Transcript of Jennie Garth New

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

Hi.

Today we have— boy, we were just saying in the fact check, if you would have told me in '95 this day was going to happen, I just wouldn't have believed you.

Never believed it.

Jenny Garth.

Donna Martin graduates.

She's not Donna Martin, of course, but yes, we love Donna Martin graduates. Yes. Yeah. Jenny Garth is an actor, a cultural icon, and an advocate. Beverly Hills, 90210. And we'll get into it in the episode. But if you're listening and you're under 30, you don't know how big this show is. You can't. There is no show as big as this show is currently.

I know it's wild.

Also, 90210, What I Like About You, A Kindhearted Christmas. And she has a memoir that we are going to talk about extensively called I Choose Me.

She's got a life, man.

That's a line from an episode of Beverly Hills. Remember, there's a love triangle between her and Dylan, and she chose her.

Wow.

Please enjoy Jenny Garth. Thank you to our presenting sponsor HP for supporting this episode. Their HP Smart Tank printer is the last printer you'll ever need. Oh, here we go, Monica, with a refillable ink tank and up to 3 years of ink included, so you get thousands of pages of cartridge-free printing. Hallelujah! To learn more, search for HP Smart Tank.

He's an art expert.

He's an art expert. He's an art expert. You were going to bring Monica something.

Well, and you.

It's all right if it's just a little fun merch.

Oh, I do love merch.

Yeah.

You're a slave to merch.

I really am.

I really am.

Where were you coming from? Pasadena.

Is that where you live?

Yeah.

I like Pasadena. Have you gotten interested in the history of Pasadena since moving there?

There are so many historical amazing estates, buildings.

Yeah, and Houston's historical.

Oh yeah, I've never been there. You haven't?

What is wrong with you? Why are you boycotting Houston?

I don't eat meat.

It's okay.

Well, but my husband really wants to go there, so I think maybe— You really gotta go? No.

Okay, it's okay. They have great salads.

They have great artichoke dip. I was just thinking the sushi's great. You wouldn't think it, but the sushi's outrageous.

It's so good.

At Houston's?

Yeah.

Yeah. You'll be shocked. All right, you're giggling. It's counterintuitive.

I mean, I don't eat sushi either, but I'm sure I could find something.

You're gonna find something, you're gonna love it. How strict are you on your vegetarianism? Because I go with two of my friends and one of them's a vegetarian. We would always get the spinach artichoke dip. She could have that and it's, the best thing on the planet. And then one day she came and she said, I think there's chicken stock in this. And then she asked and there was, and now she can't eat it.

You love stock?

It really stinks when you find foods that you love so much and you're like, wait, this has some hidden dairy in it.

So stock, we don't mess with.

We draw the line.

I don't eat hardly anything, you guys.

You know, you're done. You're post-eating.

I'm done with it. Yeah. Like I'm over it.

You're retired from it.

Yeah. It's too much work.

A lot of energy.

I've never been a foodie, so that's helpful.

Are you vegetarian or vegan?

Vegan.

Oh my God, all the way.

Yeah, definitely.

For how long?

If you're going to do something, do it.

How long have you been doing it?

On and off for years and years, but I went off of it when I had kids, so I was eating for them, eating chicken and stuff.

That was Kristen's first meat. She was pregnant and she called me. I was at a restaurant and she said, order me the bison meatloaf sandwich. I was like, you haven't eaten meat in 32 years. She goes, Delta wants a bison meatloaf sandwich.

You got to give them what they want.

Yeah.

I wanted Chicken McNuggets.

Out of health or concern for animals?

Both.

I grew up on a farm in Illinois where my dad would kill our pigs for the dinner table. I just never loved that, but I ate pork chops because I was told to. And then I just got to the place where I'm like, nobody's telling me what to eat anymore. So when I was away from the home, I would eat Lucky Charms and Taco Bell constantly. Because then I was just like, woohoo, freedom from my mom who only let us eat healthy things. Now, just as an adult, I feel like at this phase in my life, I just want to take the best possible care I can of myself. I'm so scared of dying. So when when you have sudden loss around you, unexpected, out-of-nowhere loss— it just happened again this last week— you really go, whoa, okay, priorities. I want to take the best care of myself I can. And I love it. I love feeling clean and healthy and waking up clear.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, back to Illinois. Yeah, you were on like a 25-acre farm. You're the youngest of 7?

Yes.

But you're the only child of your dad and your mom.

Yeah. It's a very Brady Bunch. And then I was like, Oliver.

Oh, you were Oliver. Okay.

He wasn't even theirs. But yeah, I was the only one by both my parents. So I was the baby.

What was the relationship with the siblings?

They loved their new dad so much, my father. And they were very happy. They were excited to have a little baby.

Okay, good.

I was everybody's little baby.

The oldest one was, what, 20-some years older than you or something?

Yeah.

And Dad didn't have custody of those 6 kids, or did he?

He had his own children. He had 2 sons and a daughter. And he ended up adopting my mom's kids.

I got it. So your mom had kids as well. It was a true Brady Bunch. Yeah.

She had 3 girls and he had 2 sons and a girl. Oh, wow.

So you had a mix of step— No, they're all half, but 2 different sets. Well, this is some permutation.

That is fun.

You guys move when you're 13 or something to Arizona, to Glendale. What prompted that move?

The weather in Illinois is really harsh. Very hard winters. And my father had developed heart disease, cardiovascular disease. So they determined that that was too hard on his heart, the cold weather. And he liked to work outside and it was just too much for him.

What did he do for a living?

He was an educator. Both my parents were teachers. He taught adult education. He actually started adult education in the state of Illinois in the '70s. And he loved what he did. He loved teaching adults who had never had the opportunity or the privilege of learning how to read.

Are these people like getting their GED? Is that what that is?

They're people that just want to learn how to read.

Okay.

Wow. Not even any necessary goal in mind.

No, I just think to have a better life.

So when you guys moved to Arizona, did they both get jobs as teachers in Arizona?

No, my mom had done Shaklee. Have you ever heard of that? It's very long ago.

Selling vitamins.

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.

It's a multi-level marketing.

Yes. She got so good at it that she ended up getting a pink Cadillac from the company.

Well, they also do a pink.

They do.

Isn't that weird?

They were like, it works at Mary Kay. Don't fuck with what's not broken.

Yeah, don't need to reinvent that.

Oh my gosh.

But she left that and then she started another MLM in Arizona. I don't remember what that one was.

So is your garage just filled with items? That's what we learn about people in MLMs. Their garage is just like filled with the vitamins or the drinks.

The stock.

My mom had a whole stockroom. I love to organize things from a very young age. So I would go in there and organize all the vitamins and the packets and the soup packets and the shake packets.

Yeah.

And those vitamins have a distinct smell.

Shackley?

Yeah, someone of course got my parents in their Target. We own Shackley. I don't think anyone ever took them, but when I would just open the cabinet where the Shackleys were, it's like I was hit with this mineral smell.

Distinct.

Fragrant.

Especially the soup.

Oh, so was it Shackley making the soup as well?

Yes, powdered soup. I actually liked it.

You did? It was good.

What flavor? Like chicken?

It was like cream of chicken or something.

Oh, wow.

Powder.

I don't think that's an intuitive extension of products.

Like, make vitamins and go to soup.

Maybe a shampoo. Shampoo and conditioner that had vitamins in it.

Well, maybe the soup had the vitamins crushed up.

Maybe.

Wow.

It had to have been good for you. Yeah.

Had to.

Had to.

And was she making money? Because we've had an MLM expert on.

Very.

And the percentage of people who actually make money is very, very, very small. But was she crushing? Was she making a lot of money?

Yeah, she was making enough money. I don't think a lot of money was ever made, but she loved doing it. It made her feel alive and she's really great with people, so she loved it.

When you moved to Arizona, he's not taking a teaching job there. She's the primary and only breadwinner at that point.

At that point, yes, because he had had a massive heart attack, which prompted us to leave Illinois. So for a while, she was taking care of supporting him and me. The other girls were already out of the house. She's a hustler, so she did what she had to do for sure.

When do you start dancing and entering pageants?

That must have been my 8th grade or my freshman year. There was like a little dance studio on our corner. Well, we forgot about this.

Okay.

My mom and dad got separated. I never really understood it because I was so mad about it. But he moved up to Prescott, Arizona.

I don't like how they pronounce that.

Prescott. Prescott.

They say Prescott, but it's spelled Prescott. But they say Prescott.

Prescott, like it's a biscuit. No, I didn't ever like it either.

But he went up to Prescott.

He went up to Prescott, had his little farm up there and was living a quiet life. He didn't like the city.

You don't have any sense of what prompted that?

I really stayed out of their relationship, and I had a room upstairs. I tried to stay away from it. I don't like to get into other people's business unnecessarily.

Okay.

Were they fighting a lot? I never really saw them fight. No.

I'm so curious. Something can't be going on, and I don't know what it is. Like, I have to know what's going on. And if Dad left, I'd say to Mom, like, what just happened?

I think I was a teenager. Like, I was pretty self-absorbed in my own world, in my own head a lot.

Maybe it's a self-protective mechanism too, because if you find out, maybe the answer is something you really don't want to know. And maybe you knew that on some level, like, I don't really want to know.

I think so. And I was upset at my mom, but then I would go spend time with my dad up in Prescott, and I'd be so bored.

Yeah.

Like, ugh.

So this makes a little more sense because when I learned that you and Mom moved to LA at 16. Something precedes that. You're at a pageant, and you meet a manager. And this, again, and you say it in the book, by most accounts, this is a dicey scenario, right? So explain what happens at the pageant.

I was like 15, and I was in a pageant, like a one-time deal. I thought it was for a dance scholarship so I could go to college and become a dance teacher or dancer. Turns out I wasn't that good, but I did dance as my— talent in that show, and it was in, like, Laughlin, Nevada, or something. He was one of the judges. Somebody had called in a favor to him and said, "Can you come be a judge for me? I can't do it." He lived in New York City. He was the head of casting. So he said to his wife, "Yeah, let's go do it for my friend, and we'll have a trip out of it." So he had brought his wife, which made it a little less weird. But he did come up to us.

Scott? What's his name?

His name's Randy.

Oh, Randy.

Randy James. And we call him Mr. Showbiz, but he's a legend. I've been with him ever since, since I was 15 years old.

That's crazy. And he says, I think you could be in showbiz. But this is a middle-aged man saying to a 15-year-old girl in a pageant, I think you'd be in showbiz. Like, alarm bells are normally going off.

For sure. My mom was right there with me and his wife was right there with it. It was actually her, Kelly's idea for him to approach me because he was in casting. Like, he was always looking for the next thing.

I have a question. If you're the baby of the family and you're blonde and cute and then you go into pageants, Do you start sensing your value is your cuteness? And what does that do? Have you explored that? To be the object of such affection in that way and to be kind of getting told your value is this cuteness, how does that set your own self-esteem and identity?

It does affect it for sure. Once I moved to Hollywood and started becoming a success, so young, that's when I really start to recognize it and have a lot of thoughts in my head about it.

I think every kid should get adored. And I also think you can be too adored. I think it can be dangerous to get too adored.

It is. I don't like being adored.

And also, I can imagine, like, once the family adoration stops, it's like there's this big hole that you've only been formatted for that. You now need that, right?

I needed to go seek it from boys. I wanted to get it from girls. That never really worked out in junior high and high school. So I was just isolated and would really just try to get it from the boys. I had a boyfriend.

What grade? Right out of the gates?

Freshman year. He was a senior.

None in middle school? Junior high?

No. Well, I did kiss Ray Padilla.

Congratulations, Ray.

Congrats, Ray.

Yeah.

Good for Ray.

Was he your age or was he older?

He was older. Much older.

28?

Uh, no.

No, that's Randy's age.

He was already in high school. He was hot.

That's fun. But then, yeah, you're in a loop of getting validation. You know, that's where you can get a quick hit. Yeah.

You start to seek that, I guess.

Of course.

As much as you hate it, it's this weird dichotomy because that's what you think your worth is. Like, you go to that like a heat-seeking missile, but at the same time, it repulses you.

You want to be appreciated and adored for other qualities, but that's not what's being offered.

We all want what we don't.

Yeah, we want what we don't have.

The grass is always greener.

But I will say The thing that was rewarded to me, I'm a little bit more in control of it, right? Like, I can generate comedy.

