Meryl Streep Playfully Says Obama Got His Story About Her a 'Little Bit Wrong' in His New Memoir

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Meryl Streep has a small correction to make in former President Barack Obama's story about her in his new memoir, <em>A Promised Land</em>.

During a virtual chat with Stephen Colbert for Monday's episode of The Late Show, the three-time Oscar-winning actress talked about her new role in Let Them All Talk and her mention in Obama's book.

In it, Obama, 59, writes that during one dinner party at the White House, Streep, 71, "lean[ed] over to softly recite in Mandarin the lyrics to a song about clouds that she'd learned for a part years ago."

"I do remember that moment, but he got the story a little bit wrong. He's a very good writer but his memory is … " she said with a grin, before Colbert, 56, joked, "Let's fact-check the president here. What was the reality — it wasn't for a part?"

"It was a poem," Streep recalled. "I had just gotten back, actually, from this trip to Beijing … I went with Yo-Yo Ma and a bunch of performers and we were to be in the great big Nest stadium with 7,000 people and were going to do a concert, and Yo-Yo and I were going to do a very famous fourth-century Chinese poem that everyone knows."

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But, "at the last moment," a wrench was thrown into the schedule that made her rethink her plans to recite the poem "first in English and then in Chinese," Streep said.

"We heard that the cultural minister was coming, who was an extremely important person … we were all terrified," she told Colbert. "I had learned the poem in Mandarin and, obviously, in English, and Yo-Yo would weave in his music in between; we practiced this."

"But in Chinese, the same word can be translated as a completely different thing," she added, giving an example of a similarly sounding word that could mean "mother," "horse" or "hooker," if pronounced certain ways.

As a result, Streep "chickened out" on reciting the poem in Mandarin. But "because of [Yo-Yo Ma's] artistry, it was a wonderful moment — people loved it," she said. "But yes, I remembered the poem [and] said it to the president."

She went on to recite a line from the poem for Colbert in both English and Mandarin: "'Alone on a misty mountain / I come to a clearing / Sunlight on green moss/ I am not alone.' "

"Since one in five people on the face of the earth are Chinese, they will know now that I have just said something horrible, probably. It's an international incident," Streep joked, laughing.

A Promised Land is available now.

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