Transcript of Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepherd joined by Lily Padman. Hi.

Per your request, you spearheaded this, and I'm so grateful you did. Yeah. She was so delightful.

Allison Jones.

Allison Jones, she comes up a bunch over the years. She's helped numerous people in their careers.

She's a casting extraordinaire.

Yep. She's an award winning casting director. Just, you know, a few of her impossibly long resume, Barbie, Veep, The Office, Freaks and Geeks, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Rec.

She does all Mike stuff.

Basically, any impossibly great comedic ensemble where you're like, where did they find all these geniuses? It's almost always gonna be Allison Jones.

It's it's her track record is so insane.

Yeah.

And it goes so far back. I didn't realize that. It was fun to learn about, like, the The girls. Yes.

Yeah. Really, really cool. And then just a sweetheart.

Love her.

So please enjoy Allison Jones.

I'm Colin Murray.

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Many, many people that you would think wouldn't be nervous Are. Bill Lawrence, who was just here, he's on a million and a half interviews. Very gregarious guy. Yes. You would not think he would be nervous?

No. I would not. And I'm working with him now.

Oh. Are you?

First time I met him.

For Bad Monkey?

No. For New Steve Carell Show. Oh, okay.

Look at you already. I'm already in. It's already tasty.

Okay. Well, I don't want you to be nervous.

This 1 was I did not.

I did.

Said I was feisty?

Uh-huh. Yeah. I had the original eye for Monica. I was the casting director for Monica.

You were? Yes. Okay. But you first worked for Kristen, or does Zex find you for that?

Well, no. Sorry. I first worked for them as a nanny. So I'm sure both of them originally

liked it. Know that a while ago.

And she was in our friendship group, but kind of a newer member.

Periphery.

Yeah. And I said, that gal's really smart. Like, she's a very Yeah. Smart, interesting person. Every time I talk to her, we argue, and she's a worthy adversary.

Then she started babysitting, and then full time nanny, then started working with Kristen, then became Kristen's writer, producer, everything.

It was before Good Place. Before?

No. Because House before

House of Lies as House of Lies was ending, kind of, is when I started taking on more stuff.

Suffice to say, Kristen was entirely dependent on Monica to a degree you can't imagine.

Oops.

And then we started this, and then it was accidentally very successful. And then I had to say, I'm gonna have to steal her full time, and she, of course, was generous.

But to be like an on mic person, an on camera person I asked him if the audio could be broken today, but the fact that you film this is scary. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

The camera stuff is new for all of us actually here, but you forget.

Yeah. The first 2 episodes, we were a little Bill was 1 of the early ones. He might have even been the 1 that kinda broke it where I was like, okay. This I'm comfortable here. I like this.

I can pretend this is my living room. But, Allison, this is a great first question. So you have spent the last I don't know how many years since 82. Starting? Oh, yeah.

We're always Wait.

We call

it ABR.

Always keep recording. Let me get this coffee. Okay. Oh, god. Okay.

Okay. This is wonderful. Sweet. You spent from 82 to 2,024, so that's 42 years of watching humans walk into a room with a ton of anxiety. Maybe the peak anxiety they'll have 83.

Thank you. 83?

Okay. Okay.

1 less year than that.

Wasn't Family Ties 82?

But I came in season 2.

That makes sense. 41 years

Yeah.

Of watching people come in nervous. And I guess maybe the layperson would assume that would inoculate you to nervousness, like, you would somehow no.

The higher up the food chain you go in terms of auditioning, I get as nervous as the actor does. And when it's, like, a final audition, you'll hear my voice quiver like you hear it quivering now. Oh, really? Oh, gosh.

Just because you care,

obviously, probably, and I wanna get the job done too, and I want them to do a good job.

Yeah. What percentage of that nervousness for you when you've gotten to that last layer of the audition process Yeah. Is you rooting for someone that you are championing versus I really want the people that employed me to be very happy with where we've gotten?

That's a good question. I would say that we always wanna do a good job, but also I really want the people I'm bringing in to do a good job and that we pick the right person. Yes. My biggest fear is we don't pick the right person. That's a common casting director fear was that they're gonna pick the boner in the group or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a million questions about exactly that coming later, but I wanna start in Massachusetts. I have a hard time saying it, but you grew up in a Boston suburb?

I did. Needham, Massachusetts.

And what did mom and dad do?

Mom was a housewife, which is what women were want to do back then, and my father was an insurance executive. Very nice childhood, kind of predictable.

A Norman Rockwell painting? Not that

Not cool. Would go that

far. That's not real for any

No.

That would have been a few of the neighboring towns like Wellesley, but a lovely town, and my best friends are still my high school friends.

And do you have siblings? Oh, no. I know this. You're the second youngest of 6.

I am. I have 5 siblings. Boys, girls. 3 boys, 3 girls.

How wonderful of your mother to nail it like that, the ratio.

She would let us know that.

Was it every other 1?

No. 2 boys, 2 girls, me, and then my younger brother.

Was it just chaos in a very fun way?

You're such an optimist. Yes. It was chaos. In a fun way, mostly, yes. But when I was growing up in the sixties seventies, Boston, Mass was filled with huge families, Irish Catholic families, Italian families.

Yes. 6 was very common. Oh, wow. Yeah. What about you guys?

Can I ask you that?

I'm 1 of 3. You're allowed to ask as many questions, isn't it?

Monica. 2. Me and my brother. He's 8 years younger than me though.

So They both have

kind of barely. Child syndrome. Yeah. Exactly.

2 would have been controversial where I grew up. It was, like, 2. What happened?

She must have some kind of,

issue.

What's going on?

And it definitely

would have been her.

Yeah. Of course. A mom

and her year old

Definitely has some stuff.

Very potent.

Most of my friends from high school came from very large families, and we would have synchronized brothers and sister ages. My younger brother was best friends with my best friend's younger brother. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

We can still talk about antics and all that kind of stuff back from the What about Early days.

Dating older siblings' friends. Was that ever an issue that popped up?

I would have been terrified. Okay.

Need to hear.

I can't say. I may have wanted to. Yeah. Sure. But the more interesting thing was my 2 older brothers possibly going after the same Oh, yeah.

White high school cheerleader.

Were they Irish twins?

They were, in fact. And my younger brother and I, very close in age, 13 months.

Okay. What's the age gap between the oldest and the youngest?

The oldest and the youngest would be about 11 years, I think. My mother had 3 kids, took a little break, and then another 3 years.

You took,

like, a season maybe.

I might. It's so a hiatus. Yeah.

Did you have fantasies about show business as a kid? Or how did this all come to be? How did you end up at Pomona College?

Well, I applied to a lot of fancy colleges and didn't get in. I wanted to go to school in California because I would watch shows like The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game and Gidget, which was like, oh my god. That girl gets to surf after school. I can't believe it. So in the sixties seventies, everything was happening in California.

Right. It was like big

surf culture. Killing. Yes. Free love. Everything was happening in California.

Right. So I was like, I gotta go.

That's where it's happening.

And, also, in those days, you didn't do the regimented thing of visiting colleges and spending a fortune on SATs and on applications. I just said, I gotta go to California. It's super cool out there. So my parents wouldn't let me.

Okay.

So I went to University of New Hampshire for a year and then transferred to Pomona College. Somehow, they magically let me go. But I think back on it, it could have been it probably fit their budget better to wait a year, and then I could go to California. But I had never been to California at all.

You just had seen it on TV? Exactly. Did you love TV?

God. Yes.

I didn't have access to it unless I was at my dad's every other weekend or whatever once a month. Because we lived kinda out in the sticks. We didn't have a good antenna. I had to go to a friend's house if I wanted to watch Dukes of Hazard. But when I was at my dad's, my brother and I, all we did from the second we got up until 3 in the morning.

And where was that? Detroit. Oh, Detroit. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. In Atlanta. Yeah.

The suburbs. I was the early TV generation. Yeah. For sure.

For me, TV, I was obsessed. And now when it's, like, screen time, that was not a thing. My parents were like, you can watch as much TV

Oh, no. We were flopped in front of the new color TV, we would have called it. Oh, no. We were TV kids. What else you gonna do with

6 Yeah. Exactly.

Ungrateful children and no nannies. In those days, nannies know. Unless you're a Kennedy or something, but no nannies.

TV shows were the babysitters. But for me, it was such a fantasy

Yeah.

World. Like, I could go in and I could pretend I was in Full House and the whole thing. Did you have that with TV? Like, you were using it as an escape or not really?

It was so new.

I don't know. I just loved it. Movies were not cinema the way it is now either. My parents would bring us to movies. My father brought us to every Peter Sellers movie and Walter Matthau Jack Lemmon movie that came out, to whom I owe my appreciation of that kind of humor.

But I don't know. I never broke it down, but I would say, yes, definitely and probably still the reason. And, also, I love you know, we would beg to stay up to see Johnny Carson's monolog. We'd begin the monolog. Can we see the monolog?

Okay. So when you get to Pomona, is this true that at Pomona, you find kind of a comedy geek culture?

They weren't self aware of being a comedy geek culture. There probably is now. That sort of didn't exist at all. They just happen to be the pure, unadulterated, brilliant science major, premed major, law major geeks who loved Monty Python and who loved Fire Sign Theater. And it was like, what are they talking about?

But those are the first people I met that I was really tuned into that comedy. They were beautiful, smart, probably at the time, highly unpopular geeks. Now they've come to the fore.

Now they run

the world.

Now they run the world.

Yeah. Remember revenge of the nerds was like this 1st 1. Monstrous scenario where the nerds would defeat the jocks and now the world is

And even then, that was like, oh, it was preposterous, but you got to see, you know, Jamie Cromwell laughing. Yes. Like, you know, and Anthony Edwards. That was the first turning point of making Geeks in the title of anything.

Yeah. So you had a visual arts major there. And what was your goal with that?

Didn't really have 1. I just liked it. After Pomona, I worked night shift at a newspaper in Glendora for a year.

You're inching your way towards LA.

Inching my way. Yeah.

For people that know, Pomona's, like, 60 miles out, and Glendora is, like, 35 miles out.

And then I went to UCLA Business School mostly because my father was a businessman, and I thought, I think I can get a good salary after

I go

to business school. I truly was clueless. In those days, we did not put the pressure on ourselves that these poor kids do

now. Right.

I don't have a goal now. I mean, I certainly didn't have a goal then.

Yeah. So you leave there. How on earth do you end up at Family Ties as a casting director?

I have a very good friend named Lydia Woodward from business school. A little core of us were just so not meant to be in the business world. Yeah. I think we're all there for the same reason, just to get a job.

Buy some time and get

a job. Buy some

time and get a job. Yeah. I was living in California at the time, and I think I only paid 7.50 a trimester to go to UCLA Business School as Wow. A resident. What a bargain.

I got my MBA for 2 years for, like, $3. Wow. That's incredible. I think that's true.

Because even when I graduated in 2000, all in was $38100 a year.

It was amazing. Anyway, so I get out of business school and a friend of mine, Lydia, was going right into film school at AFI as a producing fellow is what we called it then, and I was working in advertising in New York City at the time. My year right after business school, I went to work on Madison Avenue in New York City for an agency called Doilden Bernbach, which was mentioned in Mad Men quite a bit. That's why I love Mad Men so much. I was the tail end of when Mad Men would have ended, or maybe a few years ago.

Still smoking and drinking all day long?

And they had so much makeup and high heels. It was my first time ever spending much time in New York City. I was not cut out for advertising either. But my friend said, Allison, you should come to AFI. It is up your alley.

You can get a loan for a low rate. So I did in the producing section. Again, no goals. Just said, no. That'd be fun.

I think I'll do it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You're just following the next thing in front

of you. And so I went to AFI. Loved it. I've never met people like that before in my life. You're ending up with, oh, that person's uncle is somebody famous and that per anyway.

Yeah.

In the student films, I enjoyed the casting part of it. And, again, the same friend, Lydia, said, I think you can get a job in casting. I was like, no way. That's a real job.

Your friend is like your guidance counselor.

She is my guidance counselor. She's a great friend. She's a very successful writer producer. But, yeah, we hit it off because we both flunked 1 of our tests together, and we were singled out. It's a bonding.

Yeah.

Yeah. It

was a total bonding thing.

Yeah. It's like friendships forged in war. Yeah. Totally. Do you remember what about the casting process interested you?

I just dug it. We were casting a student film. In those days, AFI had sort of a little sag connection, but not really. We're talking 1982 or 81. You really had to pester people to get anything done in those days.