Funny.

Yeah. And comedy doesn't have a shelf— although it does a little bit. In general, I can pursue that. So it's interesting. The thing I wanted, I guess I'm probably more grateful that the only thing I got really applauded for was being clever.

Yeah, I would have rather be applauded for being clever.

I wish I was just hot.

Same.

I didn't know what I was other than that. I did okay in school, so I wasn't like the smart one, but I was just the baby and the cute one and the one that everybody wanted to, like, take care of.

Coddle and pick up and squeeze cheeks of.

Right. You know, when you're trying to figure out who you are as a young teen, that starts to really happen, I think. I didn't get a sense of who I was outside of that.

But then this career path presents itself, which is perfect. You've kind of been hand-built for you to be good at this thing. So he says this, you could have a future. To your credit, you take it serious. You start taking acting classes.

I don't know why. I had never wanted to be an actress. I never thought, "Oh, I want to be famous." I didn't play in theater at all. I didn't know anything about it. But I guess I just saw it as an opportunity. And anytime I've ever seen an opportunity in my life, I go for it and do my best. I have a very strong work ethic from my parents and growing up on a farm like that. So I just really throw myself into something. And my mom was supportive and said, "Oh, that could be interesting and fun. Let's do it." And she moved out here with me.

That explained— the separation's not in the book. And I'm like, how did Dad handle that Mom's moving to LA?

They did a lot of back and forth. They were separated, but then he was unwell again, so she moved back to be with him and take care of him.

Okay, so you get to LA. Is it exciting or terrifying?

I didn't know enough to be terrified, honestly. I'm from a farm in Illinois, and I lived in Phoenix for a couple years, but I didn't know what I was getting into on any level. I had posters of Madonna in my bedroom when I was little, and Michael Jackson and Mary Lou Retton.

She was the queen.

Yeah.

Remember her McDonald's commercial? She was in a Corvette.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

I didn't really know about fame or acting or the whole world of an actress or an actor. I just jumped in.

And pretty quickly, you were on Growing Pains before you were 18, right? I mean, that was the show.

I think that was my first or second job.

Did you interface with Kirk Cameron?

I did, in a very odd way. I was a girl in a car next to him in his car and with his buddies. I had one line in the whole show. Well, it was actually 3 words. "Sticky, sticky, sticky." No idea why. That was my line.

Hmm. Okay.

Also, what a blessing as far as the first line you gotta memorize.

Oh, true. It's the same.

Just one word you gotta memorize. One word. And hopefully you remember it 3 times. Is it 4 times or 2 times? It's 3 times we told you.

Oh my God.

Yeah. So that was my first. And then I did a Barbara Eden show where I played her daughter, which I was beside myself with excitement because, She was Jeannie, you know? I grew up watching her on I Dream of Jeannie.

Also, I would imagine you're drawn to, like, matriarchs. Your mom's a breadwinner. Then you meet this woman. She's a star of her own show. She's had this other success. I'd imagine it's appealing to see women being self-sufficient.

Yeah, I was so inspired by my mom and her. They made life happen.

Back to Kirk Cameron. There wasn't a girl in America that didn't think he was cute. Am I right?

I don't think so. I wasn't even a fan of the show.

They were ruled dead, the ones that didn't find him cute.

I wasn't like a big fan. I wasn't a big Kirk Cameron fan or anything.

Well, you weren't.

No, I watched The Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan's Island.

Green Acres.

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies.

Yeah, great programming.

Oh my gosh.

Also, I have no clue when those originally aired, 'cause when we were watching them, they were reruns in the daytime when you stayed home from school. I didn't know if they came from the '30s or the '60s or the '40s.

No idea.

Still don't know when.

We probably should look that up.

Like Beverly Hillbillies, it was in black and white.

Yeah.

Until it wasn't.

When the fuck was that show made? 'Cause I was watching it in '82.

It had to be in the '70s. The Brady Bunch was probably '70s.

At least stylistically, it's a giveaway. The color, full '70s. Orange everything, shag carpet, the haircuts, the fucking bell bottoms. Yeah, but these other— like a farm show, you can't set it with the style. The Beverly Hillbillies, everyone's dressed in tuxedos or silly hillbilly clothes. Yeah, Grapes of Wrath clothes.

Bewitched, that was probably the '50s, right?

I think '60s. Darren looked very '60s mod, didn't he?

He did. Very mod. Uh, what's that show nowadays?

Oh, Mad Men.

Mad Men.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you. Also, weirdly, you did a show that Jason Priestley was on before 90210.

Yes, yes.

What was that?

We met on a set called Teen Angel Returns. Oh.

Say it again.

Teen Angel Returns. He was a teen angel.

Yeah, he was.

Who would come down and help people. Sure. Usually girls.

Usually beautiful girls.

There was apparently a Teen Angel 1. But this was Teenage Overturns.

Okay.

Yeah. So I met him on that, and we instantly fell into this great rhythm of brother-sister energy.

He's older than you or similar age?

He's a little older.

He was a little more seasoned, yeah?

Yeah. I mean, star of a movie. He was in a Disney movie.

For God's sakes.

But he was just cool. He was just so nice. He's the nicest guy on Earth.

Well, now here's where I want to back up. The book, weirdly, is an outgrowth of a podcast, which is weirdly an outgrowth of rewatching 90210.

Explain why you did that.

Who didn't watch it originally?

Well, first of all, we were always working. 16, 18-hour days. You go home, you sleep, you get up at 5, and you come right back. Everyone was pretty much there every day.

Yeah, I imagine they weren't being helpful, like, if they'd bring in all day long.

And we had no say in anything. So we would just sit around and wait in our little dressing rooms or our little honey wagons. And I think they wanted us together all the time, which probably really helped the energy between us.

Helped and hurt, I think, as we'll find out. Yeah. A little bit of both.

A little bit of both. So I never watched it.

You didn't?

I would see dailies sometimes. That would be plenty for me. Like, I've never been one to love sitting down until recently. But I would just get too in my head, feel too insecure.

Broad jokes?

Yes. Feel like, "Who? I don't know her.

What is that?" "What am I doing? Am I making any choices?" Yeah. So you sat down to watch it because you were gonna do a podcast, a rewatch podcast. My first curiosity is, like, we all have this— reel in our head of what things look like and felt like from our past. And it's very, very unique to be able to— like, if I could go back and watch myself at 18, I guarantee it wouldn't match that well with what my memory has corrupted it to be now. Were you having any kind of disjointed, like, oh my God, this is not—

well, it's weird because I— yeah, I was going back and looking at my younger self, but that wasn't me. That was a character in a world that was it's weird to watch— Yes, that's me playing that character as a young girl, but also, that girl had no idea who she was. It's hard for me to really identify, but when I did go back to watch the very first episode, it was really moving because I had so much sympathy for that young girl, 'cause I could see past the character, past the scenes, to the core of the person.

You were seeing the nervousness and the—

The nervousness, the insecurity, the fear. Just all the things.

How about even physically? Were you like, oh, I look different than I thought I looked at that time?

I don't think so. I've had definitely a better appreciation for those years, right? I was like, wow, look at her go.

Yeah, yeah.

But here's my example. I was always like, I gotta get in better shape, right? This is constantly. And then I'll see pictures of myself at like 19, I'm like, you were great, right? You look like an athlete.

I know, I always worry about, oh, is my butt big, or what's it, my body's not right.

You can look back and say like, what a waste of energy that was, but I don't think you can escape it.

And I wasted that.

You have to feel that.

Like, even worse, you're like, fuck, I should have been enjoying that.

You should have enjoyed it. Strutting around in a banana hammock.

I should have worn more Speedos. Absolutely. What were those board shorts?

Missed opportunity.

Similarly, I watched Parenthood with my kids. I hadn't seen it in probably 8 years or something, or 9 years. And when I watched it and they laughed the entire way through, I just cried the whole time. Oh, I just remember how much I loved Peter and May and all these people and Craig T. Nelson. I was just like, oh my God, I got to spend like the most precious time with these people. And I just was overwhelmed with what a sweet thing that was. And I just was so emotional for like the first 3 episodes. I couldn't get over it. Were you having any of those swelly feelings?

Definitely. Because What a great group of people. And we all took for granted that we got to live that life together. And also, there's just this invisible string that connects us all.

And two of the cast members have passed.

At that point, one of them had passed, I believe.

Shannon had? No, not yet. No, Luke had. Okay. So yeah, when you're seeing him, is it heartbreaking?

Yeah, it was definitely very hard to watch. I couldn't really watch. But then I started to get really sucked into the storyline.

Oh, the plot was interesting.

And then all I wanted to see was Dylan.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to see him woo more girls.

Yeah.

So good at it. I remember they wouldn't see me for it. I didn't have that much resume, you know?

Angel Returns wasn't out yet.

Wasn't enough, apparently. Growing Pains didn't get me in there.

What was your 3 words?

Sticky, sticky, sticky.

What if you sent that tape? I forgot.

I got to read it. I know.

You would not have booked it.

What if you sent that tape, though, and they put it in? Sticky, sticky, sticky. And that was the end.

She's on the real show.

I don't care.

I don't care if she's on the other side of the planet. Let's get her.

No, but Mr. Showbiz, Randy, my manager, was friends with Tony. I can't remember his last name, but he was the head of Spelling casting. So they were friends, you know, in business. And he called Tony and said, "I heard you. You don't want to see her, but please." He was like, "Do this for me as a friend." So I went in to see him in his office. And then from his office, we went into Mr. Spelling's office. Where there were, like, I don't know, it felt like 50 men, but it was probably 10, maybe 8, probably.

And did you audition in front of him? And all those people, yeah. How nerve-wracking was that?

Extremely.

Yeah.

Yeah. How do you suppose you did well enough? That seems overwhelming at that stage.

I don't know. I was just so distracted. There was bowls of cigarettes out.

This is so old school. Yes.

And then him and his pipe, and them all just like, mm-hmm. Staring. And I don't know, I just went into some sort of beast mode and did my scene.

I wonder if you dissociated a bit.

Oh, yeah. That's something I like to do a lot.

It can be helpful.

Yes. But I remember leaving that building with Randy. We were walking back to our car, and I heard someone say, "Hey, Jenny!" And I turned around, and it was Aaron hanging out the window. He went like that, like thumbs up. Aww.

Thank God he didn't fall out the window.

I know, it was like a big opening too. He's a tiny man.

And this is back in the day, obviously you went and did a pilot and then you got to wait to see if it gets picked up. It sounds like you're very naive. Did you have a sense of what was coming? Did you even consider, like, what were the goals at the time? Like, oh, I hope they order 13 so I get paychecks.

I had no understanding of the workings of the business.

They explained this is a pilot and then now we'll wait and see.

Okay, cool.

Was it fun making the pilot? Like, what are your memories of that?

Really fun because I just stepped into a whole new world of people my age. We were all there creating something together, which I had never really experienced, and all doing our parts individually. And it's just really cool, really inspiring. Like, I thought, this is a nice world to be a part of.

And there were varying levels of experience between all of you. You say in the book, Jason Priestley was pretty immediately like the patriarch.

He came from Sister Kate, which was a big show back then. And Shannon had worked on Heathers. She was on Little House on the Prairie, for God's sake. So she had a lot of experience.

But had you seen Heathers? I was I was obsessed with Heathers.

I had not seen Heathers.

You were on Brady Bunch still.

Yeah, I didn't—

I wasn't exposed to much. She would swear in Heathers.

But that's probably helpful because I think that would allow for more fraudulent feelings. If you've been, like, keeping up and you've seen Heathers and you, like, know what's going on, I think you could show up and be like, "I don't belong here." Yeah.

But it's also a lot to ask a lot of 17, 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 20-year-olds to wield their experience ethically. So, like, if I were Shannon, I might think I'm too good for this. Do people come with attitudes?

The people that had experience definitely felt as if they knew what they were doing a lot more. I did feel green. I felt lucky to be there. I did feel probably less than or inferior to some of the people on the cast, just innately.

But you were good at learning how to be the baby of a scenario. Like, were you able to own that and let them take care of you?

Um, I don't feel like there was a lot of taking care of. It was kind of like man for himself. It was dog eat dog.

That's what I was curious about, like the dynamics between all the people.

It's a lot of attention to share when you're that age.

Yeah. And it's so many eyes on that show, and people's favorites, and so much going on.

