Transcript of Geena Davis

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi. Hello.

Today we have an icon, Geena Davis. She is an Academy Award-winning actor. Thelma Louise, A League of Their Own, Beetlejuice, Long Kiss Goodnight, The Fly.

Legend. Sometimes we get legends in here. It's pretty cool.

Oh, I loved her. Please enjoy Geena Davis.

He's an armchair expert. He's an armchair expert. Was looking for the seatbelt.

Oh, you were?

Interesting. You were because you think this is going to be a wild ride.

I've been flying a lot lately. Okay.

That was it.

It's just muscle memory.

That's really sweet. You really did just go for your seatbelt.

Yeah, I did. Who knows what's gonna happen?

How long have you been in Studio City?

Only less than a year. I'm just renting. I used to live in the Palisades. Moved before all of that. Unfortunately, that house went. Ooh, ooh. And then I rented a place in Venice for 2 years. Then I gave up the lease on that because I had to go to New Mexico.

New Mexico.

To shoot a series. And then, just as I was gonna come back, I thought, "Oh, it'll be so easy to find a—" The fires happened right when I was coming back. Oh, wow.

And so everyone was renting up everything.

So everything was rented up.

My apartment was gone. I ended up in a guest house in the backyard of some nice Armenian people in Glendale. Wait, hold on. You were in someone's guest house? Guest house. In their backyard.

And were they aware that Geena Davis was their tenant?

Well, it was funny. My assistant booked it in her name, and then I came to meet them, and she said, "It's actually her." And I said, "By the way, maybe don't talk about that I'm living here." Don't tell the neighbors. Yeah, yeah. Just don't bring it up. And they said, "Okay." Why? What do you mean?

They were like, bring what up?

Bring what up?

Okay. What's upset?

Are they first gen? Are they new to the country?

They had accents.

So they might have moved here. Okay. They weren't totally dialed in to American pop culture.

No, no. But here's the best part. So I asked not to talk about me and they said, oh, oh, oh, you know who also lives in this neighborhood? The guy who's the fifth billing on Brooklyn Nine-Nine lives. And then that one lives over here. And I'm like, So I was just talking about—

okay, doing exactly what you just did. I pray maybe you don't do.

Yeah, like, so that— that's what I don't want you to do.

There's kind of a sweet naiveness to it though. Like, perhaps in his mind he was like, good news, there's more of you on this block. You could get together and have coffee, talk about whatever you guys—

people all probably want to get together. Yeah, talk about art and stuff.

It's a very classy block. There's a lot of celebrities. How long were you there?

About 8 months. 8 months. Okay, so certainly I know you do Massachusetts, New York, Sweden. Where did you spend the bulk of your time? What cities? Were you in LA a lot?

I moved here in '83, and I've been here ever since.

Oh, you weren't in New York for any of that?

No. Right after college, I went to New York because my whole class was going to New York. I studied acting. Yes. And they all wanted to do plays. I knew I wanted to do movies and TV, but nobody told me, well, you know, you should actually go to LA instead. So I went to New York and I was like, how am I supposed to get in a movie?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't make a ton there. And then I did. Your town in Massachusetts that you grew up in is 300 and— I did the math yesterday. It's like 312 years old. Yes. That's impossible to be in America in a town that's 300-plus years old. Right. And I was in—

they had a parade for the sesquicentennial, which was 250th, and anniversary, which the country is having. Back in the '80s, I was the parade marshal. My parents and I dressed in costumes from the era. My dad grew out mutton chops. Pilgrimage stuff. Pilgrimage stuff. Yeah.

Yes. How close were you to Plymouth Rock? 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Wow, that's so cool. Okay. It's also Wareham? Wareham. Wareham. It's also the gateway to Cape Cod, right?

Yes, it is.

I just asked someone this the other day who grew up in a tourist town. But when I think of Certainly it would swell in the summer, right? The amount of people that were in your town, or did they just pass through?

They passed through because it wasn't on the Cape. It's right before the Cape, but you must pass through it to get to the Cape.

Then this wouldn't apply. I'm like, every time I was somewhere for duration, like go to northern Michigan in the summer, I would fall in love with a girl there and then I'd have to return home. And then I just imagined, did that girl fall in love every year with someone that was out of town? Like, that seems ripe for a lot of local long-distance relationships. Oh, yeah.

Well, I never had a boyfriend till I left town.

You didn't have one all through high school? No. That would shock people. But I've read enough about you that I know why it's not shocking. 348 years. That's what it was. 1678. That was crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. 348. It's nuts. So your mother was a teacher's assistant? Sometimes. Did she have a college education? No. She was born in 1919, I think. Yes, that's right. Wow. Incredible. Really? Now. My kids make fun of us. They say, "You guys are from the 1900s." And I'm like, "Oh, wow, that is true." And that sounds really funny. I'm sure to them in particular.

It does sound funny, yeah.

Back in the 1900s. But what kind of mom was Mom? Fabulous mom.

She grew all of our produce, you know? She had an acre-sized yard. She grew so much that she would sometimes sell to the local little store, strawberries and stuff, to them. Did she can? Canned. Oh my God. Yeah. Both my parents grew up rather poor in Vermont, and so every piece of foil got saved. I'm not sure they bought a second roll, actually. Yeah. Just used what we had. They were very, very careful about everything.

Well, they would have been little kids in the Great Depression, right? Yeah. Yeah, that'll sear into your consciousness.

Absolutely.

And Dad was a civil engineer?

With the Corps of Engineers, yeah.

Oh, like the Army Corps? Yes, yes.

His unit was in charge of maintaining the canal, surveying it and maintaining it. And then he got assigned to go all up and down the coast, the East Coast, to survey waterways and things.

And you were what kind of kid? You were shy?

I was very shy. And it seemed like every time I wasn't and burst out of my shell, somebody would say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Go back into your shell." That's too much. That's too much.

Yeah, you had a little gap in your paper route, right? And then this little gap on your bike when there were no one watching you, just let it rip and sing at the top of your lungs, but you'd get busted.

Between my house and a few other houses, and there was a long hill where there weren't houses, and there was a creek that went there. And first of all, I was very superstitious at the time, so I had to find sticks on the ground in the shape of a Y, which meant, "Yes, you can keep going." Oh. And if I found one in the shape of a V, that meant, "Very good to keep going." Oh, you made it very good.

Right, right.

Well, what if you didn't find any sticks? You just stood there? Well, I look around, you know.

You find what you're looking for, don't you?

That's true. Manifest.

And the people up the hill, you know, most of them were older, and they wanted their paper. And they'd come out and say, where is she? And they'd look down the hill. And then they'd call my mother and say, I think something's wrong with your daughter.

She's at it again.

She's wandering around and not bringing the paper. Wow.

She's staring at the ground.

We might call that a little OCD tendency now. Yes.

And I'm so not superstitious now whatsoever. But I think I was worried about things. Yeah, totally. And that was a way to feel better.

And you were very self-conscious about being tall.

I was the tallest kid in class, period, throughout. Yeah, from minute one.

Okay, so let's get into the compulsive behavior because I had a ton of it. I had a bunch of tics. I had so many tics. And then I did so many things to prevent bad luck, right? Like I had to do every single thing twice. I had all these bizarre rituals. I had to take the toilet paper and leave the bathroom and touch the wall, then come back in. But I had to do that twice. I was afraid someone would see. Wait, what about toilet paper? Did you say— for whatever reason, at some point at 8 years old, while going to the bathroom, I was like, if I don't take the toilet paper and string it out all the way to the hallway and touch the wall, then come back in. But I have to do that twice or it's bad luck. Then go again. Pray nobody in my house sees me because I know it's madness. Yeah. And I just had a million things I was so busy with. Oh, did you have any of that kind of stuff?

Well, what I was very busy with was monsters in the house. And then I'll talk about the outside monsters. But there weren't just monsters in the closet or under the bed. Which of course I had. Those are standard. To be expected. Right. The worst one was it could read your mind. And so when I was in bed, I had to think that I was somewhere else so that it would go there to look for me. Oh, wow. Smart. And get me. So I'd be thinking, here I am in the kitchen, here I am in the kitchen, and I'm having crackers. It would get exhausting. And I said, I hope it doesn't realize I'm actually in bed. Oh, no. And then I get up and spring out of bed. And then I say, yes, I am in the bed. I'm in the bed. I'm in the bed. Oh my gosh.

You're trying to teleport your consciousness to deceive the monster. And what's great is the monster is so skilled it can read your mind, but it can also be tricked very easily. Right. Yeah. That's the logic of a young person.

And it can't see clearly.

Clearly. Or it would just observe you. Right.

I didn't ever really think about that.

Oh, none of these things make sense if you try to unravel why. Like the whole evenness thing. Did you have that at all?

Evenness?

Like you scuff your left heel walking to school and then you just become neurotically obsessed with like, well, I have to make it a scuff on this side or it's— Imbalanced. I didn't have that kind of thing. You didn't have any of the balancing. Or I have to touch things, right?

I didn't have that. No touching. Yeah.

Did you have a visual of the monster? Like, did you know what it looked like?

That one was invisible. And the other ones were corporeal, but I didn't think too much about how they actually looked, but that they had grabby hands. But there was one—

Yeah, they're very grabby. They're handsy. They want to pinch you and grab your ankles.

I had to vault into the bed from very far away. Of course. Yes. But there was one outside. That was an enormous colossus giant. And if you could see the horizon, it was just below that. And if I did something wrong, it would take one step toward me. And so I would look at the horizon— This is terrifying. —waiting to see the top of its head.

Is your current explanation of all this— mine is easy. I had a stepdad that arrived in my life. He was an addict and he was violent. And then all these things took off, right? All these OCD-type things. Which someone is like, oh yeah, when your environment's very uncontrolled, you try to control things. Great, that makes sense, right? Do you have an explanation? Is yours genetic, or was there something nurture going on that you had a hunch?

I think there was kind of something about that you have to be perfect.

Dad was a deacon as well as a civil engineer.

Yeah, I mean, they were very involved with the church. He and I also sang in the church choir. You played the organ for young people's service.

So there was this huge fear that you would be not good. Yes. I hate that. Don't you fucking hate that? Yeah. Like, I got in a debate with my mother-in-law. I'm like, look, I get it, you want to introduce the kids to your religion, that is your right. I wish you well. I do ask you to not introduce this concept of hell and sin to these little brains. I don't think that's a healthy concept. No, exactly.

But it was even more than religion. It was sort of a maybe a New England-y kind of thing where you had to help, help, help everybody you ever could, but take nothing. It was to the extreme where if somebody was handing me something, "Here, would you like to have some ice cream or a glass of water?" I had to, "No, thank you.

No, thank you." You said you'd be at a girlfriend's house and you'd, like, smell the chicken and garlic cooking and you wanted it. And she invited you to eat and you said no.

I said no. And then thankfully, her mom knew about my mom. She'd call and say, "Lucille, Gina's having dinner with us. No, she is." Yeah. She took charge. "Oh, no, no, no, you can't say yes because it's too much trouble for me." We don't want to be a burden. Yeah. Politeness.

Where do you think that came from in them?

I don't know, but they definitely both had this thing where you had to be the politest person. Not only polite, but just incredibly self-sacrificing. Perfect way to be was absolutely no needs, but I'm gonna give you everything.

Self-sufficient and very generous. Yeah.

Yeah. That's tough.

Yeah. How did that play out with, like, friendships? Did people think you were over the top with that, or was it standard enough ethos in that area?

You know, my only close friend was Lucienne, who lived across the street and who I saw and played with every day. But for some reason, the other kids— I was friendly with everybody in school, but I didn't get invited to people's houses, which was weird. There was one time when I was already driving, I already had my license, and the cool boy from class called and said, "Hey, a few people are gathering at my house. Would you like to come?" And I'm like, "Oh, uh, hold on." I was like, "It's finally happening. It's finally happening." I'm a junior in high school or something, but— Hold on. And I went and I found my dad. I said, "Dad, Dad, Dad, can I take the car?" Why? Well, I've been invited to go over to a friend's house. And he said, but it's 9 o'clock. I said, that's okay. And he said, nobody goes out at 9 o'clock. No, it's too late. No. Dad, but what if I left at 7? I'd still stay there till 11. So what difference? And he was like, no, no. And I had to go back and say, no. I'm sorry, I can't come.

And then never got asked again. No! That was my one chance. That's awful. Yeah.

So did you resent them, your parents?

I probably didn't really grasp it as well as I do now what was going on. I mean, I resented the hell out of not being able to—

of course— live your life. Yeah.

I know you went and studied in Sweden for a year in high school. Is it because you knew everyone was so tall there? Do you think that was in the mix?

No, but that was interesting. I didn't know that. I found it out.

Yeah. You got there and you were completely normal, right? Completely normal.

