Transcript of Elizabeth Banks’ Commencement Speech At the University of Pennsylvania

Last night I hit up the Wawa, I walked down Locust, passed the dueling tampons, which I heard they might paint white as if that was somehow less tampon-y. I also took the required photo with Penn’s founder Ben Franklin, went to Houston Hall where back in my day I had to go to check my email because laptops and phones had not been invented yet.

Now I know what you’re all thinking, but Elizabeth, you look so young. Like a person who’s always had email. But no, I communicated through the actual mail. And if I sent a picture, it looks like actual me.

Speaking of people who don’t have email, I invited my parents here today. And the last time the three of us were in this stadium together, I was sitting where you are, very hungover, in my cap and gown, which I wore over a black bikini because it was hella hot.

So I know what you’re all most worried about right now. How do you pronounce Schuylkill? Will I have to explain to strangers that I graduated from not Penn State? And what will I take away from this experience besides good friends and HPV? Well, I’m going to do my best to tell you, and like my career and our economy, this commencement speech will be a little all over the place.

Life Lessons from Penn

But I am a Penn success story, and since I’m also an actress, I’ll just start by talking about me. I was a voracious learner here. I was going to get every penny’s worth of my tuition. I learned some Shakespeare and about bias in journalism, and why marijuana legalization is good public policy. We knew this 30 years ago. That climate change needs our urgent attention, 30 years ago. Professor Robert Giegengack, RIP, was sounding the alarm on climate.

But the most impactful lessons I took away from my time here were not academic per se. They were mostly about adulting. For example, I had a class with a tough professor that met only once a week on Fridays. And because the class was small and met so infrequently, absences were not excused and would result in half a grade deduction. An A became an A-minus and so on. So on for other people, I had an A, obviously.

So I went to the professor right away because my cousin’s wedding was coming up and I had planned to drive down with my family on a Friday. No problem, she said, but you’ll lose your A. But I was expected to go. I couldn’t let down my family, I told her. I promised I’d make up the work. I gave her all the reasons why she should not penalize me, but she stuck to her guns. It’s your choice and that choice has consequences in your life.

I mean, it felt impossible, what she was asking. My GPA versus my family? How could I choose between the two? I basically gave it the same weight as Meryl Streep deciding which kid to turn over to the Nazis. Meanwhile, she was so blasé about the entire interaction because in her mind, she was an adult talking to another adult, which was honestly news to me.

I still felt like a kid and maybe a lot of you do too. But she was telling me, no, you’re an adult, you have agency, which is a really powerful thing to tell a young person. **You are in control of your life and also you’re not entitled to anything** and yeah, that second one, it does kind of suck.

In the end, I went to my cousin’s wedding and I took the hit. I drove to Tennessee with my family, including my grandmother, who sat in the middle seat for seven hours. I had a wonderful time. My Grammy passed away soon after and my cousin, just a few years older than me, she’s gone now too. I have never regretted that choice. I didn’t graduate summa cum laude and that’s never come up, not once.

**The profound lesson I learned through all this was that our values conflict sometimes and it’s making choices in those moments that help you clarify who you are and what you value in this world.** And that’s adulting. It’s not just cleaning your hair out of the drain of a shared shower or sink, which you should absolutely do. It’s the series of decisions you make when your values conflict, GPA or family, creativity or security, loyalty or personal growth, love or money. Your path is guaranteed to be paved with these decisions.

Facing Today’s Challenges

You graduates are entering the world at an incredible time in human history. We are on the exponential curve now, baby. We’re going straight up. On the one side, artificial intelligence, the technological advancements that are coming for every industry, breakthroughs in medicine and gene therapies that will have us living longer and healthier than ever, some of which are being made at this very university.

Meanwhile, on the other side, we have income inequality, climate change and fascism straight up. So your generation must root out and continue to solve the real problem in this world. And let me tell you, it has nothing to do with the color of our skin, the ability of our bodies, the gender on our birth certificates or what religion we practice and everything to do with money.