It got really difficult as the show went on after the first season. They started really sort of taking my character and Shannon's character and pitting them against one another in storyline. And then that would, in turn, turn the media, and in turn, turn the audience. And so that's when the whole thing girl against girl really became apparent that that's what we're doing here.

Yeah. They honed the sword on that. And then when Desperate Housewives came along, they were like, "We know how to do this." Make them all fight all the time. Sometimes, though, even though it's not based in anything, once it takes on a life of its own, it can start impacting the real dynamic between you two, no?

Yeah, unfortunately. We were young. I didn't know how to deal with that. And I thought it was real. And I'm emoting, and then the camera cuts, and it's a little odd because we just had a fight or some sort of really ugly words to one another. There was no internet then. It would've been a lot worse.

Oh, can you imagine? Whew.

But it was so supported by the continued writing, and then the fans, 'cause they used to send us out a lot. They used to send me out. I don't know if Shannon did a lot, but I would go out. The guys would go out a lot and do signings. Car shows. Remember the days when they would send you to a car show to sign autographs?

Sure, sure.

I was stoked because I got a free car out of one of those.

You did?

I did.

What did you get?

Oh my God, it was a gorgeous sparkly emerald green Corvette.

Oh wow.

No, you didn't.

Oh my God.

They gave you a Corvette?

Yes.

I know that color, that green. This would've been like a '92 Corvette or something. Mm-hmm. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by HP. My mental to-do list is already full. Fix something around the house, refill prescriptions, remember to text someone back, keep track of a million little life things. The last thing I want on that list is, oh, don't forget printer ink.

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Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Co. and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. I want to attempt to explain the size of Beverly Hills 90210. I was saying to my kids, they often ask me who I'm interviewing, or maybe they heard me say to my wife I was interviewing you. My wife goes like, oh, 90210, you guys, was is so big, you can't imagine. K-pop, then, plus some. So I looked up all the numbers, and to put it in reference, you guys maintained an 11 share for most of the 10 years, right? So currently, the NFL, which is the biggest show on television by a factor of 5, gets like a 2.82, a 3.2. Grey's Anatomy gets a 0.4.

That's wild.

Yes, you guys got an 11. You had 20 million viewers a week for like 5 of the 10 years.

Right.

There's no real comp in modern television.

No, it doesn't work that way anymore.

So it's like when you're listening, you kind of got to imagine, you know, it's in the Taylor Swift era. It's like a cultural phenomenon that also lasted way beyond its—

like, I watched it.

You watched it? How old were you? Were you not supposed to be watching?

But I mean, I watched it.

I watched reruns. Okay, so that's what I mean. Like, it still held its value. My generation watched it.

Your mom probably watched it.

Maybe. Maybe.

And then I hear that all the time. Yeah, it's my mom's favorite show.

I was obsessed with it. I love—

why were you so obsessed with it?

Oh my God, I was in Detroit, right? It came out when I would have been 15. It was such a glitzy world. The poor kids driving a '65 Mustang convertible. Jason Priestley. Dylan's driving a fucking convertible Porsche, collector edition, the mansions, everyone's hot, yeah, the dudes are cool. Like, it was such wish fulfillment.

So many bathing suits.

Yes.

If you're like in any place other than California, it's so exciting because you didn't have access to knowing what any of that world looked like. Exactly. There's no Instagram, you're not seeing other people live this life. If you don't see it on TV and or you don't take a vacation there, you don't see it. So your options were Baywatch and then this show to understand maybe what what California, this dream place, was like. And I was so captivated. I remember on a trip to LA when I was 20 years old, Erin and I wanted to, like, see what the Viper Room was. And all of a sudden, coming out of the Viper Room was Amber Thiessen at peak 90210 things. And then she booted in the parking lot. Some guy from the show's screaming at us to give him some privacy, but we don't care. Like, I now, like, I have compassion for people who treat me terribly. I'm like, "No, these people, they're on TV." Hey, what's going on in this parking lot? I couldn't believe how exciting it was. So I was part of the problem for sure.

People tell me I moved to America because of your show, because they saw what they wanted to live, and they were like, I'm going there.

Yeah, they thought all of America was that.

Yeah. So I didn't look up the international numbers, but I bet they're absolutely shocking because I went on a Eurail pass when I was 19, and I was at hostels, and they played Baywatch and 90210. So it was a hugely international show too, right?

It was. We had so many different languages dubbed into our mouths.

Yes. Okay. So after the first year, how are you adjusting? You're clearly getting recognized everywhere you go. How is that experience?

They sent me out on a couple events.

Talk about the zoo one with you and Luke.

There were just thousands of people. We definitely were animals in a zoo. That's what we felt like. And they had us in, I think it was the bird enclosure, to get to the signing area where they had set it up. And we went, and it was impossible because it was dangerous. The kids were pushing and shoving and screaming and fainting.

Oh my God.

Yeah, there were lots of melees at these signings that had to get canceled. So many of them got canceled.

Yeah.

Like 10,000 people showed up at one mall.

Terrifying, 'cause you're on those little riser things they put you up on, and like a folding table, and it's just shaking and rocking. People are sweating and crying and passing out. And like, literally, the medics are carrying people off.

Oh my God.

Yeah, medics.

Remember when people would faint because of hotness?

Oh, yeah.

Because of looking at someone hot? That's like done.

No, I see people at concerts dropping out still.

I think that's because they're on drugs.

Rock stars can still garner that. But not actors.

Even to this day, like when fans of the original show meet us, they don't know how to handle it.

Well, yeah, from your point of view, if you didn't know the context and you were just looking out at the sea of people, you could only conclude there is a natural disaster happening outside, right? Like you'd have to think there was like an earthquake happening or something.

It was pandemonium. And after that started happening, I started to develop agoraphobia. Like, I never left my house.

Right.

Yeah.

How could you?

I wanted to go to the mall. I wanted to do things that—

Hit the food court, talk to people.

—young people were doing. Yeah. But I just didn't. I got scared.

And then also, which could help or hurt you, so your father's heart condition gets worse, and you get a place in San Ynez Valley, a ranch. Yeah.

After a few years on the show, I got a ranch there.

And you move them to there. —They came from Arizona.

They moved.

00:35:28

So now did they get back together for this? [Speaker:LULU] Yeah, they were back together.

Since my mom had gone back and she was taking care of him, they had found this new empty nester rhythm, and it was working for them, and they seemed very happy. And then I uprooted them and said, "I need you. I need something to keep me grounded and feeling like I know anything." And so they moved 2 hours north, and then I would go there all the time. Instead of going out partying, I would go be with my parents. Wow. Yeah.

So you said you kind of missed all the weekend debauchery that would happen with the other cast members. Yeah. The upside of that is, like, you didn't get in any trouble, really. But would you get to work on Monday? Did you not have FOMO? Would you be trying to find out, like, oh, who did what?

Yeah, I think there was internal FOMO that I really didn't even know what that was, but I felt left out. But inside, rationalizing it, like, I don't want that, so it's okay. And that sounds like too much for me. I didn't know how to handle more.

That's wise at that age.

Yeah, it was just like instinctual, I think, from where I came from.

But even though it's a contradiction, I can see it being very natural, which is like you've removed yourself from that, and then also you could feel like they're not including you, right?

Right.

They're not including you, or you're not cool.

Did you have those feelings like, oh, they're cool and I'm not?

Yeah, for this it was hard because I would hear about what happened on the weekends, and I would even see it in the press. Yeah. And I would think, wow, I wonder what that's like. But also, I don't want that. That seems scary. I don't want to lose myself into that world.

Yeah, reading between the lines a bit from your book, you don't explicitly say, but it sounds like you are in desperate need of some mooring to anchor to something. It's obvious from your actions that you felt like you were sucked up into a tornado. Yeah. Because you get married really young. Yes. You meet a drummer. Is he on the show? How do you meet the drummer?

It was through a friend that invited me to see his band, and I went, and he was the drummer, and we just sort of hit it off. And yeah, we got married. I don't even know how that happened.

Like, how quickly after meeting? I think it was 21.

If my daughter came to me and said, I'm 21, I'm getting married, I'd be like, no, you're not. It was a different time, a little bit.

People got married younger, I think, a little bit.

Then the whole world You're still going, "Why would this 21-year-old on this show be getting married?" In retrospect, he was a big guy.

He had the presence of my father, who I thought was gonna die any minute. I was trying to replace that sort of tethering, that sort of physical—

You're looking for stability. He embodies physical stability. Right. Now, here's the part you don't dig super deep into, but I'm curious. So, he moves into your house, you build a recording studio for him, you buy him Harleys. There's something in there. Yeah. Yeah. What do we think is in there?

I am very giving. I like to make people happy. I like to make money so that I can make other people happy or my family. I like to give things. My dad a truck and bought the ranch for them to live on. Like, I help other family members. I feel like I am given this position to make money for other people's benefit a lot of the time.

Yeah, but it's almost impossible, and especially when you're young, to proceed that way and not be resentful at the people that you're doing all this for. Because you're like, I'm doing all this for you, and you're drunk and don't give a shit. Like, was there not also some resentment? No, it wasn't resentment.

It was sadness. Even that wasn't enough for you to not go and drink all night with your friends. Or why would you want to do that when I'm here?

I battle some of that too. Like, if I'm being very generous, I have to think, am I doing this so that they can't leave me?

Mm-hmm. That's what I'm circling.

Look at what I've done. You know, I've invested in you, or I've given you so much, you can't leave me. And then they do, or they go do their own thing, and then you feel like really hurt.

In my mind, it never felt like I'm investing in you. I'm doing this so that you won't leave me. But that was probably the under— Yeah, the under the covers. It was never like at the end of that relationship when it was falling apart, and I was never like, look at all I've given you and you still— I never thought that way. But I think now as a woman who really understands how hard it is to make a living to support your family and how hard you have to work, I do have more of a connection with, I work really hard. And I feel like if you wanna be in my family, it has to be a team effort. We have to all work together to make this work in whatever capacity we're able to. But back then, I didn't know anything about that. Yeah.

Well, at the risk of really opening up a wound, because you have the cute appeal, that also wears off for all people. Because you wanted more of a substantive attraction to you, do you think also there was some reality of like, yeah, he thought you were the cutest thing in the world, and then 6 months later, that wasn't as exciting, and there's no second gear for this relationship?

Yeah. Yes. My life maintained its ridiculous schedule and having no real life of my own outside of work because I had to get up so early every day and be there so long. I think I wasn't as fun as he thought I would be.

As advertised. Right. Or as one would assume.

If you're watching the show, you have an idea about all of you guys. And I bet you're like, I'm a person. Yeah. I'm not that girl.

And by nature, I'm not a person that's walking around with rainbows flowing out of my ass. I was born blue. I don't know if a lot of people know what that means, but just not rainbowy.

Felt more thoughtful, introverted, tiny bit melancholy.

Yeah, tiny bit blue. You know, my dad would always say, are you feeling blue? And I would say, yeah, I don't know why, I was a kid. And then he would take me for ice cream. So then I figured out, oh, that's a reward for feeling good. So I must have reinforced it. But yeah, I'm not like a yippity-skippity person all the time.

If you're searching for stability, even this shitty version of stability is going to be more stable than when you pull the plug and you're back to the drawing board. I can imagine you measuring those two things and feeling like, well, it's better than zero stability, which will be the outcome?

I think I was just blindly brave at that point. Like, I didn't know what that would feel like, so I just was able to do it. So we separated, and then of course, I met somebody during that separation, and that made it a lot easier. It always makes it easier when there's someone else. Yes, yes, yes. So then I finalized the divorce and started a relationship with my second husband. Has been.

Okay, let's talk about Luke for a second because he's in the book. You describe basically him shining his light on you and how powerful that was.

Yeah, that light. I thought I was the only one that felt it. I really did. I was such a sucker.

No, that's part of that. That's part of that personality, right?

But I came to soon realize that he shined that same light on everyone, and that was just the nature of Luke. Why people gravitated towards him and loved him, and they felt so seen and appreciated by him.

But you admit in the book you were pretty in love with him.

Yeah, he was definitely my first real love. What do you think kept it from escalating? Probably he kept it from escalating because he had a real strong moral compass at the same time. He loved me, but he didn't want to ruin me. And I think that he knew if we got involved, it would ruin me.