My high school started this foreign exchange program when I was a junior. And the second I heard about it, I was like, "I wanna go." And I think it was that I somehow knew I could reinvent myself. They wouldn't know I was a geeky kid who didn't have a boyfriend. And that's how it turned out. They kept saying, "You must have been so popular back home." Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know?

Yeah. Had you taken any Swedish prior to—

No. I don't know what the plan was or how this ever happened, but— I got to Sweden without knowing how to speak one word of it, and I started high school 2 days later. Oh my God. Really? I show up at the school and they say, "So-and-so's gonna help you to your classes today." And I'm in the first class and I'm like, "Hang on, it's in Swedish." Yeah. How is this supposed to work? Yeah. How are you gonna learn anything? I went up to the teacher afterwards, and of course they all do know how to speak English. I said, I said, "Do you know what I'm supposed to do?" And she said, "I don't know. I've been thinking about it because I can't teach the class in English." So I started, I'd ask somebody what was the homework, and I'd take the book home and I'd look up every single word in the dictionary. So I would translate the entire homework, but I learned it fast.

That's how the Scientologists learn. They call that like clearing words.

Really?

Yeah, you have to read everything with a dictionary next to you. I mean, they believe that the basis of all misunderstanding is that people misunderstand a word and then continue on, and they build all this stuff on top of a misunderstanding. So you're obligated. Wow. I've worked with lots of Scientologists, and I've watched someone doing the clearing words thing, and I was like, what's going on here? Wow. Yeah, so you could have invented your own religion and you just missed the opportunity. What was the family like that you were living with?

They were conservative, I would say.

They were Pretty strict. This is a bummer. You left one constricting environment for another. You needed to go to the Skarsgård family.

Oh, exactly. Oh, right? Yes. They're like naked walking around.

Yeah, Alexander said they were always naked and having wine.

Oh, yeah. Dancing. Well, the older girl, their daughter, had a boyfriend who slept over.

Yeah, that was standard, right?

Absolutely. And I was like, "What?" I'm sure they felt very responsible for her.

But alas, you did fall in love there. I did. What was the name? Mats?

Mats, yes. Mats. We went on a school trip to Amsterdam. Ooh. And I hadn't even really noticed him before in my class, but we started hanging out and he was gorgeous and blonde. How tall was he? Taller than me. So that was like unbelievable. And his family adopted me. They were like, just come here.

And they weren't strict? No.

And they drank wine at dinner and I was like, oh my God. Wow. This is crazy. And then the dad had to go on a business trip one time. They said, would you like to come with us? Oh my God, yes. And the people said yes. And they got a room for Matz and I. Oh!

Wow. What a blessing.

And you were like 18?

What world am I living in? 17, 17. Oh my God. You maintained a pen pal relationship?

Yes. And my parents actually invited him to come visit us in the summer after I came home. And he came for like a week.

Had the magic fizzled out between you? No, no, no, no. So summer was nice. Yeah, it was. Did you take him to Martha's Vineyard?

No, but we took him camping in Vermont in our homemade camper.

How did that end? They're hard. Long distance back then was like a dollar a minute, right? It's really hard. So, when you first got out of high school, you wanted to go to University of Boston. That didn't work out for one reason or another.

I wasn't home in order to audition. You had to audition to get in the acting program. So I went to a college, New England College, which you didn't have to audition to become an acting major. For the first year, and then as soon as I could, I auditioned to go to BU.

And did you like it there? I did. You got an F in body movement?

In movement class, which is sort of dance, but yes, because there were these assignments like, "You and your partner create a scene with 3 hits and a fall," or something like that. Okay. And all the stuff that I came up with was so ridiculous that she would say, Very amusing, but again, not the assignment.

Did you start gaining confidence in college? When does the transition from, like, "I'm an awkward duck" to— I know by the time we get to New York, we're ready to try modeling. So something has happened between those two. Right. It was college.

Yeah, it was. 'Cause now, "Oh, I'm in charge of myself. Be however I want to be." I actually became sort of goth. A lot of eyeliner and— I pierced my own ears. You were rebelling.

It was your time to rebel.

It's my time to rebel.

Yeah. Okay, so when you get to New York, you start modeling. And did that require— like, your first time doing it, that's a big leap of confidence. You've kind of got to just, I think, fake it till you make it, maybe. I mean, does anyone feel like a sexy runway model? I don't know, maybe like 5 or 6 of them, and those are our supermodels. But is awkward endeavor initially, no?

It very much felt like I was faking everything. In fact, I guess because I was taller than most models, I would get a lot of bathing suit and underwear and pantyhose, those kind of jobs. And I was actually in Victoria's Secret one time. So I'm shooting all these photos in underwear, you know, very revealing. And then I go back to the dressing room to go home and put on my full— Big grandma. Big grandma underpants. And I told myself, I just— I figured out how to stand. That was all a trick, tricking them into thinking I'm attractive.

I don't want to be too dramatic, but do you think you were able to disassociate? Yeah. Like, okay, we're going to walk out, we're going to act like we're a sex symbol, right? Yeah. We know we're not, so we're just going to vacation while that's happening.

Exactly. I'm just going to pretend I'm all that.

One story before we get to Tootsie. You were also working at Ann Taylor. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Monica. No, just great story. So imagine she's there in the '70s. I mean, I have to imagine this is apex window display era of department stores. Yeah. Right. So you were working there and what happened?

I was a salesgirl at Ann Taylor. We would dress like Ann Taylor. Yeah. Style. So I was always made up and dressed up.

Except for the undergarments, which were enormous underneath.

Yeah, except for my giant panties. And one time the window display was a café table and two models were sitting at chairs.

And it was mannequin models. Mannequins. Oh, okay.

And there was fake food and all that. But there was one empty chair. And I kept looking in the window. Then I said to one of my coworkers, dare me to go in the window? And she was like, yeah, do it. I had no idea what I was gonna do. But I went and got in the chair and people were walking by at that time and they were like, hmm, wonder what she's doing? And I got in the chair and I just— Oh yeah. And froze. Wow. And they're like, Huh? And then they keep watching to find out what's gonna happen.

And then other people stopped and said, "What are you looking at?" But they had missed you arriving.

They missed that. Yeah. And they said, "Just wait." 'Cause they're like, "She's gotta move at some point." So I started moving, you know, like a robot occasionally. And they'd go, "Whoa!" And then more people would come and say, "What are you all looking at?" "Just wait." Oh my God.

You created like a whole scene.

I created a whole thing. At some point, And the manager of the store came over and said, "Gina! What are you doing? Get out of the window!" And then she looked and saw this giant crowd outside and said, "Well, stay there." Oh, wow. They started harking every Saturday. No. For like 5 hours or so.

She had 5-hour shifts of sitting still.

A little break every hour.

I'd take like a 5-minute break. You know, 5 or 10 minutes.

Wow. It's like an art installation.

But I think even sitting dead still for 15 minutes would be far more grueling than people would expect. Is it not hard? I learned—

You were built for it. I had no idea that I had this talent, but I learned that I have a tremendous skill at being motionless and that I could go a very long time without blinking. Because they're all also waiting for me to blink.

Oh, yeah. Of course.

You know, I could go like at least 5 minutes or more without blinking.

Then I blink and they go, "Ahh!" Did you ever consider rubbing a thin layer of Vaseline over your eyes? Would that have helped? So that they wouldn't need moisturizing? Like maybe you could convince your eyes that they could stay open permanently. Well, that's why you're blinking, to moisturize your eyes.

No one wants to put Vaseline on. Of course not.

But if you're committed to your craft—

You can't be sure that would work.

No, you'd have to try it.

Then your eyes would be closed.

You'd probably fall down getting in because it'd be blurry.

I should have tried. But you know what? People would be looking, looking at me. And one time somebody said, ah, it's not a mannequin. It has hair on its arms. And so I was like, okay. And I went home.

She could hear them perfectly through the glass. Isn't that fascinating? I would love to hear people talking about me. Oh, yeah.

I think I can hear it.

Funny. But yeah, so from then on, I shaved my arms and I got a wig that looked like the other mannequin's wig.

Wow, this is the reverse of the movie Mannequin, where a mannequin becomes a real-life beautiful girl. You are a real-life beautiful girl.

And then one time somebody said, that's not a robot or anything, she's not plugged in. So the next time, I had a very subtle little cord disappearing. Wow, she's plugged in! This feels impossible, but your first audition as Tootsie?

Yeah.

Oh my. I mean, that really is nuts.

How did you get it?

Because the role required his dressing room mate to be in her underwear a couple of times, so he'd be like, "What?" They called model agencies and said, "Do you have any models who know how to act?" And my agents knew that I did. They said, "We do have one.

She's currently acting like a mannequin on Fifth Street." It's so—

They said, "Okay, so go. These are the lines, and you're gonna go to an audition. And if they like your audition, they wanna see you in a bathing suit. So just wear a bathing suit under your clothes." So I did, and I went to the audition, and I read, and it was just an assistant to the casting director.

The first rung on the ladder.

She did the video and then didn't ask to see my bathing suit, so it just went completely out of my mind. Oh, no. Of course, my first time, nothing's gonna happen.

You flew to do a runway show, right? Yes, I went to Paris.

I went to Paris, and I got booked for some of the runway shows, and I was excited about that. And then got a message, call your agent. And they said, you got the part. And I'm like, what part? Tootsie. Huh? What? They said, but you could stay and do the shows. And I was like, I'm coming home. I gotta come home. Which I didn't need to, but I really wish. I regret I didn't.

Sidney Pollack had seen your tape, right?

He saw my tape, and he said, I really like her. Where's her underwear photo? And they said, "Oh, we forgot. We didn't do it." Well, get her back. "Oh, turns out we can't. She's in Paris." Well, do they have any photos of her in a bathing suit?

Oh my God. Lucky!

And I lit Megan. Turns out there's tons of them.

I definitely did. Yes. With everybody else in this office, you know, with shitty lighting.

What was your intimidation level? 'Cause your scenes were immediately with Dustin. And Dustin's already being heralded as, like, the second coming of Brando, right? I mean, he is a god at that time. So, yeah, what was your kind of anxiety level? As someone who trends high with anxiety.

I get there on the first day. The first scene I shoot is in my underwear with Dustin. But I was just like, "This is what was supposed to happen." Yeah, you felt confident? As if it really happens that way for people. But I felt kind of fine.

Do you think the modeling helped? Like, you kind of already crossed a really big bridge to do that. That's way more awkward than acting. When I gotta do a photo shoot for something, I'm like, "Oh gosh, I can't stand this. It's crazy I act." No, that's true.

And so, we started shooting the scene, and Dustin and Sydney were so gracious and kind with me. And then on one of the takes, Dustin accidentally ran into the door, and I went over and said, "Are you okay? You all right?" So I was ad-libbing. Sydney Pollack said, "Hey, come here for a second. Why are you not nervous?" And I said, "Am I supposed to be? I don't know." Oh, God. Yeah, no, it's good. It's great.

But it's almost creepy. But it's a little bit creepy.

He said, I mean, you're acting a scene with Dustin Hoffman, you're in your underwear, and you seem just fine with it. Yeah.

Is it fair to say— now look, I've worked with really, really acclaimed actors that didn't have this ability, and then I've worked with really acclaimed actors where they have this ability, which is like they're so good they can just suck you into their bubble. Like, do you think Dustin's ability helped you for that first role?

Yeah, Dustin was incredible with me and immediately decided that I was gonna have a career and just took me under his wing all day long, tips and advice. And the second day, he said, "Come with me at lunch. I'm gonna take you to dailies." I didn't know what that was.

And for the listener, dailies are when they used to shoot on film, they go process all the film, then you'd come back and watch it all in the theater unedited. Right.

And it's typically just for department heads and whatever to see, was the mic in the camera or something?

Is the hair reading weird in this lighting?

And Sidney was a little surprised when Dustin brought me in. He said, "What's going on?" He said, "I'm gonna teach her how to watch dailies." Yeah, 'cause let's just add, actors are not invited to dailies.

No, no. If you're Dustin Hoffman, you can go.

Yes. And Sidney was like, "Okay." So, every time I did scenes, I got to go to dailies, and he would— and talk through it and stuff. And he wanted me to learn how to use dailies as a tool. And so, the idea was, let's say you think something you did had some intention and you hope it came across. Well, go see the dailies to see if it did. Yeah. And if it didn't, you probably have some other scene where you could work on that aspect of the character. So, that was incredible.

That's great.

Well, also, you're accumulating— I don't want to belittle it and say that you accumulate tricks, But you do accumulate the things you're good at and no one's great at everything. And some things are totally unexpected. Some you've been doing since you're 8, and of course it works. But also some of the things you were doing since you're 8 on film don't work. There's a lot to learn. There is. I was lucky. The first movie I ever did, they invited us to dailies. Really? It was a mixed bag. Oh, were you self-conscious? Well, first of all, I couldn't believe I was on a screen. Yeah, I was just like, oh my God. Because they're showing the dailies on a movie screen in New Zealand. Yes. Yes. And I'm like, this is happening. So maybe the first half of the time, so when I just couldn't believe I was in a movie, and then the last half I was like, we gotta stop doing that, that, and that, you know? Right, right, right. Yeah, like once the thrill of being in a movie wears off, right, and you're like, oh, I could be doing a little better at this.