There was no email. As you know, it was just calling people up and getting hung up on, that kind of thing. But every time I watch a TV show, like, I would see somebody on Marcus Welby MD, and then I'd see her in her experiment gum commercial. It's like, oh, she's doing a commercial. How does that work?

I didn't know what casting was as a kid. Nothing.

That's why I think this episode will be so fascinating because you just are presented with this show. You're very far removed from Hollywood. In the best case scenario, you're just buying into the notion these are real kids in high school in Beverly Hills, 90210. You're not even considering, oh, that's an actor

and No. No.

No. No.

Get the notion that there's a whole rung of this industry that's in charge of scouting, finding, and getting those people in.

Hugely important, especially for the talent. You don't really realize that until you come here, and you're like, oh, wow. Casting directors and casting is a huge component of this. Mhmm.

The first big gate. Yeah. That's being cast.

For you you guys appreciate that, but not many other people. Yeah. Right.

Right.

Or even know it. I don't know. Yeah. But, anyway, I thought the casting process was really cool and creative and required a certain level of discernment and taste and realizing, wow, 1 actor can completely change a student film versus another actor. I went to Larry Edmonds or something and got a little catalog of casting directors and producers, and I started typing my letters to casting directors.

And I think I sent out, like, you had to put a stamp on the envelope? No, not. And then I think I got 2 answers, and 1 woman hired me, Judith Weiner.

She was the casting director for Family Ties?

Yes, she was. And that was at Sunset Gower, and I remember walking in on the Gower entrance on Sunset Gower and looking to my left, and there was a Hollywood sign. So it was like, wow. This is cool. Yeah.

Again, goalless, but just like, this is bitching.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

A word I never heard till I moved to California.

Made very popular in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yes. Exactly. Okay. So you start working on that show, and I imagine you're doing a lot of the work that's not picking.

The first thing you do as a casting assistant, back then, it was answering the phones. And my first office job was with Judith, and we shared an office with the late Tim Flack, who was the casting director, and they were doing the pilot of The Cosby Show.

Wow.

And we were working on a show called Benson, all at Sunset Gower, which was an amazing old historic studio to work at because even today, it looks the same as it did probably in 1925. Literally, inside, if you've ever shot anything at Sunset Gower, looks like you're in the 19 twenties. The old school payroll windows and stuff, that's really, really cool, and they shot some magnificent old movies there, including The 3 Stooges, which was my big comedy influence growing up as a kid with a bunch of brothers. We hit each other all the time, and it was all because the Yeah. Yeah.

Because we were joking and not joking. Yeah.

I think it led to a lot of trips to the emergency room

that show. Yeah.

I know

my brother and I would try that, like, because we go like this and the defense was this. Yeah. But I was 5 years younger, so seniors were longer than this.

So Yeah. But that was what we worshiped.

And people are calling, I'm sure, and they're pitching people.

Those days, I was learning how to put people on hold and say, hold, please, and get back to someone. And my boss would say, don't keep anybody on hold for more than 2 seconds. So I'd be going back

and forth. Hold, please.

Hold, please. Hold, please. It was like, oh my god. There's a big agent on the phone. What do I say to a big agent?

So it was a lot of answering phones. It was nowhere near as hectic as it is now.

Oh, it's gotten more hectic?

Much more hectic. Oh. You have tenfold more agents, managers, representatives calling you all the time. So much so that you can't get your job done. So we've had to pretty much switch to email and texting.

Right. But back then, in the early eighties, we were working on a show called Benson. Tim was doing the pilot for The Cosby Show, and we were doing a show called Condo and a pilot. So there was a lot of casting sessions to set up. And in those days, you had call the agent, talk to the agent's assistant, give the time, the place, leave the sides at the Gower gate for the actors to come pick up.

In the days, there was no fax.

Sides are the lines for people who don't know. So that's these

are the lines

for the audition.

I assume they called sides because it's 2 sides of a playbill or something. I never figured that out either.

We'll find out for the fact check.

I think it has to do with 1 side, 2 sides of something. Interesting.

Now this huge explosion in the amount of managers and agents and whatnot, is it proportional to because when you were on Benson, you're casting the Cosby show, there's only 3 networks. The 3 networks only have 5 days of airing and 4 shows. So you're talking 20, maybe 60 shows are on television, and now we're at, I don't know, 100 of shows. Do you think it's proportional, or has something else happened?

That happened way before we came into streaming.

Okay.

I mean, managers started getting busy on us about 25 years ago. I think actors, for some reason, they decided they needed an attorney, they needed a manager, they needed an agent as well. And so I remember sometime in the nineties when suddenly the breakdowns, which is a service that sends to agents the parts that we're casting, and then they submit headshots.

I need an 18 to 20 4 year old Yes. Exactly. Female.

And that is how they disseminated the casting calls, basically, for every new project that came along, it was breakdown. There's kind of a monopoly on that 1 company. Suddenly, for some reason, I I remember the first manager I ever heard of was Keith Addis who represented Sting. He never would bother any of us, but it was like, oh, what does a manager do? Yeah.

Anyway, so then for some reason, there was just like an onslaught of managers who started to call us. You'd have an agent calling about the same client that a manager would call about.

What are they saying? Like, hey, you should really think about my client, and you're like, yes or no, and then they call back and say, actually, you really should

all the time, and then the manager would call and say, this is the person Okay.

So when you were at Family Ties, I'm gonna ask you some juicy questions. Like, famously, Leonardo DiCaprio was on Family Ties. Right?

No. He was on Growing pain.

Growing pain.

Like, fuck that up.

That's sad. You wanted to ask about an early Leonardo DiCaprio Yeah.

I wanna know.

What young River Phoenix was.

He was on Family Time? Okay. Maybe that's who I'm thinking now.

Tom Hanks.

Oh, and Tom Hanks.

And Tom Hanks.

Yep. And you already had Michael g Fox.

And this was all my boss, Judith Weiner, and her associate at the time, Donald Deline, who's now a big producer. My favorite person in show business. Yeah.

He produced Without a Paddle.

Oh, he did.

Right? Gentleman.

He's hilarious and was just as funny then.

Wait. The line did the pilot of Family Time?

He was the associate at the time. Really? I think he was the 1 who probably turned Judith onto Justine Bateman as being a good 1 in the group. Because sometimes associates would preread the people, which doesn't so much exist anymore. Now you'd call it self tape is a preread.

Yeah. I got a question about that.

Anyway, many, many young people came through the Family Ties coffers. Joseph Gordon Levitt, I think as a 7 year old played a bully with that.

Do you

guys even know Family Ties? Yes. Yeah.

I grew up watching Family Ties.

You didn't. And I did. ISM. I don't think you can get it anywhere now. And it's a show that would catch on because of the conservative liberal thing.

Yeah. It would. Right? Because Alex v Keaton was a conservative, then the dad was liberal. Whole family was liberal.

It was great.

And it was

Gary David Goldberg's family story, basically. He was liberal and a hippie, and his kids were conservative. Ah. I believe so.

Oh, that is very interesting. Yeah. No. That was 82 to 87. No.

89. So Yes. I was 7 till 12.

So you loved Alex p Keaton?

I like Justine Bateman. I like Alex p Keaton, then he was in Beckley's Future. Who was Skip Mark Price. Yes.

He's literally the definition of the goofy friend next door.

Few years later, you're on Golden Girls.

Yes. With Judith, we did the pilot.

You would be privy to 1 of the great kind of funny debates now that happens with The Golden Girls. A, The Golden Girls is this enormous thing. Right? Like, it's had all these different lives, which is great. And I watched it as a kid.

But, again, I was 7 to 12. They look like grandmas to me. Now that I'm 50 or closing in on it, everyone points out some of the cast members were in their forties or fifties.

Estelle definitely made herself look like an old granny.

So what was the conversation behind closed doors about what age you were gonna cast as these grandmothers?

It was not even discussed. The women that were considered were all probably in those days considered elderly, and they were in their fifties.

It's the reality of the times. It's not like anyone was

No. It's the reality of the time. Yeah. You still see that from time to time though. But then it was not even a question.

There was just people in their fifties were gonna be the elderly people. But Estelle came in to audition for something on Family Ties. I keep everything in my storage units and I went back to see the way we got to Estelle, and she had auditioned for something on Family Ties. I saw the producer session, which I typed on the selected typewriter and then you make copies of it, then you pass it out. She had come in for a part that she did not get, but then about a week later, Judith brought her in for Golden Girls just to preread her.

We didn't tape or anything. We had to bring them back in person for all the producers, Tony Thomas and Paul Witt. Susan Harris didn't come to the sessions.

Sam Harris' mother.

That's right.

Wait a minute. Oh, Sam. I'm sorry. What does he say?

Harris has an enormous

comic who's not that Sam Harris.

Yeah. Right. He became a neurologist. He has a huge podcast, but he has also famously on Bill Maher all the time arguing. He got into hot water arguing Ben Affleck about Islam.

He is a very outspoken, provocative intellectual. Wow. Yeah. Most people go the other way, by the way. Most people know Sam, and I'll say his mother invented Golden Girls.

Sam. I think the reason she got into writing was because she had to support Sam.

Yeah. Single mother. Yeah.

She Said I can do that stuff, and she wrote a spec script for 1 of the shows at the time, and then she just got huge. She created soap, and she's very, very important person, not just female, very important person

Yeah.

In comedy. A Titan. Yeah. And that kind

of show. And she

and Paul Witt made the greatest comedies in the eighties nineties, and they had the 3rd floor on Sunset Gower.

So by the time we get to 1990, I guess I'm wondering. So you already pointed out something that happens, which is fascinating. You come in for 1 thing. You're not right for it, and that's its own thing that Yes. Actors need to understand.

All the time. It's almost the rule, not the exception. It took me,

almost the rule, not the exception.

It took me directing things and casting people to really fundamentally understand what's going on in the room. I wish I would have started directing because it would have taken so much of the pressure off of auditioning, which is, like, you're kinda right or you're wrong. You have some range of talent,

but Exactly.

What can happen, which is encouraging, is you as a casting director will go, like, well, they're terrible for this role, but they're good. I wanna keep a mental note of that.

We're keeping that in our heads.

If you start in 83, and by the time we get to Fresh Prince, you had 7 years of kind of accumulating people that you've liked.

Seeing every movie and every TV show and memorizing every actor. Anytime I go to a movie, this was before Internet movie database, I have a ton of little notebooks. I stay at the end, and I write down all the cast. I noted, like, Roseanne Barr. Her first bit was on Johnny Carson, and I wrote Roseanne Carr, and then I wrote riding vacuum cleaner.

That was

very bad.

I remember her her bit was riding vacuum. And then I ended up seeing her at the Comedy Store. Anyway, everything was handwritten those days, so I had tons of writing down everybody. Ellen does something. I didn't think I could spell her name, but I wrote it down.

DeGeneres? Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Oh, this is so funny.

Yeah. So I have all kinds of little notebooks.

And you don't have a computer, so it's not like you can put all this in a spreadsheet No. And and break it into categories and stuff. So anytime you have a new project on your hands and you've got 13 roles to cast, how do you keep track of this huge handwritten stack of paper?

I would say that most of the folks I started out with, Sally Steiner and Meg Lieberman and Donald who started in casting, we just had scraps of paper everywhere. Okay. Later, I would get time out in New York when that started, and I would rip things out about the comedy people that they would talk about. That's how I remembered people like Rory Scoville and Ben Schwartz. I still have their little things ripped out of them.

What? Time Out New York.

Some of these things, like, I think should be in the Smithsonian.

Oh, god. Yeah. I don't know. They're all

Smithsonian has a whole TV thing to it.

Yeah. They have Archie Bunker's chair.

Oh, right. Then they definitely do.

But it was all scrap paper. Our walls were covered with little thumbtacks with somebody's names. Names.

Yeah. Every time you're watching something, you're on the lookout for someone that's talented. Does that ruin scene stuff? Are you too preoccupied?

No. It doesn't ruin it for me because I still love it. But at those days, you had to stay sometimes, I'd have to see a movie twice because you can't go to IMDB, and I'd have to look at this.

And it's going fast.

Yes. And it's going fast, and that

was my primary. Be on yet?

Yes. Exactly. So I would have to go sometimes twice. And there's many people who I would bring in the next week, and they got a part.

Wow. Wow. Okay. So that's 1 approach is you're paying attention to who's and what. Are you also going to comedy clubs?