He knew he wasn't going to be able to commit to you.

I don't think under those circumstances, no.

Yeah, when I was reading it, I got to be honest, I felt a little maybe defensive of him. He's just this person moving through life, and the way he is, people are falling in love with. It's not disingenuous of him that he interacted with you just the way he interacts.

Yeah, but it was a little more than that. I'm sure in order to maintain that chemistry for the show, for the cameras, and he liked to have chemistry with whoever he worked with, so he would put a lot of effort into it. As naive as I was, I thought that that was him loving me. I felt like he really valued me, and I didn't see him doing that with everyone else until later.

Yeah, this sounds terribly painful. You had to watch then, over the next few years, different co-stars come in and out, and him create that with everyone.

Right. Whether I was mistaken and just stupid, I felt that we had something really special. And I have every belief that we did have something special because we were friends all our lives after that. I think anybody that was around us probably could tell.

That's a blessing he didn't go all the way. 'Cause that allowed you to stay friends, I'd imagine, yeah?

Yeah, I was very conflicted with my friendship after that point because I guess I was heartbroken, honestly. Yeah.

And you felt betrayed, I assume, to some degree, maybe? I guess, yeah.

It really instilled in me even more of a feeling of, "You can't trust people." And you can't trust yourself. You can't trust yourself because look what you've fallen for. I don't know. I mean, if he had— We would've probably definitely dated. We never really dated. We were always at work together, but it was always a very strong flirtation. Always. And you got to kiss in scenes, right? We were constantly making out. Oh my God. Was that fun? Groping each other. It was so layered. Yeah. I wasn't experienced at that point with making out with guys on camera and knowing that that didn't translate into real life at all. And then also being like, "Of course, stupid, that's not real. You're acting." But it felt real. And now I'm very clear because of those learnings of like, of getting it blurry. It's very easy for me to have chemistry in one second with somebody and then just the next second be normal.

Dead to them. Yeah.

Yeah. What was your name? It's easy for me to define now.

Boundaries, I guess that's what they were called. Yeah, you learn those. Now, people left the show, and I'm curious what that did to the little microcosm of the world. Like, Shannon left after the fourth season. Right. I did get to read a little bit about it. About things that were going on, which is she was perpetually late, didn't care when she was late. They kind of wanted to get rid of her. She wanted to leave, but then she had second thoughts. She cut her hair in the middle of an episode. Oh, wow. That was the final straw.

I think there was some decisions just to be like, "Fuck you. I can do what I want." And I was watching from the sidelines going, "Wow, she really can do whatever she wants." Yeah. Like, that's so cool.

Yeah.

Was it cool, or were you trying to figure out, like, "What's her problem with all this?" As a fellow Aries, there's that part of me with the horns that understands it because we don't like to be told what to do or what we can and can't do. And sometimes in the face of being told what we can't do, we're like, "Oh, really? Watch me." And being both incredibly independent women from such a very young age, she also had a dad with heart problems, and she supported her family and took care of her family. They were her first priority at all times. And there was a lot going on for her that no one knew about. There were all the struggles of trying to figure out how to have healthy relationships and be in her position. Not easy. Very difficult to navigate. That confusion, I think, caused some defiance or anger, naturally, trying to control some things.

Anything you can.

So I think, yeah, when she was late, it was annoying for everyone. We were all there on time, ready when we were supposed to be ready, and the crew was waiting. That was annoying. Was hard to work with. And I didn't know then a lot of what she was going through until we became women and discussed it more openly. I heard her saying, like, "People didn't really understand what I was going through at the time." And I never really considered that at that young age, but I did have this sort of respect for her, like an unknown, non-understood respect for her.

KRISTIN: Also, I mean, you guys are young, and you're the stars. I can imagine being, young and a star and like, "You're not telling me— I'm the reason this show works. We're the reason this show works, not you telling me what to do." Like, I could see that getting very out of hand with these stars of the biggest show ever.

And it sounds like they were like, "Oh, these are young kids. We can kind of have them here nonstop." That's what's crazy, that you're on an ensemble and you worked as much as you did. That's generally the gift of an ensemble. The other thing that blew my mind is I didn't realize you guys did 32 episodes a year. I don't think any— Like, I don't think any— Like, now we marvel at shows that did 24, but you guys did 32. How many months a year were you shooting the show?

We had 2 and a half months off in the summer and then maybe a month-ish off at Christmas. So it was a lot. We were there a lot. Yeah. I always joke and say it was like we were kept in jail because it was this isolated sound studio in Van Nuys, California, which was just industry.

It's not nice. It was like a commercial park, right?

Yeah. Like car crushing on one side and a porn studio on the other side of our stages. People didn't go there. That's what they wanted. And we were inside this building that they had transformed into a sound studio, even though you could hear every airplane going into Van Nuys Airport all day long. Never held for planes more in my life. I felt so sequestered, so confined.

You meet your second husband, and then you guys have your first daughter pretty quick. '97? 97.

Yep. She was born in '97.

That was a surprise. That makes sense because you get married in '01. Yes.

We were not ready. We, I say we, we were not ready to get married yet. I think the analogy was our boat wasn't strong enough to survive the ocean. So I waited for the boat to get stronger, but I had a baby. I was a brand new mom. I was so focused on keeping the baby alive. Yeah. You were 25? 24, I think.

Everyone else is, like, out at the Viper Room throwing up in the parking lot. Dax Shepard and Aaron Winkler are gawking at them, but you're raising a baby. There's challenges, but I would also imagine this is finally the tether you're probably looking for in life, right? Where you have an identity that's outside of this other quite confusing identity.

Yeah. And I felt like this was my purpose. I didn't know my purpose within that world of acting, the show, all of that, fame. But I knew my purpose immediately when I had a baby.

And what do you think that inoculated you against that other cast members were dealing with that you were relieved of?

Just the tabloids. I was exhausted in a different way, but not from partying, which is a very different kind of exhaustion. I think mostly I was not focused on myself any longer. I always think that having kids saved my life. Having Luca, my first daughter, saved my life because I could have seen me going into this self-important swirl of, you know, a spiral. Where all you think about is yourself and your business and your worth and all that stuff. And I didn't think about that anymore.

I do think that's the huge gift if you're in this business that kids give you, is they don't give a shit about whether or not your movie opened. They don't care. They're not gonna be sympathetic to that. It's like Mack and Cheese. Yeah, you gotta get up and do whatever. You gotta go to Travel Town and take them to see the trains whether the movie opened or not. Right.

Which is good for you. As an actor, people assume that we're very self-absorbed. We are very self-absorbed to a certain degree.

Well, it requires you to concentrate on getting it and maintaining it. It becomes your entire— it's all you see.

I always said I'm the CEO of me. I have to run my business. This is my business, I guess. Okay.

Therefore, you have to think about you.

You have to think about you a lot. I get so fucking bored with myself and irritated that I'm having to, like, think about me. I'm doing it a lot more now in my life than I ever have because my kids are out of the So I'm able to focus on things that I need to focus on a little bit more or want to focus on. But it was an interesting time. I remember doing one scene. I felt very different. And Gabrielle had had a baby, I think a year or two before me on the show, but then she ended up leaving. And she was older than all of us.

She was like 36 or something.

I don't think she was 36.

Everyone always said—

they're like, "She was so old." I don't think she was quite 36.

Rob, look up how old she was. I'm almost certain she was 36 at some point on that. Maybe at some point, yeah. I want to say for the record, she's still a babe. I thought she was a smoke show. I didn't care she was 36.

Was smart, hot.

But I do remember going, like, when you find that out, it's very exciting gossip.

Right. Because you don't think it when you're watching it. But we knew it on set. Like, she had, you know, an older— different priorities. But then I had a baby, and I was like, "I'm still in the group. I gotta go milk my boobs in the trailer." How did they shoot around that?

You were clearly pregnant.

Yeah, I was pregnant in season 2. Nine? I don't remember.

It would've been seven. '90 to '94.

I just watched it, and I can't remember. Season seven. And we hid it. We called it Bob. I can remember when Jason, he was doing some directing at that phase of the show, and he would be like, "How are we gonna hide Bob in this?" And they'd just give me, like, something to carry or giant clothes.

Now, when the show ended, did you feel relief, or did you have a moment of, "Well, I just had security for a decade"? At that point, a third of your life. You had had major financial security. Were you at all panicked after that first year?

You know, when you get that kind of financial security so young, you don't really think about money.

Okay, well, that's great to hear.

I mean, you don't really think about it coming and going. You just have it, and then you spend it, and then you get it, and then you spend it. It seems so normal. But then when you're like, wait— You're watching it just go down. Yeah, the money's not coming in anymore, but I'm still spending it. It was really scary. I didn't think I would have such an adjustment, but we all went through it. I didn't know when to go to the bathroom. You're led around by a leash, basically, when you're an actor. They, like, say, "Go to the bathroom and then come out. We'll go to the thing, and then here's your lunch, and in 10 minutes, I'll come back to get you. Here's what you wear. Here's what you say.

Here's your makeup look." They talk about the depression that follows most professional athletes, and people think wrongly it's about the fame and money, but it's always about they lost their community. They were on a team. And then they lost their routine. Everything's scheduled for an athlete, and all of a sudden, they're in the world with no schedule and no community.

It's like willy-nilly.

You're like, "What do I do?" Overwhelming.

"Should I eat now? Am I hungry?

I don't even know." Yeah. "When are they putting down lunch?" Yeah. "Why is there no craft service in my kitchen?" So, when you got What I Like About You, that was a show you then did for 4 years?

4 seasons? Yeah, 4 seasons. I was very lucky. I was so happy to get that show because there was a huge stigma that followed all of us as actors. People weren't really willing to see us do other things. I really wanted to do a comedy. I had no idea how to do a comedy because I was always doing so much drama on 90210. But I got called in by Will Calhoun, who was one of the head executives of Friends, and he was doing a new show with Amanda Bynes. And another guy was also executive producing it. I've selectively forgotten his name at the moment. He was part of that big scandal. [Speaker:MICHAEL] Oh, okay. Dan Schneider. Yes, Dan Schneider. He was the other producer. He was kind of the Amanda side of it because it was starring myself and Amanda Bynes.

She was coming from Disney on a show.

She had worked with him a lot on The Amanda Show and all the things. So he had hooked his swag into her. Were you getting bad vibes? Yeah. I was to the point where I said to Will, like, I would rather just communicate solely with you. I trust you. I think that you have my best interests at heart. In mind, and I don't feel that way with your partner, so I'd rather just be with you.

And he was like, "No problem." And did you see Amanda getting, like, kind of destroyed by him?

Not specifically him. There were a lot of problems in the ecosystem of her.

How old was she, and how old were you at that time?

When we did the pilot, I had just turned 30, and she had just turned 16. We have the same birthday. Aw. That's sweet.

So did you feel like you were perfectly equipped to help her navigate this since you did it so young? You did not?

No, no, no. And also, I didn't know how to be around a teenage girl. She taught me so much. I was kind of afraid of teenagers because everyone was like, oh, you've got a kid and wait till they're a teenager.

They're going to be a nightmare.

They love to say that. Right. They love to say that. That's their favorite thing to say. That is so not true.

People go, do you have kids? I go, yeah, I have two girls. Oh, wait till they're teenagers. I'm going to go, go fuck yourself.

Right. You don't know. I've just told that to someone recently. They were asking like advice for teenage girls and I said, I don't accept that narrative. Yeah. Accept it. This is how I want it to be with my kids.

What's really going on that I have compassion for, 'cause when I've gotten little bouts of it, it was like they're dealing with heartbreak. You have this little person who thinks you're the greatest and then they must go through a phase where they don't think you're that cool. And you're like, wait, but what happened? We're best friends. I understand they're dealing with heartbreak.

It is sad.

It's just not the thing to tell new parents constantly.

No, you're setting them up for failure.

Yeah. 'Cause also, what are you gonna do about, there's no solution in that. Like, what's the point?

Just scaring people. You're fucked.

Yeah, exactly. You're right.

It becomes a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. 'Cause when there's a blip of it, you're like, well, here we go. Exactly.

This is what everyone's saying. This is what they mean.

Like, I think I even had that and I was like, oh no, that passed. That was like a month. Yeah. And now everything's honky-dory. You got lucky.

I was very lucky.

Well, I'm like, I never went through that with my mom. I was always delightful to her.