Yeah, yeah.

Or I could be not doing that.

Yeah, maybe I don't need to do so much, period, right? I think that's what you really learn a lot of times, like you don't need to be that busy. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road? You genuinely thought you could make it? You were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you, and it's not far enough. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent plan. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate Roadside Plan today. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club, Incorporated, an Allstate affiliate. So that movie comes out, it's enormous. I think it gets nominated for 10 Academy Awards, something outrageous like that. Big hit. Yeah. And how are you computing having gone from being a living model—

a mannequin—

a living mannequin to that moment?

So I'm home visiting my folks at one point And my best friend's mom comes over. She's talking to my mom, and she says, "No one can believe somebody from Wareham is in a movie. Nobody can believe this." My mom says, "Well, she studied acting in college." Yeah, with 13 other thousand kids that year. But I remember just now, my brother and I took them to see the movie. It was a matinee. Hardly anyone was there. The movie finishes, we get in the car, dead silence. Mom says, "So, what do we have for dinner tonight?" Oh, boy. I think it was 'cause I had underwear on. I know.

I was gonna ask how they were handling the underwear exposure.

Well, double whammy. There's the underwear, but then there's also just the, like, "We're a very pious, low-poppy family, and you're a model, and now you're an actor." That just almost must have been quite threatening with how worldly you were getting.

Maybe. Although my mom really latched on to— about me being an actor. And she one time said, "Your mole, I would pay if you want to have it removed, if that would make any difference." And she also said, "I read that blonde actresses get more work. I would be happy to pay for you to get your hair dyed." She was like wanting— She was just trying to help.

All terrible advice, but really sweet. Yeah, that freckle's like, "That's Geena Davis." Yeah.

The intention was kind. It was. It was.

Yeah, it's very. Okay, so— So at that time, I just immediately built a huge fantasy around this. Tell me if I'm right or wrong. Your husband at the time was a restaurateur. Yes. So when I think of New York, I'm thinking of Billy Joel's Big Shot, like going out to Elaine's, the whole New York City 1980s. Now, it wasn't so thrilling and glamorous. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't. No, no. What, he owned pizza shops?

He worked at Various restaurants.

But none of them were sceney ones? Nothing sceney. You weren't seeing Billy Joel jacked up in a corner? No, nothing like that.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't do that. Were you going to Studio 54? No. Although my agency had a Christmas party at Studio 54, and they wanted to have models jump out of a giant present box. Sure. That would, you know, the walls would fall down and sing Jingle Bell Rock. Oh, wow. Yeah. Classic. Classic Esteem Builder. Yeah. So because— I could sing-ish and do harmony. I was one of the— the other two were, like, pretty famous, but I got to do that. So we dressed in these skimpy little dresses which had jingle bells tying together the sides.

I'm picturing, like, almost the Hugh Hefner bunny outfit in that world. Exactly. Okay, with some bells. Yeah, with some little bells added. What was your identity doing that you thought you were a wallflower in high school? But now you're quite beautiful and you're in movies and lots of men probably are giving you a lot of attention. How are you integrating that into your identity?

I think I still thought it was kind of a trick. Oh, I also thought, because somebody happened to video me while we were in college and showed me the video and I was like, I'm kind of photogenic. In that instance, I am a trick. Ah. Ah. If it's a— photo or on screen.

You made space for— there's a version where I'm beautiful, but it's only through a lens, only in this circumstance. I'll tell you my story. Okay. I have been embarrassingly vulnerable to female attention and approval my whole life because I had this big window. I was like, no girls are ever gonna like me, and I want a girl so bad. So did you have any of that where you just felt like that affection or approval held a weight that maybe otherwise it wouldn't have?

I think so, yeah. I was also very impressed if somebody took interest in me.

You were, like, surprised.

I could like someone just because they liked me.

Oh, me too. That's what I'm saying. Absolutely. Yeah. If they said, "I really like you," I said, "I like you too." Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a tricky— a tricky lane to play.

It's very tricky. Then you're just, like, at the mercy mercy of luck. Well, I hope the right dude arrives in front of me and says I like you, because I will like that person back.

All you have to do is show interest in me. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, it's not knowing yourself. It's not knowing what you really like or what you want, right?

You want to need— yeah, yeah. Also, it just goes to show, like, what you think you're meeting when you're an adult, like, you just don't know people's childhoods. No, exactly. Like, anyone that's meeting you and you're in movies and you're 6 feet tall and you're gorgeous, they're like, yeah, this This girl's had every option her whole life. I'd be so lucky if she says hi to me back. Yeah.

And then you're sitting there like, oh my gosh, I just want someone to say hi.

This guy actually likes me.

Something's wrong with him. Exactly.

Okay, so then for the next few years after Tootsie, you start doing a bunch of television. You were in some of the greats. You were in Knight Rider, freaking Remington Steele, Family Ties. Now you were on Buffalo Bill for a year. I don't even know that show, but I was really excited to learn that you wrote an episode of it. I did.

So, Dabney Coleman was in Tootsie, and I met him there. And then he was getting ready to do this sitcom, Buffalo Bill, and recommended me to play his assistant. And I flew out to LA and immediately got the part. And then I had an idea for an episode that heavily featured my character.

Assistant heavy.

And I told one of the producers, producer-writer, about it, and he said, "Well, okay, write that." And I was like, "No, I don't know how to write." "Well, write it. Just try it." That was cool of them. Yes. So I started writing it, and I thought, "Maybe this is good." And I wanted to show him, and he said, "No, I'm not reading it till it's done." So that forced me to finish it. And then with everybody tinkering with it, but yeah, we did it.

Was that so enormously rewarding to see an episode of television on air that you wrote? Yes. Yeah, I'm shocked you didn't get more addicted to that.

I know. 'Cause forever I've wished that I could write a screenplay or something, but I don't know. Have you written?

Oh yeah. And I pride myself on it way more. Of course. Like when we're traveling, if we're meeting people who have no clue who either of us are and they say, what do you do? I'll always say writer. That's what I have the most pride in.

I totally understand. Okay.

I just have to ask you this one because this is my all-time— it's a three-way tie, but it is number one. My all-time comedies are Raising Arizona, Burning with Disaster and Fletch.

Oh boy. Yeah, I love your body, Larry.

You're one of the guys who would come up to me and say, oh, I wouldn't have done that to you, but yes, I would have been very thrilled you were around, that's for sure. Right. What was that movie like? I just watched the Chevy doc. Oh, did you watch that?

I didn't even know there was.

I'd be so curious to hear from someone who did a movie with them. It's interesting, most of the people that I've had the conversation with, they didn't walk away with what I did. I can just tell you what I walked away with, which is He is a genius. He's deeply uncomfortable and he has this crazy wit and he acts out with it a lot and he's mean to people a lot. But I also don't know that he knows he's mean to people in the way that he clearly is mean to people. But at the end of the day, he is unhappy. He's uncomfortable and unhappy. So I have compassion for him. It's not like he was an asshole and he's having a blast. I think he's suffering the most. No. Yeah. Was there any hints of that when you were doing Fletch?

Well, you know, I had such a small part. I originally auditioned for the lead female character.

Mrs. Stanhope.

Alan Stanhope's wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I stood a lot.

Yeah, so many times. I could do every line.

I'm pretty sure they said, "You're not attractive enough to play that part." Oh. "But we think you're so funny.

We want you in the movie." And this was '85 where they would tell you, Yeah, that's crazy.

That's so crazy. I was wearing my hair all curly and weird. Anyway, they said, "Oh, there's this part of the morgue chief whose name is Larry, but we'll change it to a female for you." And I said, "But I still wanna be Larry." Yeah.

Yeah. It made it very memorable that you were Larry. Yeah. But was he grouchy? Not at all. He was also at the peak. Everything was going his way at that moment. Yeah.

And he might have really enjoyed that movie or something because— He seemed fun and funny and chill and great.

Okay, so you did the movie Transylvania 6-5000 and you met Jeff. Yes. Had you seen him in things prior to that? Yes. Okay, because I think The Fly is my introduction to Jeff Goldblum. He's immediately a unicorn, right? He's so peculiar in the most fascinating way. Fabulous way. And was he that way on Transylvania?

Yes. Yeah, I was immediately Smiten.

You sounded like him, just then.

Yes, yes, yes. Sorry, Jeff. But yeah, yeah, we hit it off.

It was pretty immediate. Very off to the races. Okay, yeah, then you do The Fly, and The Fly is a mega movie. What a movie. Really was.

Yeah, David Cronenberg, who wrote it also. You've probably never saw the original Fly, but It's goofy. It didn't mean to be.

That was in that spell of weird monster movies, right? Weird monster movies. Swamp Thing and—

I wouldn't be surprised if Vincent Price was in it. And when the character turned into a fly, he had a human body and a giant fly head. And then they showed the fly toward the end had his human head on it, but tiny. Uh-uh. And he was like, "Help me! Help me! Help me!" But then it gets eaten by a spider.

This has to be a very joyful phase of your life. You meet someone, you fall in love. He's a unicorn. And then you guys do 3 movies together. Yeah. Back to back to back. Yeah. Was there any stress or challenge to that or no?

No, it was all fun. And in one, he's a fly. In another one, he's an alien.

Earth girls are easy. Earth girls are easy.

Yeah, it was kind of crazy.

So The Fly is huge. I guess I would have expected after Tootsie you'd had more movie type offers, right? But it takes The Fly, that kind of gets the ball rolling. And then the kind of big breakthrough for you— well, then Beetlejuice is huge. Mm-hmm. What's it like working with Tim Burton?

Oh, so great. I went to meet him to talk about being in the movie, and he's an illustrator too, you know, he used to do animation, and all the walls were covered with his drawings of what Beetlejuice was gonna look like, and it was fabulous. And I found out later that this happened, that I said to him, "I want to be in this movie 'cause I—" I get it. I get this movie. And he told me later that he wanted to hire me because he wanted at least somebody on the set who knew what the movie was. He's like, 'Cause I sure don't.' So that was great.

Okay, Accidental Tourist, then kind of now everything changes because you get nominated and then you win an Academy Award for that. You're pretty young still.

Yeah, I'm just like 32 or something.

Yeah, 32. Feels very young to win an Oscar nowadays. Yeah. And what did you have to learn on that movie with William Hurt's just kind of darkness?

Actually, so for that movie, I hired an acting coach. I had studied acting, but I had never worked with a coach. But I thought, "Oh, this is so important. I don't wanna mess it up." And he actually had heard what Bill is like to work with. So he was like, "We're gonna proof you from being drawn off track by the way he is." Because— He did live at a dark place. I think all of it was kind of painful for him in some way. And so, I was such a caretakey, people-pleaser type. If he had been like that, and I had no idea he was going to be like that, all I would be trying to do is make him happy, fix him up. You know, "What can I do?" So if he's unhappy, given your childhood, you would have likely interpreted that as like, "Well, I've been bad." "What is it about me that he doesn't like?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. But— I learned what to do if that happened. The coach said, if you say, "Oh, how are you?" And he says, "I'm terrible." You're gonna say, "I'm sorry to hear that. Okay." Just not get sucked into that.

And it was really unnatural. Yes.

But I practiced it, and I was able to do that. It's like very codependence teaching.

Yeah. Breaking. Right. Yeah. And submersion therapy all at once. True. Immersion, submersion. Well, yeah, this is the kind of the theme of your memoir is basically like a lot of these roles have forced you to take on qualities that otherwise would have maybe been unobtainable.

Right.

And that certainly feels like a really good one. Not that you perfected it, but if I could have learned at 32, I'm currently learning it. I live with 3 women and it has occurred to me I can't be affected by their emotions, or this isn't going to work. Like, this will be untenable if I'm upset every time they're upset and trying to figure out what I got to do to fix it. I'm gonna die. But it's like taking that life experience and forcing me to learn that. So I would have loved to have learned that at 32.

Yes, but it didn't apply to anybody else. I learned how to do it with Bill Hurd.

So you're good if you're with him, you're fine. But anyone else, you're still vulnerable. Okay. Immediately after— now we're on a fucking roll. Now we go into Thelma and Louise there pretty quick after that. And Ridley Scott, obviously one of the great kind of masters to ever do it.

Just a genius.

Heartbreaking End. What did he bring to that?

You know what? I just watched it with a friend two nights ago. I mean, I've seen it a million times, but I watched it again, and I was just so bowled over by everything he brought to it. There's so many details that I kept saying, "That was Ridley's idea. That was Ridley. He did that." You know, like a motorcycle suddenly screamed by, or some vehicle shooting water out at the car, and we dodge it. And all kinds of just visual stuff. A crop duster plane flies over the convertible, and just, he brought such profound visual element to it besides being a genius director with all the acting and everything.