No. All the time. That was then you had to do it on your feet. You had to go into the Comedy Store. When I was working for Judith, she let me do some sort of new, which never really aired, late night comedy show that NBC wanted to put on adjacent or after SNL at the time.

Talking 19 eighties. That was my first flat out comedy thing. I had to learn comics like I learned my multiplication tables in the sixties. Wow. Yeah.

I went to the Comedy Store and improv every

Yeah. I

went to the comedy store and improv every single night for weeks. I'd park up above the comedy store. I never went to the main room because those were the acts that everybody knew, Robin Williams. But I would go to the back room and sit there from, like, 8 o'clock to 2 in the morning, and I would see always, like, a 19 year old, 20 year old Jim Carrey. It was the same lineup half the time I went there.

It was, like, Jim Carrey, and then it was Jeff Altman, Damon Wayans, who was very young at the time as

I recall.

I just sat in the back. I had to have a 2 drink minimum, no comps back then, and I was just a casting assistant. So I would sit there and I would sit until the end, and usually, I think it was Sunday night. I forget when Sam Kinison would come on at 2 in the morning and be screaming.

Yeah.

And then I would leave and go home and do it the next night. I just made a point to do it solid for, like, 2 or 3 weeks so I could learn comics. You had to do the legwork then, and I have very fond memories of that kind of stuff.

Okay. Because so that's positive because for every gym carrier, you're also wading through 2 or 3 that are pretty rough, and people are bombing. Some people are thinking, like, oh, I'd go to a comedy show every night.

No. Yeah. They're too rough. And that was at the days preceding you, maybe not, where the goal of a comic was to get a deal at a network. Right.

First of all, to get a spot on Johnny Carson

Yep. And get

called to sit on the couch. Second of all, I remember we would also go back and sort of go to the ladies room, and then the comics were always out back in the hallway smoking and talking about their sets. And Yeah. God bless the comics, but they're insecure. And these are now the biggest comics in the world.

They're pretty mean too.

The Marc Maron and the biggest stand ups in world were all back there at the age of 21. Yes. Yeah. Gossipy and mean.

Insecure. It

is. Yeah.

Based out.

Very few females. They even had just a female night. That was what you had for the female comics. I think it was the belly room. I remember when Whoopi Goldberg first came, it was like, oh my god.

Remember Donald DeLine telling me there is this comic, this female who is unbelievable. You should go see her. Her name is Whoopi Goldberg. And I was like, okay. Whoopi.

Whoopi. Okay. Yeah. Whoopi Goldberg.

And you put her in the color purple.

I wish.

Did you get good at delineating who's gonna work? Because it's a big leap between stand up and acting Yes. And it goes very well for some, and it goes really bad for others. Do you feel like you got good with your thin slicing or your radar? Was there anything you could tell on stage that was gonna be predictive of whether they could do it or not?

For me, the bar was how funny they were. And, for example, I did not know how good Jim Carrey would be as an actor, but I brought him in. I did not know how good Denis Leary would be as an actor. There's an actor who needs a better career.

Yeah. Yeah. Deserves a better.

1, but deserves a better because he's unbelievably good actor as most many comics are good dramatically. What is more terrifying and difficult than stand up comedy? Nothing. Nothing.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

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I've said it before, but I'll tell you. I had a scene in this movie I directed where Kristen and I are in an off road race car, and we've gotta drive through a barn door, and it's a real barn door. We're gonna break through a barn door, and on the other side, there's ramps that are this wide, and then we're gonna jump 2 cars. And I'm directing, so I'm actually doing the whole thing. And it's dark inside the barn, and it's gonna be very bright when we crash through the thing.

And then I gotta hit these little ramps. And we're sitting in the car right before we're about to go, and the stunt coordinator, my friend De Castro, goes, how are you doing? I go, I'm good. He goes, how nervous are you? And I go, if stand up is a 10, I'm at a 4.

And that's a real compliment. Jumping a car over other cars is, like, 40% as scary as stand up.

Yes. Wow. I have always admired stand ups. Yes. Also because their hearts are on their sleeves no matter how tough their act is or how tough and edgy their jokes are, every new line, they're scared about.

It's just you. And when it goes bad and you know you have another 18 minutes, there's really nothing like it. Mhmm.

I admire them greatly. I also sort of relate to their insecurity and all that kind of stuff. Most people who gravitate to Hollywood, I think, have a lot of insecurity. Yes. Yeah.

Looking for a lot of approval.

Because the 1 thing I find about Hollywood and kind of Los Angeles in general is it's very accepting of all the freaks, and I like that.

Yeah. Big time.

That's very true.

You might think it's gotta be a town of a bunch of people who really thought they were awesome.

Completely not the way it is.

No. Yeah.

Completely the opposite.

Okay. So by the time you get to Fresh Prince, my question about that is the show starts with Will Smith?

Yes. It started with Will Smith and the late great Quincy Jones. I mean, the highlight of my career was getting to meet Quincy Jones.

Right. Because he was a producer of

what I was

the producer and the creator. I think he grabbed Will and said, what can we do? And my partner in crime, we cast the show together, Sally Steiner. We drove up to Quincy Jones's house. I think it was Mulholland, but we were so starstruck.

Oh, absolutely.

I was always starstruck, and I still am starstruck.

You are still

Oh, thank you. Come on.

I told you once on an audition years ago, and you don't remember. I'm sure. But you came in I wanna hear. Pitched from Endeavor as the guy from Punk'd.

A shame.

Those are the days where it was like, you sort of didn't do that if you were a sidekick on Punk. Now everybody and their brother from a TikTok video wants to be seen. Yes. You had much longer hair.

Yes. I did.

And it was probably about 2003 because I remember I just finished the pilot of The Office, and Mitch Hurwitz had asked me to do the pilot of Arrested Development, and I couldn't do 2 pilots at once. It was too torture, so I couldn't do the pilot. Deb Borilski did the pilot. Many podcasts named me as the person who did the pilot of Arrested. I just did the seasons.

After season 1, she did the pilot, and a beautiful job she did.

Oh my god.

Wait. What a cast. I was doing a pilot. John Landgraf was the producer. It was FX, the early days of those places like FX.

And it was called Dicks, d I c k s. And I just remember thinking Dax, d a x, and then for Dicks.

That's a lot. Yeah.

Visual room.

But you came in and you were very good. And I remember thinking, oh, wow.

I find

it so

hard to believe.

This is exciting.

I'm blown away that you would remember that.

Of course. I remember specifically the agent pitching you when it was Endeavor.

Greg Siegel, it would have been.

Yes. He would have said the guy from Punk'd, which, of course, I didn't know what it was. Right.

Of course.

But I had known Ashton Kutcher because there's all these stories that you could connect everybody to everything when you start out.

Yeah.

I had met him on a wonderful pilot called Advances in Chemistry that the very brilliant Richie Rosenstock did again ahead of its time. But he came in to audition for the handsome kid, and he didn't get it because, god bless him at the time, not an actor. He was only 20 or 19. And then Meg Lieberman brought him in for that seventies show, and the rest is history within, like, 2 days.

I was gonna say, I think his story is and we're very good friends.

Oh, you are? That's so cool.

Oh, yeah.

How do I not know that?

We stayed very, very close. You wanna talk about casting. So I didn't make it through any of the rounds at MTV for punked. I was in a discarded pile of tapes that didn't get advanced to the producers, and Kutcher had seen everyone they had basically circled, and he's like, no 1 has the vibe. Let me see the people that were rejected, and I was 1 of the people rejected.

So my entire career

Goshen had done that.

No. He had done that. 70

show. He was

like and he had done just married, so he was like newly

movie star. At the time. Oh, enormously. He definitely physically hot at the time. Oh.

He also was in the zeitgeist.

Yeah. So he dug me out. And so, yeah, my gratitude for him is off off the charts. But what I wanted to own my baggage with casting directors

You do?

Okay. Do. I'll tell you why. It's all my insecurity, which was I was auditioning for 9 years in commercials, and I couldn't get them. I just couldn't book anything.

I booked 2 in 9 years. I came to view casting directors as people who didn't get me. I'm like, they don't get me. I can't get through this layer to anybody. And then the time that I finally did break through, it turned out, if we believe Ashton, I still hadn't gotten through the casting director.

So I just had it in my mind, they don't like me. But I have to believe, hopefully, these creators might like me. Yeah.

Yeah. That's in everybody's head about everything.

Yes. I was so insecure. I've been almost dedicated.

That in the world.

I know. It's so true.

I just had it in my mind because I was so insecure that for whatever reason, they don't like me.

And then maybe you were also going in, and because you thought they didn't like you, you might have been being mean.

Well, I don't think I was stupid enough to be mean.

But you might not have been warm.

I don't think I was dumb enough to not be warm. I just really had it in my head.

Yeah. So did you have a trip on your shoulder, would you say?

Yeah. I felt like casting directors knew people I was friends with, and no 1 really knew me, and I was so insecure. And so I got into my mind, I've gotta get to the other people.

Yeah. Right. Right. Go past these people.

Somehow I gotta jump over this gate that's in front of me and get to those people. Because, again, when I finally got hired on a TV show, it was from the creator of the show. Oh, yeah. I got such limited data, and I'm telling this huge story based on this very limited data, and I'm completely wrong. And then I come to find out, like, you're saying you liked me, which

is Oh, yeah. I was like, wow. This kid from Tonks is really actually a good actor.

That's so funny. I had the opposite feeling towards casting.

Well, we talk about them all the time. Like, you know the names of so many kids in

your industry. About you way before I moved to LA. I was like, oh my god. She's

That is shocking to me.

She's the person, and if I could get an audition like, even just getting an audition with I remember when it happened, and I was like, this is the craziest day of my life. I was so excited. But to me, casting directors were almost like teachers. The teacher I wanted the approval from, the person who was gonna give me an a plus. And, obviously, I wanted the job, but I really wanted the casting director to like me so much Yes.

Which I think backfired a lot because, like, then I wasn't just me. In commercials, this is probably bad to say. I did really well in commercials because I didn't care that much.

Yeah.

I just went in and did it. And then, lo and behold, you do pretty well when you don't overthink or you can just be you. Yeah. I had the I was like, casting directors, please love me.

She's a good actress though.

Oh, yes. I've hired

her as well.

Oh, yes. I put her in Chips, and then I put her in the

only commercial

I ever directed. I love Chips. I can't do it.

Oh, god bless you. Okay.

Nobody did. Curb Your Enthusiasm, 99. You were still on to the

end. I started in season 3. Jeff Garland is a good and wonderful friend. He brought me on in season 3, and then I was on for many, many seasons, except for a couple seasons where I wasn't available.

But were you there when Monica got to do Curb

Your Enthusiasm? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very sweet.

So jealous. You would have had to play yourself on Curb.

Yeah. Exactly. I don't think

I was famous enough to play myself, and then I was too famous to play.

You can't not play it

tonight. Show's over. Yeah.

Yeah. I got in the sweet spot right before it ended too.

So But I did a lot of my self education then too because I tried to know every improv person in the universe because I was lucky enough to be doing The Office, CURB, and Arrested Development starting with season 2. If you go back and watch then, you'll see the same season, everybody does Curb, everybody sorry. It's all the same people. That was when from my own history in comedy, nobody got improv actors. Nobody brought them into the fore until it was, like, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig.

For me, it was all casting sitcom pilots, and it was always tough. Tough to find anybody funny, tough to find anybody who can pull off the sitcom, and in those days, tough to find anybody great looking enough for a network to approve them.

Right. You had to have a lot of things.

Yeah. You did have to have a lot of things. So that was when Judd and Adam McKay and Paul Feig, they started appreciating the fact that most improv actors or comedians who then got into improv was not in the fore of comedy either when I started. Again, it was all stand up comics. Right.

Improv was still Second City and it was Grammling's, which were sort of character oriented.

Yeah.

Yep. You're right. There was this huge talent pool that no 1 was really looking at.

No 1 until sort of Second City started to move. I was trying to pluck people out of Second City in the early nineties. I remember going there to see Second City the first time when we were looking for Carlton on Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

No kidding.

And they said, can we just to Chicago and look for some of these kids? Because I don't know. And so I went to Second City for the first time, and that's when I met Jeff Garland. But on main stage at that time was Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinella, Jeff Garland. It was crazy.

And Mitch Rouse. Anyway, that history of comedy. But when I started to do a lot of comedy shows and bringing a lot of the improv comedy was when the state had started and when Kids in the Hall had started.

Yes.

That stuff all came through basically what was then called the Comedy Channel, I think, was Comedy Central, but in time, it was called something else.