I wasn't either. I was bad, but I was always kind of bad. You were bad. I was bad.

Lie like nobody's business.

Yeah, well, you were acting, I guess. I was meant to be an actor.

Exactly. Okay, so you guys proceed to have 3 daughters from '97 till— I don't know when your last baby was born. She was born in 2006. Okay, so 9 years of getting pregnant every few years and then having a baby. The relationship's not in a great state. Was it something that had precipitously fallen, or was it doomed and you were getting through it for a long period of it, or when did it start to feel untenable?

Early. My view of it was that he wasn't ready to become a father at 21.

Obviously not a ton of dudes are.

Nope. And he didn't know who he was yet. I didn't know who I was yet.

He's trying to create a career. He's an actor.

He wants to be an actor, and he's doing the work. It's hard to even imagine, but I feel now as if— and this is no shade, no blame, nothing. I'm kind of a realist. Like, I don't think he was ever truly in love with me, the kind of love that it takes to be married, to sustain a long-term relationship.

Yeah, to have to roll up your sleeves and do all the terrible work that's required.

Yeah, he was focused on other things, his career, and I was focused on the kids and my career, trying to do both. And now if I could go back, the writing was kind of on the wall for some reason. My now husband, Dave, doesn't understand. Well, why did you keep having kids with him?

Because you kept having sex. Well, yeah.

Answer that. It happens when you're married and you have sex and then you're like, uh-oh.

It sounds like nothing was that bad. Like nothing was so bad that you had to be like, we really can't keep going.

Is that right? It wasn't. We functioned. And we loved being a family. We loved our daughter so much. And we would do a lot of fun things, and it just felt normal. But I didn't try to make it this way. It just showed up as that white picket fence story. All of a sudden, you're like, "Wow, okay, this is what I'm doing." And then it didn't have what it needed to sustain. That's hard to leave.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Experts. If you dare. Also, there's an illusion of the equation of A equals B and B equals C, A equals C. Like, you both love these girls so much, and you can talk about that love, and it's a creation of you two. And that can feel maybe like that's compensating for the love that's actually not going in that direction. It's confusing, I'd imagine. And love has created this thing that we love so much.

Right. So we must love each other.

Yeah. But we don't. I guess we didn't. Like, it's interesting because you focused, I think, in the book that, yeah, he wasn't in love with you, but are you sure you were in love with him? I don't know.

In the beginning, we were mad about each other for, I think it was 6 months, then we got pregnant, and then it just got real complicated.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to be super into someone for 6 months. Most beginnings of relationships are pretty hot and heavy.

Maybe even longer than 6 months. Month. But things got real, real fast. I've talked about before, like, I feel like my life has just swept me, you know, it's been a constant, like, flow, flow, things happening, coming to me, dealing with it, surviving it, then the next thing comes. I never had any point where I was like, "This is what I want. This is what I'm gonna work hard on getting." Things just happened, and I was constantly just trying to tread water to figure it out.

It sounds like from 1990 to 2012, you were reacting to whatever new scenario arose. So here's this show, I'm gonna react and try to figure out how to respond. I'm pregnant, I'm a new mom. Oh my God, there's two more. Oh, this marriage isn't what I had hoped. You think at some point the way to salvage all this is all of us to move up to Santa Ynez to the ranch, and then let's do a reality show for CMT. It was called Little Bit Country, right?

Well, I had wanted to move up to the ranch, A, to be closer to my mom and dad. When my second daughter was 5, my dad died. I'm not a good griever. I just go hard, go deep, go full in, and I have to get through it slowly. I have to go really feel the feelings. I remember on his deathbed, we were going through separation, and my dad was losing oxygen to his brain, so he was saying things that weren't his nature. One of the last things he said to me was, "I don't think this is a good idea. You're old, and you got 2 kids. Who's gonna want you now?" No, that just stuck with me so profoundly.

What a lovely parting message. But that wasn't him.

He was never mean to anyone.

He was afraid for you because he loved you, and it came out terribly like that.

Like, I guess maybe he thought I shouldn't get a divorce.

I'm presuming he just wanted to make sure you were okay. Safe. And then in his mind, you were better off in a shitty marriage than you would be trying to find someone else.

Well, in that generation, tend to think that way.

I know you have a lot of anxiety. When do you start— I'm presuming you're on some benzo, you're on Xanax or something. When does that trajectory start?

That started when we separated. I just didn't know how to cope with all the feelings and all the responsibility that I suddenly felt. I've always supported myself, even in my marriage, and we split everything. It was never like, oh, how am I going to survive kind of thing. It just was— I was broken. I didn't know how to be alone. And deal with it all. And yeah, we moved to the ranch because the paparazzi were just nuts. We lived in Toluca Lake, and they just were really bad.

When you're with your kids, it's brutal.

Yeah. And so I just wanted to get them out of there and have, like, a normal life with them. So they went to, like, the local school, and we walked to school, and it was just Mayberry, USA. It was perfect. And then the show presented itself as something that he and I would produce together. About us moving to the ranch and kind of having both worlds.

Fish out of water. You guys are leaving Hollywood to live in the country.

But really, I was back to my roots. I wasn't out of water at all. I was happy.

But when the show was bought and originally conceived, you guys were gonna go there as a couple. Yeah, yeah. And then by the time production starts— Everything had changed. You're not a couple.

No. I'm drinking wine at night and taking medication.

I would be embarrassed of my marriage How did that feel?

It was very embarrassing. And then I felt like such an asshole for being embarrassed. Like, that's ego.

Yeah, but we're not there yet. You're not the healthy Jenny yet. So at the time, if my marriage is falling apart and my first step is going to be to be in a reality show where I acknowledge that, no way. I don't even know. That's got to be out of body.

Who that was. I have no idea that era of my life. I just remember being prodded out of bed. I would take the girls to school. I would go back to bed and then the crew would show up and I would be like, I can't get up. I don't know. And they would talk me up and get me out, and I would end up doing it just because that's what you do.

Were you just, like, completely disassociated throughout the whole process? I would've just gone to a place in my mind and watched this unfold like, "Holy shit, what's happening?" It was very surreal.

It was very out of body. And— but then there were moments of levity, which helped me feel better about the girls' experience because they were getting distracted by the crew and the fun people, and then they would be doing fun things that they created for the show. And I— I was like, this feels good. Everybody's laughing and feels normal for this moment. And then they would leave, and then the reality would be like, oh, this is what's normal.

Yeah, he came to visit at one point and said, let's go talk in the RV while the show's being shot.

I don't know if the show was being shot at that time. I don't think the crew was there. I think it was over. Okay. You know, y'all, this is my story. This is my recollection of it. I have I have literally no idea what his story is. I'm curious. We've never really sat down and gone through the beat by beat of it all. I don't think I really need to do that. But my remembrance is that we went into the RV and the kids were outside playing on the farm because it was safe and they were running free like kids should be. And that's where he told me that he wanted us to get a divorce.

And then he said a very fateful sentence, though. He said—

Yes, he said, "Someday you'll thank me for this." And that infuriated me.

That pissed me off. So then we go to, for me, what would be a bottom, which is you decide you should try marriage counseling in Phoenix.

I had heard about this expert, and she happened to be in Phoenix. So he was on a shoot, and I said, "Let's fly there and meet there." So we both flew from different places.

I have to say, having never met you, met him. That part feels very stand-up, that he was willing to come do that.

I feel like he needed backup, or he wanted someone to really make me understand, because I'm a fighter. I will try. And I was in denial, and I was unwilling. I didn't want it. Maybe that was just for the girls, but I didn't want that to happen.

Yeah, again, you're going to be completely untethered again.

Yeah. So we went there, and, and that's where everything sort of hit the man, even more than the RV.

Yeah. You get to the therapy session, and he's already there.

He's already there, which I found was weird. He was already inside the office with the therapist. So I felt like, "Oh, she knows stuff already that she should have found out from both of us in that situation." Like the jury's been compromised. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We sat down, and honestly, 2 minutes into it, she said, "Jenny, why would you love someone when they don't love you?" you. Why would you love someone who doesn't love you? Like, it's echoing, like, I'll never forget it. There's a few things in my life, I've already told you 3 of them now, that I'll never forget. That just gutted me. And I was like, yeah, no shit, give up. Like, it's time. It broke through.

And then you got up and split. You started walking down the street. No idea where I was going.

It was hot as hell.

This part, sorry, is mildly comedic. They roll up in a Toyota Corolla.

Yeah. Looking for you. Like a sand-colored one.

One, you know, the golden Toyota Corolla. They come looking for you.

He's in the passenger seat. This is very movie-esque. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm walking angry, crying, all the things, just like out of my mind. And they are just like kind of keeping up with me in the car and saying, get in the car, let us take you to a hotel. Jen, come on, get in the car, like a friend. And I was like, why would I get in your car? No. But somehow they got me in the car. And then they took me to a hotel— took us to a hotel. He checked in separately, and I was like, "Well, I guess I'll check in." And that was the parting moment.

And then that night, you drank a lot.

Well, as much as you can drink of the mini bottles. Uh-huh. But, like, you know, chug, chug. Just stop this pain. And then mixed with benzos. Mm-hmm. Mixed with medication that I'd been given for flying purposes. Or divorce purposes. Yeah, like, people really like to give people people medication.

So you wake up in the hospital after that night?

Yeah, I blacked out. I passed out on the floor, and I had my best friend on the phone with me, I think, while that was happening. So she knew I was in danger. Thank God.

She called your assistant in LA. The assistant flew to Arizona, and she got you to the hospital.

And when you woke up, you're looking at your assistant I'm looking at my assistant and whiteness and doctors, and everything's very fuzzy. It all came back to me, and all I wanted to do was kill the pain some more.

I'll get personal with you. This was the part of the book, because you write, "It still shames me to write this." And it feels like it still shames you a little bit to talk about it.

I think the shame really came from letting the girls down and from being a bad mom by letting myself go to that place. I could have died. In that hotel room.

But again, this is the beginning of a journey that you are destined to take, whether you did it in 2012 or '20, or you died miserable. But this is like the time you jump off the fucking diving board. Like, this is when life starts in a bizarre way. So, as much shame as you might feel, like, your transformation doesn't exist without waking up in that hospital. Right. You go to LA, and you go into treatment. And I'm mad at you, you leave in 6 days.

I wasn't good with the group environment.

And you go on a yoga retreat. Street with a woman to Bali, and you don't stay with all the other people, you stay with her. And so I think if you're one of those group members, you might think like, oh, she thinks she's hot shit because she was on TV. Were you not nervous?

I honestly didn't care. That wasn't my motive. It wasn't the reason I was isolating. And I think most of them, if not all of them, were really understanding and respectful of that and kind.

What do you think prevented you from participating?

I just wasn't ready to open up to strangers. And just like in group therapy at the rehab, I had spent so much time being private and carrying it all in silence and hiding it from the world. I wasn't ready. Yeah.

Were you also worried people were gonna find out, like, this world—

I was very worried people were gonna find out that I was in rehab. Yeah. 'Cause I didn't want my kids to have to deal with that publicly.

I think that prevents a lot of people from going, which is very unfair.

Yeah. And it's funny too because— So, yeah, I know what you're talking about. You have all these secrets and you're carrying all this shame, shame. And that's precisely why group things work, is that you go into this group, you put out on a platter these things that you think make you unlovable and unworthy, and they go, oh yeah, I did all those too, it's all right. That's actually the magic, is this thing that you're holding that you're certain will make you unlovable, once exposed in the light, it turns out that's not the case because you're looking at these other people who've done the same thing and you're like, oh no, you're so lovable, you're so likable. You have so much value. I know that's true for you. It might be true for me.

I probably missed out on a lot of that growth, and it took me longer because of that to get where I needed to get.

Yeah. So you start taking some steps. So you get an apartment, you leave Santa Inez, you do dedicate a month that had been etched out for treatment, and you start doing an outpatient program. You meet this woman, you go to Bali on the yoga thing.

The outpatient program felt like it was full-time, though.

Yeah, you said it was like 9 hours a day or something.

And sitting in a room by yourself, and people come in, every different kind of therapist.

I was curious, yeah, 'cause you just do therapy session, therapy session. Did you leave with diagnoses? Like, did they start telling you you're this or that?