As an actor, you can miss all that stuff. You're like focused on your scene. We have this 3-page scene in this car. You don't even notice a fucking crop duster probably flew by in the back. Or if you saw it, you would think it was coincidental, right? Yeah. You're kind of unaware of how much of the sausage is being made around you.

He made that movie so much bigger than it could have been.

And then Susan arrives in your life as kind of a real signpost of like some things you'd like to take on. Yeah. Oh man, she changed my life.

My life more than anybody, and we're still ride or die. So, the first day I met her was a good example. We were getting together with Ridley, just the three of us. We were gonna go through the script and see if anybody had any comments or thoughts. And there was a few little things I wanted to bring up, but I had tried to figure out the girliest possible way to bring them up.

"Well, this I can just mention on the set." Your pattern at that time was every sentence you said was mitigated with, "This is probably a dumb idea," or, "I'm sorry to even bring this up," right? You were constantly apologizing for having an opinion.

Yes. Apologizing very femininely.

Existing, let alone having thoughts about something. But so we sit down, crack open the script, and on page 1 Susan says, "Ridley, you know what? My first line here, I don't think we need it. Or we could put it in the next scene." And he was like, "Yeah, sure." And I was literally like, "What is she doing?

What's this?

How did she just do that? How come she didn't find out first how he'd react or something?" And the whole The whole day was like that, the whole experience. And then the entire movie was like that. I had never been in the presence of a woman who doesn't apologize for existing ever.

And advocates for herself without any fear of— Right. Advocates for herself.

And everybody loved her. It wasn't like, "We like Gina better 'cause she's so wimpy." Right. Everybody adored her. It wasn't like she was fighting, but she just knows what she wants and says what she wants.

Were you trying to figure out how she had become that way? That would've been my great fascination. It's like, "How did she end up this way?" I—

You just took it up to this minute. I never thought about, "How did she manage to be that way?" She was the oldest of many siblings.

She's a boss. Yeah, yeah.

She might have also just decided or understood that her value was more than just how she looked or being this very female presence, that she offered something else. Thoughts and her brain and something. Exactly. Which seems like it should be—

it seems absolutely natural.

Yeah, but it's not.

But it sure wasn't for me.

Not for a lot of women. It's hard.

Now what's interesting is everyone now will recognize that movie as like this very seminal feminist movie, but I don't think— I even realized this too, I was researching you— that that was not the takeaway at the time when it came out, right? Like, that was one of the weird things that were happening around that movie? Because it was wildly successful.

Right. A lot of the reviewers had a problem with it. Like, a week after it came out, Susan and I were on the COVID of Time, but there were two editorials denouncing the movie about how bad this is. This is a horrible idea. And a lot of reviews were like, "This is male-bashing." Hmm.

You mean rapist-bashing? There's hopefully a difference between men and rapists.

Yes, rapist. And there's 7 important male characters, and— Oh my God, what a horrible message. Now the women have guns. Oh my God. So it was really frowned on, but it didn't impact its success. People really liked it, and it did well.

But culture was not there yet. Right. So you got nominated for that movie. And Susan too. And Susan as well. So fun. We did talk about Susan a lot, so I don't want to be accused of now I gotta talk about the one man in the movie.

Oh, no, no, no. We appreciate it.

But I'm so in love with him. I'm just so head over heels in love.

Harvey Keitel is just gorgeous. I know. Harvey Keitel. Oh, you mean— Oh, you mean— No, I was like, the piano.

He's nude in the piano, which I appreciated. Harvey Keitel. Yeah, but obviously Brad Pitt, this is his breakout role. Did you think when you were watching, like, yeah, this motherfucker is going to really be a thing?

He's a star. Or no? I didn't think this motherfucker. This wonderful human being. Yeah. Just gonna be all that. I was positive that the reaction he got was the reaction he was gonna get.

And you have a nice, fun glimpse of him because you have a glimpse of him probably more as Shucksie, Missouri boy, than this— oh, international movie star. Absolutely. Yeah. So what was he like back then?

Oh God, yeah, he was so fun, so sweet, so excited, so happy to be doing it, and playful also, which I think You could tell in the way he plays the character, but he was just having fun with everything and loose. And for his first really big role, he just killed it.

Was everyone in love with him? Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Well, duh. We still are.

We all were. But I have to tell you a funny story. Did you hear about my George Clooney story? No. So, I was getting on a plane in Europe one time, and all the flight attendants were waiting at the door for me to show up, and they said, Guess who you're sitting next to? George Clooney. Oh my God. And for once in my life, I said the right thing at the right time. And I said, guess who he's sitting next to? That's right. Right?

That is right.

And I was like, I can't believe I came up with that. Oh, good for you. So I sat down. That's Susan. He's charming, he's gregarious, he's telling stories and we're talking. And then at one point he says, you know, He said, "I hate that Brad Pitt." I said, "Isn't he like your best friend or something?" He said, "No, I hate him because he got the part in Some of the Weeds." I said, "Oh, oh, really? Did you want that part?" And he said, "Couldn't you tell when I auditioned with you?" Oh, wow! He had read with you? Yes.

That's hilarious. Were you embarrassed? I'm so wimpy.

I didn't say, "No, I didn't remember you at all, ha." You know, I said, "Oh, right. No, I did." Oh, no!

He would've laughed if I said— Of course he would've.

I might have done the same thing. Thing. Yeah, yeah. No, you don't want to make someone feel like they were unmemorable.

He made it— he made her feel like, you don't remember? Then you could be like, I don't.

Oh, that's a take.

That's a Susan take. That's what Susan would have done.

Yeah, I think it's like, because I've been in this position a bunch of times, and it's like the last thing you want is to tell someone like, oh yeah, you're unmemorable. Not like, hey, I've met 11,000 people this year. But he is putting her in the position.

It's one thing if he's just like, oh yeah, I auditioned with you then you might be like, oh, I know, I remember. Like, then you want to make them feel good. But if it's like you don't remember, it's a trap.

So then '92, League of Your Own comes along. This is a huge triumph as well. Open number one, 10th biggest movie of the year. You, Tom Hanks, Madonna. Had Madonna done much before then?

Acting? Yeah, I don't think so. Evita was after that.

Yeah, for sure, Evita was.

Yeah. And we didn't know what to expect when she's Exactly. Is she going to have an entourage? What is it going to be? She was so normal, low-key, team player. Yeah.

For people listening today, you have to imagine Taylor Swift's in your book. Oh, yeah. I mean, and then some, right?

Madonna was— Beyoncé, man. Oh my God.

Yeah. She was already an icon, but she was still very young. Were you guys bros? Did you get on well?

All of us got along great. I was mostly close with Lori Petty.

This is, again, in your book, this is another one of the things, like, you had done no athletics. And then you have to be the best baseball player alive.

Anyone has ever seen, right? A phenom. Oh my God.

But you took to it really quickly. You surprised yourself?

Yes, I surprised everybody, I think. But everybody else had been training in baseball for a while, but I had to catch up. And the coaches soon started saying, "You know, you have a lot of untapped athletic ability." And I'm like, "When did I ever think I was gonna hear that? That's crazy." And I did, and I pulled it off, I think. Definitely thought I could really play.

Up to this point, you've had a really wonderful incremental— everything gets a little better than the last thing. Had you settled into like, oh, that'll be the pattern, or were you looking around and going like, no, everyone takes it on the chin, I will also take it on the chin? What were you thinking? Do you think it was just going to be a completely linear rise all the movies would work?

You're asking me questions that not only nobody asked me, but I haven't even thought about. What did I think?

Because we got to go back to 1992 for this question. It was a minute ago.

I think I felt like things are going to work out pretty good. I didn't have a feeling like, well, I've been the lead or one of the leads in two movies in a row, you know, a year apart.

And nominated for all the movies, winning a Golden Globe. All the proof is there.

Yeah, I don't know what I thought. I honestly don't remember what thought, or if I was surprised that didn't happen or anything.

I didn't have nearly the run you had, but I did have a run where I had a few hits in a row, and they were all things that shouldn't have been hits. And I went, oh well, duh, now when I go to this movie that's got a big budget with a great director, who fucking knows what's gonna happen? And then like, that movie didn't work. I was like, oh Jesus, now what? I thought for sure, okay, We made it out of the 10-year fucking doldrums where finally it's happening. And then I climb up to this rung of the ladder and then very rude awakening, like, no, if you have a couple in a row that don't work, it's rough. That's right. So anyways, you had a couple in the row that didn't work as anticipated. One of them is my favorite movie that you ever did, which is A Long Kiss Goodnight. If you haven't seen A Long Kiss Goodnight— I haven't seen it. In fact, I gotta show my—

No, I want to see it. I'll watch it tonight.

Let me hit you with the premise. She is a housewife kind of mom type lady. Uh-huh. Trad wife. She gets amnesia. Oh, she has— I had— I had amnesia. Doesn't realize she had amnesia. It's before Bourne. It's kind of Bourne. And then slowly starts realizing after an accident that she's got skills she can't explain. Oh, and she's actually an assassin. Oh, cool. Very Bourne.

Yeah, it's just Bourne.

The script's great. You're fucking brilliant. The premise is perfect. And then Sam Jackson. Come on. What's that line he has? Like, you ask him if he's Mormon, he's like, yeah, that's why I just had 2 Jack and Cokes and a pack of Newports, or some shit like that. He has some great line. So great. He was just coming off of Pulp Fiction. Yep, he was very hot. Were you so pumped to work with him?

Oh my God, yeah, yeah. And then he's the greatest guy ever. He's the coolest dude. The coolest dude ever. All we did was laugh and have fun. We had so much fun. But it didn't work.

That one did fine. We thought it was gonna— the movie before Cutthroat Island was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest financial— that's been way blown away by now. Yeah, even when I see the price of that movie, it's kind of cute. It was like $110 million. That was like the biggest disaster ever.

Oh God, yeah. Now people are writing off like $400 million.

Exactly. I know, I know. How did you process that heartbreak of that? You're also married to the director, I'm guessing. When I've had movies that failed that I wrote and directed I've got 3 months, or I'm just depressed. You know, I did that for 2 and a half years, and now that happened. Oh, I see. And I'm naturally gonna be depressed. Right. And now if my wife was also shouldering that same thing, I don't know who's available to nurture her.

Yeah, well, you kind of had to nurture each other through that. And we knew we had Long Kiss coming up, so that helped. But I was gonna tell you about the pirate movie.

Oh, yeah, tell me. Cutthroat Island.

Cutthroat Island. Yeah. So, Cutthroat Island, it was going to star Michael Keaton. He asked Renny— I was already with Renny and maybe married already. He wanted some substantial actress to play the female part, which was much smaller than his and all that. So, he was begging Renny to get me to do it. And I was like, "I don't think I really do want to do it." And Renny was begging me, "Please, please." Yeah.

Is that part stressful? Oh, it was very stressful.

Yeah.

Like, you want to do your part, your husband or wife of whatever favor they want, but also, I don't want to gamble my career.

Yeah. So, anyway, I finally got my arm twisted enough that I said that I would do it. And then, Michael eventually dropped out. He just suddenly, "I'm not doing it." And Renny and I— I mean, he wasn't that crazy about the script either. And so we were like, "Oh!" We're getting out of it! We don't have to do it! Oh my God! Yeah! We're like dancing around. And then Mario Casar, it was Corralco, was the producers. And I had the same agency as Michael, and I thought, "Well, easily I'll get out of this." And they were told, "No, there's no way Gina's getting out of this. She is doing it. We'll sue her." Why does Michael Douglas get to get out of it and I don't get to get out of it? I'm only small potatoes compared to him.

Wait, was it Michael Douglas or Michael Keaton? Michael Douglas. Oh, Michael Douglas. Right.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great, great, great, great, great. Yeah. Michael Douglas. So we're like, "Oh my God, now we gotta do it." And we got Matthew Modine, who was fabulous in it and a great guy and a lot of fun, but it was really against our will.

Right. So it was one of those ones that didn't feel right from the jump and then turned out— So maybe we learned, like, a gut intuition lesson off of that one?

Well, yeah. I mean, don't get talked into anything ever again. But we went into it with a good feeling. Will, you know, and I trained a trade to do piratical stuff. I had to learn to swashbuckle. I buckled my swashbuckle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to learn horseback riding and all that stuff.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Okay, I just— one fun thing that people certainly wouldn't know is that in '99 you tried out for the U.S. Olympic archery team.

Wow. What did I do in '99?

Yeah, which you had started in '97, so you'd only been doing it for 2 years. 2 and a half. And what, you had seen it in something? Why did you even get interested?