The Comedy Network. There was a great little boom because it was Kids in the Hall, and then The State, and then Ben Stiller had a sketch show, and then you had mister Show.

Started it all as well. Yes. I mean, Ben Stiller, very important in comedy. And I think they owe the biggest debt to mister Show. Yeah.

To Bob

Odenkirk and David Cross, which would air at midnight on HBO.

A whole new genre. Yes. Yeah. We had Jack Black on, and I was telling him, you know, I used to go to the live tapings of that show, and it seemed like just the most penetrative.

On the street.

Oh, you did? I did. He did. Was he

in tie dye? Yes. Yeah.

He's hard to miss. I had cast him in a couple of day player roles when he was first starting out, and he was very singular, Jack Black. And he could deliver 1 line, and you'd remember it. Yes. And he was with the Gage group very early on in his career.

In every casting office, you have people that you remember and keep bringing in and bringing in until they get the part that really propels them into a long career.

So that was gonna be 1 of my questions. Do you get a swell of pride when you see, like, a Chris Pratt?

I do. You have to. Yeah. Yeah.

It's Cas Parks and Rec. Yes. If it's not obvious, you're the only casting director we've ever invited in.

Oh, thank you.

And largely because I have someone who didn't learn about casting directors like Monica did. I started noticing. I'm like, this Veep cast is impossible. Who on earth figured out that all these people were this level of brilliance? And that's when I think Veep when I was like, oh, it's you you're and then I was like, oh, and right.

And the other impossible cast would have been Parks and Rec. Wow. You did that. And you've had several of those

It's insane.

Just impossible, the level of collective talent and unknown, and I realize, oh, you're

a big, big, big piece of that.

It's kinda like for me when I realize, oh, John Bryan, the composer, might have as much to do with the Paul Thomas Anderson movies that I like because Eternal Sunshine, I also like in the same way, and he has composed both. That's like a revelation. Oh, maybe I love John Bryan.

Yeah. When all of your favorite comedies, you look and it's you who's casted in, like, thank you. Wait a minute. Yeah. I think this might be about our

connection is interesting, though. I do love certain soundtracks starting with Alfred Hitchcock movies, and they are what connect your fandom, I think, a lot of the time. That's a great point. In features, casting directors always get credited, it seems, the card right after the music, the music editor, and I love that.

Okay. So you do. You get a swell of pride when Chris

Oh, god. Yes. And I bore people with all the stories I'm boring you with now.

No. I love it. Sick.

I guess here's my question. Because Chris and I were at a hotel once, and he and Annie were there, and we end up hanging out for 3 days. I'm like, this guy is so radical. He's real. He's from Oregon.

He was a wrestler.

He's a hunter, and he's funny. Pickup truck. He needs to show his funny side again. I know. Oh my god.

I've been thinking that a lot lately.

Needs to show his dramatic side. We have all these thoughts, casting people. We talk about this all the time. Yeah. I bet.

What does Kristen need to do? Keep on keeping on?

She's pretty no. Keep on

keeping on, but she would be great in a down and dirty drama.

Okay.

Wouldn't she want to? I would Yeah.

She's such a dramatic actor.

She would, and then I always talk

her out

of it.

Do you really? Why?

I don't talk her out of it. I remind her of what life she wants, which is she wants to be at home seeing her kids. She does not wanna be on location. She She wants manageable hours. She wants to know she can drive the kids to school if she wants to.

So going away to, you know, Georgia for 4 months is down in dirty drama.

Universe for Kristen. She should be do a real movie, an indie movie, or something. Queenpins was great

for her. Uh-huh. You cast that?

I did. We love Kirby.

Kirby's a Kirby's the best.

Kirby's a diamond.

Kirby, we've hired forever. The richest talent pool is comedy. Yeah. Frankly, my argument, and you would, I think, agree because you've directed now, is so many drama actors, some of them are brilliant at comedy. Going the other way, comedy to drama is much more frequent and much more a surprise.

Yes. Sacha Baron Cohen is very good in disclaimer. Yes.

Yeah. I think it's because comedy requires you to be It requires

a lot of passion. It does. I mean, and a lot of experience and a lot of beating yourself up and a lot of stuff to draw from.

And I'm gonna add, and people will be mad about this. Comedy is straight up harder than drama.

Beyond straight up harder than drama.

There's so many tools that can be employed in a drama to help you. You could have no look on your face and do the perfect push in and the right song. You're

a genius. Yeah. Get that. Exactly.

There's no cheating a joke. You can't cheat a laugh.

You can

put a fart noise in or something, but in general, it works or it doesn't work. There's no manipulating it. You can't put the perfect song in all of them funny.

Not. Though they try.

They do try, and it's generally generic. Okay. Can you think of some people that you really went to the mat over that didn't get it that then turned out to be huge? Do you feel like you've got some great vindicated stories?

You should have a group casting director thing because people would be shocked at how many people slunked first and then got the big it's tenacity. Tenacity. Tenacity. It used to be in pilot season. The people who didn't get the roles, the next season would get the roles, and the next season, the people who didn't even get as far as the network would get the roles.

That's good to know.

It's a cycle, though. It is tenacity.

Can you

think of someone that you were, like, you just battled and lost?

Oh, yeah. Battled for Elizabeth Banks to get many things. It was mostly, like, women whose studios didn't think were pretty enough like Elizabeth Banks. We finally got her in 2014. Virgin.

Yeah. I

know. The fuck? Yeah. Or Amy Adams. Oh god.

Or funny enough. Both, by the way, wickedly funny. Elizabeth does a lot of comedies, but Amy needs to get back to some good comedy because she's wickedly funny.

She needs to just have some fun maybe Yeah. For a few months.

I'm sure she would like to. Comedy is a little bit in a coma now these days. Yeah. So It's

not a great

So not many opportunities. Brie Larson is who I was gonna mention. Oh. Was never I mean, this is a gorgeous, talented girl, and she was never good enough for a studio to approve her. They just didn't think she was the leading lady, and then, boom, an Academy Award later and all kinds of stuff.

Yeah. That I do love.

It would be so hard for me for them to be passing on Brie Larson and Elizabeth Banks and Amy Adams. I would be like, guys, why are you doing this?

Wait a minute. You're approving Seth Rogen and you're passing on these people.

I would be saying it.

Yeah. You've navigated lots of different eras in this business.

We say it all the time.

So if you're working with a director, they're casting their 3rd movie or show, and you've cast 100, how do you manage not saying, like, you're wrong. You're gonna have to trust me. This is my expertise.

I try never to go there because once I said you're wrong to somebody and I got screamed at, don't you tell me I am wrong.

Uh-huh. You deal with a lot of egos yet.

Yeah. You do. Yeah. Don't you ever say I'm wrong and I'm not wrong. I've never been wrong.

He was dead wrong.

Yeah. Exactly.

And that actor became a huge star.

Yes. And you deserve to have the ego. Your resume.

Casting directors fight, fight, fight so much for actors. I brought this up recently. I wish actors could appreciate how much we do fight for them.

I gotta tell you this. This is the truth. Generally, I research people, and then in the process of researching them, there's some curiosities that kinda surface. I've never sat down and just had questions like I have for you.

Please.

Have you developed a radar for who's gonna be problematic? Like, they might be genius level in the room, but do you think you've gotten good at going, yeah, this person is talented, but it's not gonna be worth the work.

You can tell when certain people are annoying in the room when they're auditioning that they're maybe a little rough on a director. Directors can tell that too. Somebody will read and ask questions or ask the wrong questions. The way you can read people in general, even though somebody who waits on you at McDonald's is like that little prick

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Or I

bet she's a great mom.

Exactly. The way you can read people, it's just a people reading thing. And, yes, I do believe I have instincts for that. Though, in terms of behavior in the past, I don't ever repeat it unless I've seen it or it's been on a movie that I've worked on. Like, somebody else saying, don't ever hire that actor.

They're difficult. Yeah. I wanna make sure it's accurate. So many actors get a bad rap because they didn't get on with the director or a producer, and it's actually the director who is the problem. Yeah.

It

happens so much to women. Yes.

Oh, is that true? So more often you'll hear, don't work with

her. Difficult and Oh. Come on. You know?

Because she has

no idea. The director's name. It's like, come on. Right. Yeah.

Women still do not have a leg up.

What pisses you off the most in the casting process?

I'll never work again. All the casting executives, the levels of people that we have to go through. Right.

And the

levels of people that we have to cc and update.

And you're talking about in a studio.

I'm talking about in a studio or film television. There's so many levels and it really throws me off my game. And this has been for decades, frankly. And casting, you need like what we're doing now, we're tracing people back for 30 years.

Yeah.

We need to do that in our brains. And if you're constantly concerned as I am about, oh my god, I forgot to put a name on a list. Oh my god. This person thought of this person. Oh my god.

This person's cousin wants to be seen. Oh my god. This person's manager asked me to see this person. You have absolutely the shortest synapses you could possibly have. You lose that long term thinking of who is this person I loved in that show, and I can't remember who it was.

That's what I wanna spend my brainpower on, and we are exhausted by the end of the day, and that is the only time we have to do it. It's so much more difficult now to actually be creative.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What are your thoughts about improvising in an audition?

Only if you know it's okay. Do a little bit of research. People see me and they think I can improvise, but I will because I will say I will say, okay. This 1, don't improvise.

Oh, yeah.

That's Yeah. You know, because some actors will do it. All these beautiful comics. Most of the time, they come up with funnier stuff than is on the page. People like Judd Apatow and Paul Feig and Mitch Hurwitz and Adam McKay, they appreciate that.

Yes.

Right. They want that. Larry David wants that. But I will warn them before coming in or tell their agent, And I pray to God the agent tells the manager who tells the assistant who tells the assistant who tells the assistant to the actor to the actor, don't improv. Yeah.

Right.

There is a line between comedy people who want to hear every line they write and comedy people who don't care, and they say, you can't make a wrong step. Just do whatever you want, so you should ask.

Okay.

Please ask. Okay. Otherwise, they'll think you can't

Do the thing.

Right. You

can't. Which maybe I can't.

God. No.

I've kinda gone like this. And, again, I'm not giving this advice to any actor at all. I don't think this is a good strategy. Here's what I told myself. At some point, I'm like, I'm better if I can make this thing a little bit mine.

I'll be different. It might anger you, but I'll be memorable. I've got to be me because this is who you're gonna deal with. So, actually, it's a favor for all of us if we find out now. There are other people that are much better at this, if

that's what

you want, than I am. Here's the thing, I can do well. Maybe that'll appeal to you or not. Like, at some point, I feel like and maybe it was just an attempt to get some control over the experience, which feels very powerless. I'm like, I'm gonna give you what I am, and maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll hate it.

Yep. I think that's great. I do depending if you're in there for Judd or somebody, you should absolutely do that because I find myself I'll publicly apologize to Bec Bennett now because once he came in for a pilot of Brooklyn 99. And after the audition, I said, wait, Mike. Can he do it again?

Because he could be better. It just came out of my goddamn

head. Yeah. Yeah.

Bring it way down, something like that. And then he was great. He had chosen to make the character big, and I love Bec Bennett. Yes. Get the guy a major movie in a major show Yeah.

If I'm allowed to say that.

And when

you say Mike, you're talking about Scher?

Mike Scher. Yes.

We love

That's the best of

the area. Shows are spectacular. Plug for the new Ted Danson Show, which is spectacular. You guys are gonna love it.

Kristen just did a little thing on that.

I know. I didn't get to go to that, but I know she did a little bit. But, yeah, Mike Shore is a director who's a dream because he wants to see who you are. Right.

And he

doesn't care about the words. He does ultimately, but he doesn't because you find stuff there that you would bring to it or that Beck Bennett would bring to it that is not on the page, and you do need to show them who you are.

And you gotta be able to do the thing.

I totally do that. Do the thing.

I think a mix is always good. Like, if you, for the most part, stick to the sides the whole time, but maybe you improvise on the

button or

you add a little You better ask. Okay. Great.

Okay. Thanks,

Pepper Wilson.

They will say, I've had major comedy people go, he changed my line.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'll always be defensive of the actor always. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't like it when they make fun of an actor.

I just I'm always defensive.

When they leave. Yeah. Yeah. For what they want. Yeah.

Okay. What do you think about coming in character and foregoing the chit chat.

What are actors like? Because I always try to make an actor feel at home when they come in, but I realized I should ask the actor, do you just wanna come in and do it and then talk?

It's gotta be project specific. Right, ma'am?