The real division in this country, in this world, now more than ever, is economic. And to be clear, there’s plenty of money. It’s just concentrated very, very, very far away from the bank accounts of most people. And we can’t solve most problems without access to some of that capital.

Personal Journey

The artist de Kooning said the problem with being poor is that it takes up all your time. I came here as a scholarship kid. First gen, loaded up with Pell Grants, work study, which is actually quite isolating. I never went on a spring break. I never studied abroad. I never had an unpaid internship. I needed all my time to be billable.

I was privileged to look like a rich girl, a city girl, a girl who had ridden in a yellow taxi and should rush Tabard, but no. I had, in fact, never ridden in a yellow taxi and should be a Tridel. I found a rusted ten-speed bike in the basement of a frat house, tuned it up, rode it around for three years and left it unlocked on 40th and Irving the day I graduated. Why was I in the basement of a frat house? You know why.

The point is, I didn’t come to Penn to pursue a career in the arts. I came here to use the best tool for class migration that’s ever existed, higher education. And that was it. It was a low bar. Be employable, hopefully well-paid. When people ask me when I knew I wanted to be an actor, my answer is when I got paid for it. Was I passionate about it? Sure. Did it bring me self-esteem and joy? It did. But I was practical, pragmatic. But during my time here, I began to think differently. I was in control of my life. And I was working hard to build the confidence, the life skills, the connections and the grit to believe success at anything I devoted myself to was possible.

Now some of you know this already, but for those who don’t, today represents an amazing achievement for sure. But what you’re all getting today is not just a diploma, but a safety net. And I don’t just mean the Ivy League degree. Nobody here, not a single one of you, got to this ceremony alone, me included. Somebody encouraged you, loved you, bandaged your skin, fed you, taught you. All of that support, that’s your safety net too. And your job from here on out is to pursue anything and everything that scares you with absolute vigor because you have that safety net.

Here’s what I did with mine. When I got accepted to drama school to pursue an acting career, the most impractical dream there is, despite a prohibitive cost, I went. And after drama school, when I went to New York City and got offered a two-year contract on a soap opera that would have paid all my student loans and then some, I said, you know, if I can get that today, I’d like to see what I can get tomorrow. Because money was suddenly a value I didn’t always have to choose. I could invest in myself.

But full disclosure, after turning down all that money, I did call my mom from a payphone and cried hysterically. And for the young people, a payphone is a public phone that’s mounted to a wall or a box sometimes that you put coins in to make a call. And also, coins are small, round, metal pieces of money.

So many of you are rightfully excited about what’s next and worried about what you don’t have yet. So let this just be a reminder to appreciate what you’ve already got. You have nothing to lose. You have loads of time, I promise. Use that freedom. Because your life, it’s not going to be determined by your first job or your second, especially because those first jobs, they usually stink. Or they’re in a city that you don’t like, surrounded by people you don’t connect with.

I went to grad school in San Francisco right after Philly and immediately knew I wouldn’t be settling there. Naked people on bicycles is too much, even for me. You will need to keep expanding the idea of who you are and what you can be.

There Is No Pie

And let me reassure you, there is no pie. You all left incredibly competitive high schools to enter this incredibly competitive university or graduate program. And you’re about to enter the incredibly competitive job market. So I can understand why you believe that life is a zero-sum game, that there’s only so much opportunity to go around. If one person takes a bigger slice, everyone else has to take a smaller slice and the total size of the pie remains the same. And that is true with actual pie. But not with life. Not with opportunity.

So my advice to you is as much as possible from here on out, take yourself out of that mindset. Nobody knows about competition better than an actor. At any given time, 98% of professional actors are unemployed, like federal workers. When I didn’t get my slices of pie, and there were lots I didn’t get, I baked my own. In fact, I made cupcakes, cookies, brownies, too. Is this a confusing metaphor? Yeah, kind of. It maybe sounds like I was baking all the time, but also couldn’t afford the ingredients.