I had to learn to play baseball, and then I had to learn, you know, horseback riding and gun shooting, and then ice skating and gun shooting while ice skating for longest goodnight, all these skills. And I was kind of good at all of them. And I had not had any clue that I was coordinated. And so, it was so much fun. And then I thought, "I think I'd like to take up a sport in real life and not the movie version of it." 'Cause no matter what, if I didn't catch the ball, gotta do another take. Yeah. Put in the stunt double. So then, I was just watching the Olympics on TV in Atlanta, And there was a lot of coverage of archery because the American men's team was winning all the medals. And I thought, "You know, that's really beautiful, and it's very dramatic." And I did learn how to shoot pistols really well, and it's kind of a weapon. So I thought, "I'm gonna try archery," and found a coach and became utterly obsessed with it.

Like, how frequently are you doing it?

Practicing every day, like, like 4 or 5 hours.

4 or 5 hours in your what, backyard shooting at a hay bale? No, no, don't be stupid.

No, I was just— hay bale cannot stop an arrow. You really have to be somewhere safe to do that. So I go to a range and meet with my coach constantly. And then he told me I had to start competing, and I was like, oh no, I'm not anywhere near— he said, no, no, it's about getting better. You go to get better. So I've been competing and competing, and then I won the California Cup one year.

Wow. And you said what you liked about it is it was objective versus how subjective your career was. Exactly.

Are you hitting the target or not?

Do you think it was a salve for dealing with the kind of disappointment and uneasiness about what was next? Could be. Yeah, because again, it's a control thing. Back to the compulsive behavior. It's like repetitive. It's singular.

Oh, yes.

Very repetitive. You've narrowed your world. Which is scary right now and unpredictable, to a red dot. I mean, this all feels very regulating.

Yes. Very regulating and very specific. And I had the time. I didn't work that soon after Long Kiss Goodnight, so I had 2 and a half years to focus only on that. Wow.

So you entered in '99 to go to the Olympic trials.

I qualified as a semifinalist for the Olympic trials.

300 people entered and you finished 24th? Oh my God. No.

It was 300 people at the national tournament, and then And then they took the top 32 could be in the semifinals. You were in those. Yeah.

And then you somehow got a wild card and went to Athens? That was Sydney. In Sydney.

So Sydney built all of their venues way before they hosted the Olympics. And a year before it, they tried out every single sport and they had the top people come just to run it and make sure everything was great.

A dress rehearsal.

Yeah. And so the real team, went, they said you could come too. So I got to wear the uniform and walk out and hear the music and everything. It was so fun. Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. I didn't win that one though. That's okay, that's okay.

You got to go.

How old were you when you had your daughter? 46. Okay, so I wonder if you have— I have such great gratitude for waiting to 38, right? There were so many times when both both little kids are screaming, where I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I would have had the patience for this in my 20s. Also, my career was sorted enough. I just— all the mountains I was trying to climb, tired of that. And so this, I could really— do you have that kind of gratitude for waiting later, or did you have moments where you're like, God, I should have done this 20 years earlier?

No, no, I always was grateful that it was later. And, and I felt like it was important that I had a stronger sense self, who I was.

Yeah, because you're gonna have to model what it is to be a woman in this society of ours. Yes. But you're watching children's programming with her when she's like 2, and you start noticing a lot of little boys in these shows.

I did. The very first thing I showed her, I had her on my lap, and I'm thinking, oh, this is great, it's a preschool show. I think it's because of Thelma and Louise, and it really heightened my awareness of how women are portrayed because women had so few opportunities to come out of a movie feeling empowered by the female characters. So, I immediately noticed that there seemed to be far more male characters. I even looked it up, and they had one female character in this large cast. And I was like, "Well, that's weird." And then rented a video, and it was like that. A movie that came out, and I'd go, "Wait a minute!" Yeah.

You know? And you were thinking what I would be thinking, which is like, "Oh, this has already been fixed." I had thought that. Yeah. Yeah. We're like, we're 12 years past Thelma and Louise. I assume this has been straightened out.

Oh, right. Absolutely. And then I immediately kind of went global with it because I'm like, wait, so we're training kids from minute one to have unconscious gender bias. How can they not get it when every single situation has one female? Turned out to be 3 to 1. The Little Rascals, you know, like where they had Darla and that was it. Yeah, we got it.

We got Darla. Back to the Boys. Right. How could a young girl not intuit, well, there's one-third as many roles, one-fourth as many opportunities for me. I guess I should recognize that. That's the world I'm entering. Right.

And also, how are boys not going to recognize that they're more important than girls? Exactly. Yeah, right, right, right. How are they even going to care about the female character?

They're being told what's important. Right, right. So, but you had a novel approach to addressing this.

Well, I went to the Olympics in it. Everything I do, I had to be careful about taking it up because— Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever it is, I want to go to the Olympics. But I asked people constantly in the industry, whatever meeting I had, whoever it was, I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in entertainment made for kids?" And every single person said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, that's not true anymore. No, that's been fixed." And they'd say, "We fixed it at our studio, at our production company, whatever." And they would very often name a movie with one female character as proof that gender inequality was not a thing anymore.

It's like saying, well, we have Obama as a president, racism's over. Exactly.

So it made me realize this is utterly unconscious, and they think it's not true. So if I was able to, with data, show them that it is true, this big imbalance, maybe they will want to change. So I sponsored this largest research study ever done on kids' TV and movies.

Through the Annenberg School at USC, where your partner is? Yes, that was. That's amazing.

That's incredible.

At that time, yes. And then started visiting anybody who makes children's entertainment. The first studio that we went to, we finished the presentation, and their heads were in their hands. Their jaws were on the ground. They were like, "How did we not know this?

All we care about is doing right by kids, and we never thought of this?" Because at that time, the conclusion of your study, right, was it was 3 boys to every girl. Right.

And the lead characters, it was 11 to 1. Oh, wow. For a lead female character. And crowd scenes and everything were wildly unbalanced. So, we went everywhere, everybody was horrified, and everybody started changing what they were doing.

Wow. That was 2004. Where are we at now? I think 2020 was the data I read. So, even 4 years ago, where was it? Yeah.

Now we're at parity in children's— Wow! —TV shows.

Oh, that's amazing! Oh, my God! Yeah. Yeah, you should be so proud. 16 years. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, the latest study we did, we looked at specifically at new kids programs that just came out, and it was 50-50.

Oh my goodness, that is so— what an accomplishment. Of all your accomplishments, I hope that's maybe one of your highest. That's incredible.

She also created the Benton Film Festival, Bentonville. Are you friends with one of the Waltons? Is that a Walton project?

No, Walmart came up with the idea actually of having a film festival that focused on diversity and somehow thought of me. Probably not somehow.

You're like, yes, the most seminal feminist movie ever.

Yeah, I co-founded it.

A cool thing about the Waltons is to get their inheritance, all the children, they have to take on a large public works project and make their community So like Bentonville's this very weird town in the middle of Arkansas, right? You've been there? I have, yeah. But they have like one of the best museums in the world, and they have the best bicycle parkway, right? They have all these like incredible installations because of how they get their inheritance, which is so cool.

So incredible. And Alice Walton just built the best medical school ever built, and it's— I think it's either free or something. Oh, wow. If you agree to stay in the area and work for a certain number of years. It's this pocket of progressive explosion. It's incredible.

With like some some of the best art pieces in the world. It's hilarious. You can imagine one day Bentonville being like this weird Eden that they have created through all these public works projects. Wow. Okay, The Burrows. Yes, I'm watching it and I love it. It's sweeping Netflix by storm, right? I think I saw number one. Oh, this is so wonderful and encouraging. Okay, so The Burrows, you explain how you want to explain I'm gonna use a reference that only people my age will like, but I want to hear how you would set it up.

It takes place in a fancy, fancy retirement community. I want to live there.

It like looks very appealing.

That's been my dream life. I want to live in a camp. Yes, right. But for adults.

Golf cart, shuffleboard. Right.

They say, "Well, now we're gonna go canoe." Oh, okay. "Now we're gonna take a field trip." Okay. "Now it's lunch." Yes, now it's lunch. And I don't have to decide anything. Yeah, yeah. You know, that's what I want. So, It's a retirement community, and it focuses on a group of friends that live all in the same cul-de-sac. And then something spooky and dangerous starts happening.

Ooh! A la Stranger Things. It's Duffer Brothers, so there's, like, some— I don't know. There's a creature. Is he an alien? Is he a weird animal?

Is he a monster from your childhood?

Monster. Ooh. Right?

What I like about it, and I hope you take this as a compliment because I fucking love this movie, and it speaks to how much— it transcended that I would have watched this movie at 10 and loved it. But Cocoon is still one of my favorite movies ever. Do you remember Cocoon? Oh yeah, there are these— did you ever see Cocoon, Monica? There are these alien pods. These little cocooning aliens are in a swimming pool and it's giving them magic powers and they all get very youthful. Now what's incredible is, have you ever seen the Instagram post that says all of their ages from that movie?

No, they weren't really that old.

Brimley was like 52 years old.

Oh my God, all the cat—

I don't think anyone in the cast was over 60. Maybe Alan Arkin or something, but nobody's even over 60. And we watch that movie like, oh, look, these grandpas have superpowers.

Isn't that crazy?

That's crazy. It is. Same with Golden Girls.

Yeah, Golden Girls. They were all young.

Estelle Gettys was like almost the same age as her daughter.

Yeah. Yeah. At least it was like in their 40s on that show. Yeah. It's wild. Playing a retired grandma.

Did they think people just couldn't stand to actually watch old people?

It's such a different time the way we looked at age.

Oh, yeah. Yes. I've had this moment. Several times where it's like I get offered a role and the character has an 18-year-old or a 24-year-old, and I'm like, yeah, that's correct chronologically. I just think this job has a very weird ability to remind you in a very cruel way of how old you are all the time. Yes, it's like you're getting the things like, oh, I'm someone with a terminal disease, that's who I'm playing, that's where we're Yeah. So did you have any, like, shock of, like, "Yeah, it makes sense that I would be in a show about this"?

Yes, I was like that. But like you, I mean, I turned down any number of roles because the character had adult children or— Grandma or— And I was like, "At no time on earth am I gonna play a grandmother." But no, I was very— whatever age I was, but I was like, "I don't even want teenage kids." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this made sense.

I've been on a couple shows where the older cast members are gonna have to die, right? Like, I was on this great show Parenthood, and Craig T. Nelson, who's just a blessing— Yeah. He's gonna play someone who's dying. I mean, vaguely of old age, you know, like just a heart thing, but still. And I just remember talking to him and being like, "Is this tricky, dude?" Like, I think it would be tricky for me to go like, "Wait, this makes sense to everybody that I'd be playing someone that might die?" drop dead right now. Like, this is a lot, I think, to contend with. Exactly. Well, the good thing—

I think something I really like about this show is we're all very able. We can battle dangerous things, and there's no beats about how, oh, we can't even get up there, right?

No, but there is a scene where you're all showing off your scars. That's true. And everyone's had a massive operation, right? Their whole cut open, someone's had their back cut open, you've had your hip replaced. That's right. First, I just love the show, it's so good. Your character is so fun. You're kind of the vixen of the scene. You're an ex-music manager, so you're like hip and cool and you drive a cool Fairlane convertible and you're awesome. You're a rock star. But I was like, we are still a little bit caught in the notion, like, you wouldn't be in a retirement community. In reality, they need to be 15 years older. Everything's changed. When I was young, all 70-year-olds were in retirement communities. That's not how it is now.

It's not how it is now. And my character is the only one who didn't plan to go there. My mom bought that house, and I had to take care of her, and I also lost all my money, and then I just ended up staying. But a few times, I refer to the fact that I don't really belong here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had you worked with— with Alfred Molina or Bill Pullman before?

This is my third thing with Bill Pullman, my third project with Ed Begley Jr.

I've done three with him as well.

Really? What a sweet— sweet— oh, love—

scares me how sweet he is.

But also Bill Pullman is like that. He's so sweet. Amazing.

Funny, I've never met him. Yeah. Oh God, it's so weird to say this, but he's weirdly a revelation in this show, right? He is. Even though I've seen him a million times, I'm I'm like, this is great. He's like a fucking beach stoner retired dude. He's so chill. Yeah, he's incredible.

It makes you go, oh, no wonder they got him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is great. This sounds like it's doing like anti-ageism work.

Yeah, you have a very young lover.

He's 40. Yeah, he's 30 years younger than me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fun. So, but Renee's like, so what?

Yeah, that's great. Feeling very confident. And so is he. And everyone's winning. But I will say, I was watching it with my wife and our 13-year-old and 11-year-old daughters last night. And I love these situations, right? Like, I'm feeling a certain way and I'm like, I'm going to bring this up to everyone. And I said during that scene, we were watching the sexy scene with you guys, and I said, isn't it crazy, you guys, that we have seen at this point point, 1,000 movies where the age gap was this, but it was the guy and the woman, and you don't notice. But this is highly noticeable. Yes. And isn't that really something? Like, let's just talk about that for a minute.