I had already had diagnoses of depression from a very young age that I was always using medication to balance and then going off of it because I didn't think I needed it, being embarrassed 'cause I had to take it, and then not taking it when I was pregnant, and just dealing with all the ups and downs of that. And so I was already there. They didn't really give me any kind of diagnosis. They were just really, you know, helping me hear the words that I needed to be hearing constantly and hearing the messages of value and worth and listening to your instinct and just trying to get me back in my own body.

Yeah. So in order of the things that were very effective, I'm fascinated by this. And funny enough, you talk about joining this Buddhist group and going every Monday night. And I wrote down the name of it. Kadampa. Kadampa.

It's right down the street.

So I wrote down the name of it because I'm like, oh, I want to start taking classes there. On Mondays, and then I'm taking a family walk with my kids.

Yeah, you can walk there.

Two days ago. And we like, I look at a sign and I go, oh my God, this is impossible. You guys, I just wrote down the name of this from reading Jenny's book.

It's literally a subway to go.

And then my 11-year-old's like, I want to go with you.

It's so fun. You know, they do for kids too. Oh, they do? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just drove by it on the way here and thought, oh, I miss going there. I need to get back.

Yeah. What things were you picking up that were helping you tether yourself to yourself? And what were the building blocks that helped you most come out of this?

Gen Rigpa, the leader of the class, he was so relatable. Like, he translated the teachings of Buddha into, like, present-day usable stuff that we're all dealing with. Road rage and heartbreak and hesitation for reaching for your goals, all the things. So I was hearing it in just a different language. It just came in differently, and it just resonated so much. And I had seen a friend of mine that had gone through the stages of the Buddhist teachings.

You met someone on set, right? It was another actor? Yeah, another actor.

I was like, "Wow, you are so cool and level-headed and just like at peace all the time. I want what you have. What's wrong with you? Like, where'd you get that?" He's the one that told me about it. But I was just sitting there listening to the teachings, and I took copious notes because I tend to have to write things down in order to remember them. And I just have those books with me. I go back to them all the time. Also, the just human connection that you said I was perhaps missing by not going to the group therapy and realizing that all of these people were there for the same reason. And one of the main teachings of Buddhism is that we all want to be free from suffering. And that was just revolutionary for me. It started me thinking outside of my own pain and realizing that we're all carrying our own pain. And it's through connecting and then recognizing that in each other that the healing really happens. Yeah.

Talk about the scarcity mindset a little bit. I thought this was a great section.

I think I've always had it, just growing up very modestly and having been independent my whole life and having to pay all of my bills and other bills. You worry about things like, "What if it's not there?" Like, I would keep clothes that I didn't need because I thought, "Maybe someday I'll need that, and maybe I won't have enough money to buy it." In your mind, when you are so self-sufficient, it's scary.

I love that you say in that mindset too, you're scanning for short-term wins because you have so much anxiety, and they're not long-term wins. I can relate to this so much. Like, as an actor, it's like, like, oh, that movie failed. Shit, I don't think I'm gonna get hired again. I guess I'm gonna consider these other things that I never wanted to do, but they're on the table, so I should take them 'cause those will go away too.

If I don't do it, somebody else will. And I had to make money. I had to support myself and my girls, and I was accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle. Sure, yes, we could have moved into an apartment, but I really wanted, probably for myself too, 'cause I'm really at home at my home, like that's my place. I wanted to have that sort of security for my girls and always be able to provide it. But the scarcity just keeps you living in fear of not having. And I think especially with money, 'cause I spent all those years not worrying about money. It'll come, it'll happen, it magically appears. I don't know who does what with it, but it's all good. Yeah. Then all of a sudden I was forced to really think about how am I gonna do this? I don't have that backup. Even if we were sharing things equally, the feeling of having that kind of backup support was gone. Gone. And my dad had died, and I felt a lot more responsibility. And I just never worried about money. And then all of a sudden, I started worrying about money. I started worrying about, when am I going to get enough to pay?

And my business manager was really scaring the shit out of me all the time. Said, you need to sell your house, and actually, you need to sell the ranch too. So I just built a home for my daughters, and he said, you need to sell it now while the real estate is at its height, because it's going to change. I was like, okay. And I didn't have a sounding board on the other side of that. And then he said, you need to sell your ranch. And I did that too. And I regret both of those decisions because the minute you start worrying and holding on and attaching to the outcome of the money coming and going, that is when, for me, it stopped coming. I like clenched my fists around it and strangled it. Yeah. Yeah. With worry. And that was a real life lesson.

You gotta kind of take a leap of faith. Faith.

And even like going back to my relationship with the girl's dad, young insecure me was worried that he would leave me or he would cheat on me. He's an actor, he's going to make out with beautiful women. And that was very difficult. And I got really concerned about it. And I made it happen. Yeah. And I remember him too saying at some point, you're gonna make this happen. I didn't understand that. And I also kind of thought that's a little bit manipulative because you're saying I'm gonna make you do something.

There is some element of that. Yeah.

But I get it from the other perspective too.

Yeah. It's like if I'm always in trouble for cheating or I'm always under scrutiny, then I might as well be having fun because I'm dealing with this and I'm not having that. I'm paying the price, as if I were.

There was a lot of that in our relationship because I was just insecure and unstable and not connected with myself. Like most of us. Yeah. I felt like it took a long time for me. Like, I didn't get there until like 50. 50, late 40s, where I really started to understand myself more and love myself to the point where I could comfort my own self and be my own anchor.

Well, I admire how much you tried and fought. Yeah, like you did Landmark.

Did you ever do Landmark?

No, but our friend did the whole thing.

He loves it. He still talks about it all the time. It's like a Kool-Aid.

Yeah, he doesn't participate anymore, but I think he was great at extracting. Of course, there's really great principles in there, or it wouldn't be so successful.

I still live by one of them today. You have a choice in the world every day. You are a person that either loves chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream. Which is it? And you're like, vanilla. So to really get in touch with your internal answering a question without doubt. So I always go back to that one too.

Yeah, my understanding of it that I like a lot is it's a lot of about personal responsibility. Like, the world's not happening to you. No, you're not a victim. Yeah, you're not a victim. It's not happening to you, it's happening for you. And how do you want to navigate it?

And while you're at it, go clean up all the shit that you've already destroyed. Yeah, which was really beneficial. I think that helps a lot of people so much because so much happens when we, we know we've messed up something or made a mistake or didn't do something well regarding the other person's perspective or feelings. So it really does pinpoint those moments for you, and then you back and meet with that person, hopefully, or write them a letter or whatever it is.

Yeah, this is the 9th step in the program, which is like, clean up your records again so you don't have to walk around with shame because you can't afford to walk around with shame.

It's like a bucket. If you have a bucket full of water and the water being all those moments where you messed up and you are beating yourself up over it and it's full and you just have to put your foot right in it and let the water overflow because you will never get past it if you don't.

Let's talk about David because you also found a way To Find Love Again, as you titled the chapter in the book. How did this one differ from previous ones? It was weird.

I was trying dating. I'd never done that. I didn't know what kind of guy I liked. I tried all different sizes and shapes and locations. Usually they were out of town, which was nice because I could come home and be a mommy. And then when I didn't have my kids, I would go try to date someone.

And if you have a hard time establishing boundaries, a geographical boundary helps. Yes, definitely.

I had really come through a lot of intense therapy at that point with my therapist, Wade, and I was feeling this freedom and this positive feeling of, like, I can handle everything now. And right when that happened, I met Dave. I built my house, and I was doing a photo shoot for the, like, unveiling of the house because it was on HGTV. And I was thinking, like, this is the best. I'm here with my dogs in my home the way I want it. And that night, had a blind date. Blind date with somebody my friends at school had set me up. It was like a blind double date. That's when I met Dave. Wow. And I remember walking in because I didn't know who he was, so I did look him up on the internet. I was busy all day, so I was like, help me look this guy up. And a Chippendales dancer came up with the same name. So I texted my friend, I was like, he's not a Chippendales dancer, right? She's like, no, he didn't have a big footprint at all on the line. So I just kind of went into it blindly, and I walked in.

He was this tall, handsome some actor-looking guy, and I was like, oh, fuck, no thank you, bye-bye. So, so completely detached the whole dinner, just thinking, this is such a waste of my time, but trying to, you know, get through it. And then he made me laugh a few times, and women are a sucker for laughter. Thank God, right? Because I didn't have laughter in my life, and I was like, oh, this feels really good. And I thought, I want this for my girls too. You didn't have joy in your life. I didn't have joy. Yeah. No, I was just plugging along. And he brought that to our household. I just fell in love with it and him. That's lovely. We've been married for 10 years. Wow. I call it 9 because we did spend a year of separation when the sparkles faded again in the relationship after, like, that first year when it's not what you thought it would be.

Yeah. Well, when the work is now required. Yes. And neither of you have experience or the confidence. Can I challenge this without being unlovable?

And he had never been in a relationship like that. He all of a sudden had 3 stepchildren. Yeah. It's a lot. 4 dogs. So he stepped into a big world. And we took a year off. We were getting divorced, actually. And we had the paperwork signed on my end. He hadn't signed it yet. And it was in a yellow envelope in the back of his truck. This truck that he bought after we broke up as, like, a signifier. Like, this giant Tundra. And he lived on the itty-bitty streets in Silver Lake. And it was all scraped up and dusty. He loved that truck. But he had the paperwork in the back of his car. I noticed it there months after we had gotten back together. And I was like, "This has been in your car this whole time?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna keep it around." 'Cause it reminds him, like, I have free will. Like, I cannot be in this relationship if I don't want to.

I choose to be in it.

Right. I think it helped him kind of come to terms with that. But he had a lot of growing to do. I had to go back to the drawing board because it was just like ripping a Band-Aid off a real fresh wound. Yeah.

Were you like, "Oh my God, again!" More attempts.

Attacking my own self internally for, what is wrong with you? And then the narrative in my mind had become and was really concreted was, you are not able to have a healthy relationship. There's just something about you that you can't do it. You're permanently flawed. Okay, I guess that's me and I'll just live that way.

Yeah, I'm defective.

Yeah. Some people just can't do certain things and maybe that's mine.

How'd you get out of that therapy?

Yeah. It was after that divorce, or separation/divorce, that I went to Bali and started doing a lot more work right back into it. Like, I cannot let this derail me.

You can't wake up in the hospital again.

No. And so I just started working right away and learned even more about myself during that time and really came to peace with what is and stopped trying to fight everything. And that combined with the Buddha classes that I was going to really just brought me peace in whatever situation I ended up in. Like, "It will all work out. You will be fine." Also, that opportunity to really connect with— it sounds so woo-woo, but like that little girl inside of me, that little person that is so afraid and so like, "Something's wrong with me, and nobody can really love me. Nobody knows me." This person, I started to become her best friend again. Like, I started to mother her like I did my own daughter. And once I started to do that, I just felt at peace and capable of taking care of her, me, us.

Well, and in Buddhism, right, the suffering's coming from you trying to force a different reality than the one you're in. The reality is not actually that painful. It's the desire to have a different reality around you that is so uncomfortable. Afraid of the unknown.

Yeah. That's attachment. That's one of the core beliefs. Is not having attachment. And, you know, if you are full-on Buddhist, you don't have attachment to any things. But in this modern world, they taught it in a way that there are certain things that it's okay to have and love and be so grateful that you have them. But then there are certain things that you're attaching to that are not benefiting you and sort of really deciphering what those are and learning how to unattach. Yeah.

Well, I Choose Me is the book, and I think it's a very brave book. And I think a lot of people, like, even as you're saying right now, you felt like, how is this this happening again, it must not be for me. When I interviewed my mom, I was like, it's so inconsistent with who you are to have been with a guy that was beating you up. How were you this gangster of a woman with a guy that was beating you up repeatedly? And she said, the thought of failing again was more painful. I couldn't accept failing again at this.

And I think a lot of people relate to that for whatever reason, the shame or the, the inevitable pain that you know you're going to go through.

Yeah. So for you to publicly put out your whole roadmap, I think is awesome and admirable, and I think it's great. Thank you.

Yeah, I think that learning how to connect with other people, especially as an older woman, learning how to connect with other women has just brought me such a desire to keep doing that in hopes that someone sees themselves somewhere in my journey. Yes.

If someone comes up to you and they offer adoration to you because they wanted to be you on 90210, versus someone that comes up to you and is like, I have experienced the same thing as you and I feel so seen and connected, are two dramatically different things. They're the thing you wanted. They're substantive. They're not, you're a cute baby. They're, uh, your story has made me feel less alone, right?