Drama? Yeah. Chit chat.

I've come into things. I remember I almost got on True Detective. So I go into that, and I'm like, you know what? I wanna get to the acting as quickly as possible because I am funny in real life, and I am joyous. And then I don't want to have that huge radical shift.

For you, I'd rather just come in, be polite, and do the thing and let you see that I can be a badass Yeah. And then leave. But I don't know. I feel like it's project specific.

I mean, I've always just being, I think, empathetic to actors when they come in because no matter who it's in there, it's a dead room, and coming in to audition for comedy is ridiculous. You're in a vacuum and you're trying to be funny.

And they've seen it 45 times.

Exactly. And it's a ridiculous task. So that's why I also think self taping is beneficial.

Great. Oh, that was 1

of my questions. Beneficial.

That's changed.

But you come in and then I should ask actors, can I say something and make a joke? I always try to just make some sort of joke or mention I just saw them in something, but I do have a feel for if they kinda just wanna start. Because what I am cut off from is I appreciate it, but how much preparation you folks have done and how you've talked yourself out of it and have beat yourself up.

It's the whole

car right there.

Oh, it's

just a lot of people.

The worst. The lobby is you're listening to other great comedians.

And you see the same people. Like, can I tell a small anecdote?

Yes, please.

Donald Align's movie, he did a movie of Yogi Bear

Yes, sir.

Which was lovely. People should discover that for their kids or put it on Netflix. And I was bringing in the greatest comedy people ever. Dan Aykroyd was willing to come in and read for Yogi Bear. He was perfect, but, of course, the studio thinks they have to hear him do it, which is ridiculous.

That's the other thing. I'm like, just hire this person, but that never works.

Uh-huh.

He came in, and then Rob Cordray came in and he said, I have to follow Dan Aykroyd. Yeah. Yeah. Instantly was like, god. I know.

Yeah. It's my generation. I was starstruck to even meet Dan

Aykroyd. Yes. Of course.

You see who's coming in. You came in before you.

It's so rough.

It's so worst. Mind fuck. Yeah.

Oh, shit.

You're already nervous, and then you see, these 4 guys are definitely better than me.

I have to cut myself off from her, or else I'll just be too much jelly of sympathy.

I was gonna say

that how much preparation. And when they leave, it always just blows me away somebody who gives an incredible audition and who you can tell worked on it so hard. That is impressive. That is how you audition.

Right.

Yeah. You can't take on everyone's enter. The amount of energy that

oh my god. But god bless actors from a to z.

It's very gracious

to me. To god. It's gracious. Oh, some of them come in not prepared at all. Right.

And then you're like, just leave. You're a jackass again.

Yeah.

What's the number 1 mistake you see actors make? I would say, not with me, but when you're in with a big mistake you

see actors make? I would

say, not with me, but

when you're in with a big director, big producer doing it and saying, oh, I didn't like that. Can I do it again?

Good tip.

People can do it, but sometimes

You better be fucking great that next suggestion

you need or do. Sometimes you sorta wanna wait for the director to do that. Get a feel for the room, be prepared, and don't come in, and I know you can be nervous, and I will try to help is that the camera in my movie?

That's what actors do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I would say just sort of read the room sometimes Yeah. And don't come in and say, I just got the sides last night, so I'm not prepared. That's an old trick some actors have done for decades.

Right.

I will already know which actor's gonna come in and go, oh, I just got the sides last night.

Yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Okay. Great. These are great tips.

And don't chew gum in an audition unless it calls for it. A lot of people are insecure, and they'll eat food or chew gum in an audition. Food? Bring a big sandwich. Well, you asked me about what do you think about coming in in character?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I could see it freaking people out, or I could see it really working.

And you mean coming in in character being the character, not dressed like a policeman or something?

Well, that's 2 questions, I guess.

Well, self tapes, I think it's fine to look like the person because studio executives who approve these parts, you're in a cop uniform, they're gonna think, oh, he can be a cop.

Yeah. I It does a lot of the work.

God bless them, but most of them think surface things.

Yeah. They're juggling different things.

Yes. Exactly. And then you do have a group of executives who are unbelievably tuned into the creative part of it, but many are not. But I would say come in in character with comedy. I think it's okay.

I wouldn't say you have to. But, for example, JB Smoove came in to audition for Curb as the character he had made up, and he came in, Larry Larry David.

Yes.

He came in instantly. Larry was on the floor. Right. He had the part immediately, basically. Yeah.

So you gotta be pretty confident when you do it. You gotta be good and you gotta be confident because then it won't hurt you, in my opinion.

I could see someone going, this is a little scary. I need to know the real person.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Frequently also, when the scene is done, you get a feel for the person. Yes.

The way in Borat, Ken Divisian, who played his assistant in Borat

in the

first Borat movie, came in with Sasha did not know, but with a very authentic Eastern European accent. And then after he was done, after he got the part, we told him he was American.

Oh, wow. Oh, that's great.

So that was smart, and Sash was blown away because we Ali G'd him. I mean, we Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

What's the hardest role you've ever had to cast? Meaning, you read the most amount of people and traveled the greatest distance.

McClellan. Oh, really? Everybody knows what McClellan is. Yes. Oh.

I would say it was the toughest role ever to cast because

No kidding.

It took months months. Pre Internet, I think we did some sort of a Myspace thing. That was the first big Internet thing. Right? Myspace?

Yeah. And it turned up nobody. Those are days you still put up flyers in high schools and things like that. Wow. And I knew I wasn't turning up a good geek.

You know? I know I can recognize a good geek. And Judd was like, no. No. No.

No. No. Michael Cera first came in from McCleven, and then it was apparent he was perfect. That was right after he finished Arrested Development, so he wasn't a star yet. We still had to read every kid in town to play Seth and Evan.

Judd first only wanted kids who were actually 18 or 19. So at the time, Jonah was a little bit too old. We wanted him to do the table read, and, no, Judd wanted kids younger. I sort of ignored kids who were older than 19 or 20, and then it did dawn on Judd. Wait a minute.

Jonah looks like a baby.

Of course, he

can do this.

And then Michael Cera came back and read his assassin. Of course. Wait a minute.

Or Evan.

Or Evan. Yeah.

Yeah. 1 of the 2. I already got it.

But McLovin, I wanted to find the most amazing nerd ever. Greg Mottola did too, and I knew I wasn't turning anybody up. Casting people know when they're not delivering, and you had to keep looking, and so we put up a people know when they're not delivering,

and you had to

keep looking. And so we put up flyers in high schools, and I I still have a copy of my flyer. It was a attention, nerdy high school boys. Call this number or fax. Fax your picture to this number.

The little headshot of Christopher Mintz Plasse came through a bad fax. His forehead was stretched out. It came through. It was like, okay. We're gonna see this kid.

We had sent and my associate of the time, Delia Frankel, had looked up improv classes in high schools.

Uh-huh.

So we had sent them around to high schools, and they were calling us. And I think the way he got was 1 of his friend's mothers said, there's a flyer for a nerdy high school kid, Christopher. I think you should submit it. So he came in. Judd saw it instantly.

Other people did not. I did. Judd did. The reason I thought he was funny is because part of the scene was he had to name his character McLovin gah. He said McLovin gah instead of McLovin.

Cracked me up just the way he said it. Those are the little things Yeah. You recognize in comedy. Yeah. And he was just like Coke bottle glasses kind of a kid, the same way that Martin Starr was.

He read for all 3 male roles in Freaks and Geeks, all the geek roles. And he was just like, bingo. He's 1 of them. And knew what he was doing. He came in and he was like, wow.

Look at the way this kid looks and he can

act. Right.

Wow. Same with Tim Simons when he came in for Veep. Oh. Thank you for that compliment, by the way. Veep and Parks and Rex knocked me out, those casts, and I'm not saying it to pat myself on the back.

They're They're being awesome.

It's all an act of faith, all of it, and they knocked me out.

We heard he was a casting assistant.

He was at some point. I think he was. I don't know specifically.

But not for Vy.

But I mean, you know, Tim. The way I found Tim, and it's a great sort of casting story. I should get into the Phyllis story too. Am I taking you over too much time? I love it.

1 of my associates at the time, Peter Kusakas, who's now a great manager at Mosaic, he said, would you meet my friend, Tim Simons? He's in did you see that Abraham Lincoln commercial when she says, does this make my butt look big? And I said, oh, yeah. That tall guy. He's cool.

I of course, I would see him. I'd love to see new people, of course, as all casting people do. Then I met him. I think we just brought him in to read for something, and it was like, oh, he's really good. We put that in our head bank, and I brought him in shortly thereafter, I think, for 1 thing that he didn't get.

And then I brought him in for the Veep pilot, which was written as like a short stocky chain smoker. Right. Any good casting director, you don't really read the writer's description because you need to just bring in good people.

Yes. Yes.

So he came in, and he was killer funny. We read great people for the Veep pilot because that writing is Armando Iannucci, and Julia came in for the sessions and read his people. Yeah. So that was very enjoyable, but Tim came in and killed it. But his competition was stiff, and when we got to the network at HBO, he was great.

And after talking, I was able to hear how they came to the conclusion that Tim Simons was the way to go. And, again, against some very big comedy people, and Julia would talk about it and how she wanted to act with these people. Julia was a large part of picking that cast. She said about Tony Hale versus the competition for Tony Hale, I would not be embarrassed to ask Tony Hale to get me a Tampax.

Right.

And that's how he decided he would be the perfect bag man. He said, Tony would not embarrass me. The other person might embarrass me. And it turns out that we ended up using all the runner ups in recurring roles on Veep.

What a freaking cast.

Wait. Do you wanna tell Phyllis?

Oh, Phyllis. I don't know if this is generally known. I think it is that Phyllis was my associate for 7 or 8 years, and we were casting the pilot of The Office. With Ken Kwapis, we were in the room reading we had 2 days of final testing for all the different combinations we could use for The Office. I was reading, and Phyllis was filming, and Ken Kwapis just sort of tiptoed over to me and said, let Phyllis read with the actors because I think she might be good in the background.

I was like, of course, she would. Look at the people in the British office in the background. They're real looking people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, yes, we let Phyllis read, and she went in to read with the test between, like, Krasinski and Jenna and a lot of other people. I had previously been reading with Steve and a few other people, and she was great. We were so excited. And then, Greg, when he faxed over the pilot, and there was 1 line for Phyllis. We win.

Oh. How exciting. Time. Phyllis was gonna make, like, $130 for the day, and that was exciting, Zagscale. Yes.

Yeah. In 2003, right about the time I met Dak Shepherd.

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Well, mentioned a new thing. This wasn't 1 of my questions, but it just occurred to me talking about technology. Clearly now, a big driver of who gets cast is, like, what their following is.

Not in what I work on. Okay. Good. Okay. I wouldn't have a clue.

And if somebody says to me, oh, they have so many followers or they're this on TikTok, it's not a negative for me, but it means, well, they're not a trained actor. Uh-huh. Yep. Maybe they're funny. I'll look at a clip, and it's like that person's not gonna be able to act.

And I've been wrong many times.

Yeah.

Yeah. But, usually, it's a version

of that.

How about this? What percentage of the roles on the shows and movies that you're casting already have stars attached?

Almost a 100%. Movies have to have a star attached

to

get it made. To get any financing, you probably need 2 or 3 no matter how low the budget. Even maybe the lower the budget, you need the financiers to say, we got Kristen Bell, you know, we got Right. Jack Shepherd.

Right. Well, that's not a play too fast,

Luis. Edmond and Jack Shepherd.

Now we're now we're ending.

We're adding

up to, like, half a Chris and Bell.

That makes all 3. It's looking pretty good.

TV frequently now for the streamers, they probably have a project attached to, like, I'm currently doing Bill Lawrence's show with Steve Carell, but we're casting everybody around him.

Yes. So what is your preference? Do you like to start with a clean slate, or do you like that?

I'd love to start with a clean slate. Yeah. The Office, we started with a clean slate.

And would you prefer to break unknowns? In comedy, for sure. It's gonna be more rewarding for you.

It's so much more rewarding to give someone a break. Yes.

Earlier, you said I love meeting new people Yeah. As all casting directors do, but I don't think that's true. I think you're an exception. I think a lot of casting directors, they don't necessarily wanna see anyone new. They want reliable people they already know, and I think it's special.

I don't know about that. I couldn't speak for other people.

Well, I think it's special.