It really is.

You wouldn't think about Michael Douglas is in something and he's got a 40-year-old, you know. You just—

yeah, it happens all the time in films.

You don't even notice. But this is very noticeable.

Right. Yeah, because we're not used to it. That's exactly—

that's why it's noticeable.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a juicy thing for you to get to talk about with your kids. It's an opportunity, right, right, to hear what these young girls think about that. Like, oh wow, why are we seeing this for the first time?

Yeah, that's so cool you brought that up.

I really dig that. We're watching something from the '70s or '80s and something gnarly happens, you know, it just doesn't happen that way anymore, like the way guys are talking to women or and would just pause and be like, well, what do you guys think of this? Oh, that's so cool. That was kind of standard biz in the '80s. That was like standard. Guys would just say shit like that to women. And you know, what do we— what do we think about this?

Oh, it's freaking to watch it with your kids. When my kids were— I watched everything with them because I felt like I could be their media interpreter. I would say, why do you think she's wearing that if she's gonna go rescue somebody? Doesn't that seem like it's not appropriate? "Did you notice? Do you think girls could do what all those boys are doing? Why don't you think there's more?" So it got to the point where— and even if we're out of the movie, if I just went like this, I go, "I know, Mom, there's not enough girls in that scene." I know, I know, I know.

We know, we know, we know. I'm aware. It's so great. That's the best part, though. Kids are supposed to fuck with their moms. My wife's constantly talking about what neurologist she just saw on Instagram and what new hack we have. As soon as my wife starts talking, either girls look at like, me is this one of your neurologists from Instagram, or did you actually— yeah. And they're like 11 and 13, they've already got it dialed, you know.

That's hilarious. Yeah.

Okay, last thing I want to talk about is you just kind of went viral. Second weekend of Coachella, you were a guest at the Sabrina Carpenter show.

Yeah, not just a guest, I was on stage.

Oh yes, I guess guest means you're in attendance. No, you were on stage. In a convertible Cadillac or something like that. Very much Thelma and Louise-esque. And Susan had done it the weekend before.

Yes. Oh, fun. I had no idea when she did that. I thought, oh, that's cool. I had no idea they were then going to ask me to do it. But that was— Wow. Who calls you?

Does Sabrina Carpenter herself call you?

No, I mean, they called my agent. Her people did, I guess. But she was the one that wanted me to do it.

That's awesome. What do you think of her? I love her.

Oh, I love her so much. And she was so wonderful in person and so charming. Gave me a t-shirt. I guess the title of her show was Sabrina Wood. And so she gave me one that said Gina Wood.

Oh, cute! I loved it.

It was so fun. But I didn't expect it to blow up like that. Somebody said, "You're trending." I'm like, "What?" Yeah!

You never know what's coming. You never do. I have so much gratitude for her, for Taylor Swift. I've taken our daughters to both of those performers.

Oh, that's great.

For them to be little girls watching these women who have created did a true matriarchy. They have their own world and they are the top of that world. They don't have to suffer any fools. They're in charge. There weren't a ton of examples like that, and now there's a ton. It's true, it's true. It's incredible.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, I'm delighted that that happened with you. Had you ever been to Coachella? No. Yeah, me neither. I think that's the way I want to go the first time. I want to be on stage. Most loved performance of the night. Exactly. Okay, and then lastly, where are you at? Are you still susceptible to if a guy likes you, or have we evolved in that? If a guy just simply likes you, is that enough anymore? No, no, that's not enough anymore. You shed that. And what did you learn when that shifted? When you start thinking, wait, what do I like?

Is that what it was, right? I had been attracted to to extroverted, flashy, shiny men. And now not so much anymore.

Not so much. So Brad Pitt doesn't have a chance now?

Actually, well, let's make an exception.

Let's not exclude him from the pool of bachelors we'll consider. Oh, well, Gina, I adore you for real, sincerely. Long Kiss Goodnight, it's one of the first films I think I owned on Blu-ray that I watched over and over again. I just love it. I'm so in the mood to watch again. I can't wait to show my daughters. It's an honor to meet you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really excited.

I just want to tell you one thing about Luck Hicks tonight. Sam and I— well, we changed the ending when we were shooting because we realized we'd love to do a sequel, and in the original script, Sam's character dies. So we reshot the last scene and made him live. And I know it's all these years later, but we still— Sam and I talk but we're dying to do a sequel. Oh, I would love to. Well, I know, but we got to get somebody to do it.

I nominate Netflix. Yeah, let's get there. You're crushing. They want to be in the Gina business now. Gina would. Let's get— yeah, Gina would.

Would Gina do a sequel? Yeah, Gina would.

Gina is open to a sequel. All right. Well, lovely meeting you. Thanks for the work you've done on the gender parity with kids shows. And hopefully that moves upstream all the way. And everyone watch The Burrows. Thanks so much, Gina.

Thank you. This is really fun. Thank you.

Yeah. Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite Fact Checks.

I got my hair cut today. Barb did my hair. Where'd you find Barb?

Barb Chopstick?

What'd you say? Don't ever say that again. No, what did you say? Farb Thompson.

Thompson. Okay.

She's awesome. Um, and she's done my hair before. She did it for a gala. Okay. One of the only gals I've ever been to. And, um, she's, she's great. Always a bridesmaid, never a gala. I know. Um, and she said you did a great job growing your hair out on your legs too. Ah, don't look. I just haven't shaved.

Oh, but I didn't know if you were making a decision like everyone's making. That fair question. What happened?

I can't believe you did that. I was—

well, I wanted to celebrate you if you were embracing that. No.

Okay, I, I take care of my hair. Okay, I just haven't, and it's hot out.

Yeah, that's great. I— you— can you understand there's a movement where, where women aren't shaving anymore, and I thought maybe you joined that movement.

It's really actually self-conscious.

Oh, and I mean, it works.

Notice, and I was like, there's no way No one will notice. And you noticed immediately. I'm very observant.

You know this about me. I know. I don't miss a thing.

It just takes a long time to shave.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I shave my arms now. I have all this money tied up in these tattoos and I want them to be visible.

That makes sense. Well, you know, I also— I have to groom my arms, my legs, my armpits. I know my vagina parts. Yeah. And I feel terrible for you.

I've said that. My eyebrows. Now that I'm grooming a lot. Yeah, it sucks.

Speaking of, how's the cashmere? We haven't even seen it in a while.

Well, you know who's a real producer is Delta. Yeah. Yeah. Are you collecting? Yeah, yeah, it's growing. Although I may have a big, I might have a, I'm now thinking I might have a nice deposit in the drawer in my bathroom. I think maybe I haven't transferred some to the— Okay, great. The main storage. Okay, great. Okay, I had been wanting to tell you a story. Oh yeah. Okay, so we all went to Monster Jam on Saturday.

Yeah, who's—

describe we all. Okay, so we all is Charlie and the boys, Ace and Wilder, the two handsomest men in Los Angeles, and then my girls Lincoln and Delta, and then Delta's friend. Fun. Yeah, and then Eric, Eric Yeah, that's all. So we went, it was immediately fun. It's so fun. Monster Jam's so fun. We got to ride in the like 12-passenger monster truck. That's great. I was kind of not clocking any of this, but apparently, um, Delta and her friend had brought their two most important stuffies in a red bag. I didn't know that. I probably would have been like, maybe we don't bring them into the event. Can you describe the stuff? Yes, it's imperative that people understand the stakes here. So anyone that knows Delta would know her son Groot.

Oh my God, I don't even count Groot as a stuffy. When you said that, I wasn't thinking of him. He's a real boy. He really is a robot.

I don't know that I've ever seen— and I had very deep relationships with my stuffies. I had 3 bears that I loved, and I thought about them, and if I was gone too long, I felt guilty. Like, I was very in touch and close with myself.

Names?

I don't— I didn't name them. Just one was a polar bear, one was a brown bear, and one was like a panda, um, koala bear. There were different breeds, so I didn't— breeds, the species. So you just said koala, polar?

I just never was like—

you never called dressing them? I was just squeezing them and feeling guilty.

But what if like it was downstairs and you had to tell your mom like, oh my God, Polar is missing? That would never—

like, it would never happened. I, I would never lose track. Never. Okay. And they didn't travel out of my room either because I was too afraid something would happen to them in the wild. Okay, but to put like this in perspective, Groot goes everywhere with us. Groot has truly a bigger wardrobe than Delta. Yeah, he has many different jammies, he has swimwear, he has like Delta's birthday.

She'll often ask for clothes for Groot.

That mostly, that's all she asked for is things for Groot. And he has books he reads, and he's an artist, and she makes him dinner. And he, like, it's such a huge part of her life. And then I didn't know this, I learned this recently about Groot. She was kind of explaining what was going on with him athletically, and then I said, is Groot disabled? Oh. And she said, yeah, Groot is disabled. And I said, oh, what's his disability? And she said, well, he's half tree and half boy, so So he needs to breathe carbon dioxide as a tree, but he needs to breathe oxygen as a boy. So his lungs are like half dedicated to breathing, and so that's kind of an impairment for his cardiovascular. Additionally, this is all real. Like, I didn't even know Groot was disabled. Well, obviously, but I just had a hunch. There was some way she was talking about his athleticism and his outfit. Bit. Sure. I don't know. I asked, and he, and he is. And then she went on to tell me another challenge he has is, is he's got both veins. Uh-huh. And then he also has to have, um, plumbing for the water.

Yeah. So it's like his body's sharing a lot of—

wow, double duty.

Double duty. Also, his bark hasn't come in, and that's going to make him more stable. Oh wow.

Yes. So there's a lot going on.

Okay. Wow. And I'm gonna be honest, I love Groot.

Like, he's also my grandson, and when we snuggle at night, I go, I want a little time with Groot. So he has to be in my—

does everyone have to leave?

No, no, no, no, just I will want Groot in my left nook and Delta in my right nook if we're all laying together. But she's gotta give me some grandpa visits.

Okay, never mind.

Anyway, uh-oh, never mind. I don't want to say—

okay, good.

It's because you like him in your neck and like, like a kid, like a kid.

Yeah, like a little baby boy. So, uh, okay, so great time, we're having the best time. Now we're up in the— this huge suite, there's like 50 people in there, it's a blast, it's hectic. And Delta comes up like mid-show. Again, I'm gonna say it, I've said it before, there's no better show on earth than Monster Jam. It starts and it doesn't let up. Race, race, race, race, race, stunts, stunts, stunts. Yeah, so it's a party eating food, and then Delta comes up to me and she is— she's past— like, she's— I don't want to say she's hyperventilating. She is so scared and panicked. And she said, we don't— we lost Groot. And I'm like, what do you mean? I didn't even know Groot was in here. We lost the bag. So her friend was in charge of carrying the bag. She brought it in here. Someone maybe stole it or whatever. And I'm like, okay, no one stole it. Everyone that came is still here. No one left. Mid time, you know. So now we start scouring all the bathrooms in there, and then we go through systematically and we look under every single chair.

This takes 35-40 minutes. I'm missing the Monster Jam.

Sure, but you can hear it still.

I can hear it. That is helpful. And, um, I say at some point, okay, it's not in here, which means it didn't— it didn't come up here. Oh, now we arrived and we went right out onto the— to the arena floor to take that side. So it's like, we're 7 stories up, that was pre-show. I don't— so now, Charlie, take him into the monster truck.

Yes.

So, well, here becomes the investigation. So then Charlie and I are— I'm like, oh, I made a video of them get— I'm like, did they even bring the bag out of the car? Right. Okay, I took pictures. Yeah, I take some. Oh yeah, there's the red bag. Then I have footage of them getting on to the monster truck and she's carrying the bag. We don't have footage of them getting off, but I'm like, but this is— she would have never set it down in the elevator or on the walk. It definitely had to get left in the truck. So now— exactly. And we're now mid-show. This is hours later.

And I said, is that truck like out on the thing?

No, that truck has now been already put in a trailer to go to the next Monster Jam. So I like— this is like my friend Sally, who I've been, um, you know, going to Monster Jam with Sally as our host for, I don't know, 8 years now. Yeah, she's an incredible lady. She's an armchair. Oh, shout out. She's so sweet. And I'm like, I don't know what else to do, but like, here's the situation. She's a mom. She put out a full-court press. Oh look, oh, it's okay. I'll try to get into that truck. Like, I'll try to find the truck in the parking lot and try to get into the semi to get into this monster. Oh my God. So like an hour goes by and Delta's really like, she lost her son. Oh my God. And I'm, I'm very, um, pessimistic. I'm like, who knows? They set that bag down anyway. There was so many bags and so many things and so much equipment. It's in an arena. So I was really, really pessimistic. And then the show ends and then we just sit there for another 45 minutes while the whole place clears out.

We're kind of like waiting to see if they're gonna find group. And then she says, well, you guys are free to— if you want to just wait in the car. So anyways, we go sit in the car now, and then I get a text from Sally, and it's a picture of her, and she's elated, and she's holding the bag. She found the bag in a random golf cart somewhere.