And made me feel seen, less alone, because we just internalize everything as humans. We think we're so uniquely terrible.

It's like all of us are. All of us are. That's what we— that's an illusion if you think you know someone who's done it perfectly. Well, Jenny, great meeting you. Thanks for coming. Good luck with the book. Everyone get I Choose Me. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here.

She's got I have a story. Oh great. So this is like right after you left, so this was like 2 months ago. Okay.

Um, I was gone for a week, just to be—

yeah, but it feels like it was a really long time ago. Anna parked her car at my house. Okay, we were gonna walk to Cara, but before we walked to Cara, we were gonna drop something off at your house. Okay. Yeah, so we stopped by your house, we're chit-chatting, Kristen, Delta. I— oh, I dropped off a a vintage shirt for Lincoln for her birthday. Which one was that? Willie Nelson.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Great tee. Yeah.

And so then we asked if anyone wanted anything from Cara. Delta wanted a salad. Yeah, yeah. The Gem salad. Yeah. So then we walked to Cara, have a great time. Yeah. Get the salad, walk back to your house to drop off the salad. Everything's looking good. Yeah. Everything's going well so far. Car, and it's like 8:35, I would say. Okay, we'll drop off the salad. Delta's asleep. Um, and we— so we then we start walking to my house. Now, for the listener who doesn't know or remember, my house is 80 feet. Yeah, I was gonna say 15, but that's because I don't know measurements.

It's, you know, there's two options. Yeah, you can try— you can go down your driveway, or you can go up the hill to where your front door is. Yes, exactly. Probably equidistant. Right? Yeah, but within a couple hundred feet.

Yeah, I mean, it's so close. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we're walking. Oh, and we have Mona. This is a big part of it. Mona is Anna's dog, and a pretty large dog.

She looks like, um, almost like a wolf.

Yeah, but like not a scary one.

Not a wolf like in the forest, like a wolfhound, right?

Just— but like, so like, she's so nice. Nice and kind of dumb looking.

Like, I love her, and I'm not drawn to dogs so much, but I'm like in love with her.

Am I like, she's a good dog? You just don't like her. Yeah, I'm not gonna say love. Anyway, okay, so we have Mona, we're walking back to my house and we see my nemesis, Coyote. Coyote in the street. On the corner, on the corner, just looking, just looking at us. Okay. Yeah, they love to look. And I was like, okay. Uh, I know, I think you're supposed to just keep walking and look and be not directly in the face.

Go, what's up? Even just them hearing what's up—

no, I don't want to talk to them. It scares them. Okay, so I was like, you're supposed to be non-fazed and just be like you own the streets.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're 6 times the size.

Oh no, no, it was— no, they're big and so maybe not I mean, they're like my size. If I got down on all fours, they're my size. Anyway.

You're 100 pounds. They're probably 40 pounds. But they're all muscle.

They're all hair. I'm mostly boot. So I don't know what my chances are. Anyway, he was looking at us and I was like, okay, I know we're supposed to keep going. And normally I'm scared and Anna's not scared of things, but she was scared. So this wasn't a good combo. And she was really worried about Mona because coyotes eat dogs.

Dogs, even though Mona's much bigger than small dogs.

Yeah, but still, we were like getting— we were starting to get a little panicky.

We should add, Mona's extremely beta.

Exactly. Yeah, like Frank would have gone after—

he would have lost, but he would have gone after the coyote.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, what do you prefer, you know? I don't know.

I can tell you right now what I prefer.

Well, so I was like, oh no, I don't know what to do. And I was like, me either. And we just were standing standing still. And I was like, okay, like deer, they freeze.

Yeah. So you really look like prey because now you're frozen.

Yep. The opposite thing of what you're supposed to do. And then I was like, okay. And I knew that. I was like, I don't— we're not supposed to be like standing here like this. We gotta like— I don't, uh— and I was like, let's go back. So we turned our back and kind of walked quickly back to your house. Okay. And, and then we just stood in that little well.

Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Where the packages come.

Yeah, where the package— we just stood there and I Googled, what do you do when you come across a coyote? Basically, first thing it says is don't stop, don't turn around, don't run. You know, everything we had just done. Yeah. And I was like, fuck. And then it said, you know, be loud. Yeah, sure. Um, throw rocks. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

But there were no— they don't understand hand throwing. So it's like, you're a thing and all of a sudden you got projectiles? Oh, okay, interesting.

But they didn't— I think you just yell at it.

We have them on our street all the time and that's all Natalie does. She just— yeah, it was dark. I know, but they're in the city. You don't understand.

You've never been—

Natalie's not white.

Oh yeah, they're city coyotes. I forgot about that. Okay, so, okay, so it's like throw rocks at it. We didn't see any rocks, but it was like, be loud. I was like, okay, so we'll just— and we're starting to like get unhinged. Like our ideas were bad. Yeah. You know, I was like, okay, I'll just put on this podcast and it'll be loud. Okay. And I'll turn on my flashlight on my phone. So turn on my flashlight, turn on the podcast I'm listening to, which is Aaron and Sarah's podcast, Aaron Foster and Sarah Foster's podcast that I've become kind of weirdly obsessed with. So it's just like, turned it on and it's just their voices, like, you know, you know, talking normal. It wasn't that loud.

I don't want to be critical, but when choosing a podcast, maybe like Go Rogan. I mean, now's the time for the manosphere. I agree, I agree.

Aggression. But it's just, he's like, two ladies, you know, and they sound delicious. Yeah, he's like, attractive women. And so I'm just like walking, holding it, and I real— you know, we're 3 steps in and we look up 3 coyotes now.

They've gremlined on you. He got his friends.

He said, oh, I have the per— these, these girls will not stand a chance.

Easy pickings, but I'm gonna need help because this is too much for me to eat. Yeah, yeah.

And they just stood there staring at us. It was so scary. So then we really— we turned and we ran back to your house, like we sprinted.

You should have hung baloney on your back while you were running.

I mean, we were from Carr's, like, we probably smelled like food.

I'm sure.

Yummy. Oh, so we run back to the house, and, um, this time we run into the house, and I say, Mom, we don't— we don't know what to do. And she said, I'll go with you guys. And then Lincoln popped up from the couch, said, I want to go.

Yeah, yeah. She get her numchucks?

She's very you in that way. She really wanted to be part of the bravery. Yes, exactly. And I was like, no, no, no, and you know too, because then you have to walk back by yourself. I don't want that. And, um, and so the solution I came up with, uh, was to take Kristen's car, drive it to my house. The problem is I don't like driving other people's cars. Oh, so then then we drove Kristen's car to my house. I got in my car, followed Kristen's car back. Anna drove Kristen's car back to your house, and I followed to drop off her car. And then Anna got—

again, my reminder to the listener, 100 feet. Yeah.

And then Anna got in my car, we drove back to my house, and she got in her car.

This became the fairy, um, riddle. Yeah, it's a riddle. You got some chickens, you got a fox in bag of grain. I know. Yeah, so it all worked out.

And then, and then I got home and I, um, I panic bought so much stuff. So I bought wolf pee.

That's a deterrent that you're gonna put where? Around your doorstep?

I think around my front. But I don't want it to smell bad. Yeah, exactly.

As opposed to going like, hey, what's up? Like, your options, your options are scatter urine all over the place or go, hey, what's up?

I just don't think they're going to do to me what they do to you.

You haven't tried, and you can't conclude that yet.

If I try it and I get eaten, what are you—

how are you going to feel? You can't— you cannot find me a story of an adult— Rob, look it up—

an adult getting eaten. A female, 5 feet, brown, at night.

Okay, by a coyote specifically. Yeah, uh, go ahead and pin Indian. Put college educated. Put Indian.

Don't put college educated. Don't you put that. Small, high voice. High voice, cuz maybe it won't care if I say, what's up?

There was a 2009 case, but that was the last. What happened in 2009? Uh, Taylor was hiking in the national park. She was attacked by two coyotes and died from injuries and blood loss. Oh.

My God. Oh my God, I regret having you look this up.

Oh my God, 2009.

I graduated college, so that's—

Sim, it does say it is extremely rare.

Yeah, but I don't care. I don't want to be the one. My life is very rare. I've had really rare good fortune. Taking a nap.

This is the— it's the only confirmed case of an adult human being killed by coyotes. The only is this woman. I don't—

I'm very special.

In the woods taking a nap with—

she was not taking that. Don't you say that about her.

Snacks. She rests in peace. Anyway, anywho, I'm sorry you got spooked like that. Oh my God.

So then I bought the wolf pee. I bought, um, some air horns. Turned out I bought too many. I bought like 9. I don't know how that happened. Yeah. Um, and then I bought, um, um, a little flashlight.

But you're bad at Amazon. It's interesting. I don't know what happened.

I got flashlights. Plates, a little one that goes on my keychain. I got, um, and I got this really mean wolf mask thing that I think you put on your fence and it has lights and it like looks really scary.

Okay, did you think of getting one for yourself to wear? That's what I thought she was saying. It's like gonna be in her purse and she was gonna— so I was thinking like, why would you have the gumption with a mask on to be aggressive?

Well, I would if it's like a scary wolf with— it's like scary red eyes at a flash.

Okay, but I think what's scary is that you are 3 feet above them.

I'm like 1 foot up, but they're tall.

I'm like, I think we're seeing different, um, things out of our eyes.

Look at how tall they are. Average coyote, um, 2 feet. Okay, then I am 3 feet taller. Yeah, but they know, they have instincts.

Well, they do know you're scared of them. Yeah, you've made that clear. I am freezing. I am, but Um, I don't know if this is one of these situations where you don't really— you're not, you're not looking for any advice or anything. Well, because here's what I'll say is you can't not be scared of them by just thinking about it, right? That'll never happen.

You're gonna be thinking about— exactly.

Yeah, you can't think your way out of being scared of them. Yes, correct. But I promise you, and I know for sure, if you can one time run at them and scream, they will run, and then you will know permanently instantly, oh yeah, that's how I can do that. So it's either we gotta try that or we gotta be afraid. They're in the neighborhood. There's a ton of coyotes in our neighborhood.

Oh, I know.

Have you heard them go berserk yet? Yes. Yeah, they go— it sounds like they're having a séance or like, or like a, yeah, devil worshiping orgy. They'll be like— who wouldn't be scared of that? Seems like 15 or 20 of them in there. The noises they're making, it makes laughing hyenas sound inviting. It's really bad. And you wonder, are they eating an old old lady. That's what you wonder when you're in your room. You're not open. It's only happened once ever.

Yeah, no, you wonder.

You wonder, was it 2009?

When you hear that, I don't like them at all. Your hair looks like it's getting longer.

It is. I'm growing it out. Yeah, yeah. What do we think? It's in the crazy face. Are you sure?

Yeah. So your thing's working. What's that? Your, your topical? Yeah.

Does it look thick? Well, I mean, long doesn't equal thick, right? It would have always grown long. Just how dense would it have been as it was growing long?

I guess. I think it—

yeah, I'll tell you, every guy I know has seen this. This probably hasn't reached your algorithm. Turkey? No, that's, that's hair transplant, right? There's a UCLA— I keep seeing this goddamn meme on Instagram, and apparently UCLA has a full-on topical cure for baldness that— what— completely wakes up all dormant follicles. Really? Yes. I was talking to another person with— they, they had long hair, and I was saying, I'm growing my hair out, it's going to be hard, right? Were you wearing hats? And I wouldn't have even thought this about him because his hair looks very robust. Somehow this UCLA thing— I go, have you heard about— and he goes, the UCLA thing? I go, yeah. I go, yeah, how do I get in the trial? He goes, I looked into get into it. Can you? There were like 500,000 applicants for a trial of like 200 people or something crazy. Every single guy was like, I need in on this trial. But apparently it's, it's like it works, and now I'm just waiting.

Do you think that you should be able to jump the line because you went there?

I think there's a lot of reasons I should jump the line. Okay. Okay. I'm a tall white male and I'm totally disenfranchised, and it's time that I get recognized. Yeah.

But really, you went there. I kind of think alumni should kind of get a leg up.

I mean, I'm obsessed with this. Not only do I want the product, but I gotta figure out how to be an investor in it before it goes. Anyways, interesting. So you've never seen that, right? Um, UCLA invented it. Exactly. And every single guy I've brought it up to has seen it, right?