More of an expert in that than I, but I know that we all have our favorites based on how we perceive the talent and how they can deliver and how they haven't been given a shot

to do it yet. I'll read something and think, oh, this is perfect for Monica Padman, or this is perfect for

Rory Scovel or something, and they haven't been given that huge shot yet.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I think that's an exception. I really

You really do? I don't know.

I think it's special.

Have you had people who you know are so talented and you've seen them be so talented and they just can't audition?

Oh, plenty, especially in comedy.

Yeah. And is it heartbreaking, you know,

when you It's heartbreaking because my job then is to talk the director into it and to show them stuff or another audition where they've done it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't. People will listen to you and then people won't listen to you.

Yeah. I gotta say 1 of the, I think, more difficult things about this job is I don't know how good Daniel Day Lewis is as an auditioner.

He would probably be the worst auditioner. He probably

would be. It's a different skill set. It's almost the closest they'll get to stand up. They don't have any of the environment. They don't have the other actors.

There's the reverse. There are people who are great auditioners who then on the set, don't get anything more from them. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

You get the line reading from the audition. However, a kid who was great from the time he was 12, Leonardo DiCaprio.

Well Yeah.

Okay. So let's talk about Once

Upon A Time.

I gotta say in the last 10 years, the performance that has blown my mind more than any other, and I watch the movie all the time, is, once upon a time, Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie is so next level. I don't think people are recognizing that he's playing 3 levels of actor. He is an actor playing an actor who's okay sometimes, and then he has a moment where he's great. Exactly.

But

he's not as great as Leonardo DiCaprio can be great. He's as great as that actor can be great.

Yep.

When you see what's going on in that scene and what he's having to juggle, it's so impressive.

He has never given a bad performance. He's always almost better than some of the movies he's in, Killers of the Flower Moon. Any other actor in that part would have been like they were doing a role from a sketch in Hootenanny.

You

know? It was like, are you kidding me? He was heartbreakingly good in that role, and he was so over the top. And the version of that in comedy is, like, Steve Carell as Michael Scott. So over the top, but still unbelievably real and good.

You gotta have

a genius to pull those off.

Well, Allison Jones, this has been such a delight.

For me. I could talk to you guys

for hours. Oh, sane.

You're the best.

You're so sweet and wonderful. And I'm well, I guess my single last question is, you refuted my claim of 42 years, but it is 41 years.

Might be 41a half, but just say 41.

How on earth have you kept your stamina to stay hungry? And your job is so hard. The hours are so crazy. How have you stayed hungry and dialed in?

Because I like it. However, the past 10, 15 years, it's a different business in terms of what we do and in terms of pressure you get from top heavy things, and things have changed completely.

You're like a doctor that has to do managed care now with the insurance provider. Exactly.

Yeah.

Perfect. And even since streaming has started, it's incredibly different. You go to 1 of these streamers, and we become just data entry people. Everything's put in no algorithm. I hate the word algorithm.

They've algorithmized creativity, and you can't do that. Yeah. But they have, and they've tried in terms of payment and who to cast and what's gonna appeal to a certain group of people overseas or here. Netflix is doing that a little too much, I think, just in my very humble opinion. Right.

Right.

It's not a humble opinion. Your opinion, again, the few things that you were asking for is fucking ridiculous. I was right to be so excited to get an audition for you.

So kind.

You're a legend for

the interview. We're super honored that you guys already chatted with us.

My assistant, Hannah, freaked out when I told her I was doing this.

Oh, she did.

Yeah. I'm afraid I'm not a podcast person either, and I should be because I'm a true crime person more than anything.

Oh, then you're missing out on that.

I know. Yeah. But I googled armchair expert, and I typed too fast, and it said armchair expert. I'm not kidding.

That should be a Yeah. Another show we do, arm

hair expert. Yeah. Actually, do I have I need 1. I have arm hair. Yeah.

You can literally say

you want Fuck.

I forgot 1 question I wanna ask, and this is a nosy question. No. Sure. When you have a track record like yours and someone wants to cast a comedy, starting with you is like starting with Jimmy Burrows. Thank you.

Do you get to participate ever in the success of a show?

No. And I wish I had. On a couple of indies I have

You mean financially I know.

Paid off extremely well, but casting directors, we can't even get paid ads. I mean, we just don't get anything because studios don't care, and they don't understand.

That's insane.

I feel like you should be a participant at

You

should be with your level.

You can on indie movies because they do need you to attach some of their leads, things like that. But, no, on television, never. If I had residuals on shows like Boy Meets World, Fresh Prince Bill Air, The Office, I'd be retired right now, and I'd be very happy.

Yeah.

But, no, we do not, and I wish we did. That's the next step. This year, I was able to help negotiate with

Oh, you will.

AM PTP and the Teamsters. And it was fascinating, and we can only go baby step by baby step. But when we could ever participate, especially in a cast like The Office, which you do do from scratch Yes. And people do know your value as a casting person Yes. In a comedy, basically, I do know I have value Yes.

Of course. Creatively anyway. But thank you for asking that because, no, we almost get paid within the same pay range too. I don't get paid much more than

Anybody else. Wow. It's kinda like when you're a director of a TV show, you get the DGA minimum. It doesn't matter if you've had a great career. Now if you're Burrows, you can obviously negotiate ownership of the show to do the pilot.

That's how they make money. Right? The ownership of the show. Anybody who gets to do a pilot, very good. Jim Burrows

is a Sophie. So Yeah.

Oh my god. To get a pilot too soon.

Warner bought the fucking Red Sox.

Yeah. I know. I know.

Yeah. Right. Although, again, that too has changed.

What do

you mean?

It's changed. Well, Seinfeld would sell into a cycle of syndication for $800,000,000. And in the streaming world, none of these shows that have been on the air for 6 years get sold into syndicate. People don't get like, Mike, sure. Why don't

I go

to Exactly.

I said, Mike, do you ever lament the fact that if you had the exact same career you had in the eighties nineties, you would have $800,000,000. He goes, yeah. I think about that a lot.

1 of my very early pilots was for a very big then TV producer named James Comeack, who did San Franzen and did all the cool shows. And he had a big home in Beverly Hills that he called Casa Syndication. Oh my god. So come on. Yeah.

Yeah. But that's a lovely question to ask about if we break this big because no, and I wish I did. No. You should. I wish I had.

It'll never happen. It's kinda bombastic.

My lifetime. Easy to me.

Or stock options. I'll take stock options. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I used to say to Netflix. Okay. Don't pay me, but give me a mutual fund of Amazon. Netflix. Yeah.

Put a mutual fund out and pay us that way. Yes. And then when you get rich, we get rich.

Okay. Well, Allison, I look forward to seeing you again. We adore you. This has been so fun. I'm so glad you

did you

could do it. Likewise.

And I

hope your nerves dissipated.

It dissipated. I was so excited when you emailed.

You're definitely getting called back to producers. I can see you in the room.

Thank you

so much.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alright. Be well. Fantastic. Thank you.

Stay tuned for the fact check. It's rather party time. Yeah. But it's fine.

I think he's, I don't know what the word is.

Sturdy?

I was

gonna say fighter. That's not right. I mean, cleaner. Like, maybe he's because I wouldn't call a sloth a a fighter. Right.

By god, can they hang upside down indefinitely?

That's true.

That is true.

So maybe he's sloth like?

He wants to show up for his friends.

And for the holiday?

Yeah.

What is that thing, Monica? Is that a person or a reindeer or a ram? Those horns are should be kind of informative.

I think

it's a bear reindeer.

Is this a big old with 2 big horns? Or those are ears kids. Or hers? I shouldn't genderize.

I think those are ears, and then he and then

Some antennas. Horn. I see some metal antennas

on I think those were right rear horn. That's our hat.

Yep. And to put it on the very top, made it leave frame.

Yeah. So he's just sitting on some branches.

Yeah. He's almost he's almost summited that tree.

He's a he.

Yeah. He's let's let's call it what it is.

Yeah.

It's festive in here.

Okay. So we just we just, scrambled. Right? Because we're setting up for the, holiday episode.

Yeah. Which we should tell we have a holiday episode coming up. It's a bonus episode.

It's a bonus extra episode

Yes.

On 20th.

That's a coming.

That's the 20th is when

it's coming. Be on YouTube, though.

Of course. It's gonna be everywhere.

I think people should watch it on YouTube.

Oh, big time. You're gonna have, some a list singers dropping through, gonna have some present reveals, gonna have a lot of decor. This is only a taste of what, Wobby Wob has got more stuff planned

Great.

As he does. This tree has been stolen from my daughter's room. So I had a really great meditation this morning.

Great.

It's been a long time since I had a great 1. Or

What constitutes a great meditation?

I think what adds up to it is, like, can I stop ruminating? Can I not think about our employers during my meditation? Can I achieve that goal? And so I got kinda I took a different tactic with my mantra a little bit, which was no one's and we don't need to get this in detail, but I was just literally, like, say you have to say the mantra 5 times and just concentrating with some limited thing, then I could buy myself 5 more. All to say, when it's really great, I lose a sense of my body, which is really fun.

Like, I know how I'm sitting Uh-huh. But I can't really feel my hands or my legs anymore. I can tell I'm kinda detached from my body, and then I'll often get blasts of light. I'll start seeing, like, lights in my there's a word for this Okay. In TM, but I don't know what it is.

I heard I've heard Howard talking about it, but I'll get some light activity in my detached state from my body. And, anyways, when I came out of it, and that's why I'm telling you about it, is when it ended all by myself in my room, I said, hey, y'all. Really great meditation. Wow.

That was the first thing out.

It was. That's great. That's the power of TM. It opened up my creative channels enough to go, hey, y'all. Really great meditation.

That's good.

And then I thought, of course, need to have an app that just at the end of your thing you hear. Hey, y'all. Really great meditation.

That would be great. People would buy it. Are you done with your Christmas shopping?

Oh, man. I'm afraid to even think about that. I mean, I know I've gotten a bunch, and I've certainly forgotten people, and it's gonna Yeah. As much as I I this is my holiday. As you know, it's my favorite.

God, do I cherish every day of it. In fact, I hate that it's coming.

Yeah.

I hate that there'll be a day where it ends.

Yeah. I know.

And so the girls will be, like, they're in a hurry. I'm like, no. No. No. Guys, just pump the brakes.

Enjoy it.

Enjoy. It's so much more fun anticipating that. But the only part I can't stand about it is the test of your love for others by your how thoughtful your gift was. Sure. And then I was thinking I got a little cynical for a minute.

I was like, they they really got us with this racket. I mean, what an incredible racket. Yeah. Consumerism is like, you have to go buy something for everyone you care about. Yeah.

That's the rules.

Well, it's not always the rules. You can make new rules. Like, secret turkey, we have to make our gifts. You don't have to go out and buy. It's just it's just taking time to think about people.

Yeah. What if at at Christmas morning, everyone sat around and you go, I thought about you? Like, that was the present.

That would

be nice. Well, that'd be like The Grinch Who Sold Christmas. Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.

Wow. Doctor Susian. Susian. Yeah. Your favorite word.

You know this. This is a blast from the past, but Crosby's houseboat, which was in Sausalito Harbor in real life Okay. The first time we ever shot on it, it was an actual boat. And then it, of course, was in a sound stage down here, but it was originally in Sausalito. 2 boats over from Crossey's boat was doctor Seuss's boat.

He had a houseboat in Sausalito.

And he still had

It was still his boat. I guess it was his wife's at that point.

His wife's still alive?

She was in 2,000 but whatever year we filmed the pilot. Wobbywobby, give us a, update on missus Seuss.

His second wife Oh,

okay.

Died in 2018. Yeah. That's way after we shot.

Another blast from the past. Are you ready for this?

Yes.

Some scholarly detective armchairry. People a lot of people won't know this whole thing because they came in at COVID. My endless fucking thing about the American soldiers getting the English woman pregnant during World War 2?

Yeah.

They found the book I'm talking about. You know who wrote it?

Doctor Seuss.

Doctor Seuss. No. Margaret Mead. Oh. It's a Margaret Mead book.

It's almost impossible to get. There's, like, 5 libraries

in the country.

I could tell you.

Yeah. We need

to call you right frigging now. But not only did am I not insane that I imagined that whole thing, it's Margaret Mead, godmother of anthro. It's called the American troops and the British community, an an examination of the relationship between the American troops and the British by Margaret Mead.

Is this the pumping the brakes thing?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. That her conclusion was culturally in America, women have the brake pedal. Yes. Men have the gas pedal. But in England, men have the brake pedal.

