILA: Well, I may be that. I may very well be lame brain. I’m tired a lot of the time. I pretend not to be, but I’m mostly tired. Judith, I’d like to hear from you. Do you sleep?

JUDITH: Oh, me? Yes, I do. I do. I’m almost embarrassed to say so. If we’re not going out, I go to bed about 10 or 10:30 and I get up about seven.

SHEILA: And you just lie down and go to sleep?

JUDITH: I lie down and go to sleep.

SHEILA: See, you can tell who’s a sleeper and who’s not.

JUDITH: And how can you tell?

SHEILA: People like me who jump out of their skin, essentially, most of their day, and most of their lives, people who are constantly rattling, tend to have sleep disorders. I mean, I can meet a person and know that they’re not a sleeper.  There is a brotherhood or sisterhood, whatever, of sleep disorder people. I tend to be able to spot them. Not through yawning but through a certain kind of hyperventilated energy that kind of goes on all day long. The thing is, I can’t turn off. I don’t have an off switch. I’m amazed by people who can do that. I can’t stop thinking – what I’m working on, what I’m doing, what I have to do the next day. It’s very hard for me. I have to drug myself out of thinking a little.

JOAN: The first thing I realized after I left French Vogue was the joy of waking up in the morning and finding that there weren’t some 38 staff members and 60 contributors and 200 advertisers all screaming at me before I opened my eyes.