So what I mean is this. I used my agency to create my own opportunities. Rather than wait for those great acting gigs, I started producing, writing, directing, hosting a game show, becoming an investor, an entrepreneur, podcasting. Was this all in response to overwhelming disappointment? Yes! Failure is a great motivator. And what’s better? All of that made pie for other people, too. I created jobs and opportunities for others by selling ideas for TV and movies, like the Pitch Perfect films, inspired by my time, right here. You can ask Penn Masala, who sang in Pitch Perfect 2.

The truth is that if the pie was real, there’d never be any progress. People who didn’t get their slice would do what? Accept it? Many do, and their lives stay small. Blame someone else? Ooh, that’s petty. And it breeds resentment that only serves, well, no one.

You’re really only ever competing with yourself, with the limitations you’re willing to accept, with the smallness of someone else’s idea of what you’re capable of. So stop competing and start beating the pie lie.

If Jackie Robinson believed there was only so much baseball to go around, we wouldn’t have the MLB we have today. If Billie Jean King and Lily Ledbetter had just accepted it when they were told to be happy with what they got, the notion of equal pay for equal work would not be a phrase recognized by every person in this stadium, which reminds me, there’s still a lot of work to do. We need bright, conscientious, positive people with expansive minds to do it, and you, you are them.

Embracing Failure

And I am so excited to see you fail. That’s right, you will fail to get exactly what you want at some point, and that is your best opportunity to clarify what it is you really want and pivot if you have to. You’ve got the safety net to do it.

No, no, but I need this thing, you’ll say. But in that single-minded pursuit, you will risk ignoring all the other opportunities waving at you from the periphery. So at every perceived failure, look inward and ask yourself, what are you really after? Is it money, admiration, flexibility, credibility? Get real with yourself and figure out how to get it some other way. Your way, your path. Create, collaborate, build, join.

In my industry, we like to say, rejection is protection. In time, I always came to see why I didn’t get the part. I’m not Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods, but I am the Hunger Games’ Effie Trinket. And here’s the thing about Effie. Effie was protected by a system she propped up, promoted, and collaborated with until she was overcome by empathy for Katniss and Peeta, who were unfairly treated by that same system, and she ended up in a bunker helping the revolutionaries.

But that last part wasn’t in the books. It’s in the films because of what I brought to Effie. An emotional arc, a dash of empathy, a crush on Haymitch, and I wore the hell out of those costumes. In short, I didn’t accept anybody else’s idea of what I could do with that part, not even the author who created her. Thank you, Suzanne.

I took my opportunity, my little slice of pie, and I did more with a limited role, which rewarded me not only with a better part, but six years of guaranteed work that meant I could afford to start my family and pursue a directing career. In short, I built myself another safety net, so be on the lookout for them and use them wisely.

Progress and Partnership

Benjamin Franklin himself did not dream this big when he founded this place. He laid out some ideals, and each successive generation has improved upon them. Penn is a place of progress. I am that progress. A working-class girl whose parents didn’t go to college, who waitressed for a decade, who persistently built her success with hard work, guts, a cup of ambition, and whatever else Dolly Parton sings about. And if you don’t get that reference, young people, please watch 9 to 5, as it’s hilarious, but sadly all too relevant today.

Class of 2025, you are that progress now. Harvard has her crimson, and Yale her colors, too. But dear old Pennsylvania has her red and blue, and every other color, too. And we are better for it. And it is the future. Because the problems of this world, that exponential curve, it will take all of us, everyone, to solve them. So we need to spread the wealth. We need to invite more people to the solutions party, not less.

All right, I’ve got two more quick things and then we’re all going to go day drink. I found the love of my life at this place, on 40th and Spruce, on a steamy evening in 1992. I’ve compared every potential partner to him since, and well, he just keeps winning. He is my true safety net. And that’s my relationship advice. Find the person who gives you the confidence to do it all scared. Tie those nets together.

Because co-creating your dream life, parenting kids, that’s unfathomable with anybody who isn’t going to catch you when you inevitably fall. Everything’s great when everything’s great. But when everything’s shit, you deserve a partner holding you up, not keeping you down.

And finally, you’re going to make mistakes, and you deserve to learn from them. They

Congratulations, Quakers, class of 2025. Thank you, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

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