Women have the gas pedal. You get a couple folks with the gas pedal. I had an anecdotal experience with a gal

You did.

Who I adore. Yeah. What a gift.

Yeah. Yeah. And we used to ask all British people if they agreed with this, and pretty much no 1 did.

Well, I I remembered as being, like, 5050 but.

Oh. Yeah. Okay.

And then there was but in my pursuit of figuring out what the hell I had read, of course, I I stumbled upon a bunch of other academic papers on this same topic, because there's this huge term war babies. There was, like, this yeah. And so 1 of the theories or conclusions was another element is that in America, kissing's nothing. Anyone will kiss, kiss on a first date, whatever, but that in the steps of progression in England in 1942, kissing was very far down the road. You would have held hands.

You would have done all this other stuff. Like, I guess kissing was, like, you're there. You

if you've committed

to kissing, you're pretty much committed to banging. And so there was some miscommunication there where the American GIs were like, let me put 1 on you, and then those gals were like, oh my god. This I think we're gonna have Oh, wow. Sexual intercourse. This is so intimate.

Not as intimate as holding hands. Yeah. Okay.

For me, the most intimate is holding hands. I I have to basically be about to marry you in order to hold my hand.

That would be so weird, to be dating you

Uh-huh.

Head of made out, rolled around, lots of sex, go to grab your hand, and you always pull it away. That would be freaky.

Well, this happened. I went on a couple dates with someone, and they held my hand, and I

You are ready.

Was like, what are you doing?

Yeah. Like, let's do anal, but let's not do this.

Way too intimate. Way too intimate.

Where do you think that stems from?

I guess the only real memory I have of having my handheld is as a kid from my parents.

Yeah. Sure.

Or my grandparents or someone, like, making sure I was safe.

Yes.

It wasn't just no 1 in my family just holds hands.

Oh.

They don't. Yeah. I think it's odd too, but it's my life. So my parents don't hold hands

or anything.

Oh, yeah.

So it wasn't it wasn't a symbol of, like, romantic affection. It was a symbol of safety, and that's extremely intimate.

Yeah.

So, unless you're about to propose, you're not allowed to hold my hand.

Grab that hand when it's time to propose. I hold hands on the ride to school every morning.

Yeah. If

I'm in the car with them and they're in the front seat, we're holding hands.

Yeah. I feel like you hold your you hold Kristen's hand. You hold people's hands.

I hold Aaron's hand.

Yeah.

Yeah. Handholding is very nice.

I think it's very nice.

Yeah. Very intimate for you.

It is. It is.

Okay. Do I have my Christmas presents done? Not really. This year, I didn't feel like I got the there was a perfect gift for anyone, really. Yeah.

So I didn't really so far, I haven't got the satisfaction that I normally get in buying presents, but that's okay. You you can't win every time.

Right. And so you're you what I'm grateful for is you have experienced how I mostly experience buying press.

Like, I

hope they like this. This will do. Yeah. They'll know I thought of them.

Well, I know everyone will like it.

Sure. You got good taste.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I it wasn't I wasn't like, I'm I'm not feeling like I'm so excited for everyone to open their

To see their faces.

See it,

and they're gonna and it's so thoughtful. It's, like, not as thoughtful this year, but, you know, it's okay.

I've already had some mix ups. So Okay. Use your gift guide. Everyone should.

A lot is sold. You said a lot was sold out, and I was thought you were just being nice. But then No. I went on to buy some to send some stuff to my mom to buy me and because she needs she needs a written list.

Yeah.

And, a lot was gone.

Oh, yeah.

I wanted stuff off of that.

Get back

to Nothing. The only thing I could get is when I'd be on the website, and then I'd start sniffing around for other items. Those glasses, those adorable glasses, which they didn't have the first time I was at that website.

Oh, they got back in stock?

Then I was there for some other business. So, anyways, I sent them to my sister-in-law.

Cute.

And they arrived, and they just opened up the box, and then she sends me a text. I like these I'm like, well, do you how could you have thought Oh, he does. To wait till Christmas? Well, she thought But but it's not her fault. It's not her fault.

Slow down. It's not her slow down, Dax. She goes, oh my god. I'm so your brother feels terrible. So what happened was the box came.

My brother just opened it. He knows I didn't get him fucking set of glasses. Yeah. So he just, like, Dax got you these glasses. But,

Yeah.

But, clearly, it's Christmas. You wanna hear the gross thing I did too? Yeah.

What'd you do?

She's like, oh, I like them. And then I'm like, I need her to know they're not kid I didn't get those at I didn't get them at a fast food restaurant. Like, those not. They're nice. I respond, yeah, those are Monica's fancy glasses.

Like, I I I I enlisted you. I was like, yeah. She'll she knows if I said these are Monica's, she's gonna go like, oh, he spoiled me.

Oh, that's

nice. That is really nice.

Is that store not in America?

It's not.

Okay. Great. So this is a grievance I have. I I went nuts there, and they use DHL, which I guarantee is a phenomenal service. This is no shade DHL, but it's I think it must work easier in Europe.

Sure.

This is a ton of text and it just standard as a signature. No.

I know.

No signature, guys, unless I say signature. So then I gotta go every single item I bought from that place, which is a lot, I had to go and fill out the forms to make sure that they could be left on the porch, but after but I have my text from DHL. I probably have 40 texts

from DHL

in the last week. And every time I I think now knowing this one's just an update. It's not the consent form for the no signature. I already

did that.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. The signature can get very stressful.

Listen to my complaints in life. What? I just got completely ashamed of my complaints in life.

Yeah. Like, we

live in an era where I can see something that's gorgeous, and then it'll arrive somewhere, and I'm, like, so flummoxed by

the sidebar.

Clicked my phone twice.

It's true.

It's true. But this is what happens with technology. We just get accustomed

To it being quicker and quicker and quicker

and easier

and easier.

Yeah. And we want it to be I mean, again, we've talked about this a lot, but, like, the amount of minutes my brain has spent on wishing there was teleportation and really wishing. Like, thinking, like, I think that's coming and that needs to come now.

And, like, it's about time, like, actually frustrated.

Yeah. Where is it? Yeah.

Yeah. When I try to explain to the kids that, like, yeah, I had a cassette tape. It was 60 minutes long. If I wanna listen to my favorite song over and over again, I had to rewind forever, and then who knows where you land? Who knows?

You can't land on your song. No. You're always gonna be listening to the back half of a song you don't wanna listen to.

Sure.

I know. Wild. You're

in all black today.

Well, I think these

are great.

Thank you.

Yeah. Very smart outfit.

Thank you.

But I think these

are actually dark and

I don't wanna do this.

They are. They are.

Let me guess your shoes and socks aren't white. They're titanium white.

I bought these at a store, and when I bought them, they were navy.

On the description.

I think so. Okay. I wanna be honest and say I don't really remember, but I'm pretty sure they were.

I'm ensnared in it. Here we go. There's no way those are navy.

Hold on.

I can't sit here and have you saying those are navy. It's the same color as your shirt.

On the TV, it kinda looks navy.

It does.

Here we go. Is this a constant double cross from Wabi Wabi. Well, I don't

know if in person, though. Well, blowing up. It's just kinda shimmery.

Mhmm. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you, Rob, for being honest, speaking your mind.

You have something on Rob. There you go. There's something behind. Have great points.

That I think it could be both.

Look, I will say

I'm straddled.

I know.

I will say that, normally, I'm more it's navy. Like, I feel very definitive about it.

Yeah.

I'll give you that these a couple times I've thought, are these black?

I like

But then they're not.

Okay. I would prefer you you go like, these aren't navy. That's the kinda reaction

you want

to do. Prefer me to say these aren't navy than are these black?

Yeah. I just think it's funny to go, like, you've been duped. You just go, these aren't navy just to yourself. Right. You don't think that's funny?

I just think it's the literally the exact same thing. This is like what happens on sets where there's a line written

Mhmm.

And some the person normally, the writer says, like, oh, this is the best way to say it. Writer. Well, sometimes me. Yeah.

I mean, sometimes me.

Yeah. Exactly. And says, well, no. This is I've dissected that this is the funniest way to say it.

Yeah.

And then the actor, whoever, will say the same line

Mhmm.

And then the original person is is like, oh, no. No. No. Can you go back? Can you say

That 1, unfortunately, that's actually the script supervisor's Navy? Job, which is so unfair because they don't give a fuck what you say.

I don't care.

And they're pitted right between the actor and the writer.

Yeah. This isn't navy, and is this black?

Yeah. Those are pretty substantively different. No. They're not. So.

I think so.

No. They're not.

Like, if you had written the line say your line again.

Are these black?

That's really good. You sold it this time. So I'll try that. I'll do I'll do 1 your way, and then you pick in the edit.

Okay. Are these black?

That's kind

of a That

was a new

night. Yeah.

Newry? Oh, is this navy?

It was like an acting exercise. I didn't wanna do it exactly how you did it.

Do the navy 1 then.

Oh, didn't I? No. I was doing yours.

Oh, but I want you to do both so I could pick in the edit. My god. You told me you set this up.

That's lunch, everybody. We didn't get to it.

I was leaving for lunch. Oh.

0 my god.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Oh my god.

Like the idea that Rob leaves for Rob.

Was like a that was such a Rob joke. Yeah. It wasn't a pun, though, but it was like a behavioral pun.

A baby a baby pun. A baby behavioral pun.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That was bad. That was great.

Okay. Wait. So Back

to why you're in all black. No real reason. Just that's your outfit. Yeah. This is just No 1 passed.

No. Okay.

No. No. No. No. It's I just thought it was chic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Dress to impress. Dress to impress.

Yep. I did. I do that. Yeah. People wanna

Why did you look down at your because

I have a fuzz.

Oh, okay. I go dress to impress and you go.

This is the

outfit. I'm just repeating what act what just actually happened. We could rewind the tape.

Okay. I looked down. This is my outfit, and then I saw I have a bunch of fuzzies on.

Tell me I dress to impress even though you know where it's going.

You dress to impress.

Wouldn't that be a wild

if for me to for me to look at my outfit and not look at my boobs, I'd have to, like

Okay.

Fair. Fair. Fair. To I feel so conscious now.

Oh,

no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

It's okay.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if that was inappropriate. Anyway Anywho, I know where we're at. Really great meditation.

That was so long ago. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you had a great meditation.

Good. Me too. I watched A Christmas Story last night.

Okay.

No 1 will watch it with me.

Oh. I

mean, the kids won't watch it with me.

Got it.

And I

was like, why don't they they know good shit. Why are they acting like that they don't like this movie? I really couldn't accept it.

Uh-huh. And then

I was watching it, and they weren't there.

Mhmm.

And I was like, yeah. It's probably a little slow for them.

Oh.

I could admit that.

And it

made me very nostalgic for back when there was, like, a downtown and it was decorated. Because when I was a kid, Detroit still had, like, Hudson's did a big Christmas display. You could go meet Santa, then you go to Saunders ice cream and have a cream puff. There was a whole thing. There was a there was a parade, and then Caballajal had this thing.

And as the you know, that opening shot where they go, it's a wide. It's in Cleveland in the fifties. Higbee's, you remember they had their their department store was Higbee's, and it was lit up lit up beautifully and really great window display with train sets. Yeah. It made me so nostalgic

and sad.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Well, also to them, like, the fifties is like the 1900 to us.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't wanna watch a movie about the 1900.

Yeah. And you know what? Instead of, like, trying to get my kids to like it, all I do, I go, oh, my father-in-law was born in Cleveland, and this is the era of his childhood. So I'm like, hey, do you love a Christmas story? He's like, who doesn't?

I go, yeah, but you particularly, you grew up in Cleveland. Mhmm.

And then

he was like, is this set in Cleveland? Then he sent me this whole thing. He's like, oh my god. You're right. Higbee's.

I used to go to Higbee's every and then he got a whole story about Higbee's.

That's cute. Yeah. So then you just text it throughout the whole movie.

Because it's slow and boring. It's not a good movie. No. It's so good. And, Ralphie, if anyone's gonna has yet to watch it and they're still gonna watch it, what I want people to dial in most the cutest thing he does, Peter Billingsley

Mhmm.

I e Ralphie. His tongue is so busy in that movie, and it is 1 of the cutest things I've ever seen. Like, when he's doing the decoder ring, and he's like, a.

And

they did and they know it too because they all of a sudden used to go to extreme close-up of his little mouth with that little tongue darting around. And anytime he's reading out loud or he's thinking he's in front of his class, he's, like, having this fantasy that his teacher loved his essay. And, she's on the chalkboard writing, a plus, a plus. And they go to him, and he just wistfully thinking of this. He's like and his little tongue is darting around his face.

