Scarlett Johansson is priming me on what to order at the Ritz Diner, a 60-year-old institution in her Upper East Side neighborhood.

She’s just walked in wearing bulky circumaural headphones, a plush turquoise turtleneck, and an old Yankees cap, and we’re sitting in a small booth by a window with the blinds closed.

Today may technically still be in the midst of a dreary New York winter, but this buoyant mid-March afternoon—the temperature inching toward 60 degrees, the sun brightly shining—is signaling the beginning of spring.

Before ordering a turkey sandwich on rye, Johansson suggests a change in the season will do us all some good: “It’s such a weird time.”

She smiles the kind of nervous smile my mother gives me when she’s spent too many hours doomscrolling. “For me, there’s a blanket of unease,” she says. “Every day it feels like you’re going to get hit with some news that’s disturbing.”

She asks for a black coffee and a seltzer. I tell her my husband is urging me to disable push alerts on my phone. “No, I get it,” she says. “It’s awful. I’m thinking, Should I just get rid of my whole news feed now?”

We trade a few more stories about general political anxiety before Johansson downloads me on her experience at the Oscars from a week prior.

She presented alongside June Squibb, the 95-year-old star of Johansson’s feature directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, which, it just so happens, includes the Ritz Diner as a key location. They nailed a bit about Squibb actually being the latest disguise of 34-year-old Bill Skarsgård, the hunky shape-shifting star of Nosferatu and It.

“June was so excited, it made me feel excited too,” Johansson says.

Otherwise, she has some beef with the Oscars telecast: “Why was it so long?” I suggest that the elongated tribute to the James Bond franchise might be one possible culprit.

“No comment,” Johansson says, then comments, “It felt like an ad placement. What a weird thing.” She didn’t watch the whole tribute but gauged the reaction at an after-party. “People were like, ‘What the hell was that?’ ”