No. Yeah, it was on its way to the trash.

On its way to a sex trafficking— don't say that!

Oh my God. Oh my God, what a tale.

Oh my God, it was And, um, the amount of relief I felt—

so obsessed— scary— when that bag returned.

You know, I was starting to think about what our next 2 weeks to a month— like, I was like, this is gonna be—

imagine what it's like to lose your son. You never get over it.

Yeah, it's gonna be devastating in a way that I'm not sure how we're all gonna deal with. We lost Groot forever. That is— and then I said to her, I was like, once we had Groot, I was like, you know, I started thinking like, what do I do? Would you have wanted me to find the same Gru? And she's like, no. Yeah, because it's real and he's real and there's no replacing him.

Well, and so she answered our long-lasting question about would you clone—

would you clone your dog or your kid? She won't. She won't. Yeah, she's like me. Yeah, she is. I guess she has ethics. I, I don't We don't know. We don't know what that means ethically.

Oh gosh, that's why. But okay, if he had gone in the monster truck and then got sent to the next monster truck show, that's a kid's book.

That's a children's book. And like, they love him and he becomes kind of a mascot for Monster Jam.

Yes, but then he returns back home.

Oh yeah, but he's like, now he chews tobacco and he's grown up a little bit.

We have different—

he's been in a couple of tussles.

Well, he's on Monster Jam tour. Yeah, he is.

He's on the—

he's not going to like symposiums on physics, but he's very—

it's a very Toy Story. Yes, yes. He could have been on a real adventure. I don't think all the dust from the monster truck would be good for his lungs. Well, not given what I've learned about this. Yeah.

Now what if like the driver of Gravedigger found him and started keeping him on the dash? Oh, and we could like— then we were watching and he was riding on the dash proudly.

Oh my God, that's terrifying.

Oh, it was really an event. Yeah, so I missed a good half of Monster Jam, both looking for and then panicking over Sally. Really? Here, Sally. Oh my God, the hero of all heroes. Wow. Yeah, I mean, if you were to ask me at some point what I would pay for his safe return, it would have been embarrassing.

I know, but Dax, that's life. It's like you can't— you can't buy health. Well, actually, I mean, to an extent you can, which is a problem. But yeah, you know, yeah, that's why health is the most important thing we have.

And just being there, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. Being there, being present. Well, I'm also grateful because I immediately got codependent for the girl, the friend. Can you imagine?

No, I know. So that was all happening. She now feels so guilty and she's crying. Delta's crying inconsolably. Yup. Her friend's crying. Yeah. And this is the worst. I'm like the dad watching. And so I kept going, oh sweetie, it's totally okay. Delta should have been carrying her own bag. It's not— that's nice. Yeah, I was like trying to comfort her and trying to comfort Delta. Her Groot is in there too.

Oh, it is.

She's got the double whammy. She's lost her stuffy and she lost Delta's stuffy.

Who was her stuffy?

Um, I didn't get a good gander at it once they were all reunited. I didn't even know we were bringing stuffies to Monster Jam anymore. I hope not. And then, okay, now this is the thing that we go back to. We've been talking about this the last few episodes. I'm like, and I'm talking to Charlie and Eric, I'm like, you know, all I got to do is keep trying to find Groot and not say this is why we don't bring— what you want to say as a parent is this is why we don't bring stuffies to sporting events. Yep. And I was like, she has learned that lesson. She— I don't need to tell her that. She is in major discomfort. Yeah. And so I let it go. But then I, on the way home, I was just saying how grateful I was that he's back, slipping it in a little bit, a little bit. And then, and then I said, he's just so valuable. We got to make sure that we're safe when we bring him places. She goes, but he can't just be a boy that lives at home and doesn't go and do things.

I can't just be protecting him from it. And I'm like, I know that's a great point, but there's a ton of things we can take him to so he's not stuck in the house, but that are also maybe not so distracting as Monster Jam.

This is complex, 'cause this is how you feel about your kids. This is how you parent them. You're like, you know, I'm gonna let them go explore the world. Mm-hmm. And another person could say, look, they're a little too valuable for that. Don't let them just go down the street to Ralph's. Right. Where there's crazies. Yeah. So it looks like she's—

She's inherited my parenting skills. Looks like it's nurtured. Yeah, in this case. Wow. Yeah. I'm grateful.

I'm so grateful.

I would've been really—

You understand.

Yeah, it would've been so sad if Groot, I mean, I would've been happy for him if he was on an adventure, But we, we know that really he would have gone in the trash.

Well, he's, he's so cute.

Dax, missing persons after like 48 hours, they're dead. Okay, so you think he might—

someone murder him?

Trash.

Okay, I just can't imagine holding that little guy. He's so sweet looking. Oh, I know. I told her that's why I didn't know he had a disability, because he's so, he's so smiley. I have no idea he's suffering from anything. He's in a perpetually great mood.

Well, that's the thing, is it the best attitude?

It sounded like there's some pain accompanying these.

Okay. Yeah, the whole carbon dioxide thing.

Trick her into getting like pain meds for him.

I might see if we can get some nerve blockers.

Oh my God. Wow, that is quite an adventure. I'm— yeah, I'm really glad that had a happy ending.

Oh, me too. Anything fun happen to you?

Yeah. Okay, so you've been gone a couple days. Um, in the meantime, I've watched 2 full seasons of You, the show You, which reminds me, I want to play the thing. That's a show about me? Exactly. It's about time that we revisit that because I'm watching it.

Oh, it's such a great exchange. Okay, let's— Laura Ingraham.

Yeah.

You want me to put on the TV?

Oh yeah, you can.

This is my favorite clip of all time, and now it has extra meaning because I'm watching the show. Is it a great show? I love it. It has real Veronica Mars Oh, fun. But it's like Dexter meets Veronica Mars. But I've never seen Dexter. Okay, let's watch this real quick.

Yeah.

I was watching an episode of You where measles came up.

Wait, wait, wait. When did I mention measles?

I don't know. It was on you. What was on me? What are you talking about? I never had the measles. You. We never did a—

we never did a measles vaccine episode of my— is this a joke?

I don't know what you're talking about. It was on you. It was on you. I've never had— Raymond, I've never had measles.

What are you talking about? Stupid. It was an episode of a show, Laura.

What's it called? You— you— you never done a show on measles.

I just completely give up.

We gotta go. So should I give up? Called You on Netflix.

I'm moving on to Adele. I can't explain this to you. What are they talking about?

So stupid.

So funny.

It's a real life who's on drugs. It really is. Yeah. Oh my God. Anyway, um, so I— yeah, I started You random. It like popped up as the next— this never works out.

You're right, right.

Auto recommend, play, or whatever. And, um, I was like, sure, why not? Watch the whole thing. And then last night, stayed up so late I couldn't even look at the time. I was too afraid to look.

Oh wow. And watch all of season 2. How many episodes in each? 10.

So you watch 20 episodes, 45-ish minutes. Whoa. Yes. Oh my God. Okay, so it is Penn Badgley actually from Gossip Girl, who I loved back then, Dan Humphrey. Okay, great. And he recently, he has a podcast, but also I saw there's like an Instagram kind of viral video of him like dancing on one of these talk shows.

And I was like, well, or well, okay.

I, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, oh yeah, I love him. Oh yeah.

And then he posted, also dancing is attractive.

I guess it, you know what it is.

Okay.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna circle back. I didn't I didn't say it wasn't.

Right, right, right. You just didn't put it very high on the list.

Yeah, but turns out it's really high. Yeah. So anyway, then it pops up and he is a, he's a stalker. Like he's obsessed with this woman. Uh-oh. There's like murder. Ooh. He's a psychopath. Wow. But it's a love story and he's hot. And it's confusing. Yeah, it's sexy but scary.

Yeah, very thin line for women there.

Well, I know, and I, I hated myself, of course. Sure. I heard him, um, say on an interview something like that, like, or someone asked like, what do you think of when people say he's hot? Yeah. And he was like, he's a killer, right? So I saw that clip before I watched the show, and I was like, yeah, he's right, this is— people are crazy. Yeah. And then of course I'm like, he's hot. Yeah, he's also tricky because he's like kind of a good boyfriend if he wasn't a murderer and putting people in cages, right?

Yeah. Who, who, who just was everyone obsessed with that also was a murderer? Wasn't there recently someone everyone thought was hot? Oh, is it the UnitedHealth? Oh, assassin. Were people like really horny for him? Luigi. Luigi. That one I—

that's real life, so I I find that much more complicated.

I do not think he's hot. You don't think he's hot?

No.

I don't think there's anything good about killing.

Would you think he was hot without the murder? There's no way for me to know. Yeah, you can't go back in time. He's got very powerful eyebrows.

I don't think murder is hot in real life, and I don't think vigilantes are hot. Okay. I'm gonna say that. Good to know. I'm not— There's a lot of people that are like, "Good for him." him. Oh yeah. And I, I disagree. Yeah, yeah, I disagree wholly.

Yeah, I think that industry is evil, and I don't think you're allowed to kill people.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Um, except in the show, sometimes he does kill some people I really don't like, and it is vigilante, and like, it's for kids. He's protect— sometimes he protects kids. He's weird. He's like kind of this like good friend and hard to pin down.

Mixed messages. Really?

Of course you're horny for him. Yeah. Mixed messages. Yeah. Anyway, I am loving it. Oh, wow.

That's great. 5 seasons. Oh, there's 5. Oh, so you're fucked for the whole week. I know. So what time did you go to bed? Do you know?

I really don't know, but I was so tired when my alarm went off at 9. Oh, okay. Yeah. So probably 2 or 3. Probably 3. Wow. You're nasty. I can't help myself.

I know. You're indulgent.

And because Because I'm scared a little. Like, it's very cliffhanger-y. It's very good at keeping you on the hook. So I'm a little too scared in those scenarios to go to bed. Like, I need to know how it's completed. But they do a good job at the end of each season to— You never know. I did start episode 3, but then I was like, "Monica, no!" Yeah, you got to stop. I gotta stop. So I turned it off about halfway through that. When I woke up this morning after so much murder, I was like— I was like, I think I need to take a break today, uh-huh, because it really gets infiltrated. And then it made me think, this is what's happening with boys and video games. Oh, they're just— it's like a constant— they're living in this world that's dark and bleak, and they're shooting people and stuff, and then like reality starts to disappear.

Hmm, you're feeling that happen to you?

Well, I could see it.

This is your OCD, like, this is— you think you're a per— you're a killer, or you think you're a pervert. I don't—

okay, in this show it's a lot of voiceover because you, you're hearing his thoughts. Yeah. And so then today I was kind of hearing my thoughts like that, right? And I thought I need to take a break. Yeah, take a little break. No, but I also really want to know what happened. All right, let's see if there's anything else I want to talk about. You You know, you really— tunnel vision. It is easy. I get— wow, I get how it happens.

He's only so culpable. It was very confusing, but it was just— and he didn't do a good job. Like, he should have recognized what was going on much sooner and said, it's a television show on Netflix and the title is You.

And the title is You, Y-O-U. Yes. And not Laura Ingalls. It's a show on Netflix called You.

And she said, but he did, he did say, I was watching You about 7 times before.

It's a show on Netflix. It's so good, I almost feel like it's fake, and I don't want to like look too— I don't think so.

I don't know, he's such a genuine reaction from her.

All right, well, that's it. Let's move into facts.

Yeah, yeah, facts. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you There.

So, facts for Nick Kroll. When he said daddy's money, when he brought that, I keep thinking how funny that was when he said that. Do you remember that? I don't care, cuz I have daddy's money. Yeah, that was so funny.

Also, I wrote down specifically when he said sick little cutie. I laughed so hard at sick little cutie. I thought that was the funniest. He's just a sick little cutie.

Yeah, he was a mess. He was coughing and snorting, a little indigestion there for a minute. I fucking loved it.

It was great. Yeah. Um, and then I was kind of like, oh, sick little cutie is kind of like my kink. That is your kink.

Yeah, sick little cutie. That could be your clothing line.

Sick little cuties.

Um, anyway, that was just I really made me laugh. Oh, he's so funny. But it's more than that.

He's got that thing some people have where he is just like infinitely comfortable in his own skin, which is so appealing. Yeah, it's such a comforting personality type. It is. Yeah. The women came after me. Just— should I tell you that? What do you mean? Uh, the— on my— what I thought was an incredibly obvious joke about period underwear and tampons. Such a joke. Some women really came at me hard. I think they also might—

I don't know if they really think that or if they're like playing along.

They're playing your role, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We really did uncover though something with the X.

Yeah, I know, because Maxi Pad. Yeah, Tampax. Maxi Pad would have been the first, probably.

Yeah. And then NYX, and then Thinx. What is it? Thinx. That's another brand of Spanx. I mean, on your— they cover your—

okay, yeah, women. X because X.