Oh, is it cute?

Acting used to be so easy. All you had to do is move your tongue around.

You started around.

And it was considered good acting.

No. He's he's impossibly good for a 9 year old in that movie. It's crazy how good he is. But just any time he's thinking, the shepherds, we stick our tongue out when we're concentrating really hard. Do?

You've not noticed that? Uh-oh. I don't have it quite as bad as my dad and my brother and my uncle, but, yeah, if I'm really going after something, my tongue comes out

Really? We

all do it. Yeah. So his just seem like the thing he does when he's, like, distracted.

Hold on. Do a role. Do it do it as if you're yeah. I wanna see it.

This will be out also.

It's a little out. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Like, I'm expressing, like like, I I wanna

I guess I have seen that face.

It's gonna become an inappropriate fact check, and I wanna apologize to the Christmas listeners.

Why?

Because of my previous thing about you going like this, and then now I'm just going like like, it look all of a sudden, that looked kinda inappropriate, and I just wanna clean it up for the holidays.

Since when do you wanna clean it up?

It's the holidays.

The holidays are sexy.

What do you talk about?

People love to

have sex.

Singles?

And for people and couples, they have sex by the fire and stuff.

Yeah. It's great for singles and couples. Not people with children. It's all about children for all of us.

Yeah. But for even for right? People with children, like, don't they still have sex by the fire?

Oh, no. I wonder if you have sex. Your days of having sex by the fire are completely over the day your first kid arrives.

What about if there's

parents you can't fucking run the well, Monica to fuck on the island in the kitchen.

Why not?

No way. Rob, are you and, Natalie fucking in the open house at all?

No. Never.

But do you have

a do

you have a fireplace?

We do.

Oh. Well, you should fuck in

front of it. By all the cleanup of Christmas, do you ever

jerk off in front of that fireplace?

Christmas, do you ever jerk off in front of that fireplace when no one's home? You know the thing I hate that I can't not think of? And I don't know if this is urban legend or or real. Mhmm. But allegedly, rumor, urban legend, little boy who puts his tongue on the pole gets it stuck to the pole.

He did a porno when he grew up.

Oh, no.

And I know it's

because of that?

No. I don't think it's because of that, but

Well, it might

be. I don't like that. I'm watching this movie, and all I can think of is this little boy grows up and does a porno, which by the way, it's fine if you do pornos. I don't even I don't even know why it's I don't care if you've done a porno.

I'm kind

of curious why it bumps you.

But I don't think when people go into movie acting, their goal is to then graduate to pornos. I think you probably come out here to do movies, you start in pornos, and maybe you graduate.

Well, that's the whole thing when your parents are afraid you're gonna move to Hollywood and then become a porn actor. Yes. That's, like, the whole thing.

Scary about that.

Don't go become you're gonna have to get sucked into porn.

Right. Unless it's a dad and a son. He's like, boy, I hope you find your way over to pornos.

Or maybe then.

Maybe you're just following his dad's dream.

Let me ask you this. Yeah. Now this 1 I I know is real.

K.

Double check, Rob, so I don't get sued. But I do believe Screech was in an adult.

He yes. I was about to say that he was.

Yeah.

And I'm

And does it impact when you're watching Saved by the Bell? Are you thinking like

I haven't watched it since I learned that information, but, yes, I can't I wouldn't I can't, like, see a picture and not think that.

That he is a porno.

But I also it's I it's more than just, like, oh, I did a porno. It feels

I'm dark.

There's something that feels dark about

it. Again, like, it's not what they were wanting or aiming to do, and that maybe they were in financial straits, and then people knew that they would be a draw. It doesn't it sounds like someone maybe compromised.

Well, he but he put

out advantage

of it.

He put out a sex tape called Screeched Saved by the Smell.

Saved by the Smell? Yep. What a classy title. It's I'm lucky I never ended up in 1. I mean, let's be honest.

I was unemployed for 9 years. Oh, no. And I was, you know, I was a party animal. I coulda ended up in 1, and boy, god.

Would you really have?

I mean, I don't know. You're somewhere. You're drunk. You've start you hang you you meet, like, 6 porn stars at a thing. Everyone's having fun.

I guess you're hanging out

with me. Money. You like having sex?

No. You'd have sex with them, but you wouldn't have them film it.

On camera, I'm just saying that I'm I'm lucky that never happened is what I'm saying.

Dude, have you ever filmed yourself having sex?

How dare you ask that question?

Why? Why? Why?

Have I ever filmed

People do.

Of course, they do.

Or not

you or has has okay.

Or to

really think about that.

I'm surprised.

I think I've run some video on you know? But I don't wanna say anything because it's not I don't wanna say Who?

We're not saying who

is.

But I think I've, run some video on some nudity in my day.

Wait. What's the difference? This is like the

I'll tell you the difference. Like, did I ever set up a tripod?

Right.

And then Yeah. No. I didn't I didn't do that.

What is running some video on nudity? What's that look like?

Well, you got your video camera out, and then you're, like, shooting in your thing, and then your girlfriend's naked, and then you film her because you wanna look at it later at some point.

I think there's a not the act. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay.

I mean, I don't have any problem with people making a sex tape.

I

think that's awesome. They're having fun.

Having sex by the fire, the holidays, like most couples do.

Like, once married couple with a house full of children do.

Alright. Well, this is for Allison Jones, and this is our last episode of the year. I mean, sort of. We have a

hog sporg

of offerings.

No. No. No. We do, but this is our last real episode. Then we have an Armchair Anonymous coming out on Friday.

Mhmm. And then we have our holiday special.

Last new interview of the year. How about that?

Okay. And it was a great year.

It was a great year.

Fantastic year.

Closed really strong.

Yeah. Yeah. And we

after another.

We added this location.

Mhmm.

That was a big deal. That was scary. That was a big change, a big challenge.

Yeah.

And we're embracing it.

Yeah.

It's nice.

I like how it's going.

2024. Oh my gosh. Even if I forgot to say this, do you know that the Pantone color of the year was announced?

Okay. So I saw a comment yesterday.

Okay.

That was like, when is Monica gonna talk about pant they were, like, nervous and worried.

Yeah. I'm so sorry. It's taken me this long.

Yeah. Okay. What's

But do you know what it is? Black. No. Close.

What?

It's called mocha moose, which is basically mocha mouse, which is basically brown mouse.

Is it the color of your skin?

It's brown.

There's a lot of shades of brown.

Okay. Fine. No.

Hold up the Pantone color to

your cheeks. It's not really, but but no. That one's a lot.

Modest mousse? What's it called?

It's called mocha Miniature mousse. Mocha mocha moose.

Mocha moose. It's not as dark as yours. So

I'm doing tongue in cheek.

This is

this is a holidays. And boppity bop.

Okay. But it's it's a little more pink.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But

Yeah.

That's a great sign.

That we're going into the Browns with Pantone?

That

That they Brown mouse?

Brown mouse. Brown

That's a good omen.

That is a good omen. It's gonna be an incredible year.

Yeah. I think so. For all all of the people who listen, it's gonna be a great year.

What do you do with that color? Are you ordering items now in that color? Like, do you adjust anything in your life?

Yes. That's the whole you know, it's my background on my phone.

Okay. So that's 1 thing to do. That's an actionable step.

That's the whole that's what I do.

Okay. There's nothing else. It's not like when they announce this color, are there collaborations where now different companies you can order the Pantone

Yeah. Sometimes

moose mocha moose moose knuckle.

Brown mouse. They'll do some collabs. Sometimes there's there's often a mug. I might I might get that this year.

Yeah.

And and yeah. So I make the background of my phone the color.

What I would call that color? And, again, I know this is, xenophobic.

Oh.

It's not really, but nude. That color just looks like nude to me, like nude the before they got wise to that's not what everyone looks like nude. But nude undergarments, do you know what I'm talking about? It's almost like a peach.

Yeah. That's more peach.

Uh-huh.

That's more what this year's was.

That's this year? That's not moose knuckle? Uh-uh. Oh, I thought you already had it.

No. I don't get to put it on until January 1st.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright.

They have a bunch of collabs already. They have, Motorola phone.

They have

Joybird, Libri Tone headphones, all Oh. Pantone and all those brands.

Oh, wow.

Oh my god. Do they have the mug?

They have a they have a 1,000,000 things. So yeah. Probably. Yeah.

Okay. Great. To be oh, I wish they made an iPhone case in it.

See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Like That

would be great because then the wallpaper, everything would be brown mouse.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

No. This is this year's. That's more nude to me. I mean, the color

Yeah. The 1 you're on the outlook is very nude.

Yeah. And the mocha mousse is nude for a brown person. Light brown person.

Light brown person. Colorism. It's even it's even

Whatever. I embrace this as me.

Okay. That yeah. Wait. Hold that up again. Now it looks darker.

Oh, this is much what has happened? Are you sure? I think you might have held up

the paint.

I promise. It's because when you zoom in, it for some reason, it looks

Something goes well, zoom out. It's, like, 10 shades darker. That's your almost your skin color.

Yeah. So there you go. Great.

Okay. 2 facts. 1, she got her business degree for $750 a trimester at UCLA. Now, I made a mistake when I checked this fact before.

Okay.

When I type in now, UCLA Business degree cost, it says the total cost of the MBA program is $128,000 per year, including tuition and living expenses. The tuition is $78,000 per year.

Could it have quadrupled since the last time you Googled it?

I must have it must have been not the MBA program that I looked at. It must have been regular tuition because I Googled this now, like, 8 times because I was also confused. That's wild.

Alright. Let's just say the last time you looked at it up, it was $22 a year.

So, obviously, I looked up the wrong thing. Yeah. So I don't know.

Who knows?

But I

Just go there and then find out. When they get when you get the bill, tell us.

Alright. And then why are they called sides?

In acting,

sides refers to a specific part

of a script given to actors for auditions because,

historically, refers to a specific part of a script given to actors for auditions because, historically, actors would only receive their own lines from a scene, essentially just their side of the dialog, which helped protect the full script from being copied or shared with competitors, especially during Shakespeare's time when printing was limited, hence the term sides. We also discovered that he's married. His wife's name is Anne Hathaway.

That's crazy. Still adjusting to that info.

That is shocking, and I'm I'm surprised that I didn't know that.

Because you're an Anne Hathaway superfan?

No. Because I took a lot of I had to take a lot of Shakespeare.

Right. From your Shakespearean knowledge.

I should have known that maybe I did and I blocked it. I don't know. But Anne Hathaway well, she is a style icon.

We need the interviewer to get to the bottom of whether or not that was intentional or not.

I agree. I agree. I agree.

It would kinda confirm the story I've made up about her in my head, Okay.

Which I

feel like she's just born to be an actor.

Right.

Like, I feel like she's probably been acting since she was 1 years old.

Yeah. I mean, Princess Diaries, she was just 2 years old.

Okay. Is that her real age? No. I didn't see it.

No. But she was young.

Okay.

Not as young as Pepsi Girl. No. I would love to interview her and ask her that.

Me too.

Right.

Please, Anne. Even if the interview is 30 seconds and you tell us whether that was intentional or not, we'll take what we can get.

Or if she wants to come in as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife.

I'll dress up as Bill Shakespeare.

That would be cool.

Yeah.

Who could who could I be they didn't I don't think they have many brown I will dress up as

Julia.

A piece of poop on the floor.

What?

Because because, Brian, they didn't have very many brown people.

You are

So I need to

be you

are so mean to people of color, and I'm here to be an advocate and an ally. I we're

trying to be true to the times.

I am very disappointed.

I know who will be a butler. Okay.

Okay.

Because they had Indian

Servants?

Yeah.

They did.

I think. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure back then England, because they owned India.

Listen, I'll be a poop a poop.

No. No. No. Piece of poop. No.

It'll be a moose knuckle, Pantone moose knuckle.

Wow. Alright. Well, we aren't gonna do this again until, I guess, the holiday special, but that'll be a little different.

Yeah.

And then next year, 2025

Brown mouse

is good. 50th year.

Oh my god. So many good things. Very even age number for me. I love that. Yeah.

Brown mouse Yep. For you.

And 2020 5 feels really sharp.

It's a quarter of a century.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's something about you being 50 and it being 25. That's nice.

Yep. Because I was born in 75. Works

out perfectly. 255075.

Yeah. All quarters.

You should be more excited about that.

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