Someone said that. Someone suggested that in the comments, and I think that's brilliant. And I don't think that's what it is, but that's brilliant.

How could you possibly know?

I'm just trying to imagine the Tampax people going like, okay, let's call it— it's, it's a tampon, but let's, let's build on that and let's add X because of the chromosome. I just— I— what's your—

what's your, um, you know, idea?

That they wanted to imbue a sense of max, like max comfort, max absorption, max freshness, max— what was the word?

Huh?

They had the word attached to Tampax in the ad we showed. Oh, radiant. Max radiance.

But it's not— it's Tampax. Yeah, not Tam Max. Tampax. Them. I think it's X chromosome.

That's good, it's good. We'd have to track down whoever named Maxi Pad.

That's the original. I bet, I bet you can, you can do that and come back to us.

Are you— do you think they're alive?

Um, probably their kids or kids of kids.

Okay, well, while you read a fact, I'm going to ask AI if the inventor of Maxi Pads is still alive. Okay, great. Is the inventor of Maxi Pads still still alive.

If people listen to the CTE episode with Chris Nowinski, and then also it came up in another episode, the Pee Baby. Uh-huh. Um, we had AI make a video of us originally talking about the Pee Baby, the original story of Pee Baby. Oh really? Yeah. And we're— I'm gonna post it tomorrow, but so by the time you listen to this, it will be posted And I really, really recommend people going to watch this. It'll be on our Instagram because for one, the story is just, you need a good reminder of the pee baby, but the AI is hilarious.

Oh, I can't wait to see it.

And it's like a version of you and me, like the AI made versions of us. Wow. It's so funny.

Well, I can't wait to see. Yeah. Were you holding this this as a surprise for me? No, I was just—

forgot. I'm doing stuff. You got things to do. Um, anyway, so check that out. Check out the Pee Baby and the AI. It just reminded me— AI. Okay, great. Did it respond?

Well, it had to have. Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner, an African-American inventor, is renowned for her development of the adjustable sanitary belt, a precursor to the modern maxi pad. Okay, so they really went back. That was 1912. Oh, Wow, she passed away in '06, so that's off the table. Kenner's invention patented and featured a moisture-proof pocket designed to hold menstrual pads securely in place. The innovation— okay, where Kenner faced, uh, racial discrimination, that's a bummer. And of course, uh, was awarded 5 patents. In summary, Mary Betas Davis and Kenner passed away in '06. Okay, so I don't know if we're giving her credit for Maxipad or she did the belt.

Okay, okay. All right, so we didn't learn anything.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Great.

Um, now what are the most watched shows on Netflix? This is on Wikipedia, and notoriously Netflix doesn't really release this information, so—

or they do it weird. They do it— they'll do like a minute. Like, so I just saw this, um, and congrats to Dumal and Minka Kelly, friends of the pod.

Ransom Canyon.

Ransom Canyon has 2.6 billion minutes. Viewed. And to put it in perspective, Mobland, which I love and is seemingly a hit— everyone I know is watching it— had like 580 million. So wow, a 4.5x of second place. But they do minutes, right? So that's an interesting way to, to quantify it.

Interesting. As opposed to like households who watch minutes or hours. Minutes. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, well, this is just Wikipedia. India. Oh, and it's most popular television series by hours watching their first 28 days. Number 1 is Squid Game season 1. Yeah. Stranger Things. Oh yeah, is number 2. 3 is Wednesday. Okay. 4 is Squid Game season 2. 5 is Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Wow.

I wouldn't have picked that up just from walking around and people telling me to watch stuff.

Yeah, that one's a surprise for me. Uh, Six's Money Heist, that was a big European show. Yes, I think maybe it was in Spanish, I think.

Yeah, Anna turned us on to it.

She loved it. Yeah. Um, oh wait, no, sorry, that's— so Six's Money Heist Part 5. Okay, interesting. Interesting. 7, 8, and 9 are Bridgerton, season 1, 2, and 3. Uh-huh. And then 10, Money Heist Part 4. Okay. 11, Stranger Things.

I need to give Money Heist another shot. It was, it was subtitled. Yeah, I think so.

I know I would, I would watch that. I'm still in ER.

Oh, I know what I started, which is so fucking good. The Deli Boys. Oh, I wonder, have you tried—

you gotta try it. Yeah, I want to.

It's such a unique tone that they are pulling off beautifully. Nice. It's fantastic. Cool.

I love that.

You know, I like discovering these hiccups in my thinking. Uh-huh. And, uh, so there's a joke in Deli Boys. They have to deal with this Italian mob boss quite often, and they're Pakistani. And the, the patriarch of— not even the patriarch, one of the partners in the criminal organization, an older guy, he hates Indians, right? He's constantly talking about how he hates Indians. And so he's sitting across from this Italian mobster, and, uh, he, he says, um, Pakistani, but I'm telling the truth, Indians are terrible. And the Italian goes, oh, I thought you were Indian. And he goes, no, I'm not, they are our mortal enemy. And then the, um, mob— the Italian mobster goes, so you guys look identical to each other and you hate one mother. And he goes, oh, Cookie just got canceled. He's like a— then they all laugh, the notion of a mobster could get canceled.

Oh, oh, that's funny.

But then I was like, I think people do go, how do these two people hate each other so much? They're clearly related. And then I was like, yeah, I would never think that about the Irish and the English. Exactly. The French and the English. Yeah. And then I wondered if people in India are looking at those people going like, wait, you guys are same people. Why are you fighting? Well, I wonder if it's like whatever in-group you're in, the out— it seems crazy on the outside.

It's always about land and religion, often religion. But yeah, who owns what? And it's— I mean, that's, that's very timely because India and Pakistan were—

well, this was obviously made before they now launched missiles at each other, but they're in a ceasefire.

Yeah, but anyway, okay, Seth MacFarlane and Nick, that conversation That's the SAG— on the SAG-AFTRA Foundation YouTube. Yeah, so you can watch that there if you're interested in animation. Pretty unique conversation. Okay, the seasons of Seth MacFarlane shows. How many? Family Guy, 23 seasons. American Dad, 19 seasons. Cleveland Show, 4 seasons.

46. Wow, 46 television— 46 seasons of television. That's really it. That's all the facts. Yeah. Well, Nick Kroll, we love you.

Well, there was one—

pray for your speedy recovery.

He's gonna be sick for another 10 years or so.

Yeah, uh, like 6, 6 more years he's got of being sick. We're not sick anymore.

Well, you kind of are. You're still kind of sick.

Probably more sick than I was pre-kids in general, but like they just stop putting their fingers in each other's mouths and butts, and like, like, they just— they get a little more separated as they get older.

Speaking of kids, yeah, um, I wasn't sure if I was gonna bring this up, but why not?

Yeah, why not? I said I was racist, you know.

Well, no, this isn't negative towards kids. Oh, right.

I'm just saying I revealed a lot that I had some vestigial racial thinking that I caught myself.

Sure, yeah.

Okay.

Um, Mother's Day— we just had Mother's Day, right? Yeah. It's getting increasingly harder for me. Okay. And I think from— for like so many reasons that feel overwhelming.

Yeah.

Um, and I'm just tracking that, that it's starting to feel really tough. Um, I'm glad I go home. I go home. I've gone home the last couple years and it's nice to be with my mom. Um, and I know it makes them very happy, so I like doing that. But there is something about being there that's hard. When I'm there, especially for moments, uh, events, yearly events, the passage, like time starts to feel very oppressive. Yeah. The passage of time. Yeah. You know, we go to the same places and, you know, I'm going to this like mall that I went to when I was in high school and to see it be so much the same and also so different. It's just, it feels, it feels sad. It feels melancholic. Right. And then seeing my parents age. Yes. Is so hard.

The lack of permanence to everything. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And I can kind of— Buddhism, I know. And I, when I'm not there, I can detach from it when I'm here.

And you can keep it time-locked in your mind and memory. Yes.

And I think I can just compartmentalize in a way, like they're there and that's happening, but I'm not seeing day to day, like the little things that are changing. So it's kind of hard to be there, even though I'm glad I make that decision. That's a little hard. And then I also know being here would be hard because all of my friends have kids. Yeah. And that is painful in its own way. And like, it just feels sort of like this day is hard.

Is it painful because you feel like you're missing out on the mothering experience, or is it painful because you feel excluded from your friends in a way?

I— which pain is it? I feel I think it's both. I think it's, it's so tricky because it's not like on a day-to-day I think of the pain of not having children, but on that day, yes, I am away. I'm just very aware that I don't. Yeah. And that it's not, it wasn't really a choice. It's just the way my life went, right? Folded. Yeah, it unfolded in this way. I made decisions that took me in certain places. I, you know, I'm not married to my high school sweetheart. I didn't have one, you know. And yeah, I'm just like aware, like, oh, my life hasn't gone— didn't go that way, right? And yes, I can still make decisions that might lead to that, but it's different. It's like really different now. The me having a kid now now is a real choice. It is not like, oh, I fell in love with this person and then maybe we'll have kids, that's the next step.

It's, I have kids, I'm pregnant, what do we do?

Fuck it, let's do it. It's real, real hard decision making. Yeah, it kind of— I don't— yeah, and that's, that's an annoying thing to have to think about. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I guess it was a hard day. Closer or I don't know, like, it, it, it, it makes me feel, feel like, oh, I wish I had that. But does it make me feel like I'm gonna take those steps to do it?

If I were you, I would just want to be crystal clear if it is a desire to have the experience versus the A student in you. I know that's hard to know which is driving it, but I think one is worth chasing and one is worth overcoming. Yeah, I know. I don't know.

Again, that's a question that I have to ask that I'm kind of resentful that I have to ask. Resentful towards my, like, towards life, I guess. Because I know that if I was married and in a partnership, I would, I would have kids, right? I would want that.

Yeah. So what does a guy in your situation do? Like, what is this 37-year-old guy who can't go get a donor? Well, they could. I mean, yeah, they could, and then they got to get a surrogate, and it's definitely more complicated. You're like, you're a stop at a sperm bank away from having a kid.

Well, maybe.

I mean, well, maybe because of fertility, but, you know, like a, a, a dude who's not loaded and can't pay for a surrogate and, and, uh, egg and all that stuff. I wonder what— how they wrestle with it, you know?

Yeah. Um, I mean, I, I assume it's the same feeling and the same thing. Like, I guess I have to figure out if I'm gonna like just be with a person I don't want to be with, or, or take those steps. In some ways, I mean, it's, it's all hard, but I think for a man, if they have the means— I mean, a lot of women don't have the means to do any of this either. How much is a sperm donor? That's not terribly expensive. But to your egg, like, you know, do retrievals, and it's expensive. But let's just say you, you have to remove the eggs in order to make the embryo.

Oh, they can't put a base drain you and do it?

Oh, they can try. Yeah, some people, that works for some people. It's It's pretty hard for it to take, but it works for some people. But then if that doesn't work, you spent money doing that and then you have to, you know, it's a lot, right? But for a man, they can make the embryo, you know, they'll take the egg, the sperm, they'll make the embryo and then they'll implant it into a surrogate.

Yeah, I imagine that's a pricey endeavor. I'm sure.

Fertility is so expensive. Another thing that's like, that's a cost that it wouldn't be a cost. I mean, having kids is an insane cost in general, What, to your mental health? Yeah, diapers. Diapers. Ding ding ding, that came up in Nick Kroll's fact. Your dipes. And they went bankrupt.

Yeah, my dipes went bankrupt. Bad for business.

Um, anyway, I just thought I would share it because I'm sure it's complicated for a lot of people. Surely Mother's Day, for so many reasons.

Carrie sent me this incredible post that a girl at our high school had put on Facebook. Book. And, um, she was a grade younger than us, I believe. I didn't— like, of course I didn't recognize her right away, but it was this really heartfelt, beautiful post about the complicated nature of Mother's Day and how she basically had to say goodbye to her mom at 16 because the mom moved to Arizona and the mom was not healthy mom. And so this girl was living, going to my school. Yeah, living on her own. Oh my God, paying for apartment. She sent it to me because she goes, side note, that's fun, I was once in detention and Dax Shepard said to me, what'd they put you in for? Oh, that's funny. And then went on to say, don't worry about all this, your life's really gonna start in 2 minutes. And I know mine's not ending here in this detention. Oh wow. Whether I said that or not, who knows, maybe in her mind I said that. But, um, I'm delighted that on that detention we had, you know, like a fun—

yeah, an interaction. Yeah.

But it It was just a really sweet post and a reminder of like, man, some kids— like, the experience can be so radical. Carrie sent it to me going, I'm such a fucking asshole for bitching about my two loving parents who, you know, whatever. Yeah, but like, yeah, there's kids in your high school that are like, they're supporting themselves and living in an apartment. Yeah. And they don't have any parents. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay.

Anyway. Anyway, well, that's it. All right, love you.

Love you.