Well, the algorithms are so good.

Yeah, they really know.

It probably works for women too. Women?

Yeah, it's not like you guys have unique follicles that can't be woken up from dormancy.

Although I'm having the opposite situation. Too much. I think I'm having new hair growth.

Like, what do you think is coming down?

Like, it's not like a coyote.

Maybe you have to start shaving.

No, the other day I was like looking in the mirror and I was like, what is this poof of hair that's just like— it's just like sticking out. And I asked a hairstylist and she was like, I think it might be new hair growth. And I was like, new hair growth? That makes no sense.

That makes no sense. But because the only thing different in your life is that you're on Tris, do you think creatine— wouldn't it be— you've been on creatine for like 4 minutes, right? Like— but, but I wouldn't even be surprised if you had another off-label observation of, uh, triseptide. Is— oh, by the way, it makes your hair grow back, because every single thing you read is like positive.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know, but I don't really—

your teeth whiter. You're not looking for more hair.

Yeah, yeah, you're in a unique position. I know. And I don't want it to have a little puff like this. That looks weird.

Yeah. Um, it's hard to style.

It's like when people are pregnant, often this happens, like they lose a lot of hair, and then when it grows, it's like grows back and it's like in little patches. It looks kind of weird. Um, I mean, it looks great, but you know. Good save.

Really good save. It's as if he didn't save even I didn't even say weird.

So yeah, so I, um, yeah, hair. Okay, well, would you ever consider going to Turkey and getting new hair? I mean, you don't need it.

I don't think I need to do that.

Yeah, but if you went, if you were like, oh fuck, like it's going—

you know, this is a great topic. I, I mean, I— there's a, there's a lot of battles happening in my head, uh, and I think they're age-related. I did. And so, and I think I spoke on it a little bit with when Zach Braff was here, which is like 85% of the time I'm like, yeah, we're getting older. And I mean, you look fine. Yeah. And maybe your hair's thinner. Yeah. Okay. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you have more wrinkles. 85% of the time I feel that way. Yeah. And then 15% of the time I can make a very solid argument. And here's how the argument goes. I use whitening toothpaste. I want my teeth to be white. Um, I use moisturizer on my skin. I put drops in my eyes so they're white before I'm on camera. Um, I do all this stuff. So why am I drawing this arbitrary line between I wouldn't do this? I mean, I am vain. It's not like I'm not vain, right? Um, and then I go, and I have the means to. So what do we do? Like, what's the hang-up, right? And then I go back to like, I don't give a fuck.

And I think it's cool.

It's cool to not give a fuck.

Yeah. And I think, I think even specifically for men, probably, it's probably a better look in general.

I mean, I want everyone to do what they want. Yeah, it's not weird. It's great. Um, but I agree that there's something like cool, attractive about not— about someone not caring that I mean, caring, like putting yourself, like not smelling yourself together. Yeah. Oh, ding, ding, ding. I wanna bring up something. Okay. You smash that right now. And, and so yeah, I'm kind of, I'm with you on that.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Would you rather This is back to the poop. I mean the smelling like shit. Okay. Okay. Do you think it's grosser to not— well, I think I know how you're gonna feel, but try to be objective, I guess. Do you think it's grosser to be with someone who never gets their teeth cleaned, never, or has skin marks?

Well, we need some—

I need some follow-up. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Is their mouth like a rat's nest, or does it look complete? Is it mine? Because I don't go to the dentist, you know this.

I know this. You've asked the wrong person. I know, but I wanted to—

okay, but 2 times in 20 years.

I know, that, that is wild. But also, I too don't get my teeth cleaned enough.

Yeah, and they look great. So it's like, there's nothing about your mouth that I'm going, yuck, right? But if you had shit marks all the time and you're under ears. Right. I'd be like, gross, man, wipe your hiney. Exactly.

Okay, so I'm with Jess, obviously, and he— I don't know what— oh, he spilled chocolate ice cream everywhere, right? And it looked disgusting. Yeah. And he said it looked like skid marks. And I said, do you get skid marks? Yeah. And he said, a lot less.

A lot less.

I just said, no, no, no, the answer should be no. I don't. Yeah. And he said, well, no, like I said, let— I said let— I was like, I know, but you shouldn't have— you shouldn't have any.

Okay, I'm gonna— I'm gonna try my hardest. Okay. Um, I'm not gonna say who this is, but you'll know. Um, but I have a friend who has— he'll say, dude, I put the bar of soap up my asshole. Like, I cleaned my asshole so thoroughly in the shower. Yeah. Yeah, and then I get out and I dry off, and then I can wipe my butt, and they'll be— and so I don't know about, like, if that's not my scenario, right? I don't have, like, I guess, a leaky keister. I know, thank God. I mean, there's so many things to be grateful for that we're not, that we should be all day long.

It's true.

Yeah, I'm not leaking sewage.

Thank God. Thank God. I know. So it's not weird. It's not weird.

It's great. It's very attractive.

Then he came back, his report was like, well, you don't get your teeth cleaned. Okay, yeah, he felt a little defensive, understandably. Sure. Yeah, yeah. But you— oh, because I guess Anna and I recently had said like, yeah, we like barely get our teeth go to the dentist. Yeah. And he goes to the dentist regularly. Yeah. And for a real cleaning. And you should go, like, look, you should go to the dentist, right?

Everyone will put in the comments, uh, brain infection.

We know, we know, we know. And heart disease, like, yes, infections.

We know, uh, 80% of diseases emanate from the mouth.

That's right. Got it. That's— they do. We should be getting our teeth cleaned every— you're right, always. Months and we're not doing it. And, um, so for him, he was like, that's worse. And he said, he said, that's worse, that's more disgusting. Wow. So I didn't know where everyone landed. I mean, I did feel like you probably were on my side about this. Yeah, yeah, because you also don't get your teeth cleaned and you don't have skid marks.

Nothing really bums me out, as you know. Sure. Yeah, you're down with anything. I'm pretty much down with everything. But if you saw a big skin mark— I can't— as you were taking someone's garments off, I know, just before you were perhaps going to be down there, be down there. Yeah, you know, I don't know, is that, is that what you want to see immediately before? You might go, let's reschedule this portion of it.

Oh my God.

Oh, okay, okay. That— well, one, one question I had that I was excited to hear about was, so we were gone for, I guess, 5 days. They were— I was going for longer. I was in Austin. You're marked that you and Anna were neighbors. Yeah. So Anna was staying here at the house. Yes. What was that like to be neighbors? She didn't come over.

Oh my God, I didn't go over. Oh, what? I know. No, no, she had family in town. Oh, she did? Yeah, that was the whole—

she had— she planned a big family reunion at my house while—

oh, oh my God, I'm not— she's gonna be angry at me. I'm sure— I think— I'm sure she asked Kristen. Anyway, the— she had two cousins in town, and so she had like plans with them. And so she didn't— and like one day I was outside in my— on my beautiful deck, and Jess was there, and we FaceTimed her, and I was like, come over, like bring your— just come over. Yeah, bring your whole family reunion. Oh, we're like gonna get in the I'm like, what? And then Jess was like, well, we could go over there. And then I said, I don't, I don't want to go over there when, when Dax and Kristen aren't there. I feel kind of weird about it for some reason. And so then we just never saw each other.

He, she came over. It's funny you'd say that because I remembered I wanted to ask you about this on the, this program. Oh, okay. I want to see like what was like being neighbors.

Was it fun? Right. No.

And then I, when I, I was, I knew I wanted to ask that. It sounds fun. Yeah. Um, because you guys hang so much, right? Yeah. And then I thought, what if she came over and went in the sauna? You'd be mad. Then I was like, yeah, I think I've invited you like 5 times to go in the sauna and you haven't. And then I go out of town and then Anna invites you and then you go. That crossed my mind. I was like, oh my God, well, I might feel like a little hurt. Like, oh, you're not going to come over when I invite you, but when Anna invites you, you go over. Yeah, well, I didn't, right? Like, what if you had invited me, uh, over for breakfast like 5 times at your house? I don't— I, I can't go for all these reasons. And then Aaron's staying at your house and he invites me over for breakfast. I'm like, yeah, I'll be there in 5. Yeah, right?

No, I don't actually know if I would, because it'd be one thing if I never came over here. I come over here, I'm here every day. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think that's a little different maybe, because if you came over to my house all the time but you just weren't coming over for breakfast, and then Aaron was staying at my house and he invited you for breakfast, I think I'd be like, oh, it just worked out timing-wise.

But also, you have— somehow breakfast has to include like, I got a brand new, very special breakfast nook. Oh, like, I got a very cool sauna, and I love how social it can be. Oh, okay. And then and then you don't come, and then, and then I leave, and then you're like, hey, you call on, and you're like, dude, I'm dying to go.

I've been dying to get in that sauna. I just finally—

the ex, uh, is gone, so let's—

no, like, okay, let's pull back the curtain. I feel like you guys can invite me over way more.

Maybe just not to sauna. Yeah, you know, you just don't want to— you never invite me.

You only invite me over to sauna, and it's like, that's all I do, right?

But it's like, that's so sweaty. I'll tell you my evening's exact— just like my breakfast and my, you know, my, my evening is the exact same every single night. I sauna at 5 o'clock, I cold plunge, I get in the hot tub with the girls, I hear about their day, then we have dinner, we watch TV and go to bed. So the only time to be social in that scenario is the big sauna block.

I guess you can invite me over for dinner.

You could come over for dinner. That makes a lot of sense. That's, that's very traditional.

Actually, I mean, like, I guess TV.

TV's in bed, which we're already at capacity. We go into the room, I don't need to— there's 4 of us in the one bed. It's already, uh, a little tight. I get it. Yeah. So you guys never hung out. That's the point.

And that's interesting. I definitely didn't go in the sauna. Do not worry. Uh, do not worry about that. And I'll come over to sauna.

I just, you know, I just don't like the sauna.

Well, I do like it. There's a couple of hurdles. One, you have to be in a bathing suit in the sauna.

You could wear full out, you could wear this outfit. You don't sweat it. You could actually have the freedom to wear anything in the sauna because you don't sweat.

Well, I do sweat in the sauna. It's actually the only place I sweat. It's why I do enjoy it. I do feel good after because I've sweat. Yeah. But you have to wear a bathing suit and that means you have to be naked. Um, well-kempt.

Okay, okay. And you won't kempt? Is that— you don't want to kempt?

Well, okay, kempting is tricky because I don't like to shave. It's like all— that's like not—

let me make a pitch. Can I make a pitch? Yeah. Bathing suit, boxers, shorts.

Oh, that's like so ugly, but oh, I mean, it's great. It looks great.

And then if that's how you like to Sonic, you're even hotter for it. All right, can I tell you the other tension in my head? Oh yeah, sure. So that's one battle's waging, the my aging. Okay, 85% of the time, who cares? Let's go, bring on the wrinkles. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bring on the thinning hair. 15% of the time, let's throw everything we can at this. Let's get a facelift, let's do it all. Okay, I know that's like 15% of the time. I know. Anyways, the other tension, and this is— I don't really— I don't know where— this is so confusing to me. When I'm in Nashville, I'm so happy. Yeah, I can't tell you, it will make no sense to you, but I cannot tell you the amount of joy I get from doing stupid tasks around the yard. That's great. And in the garage, you know, with the cars and the boat. Like, I'm just so— and but I'm not like, it's all useless, right? It's just like, I mean, it's not important. It's just like, it's just me staying busy. Yeah.

And, um, gardening is good for like—

oh, brain. Yeah, it's good for me for sure, because like just to be moving and doing—

and there's like studies on that.

I accomplish little things and I feel good about it. And then, um, I stroll like— I really am becoming friends with my neighbor Nate, who I really like a lot, right? And so like I'll stroll over to his house, or he'll stroll over, or— this was my favorite part of the whole trip— his boat was stuck. His boat is on a lift that comes so you can take it out of the water at night, and he lowered it, and our lake is a little low right now, so when he lowered it on the lift, it wasn't floating. He couldn't get it off of his lift, and he wanted to take it in for service. Okay. And I said, uh, how about I hook up my pontoon and see if I can fucking jerk you out of that? Well, that sounded weird. Can I have you jerk you off? Lift? Yeah.

And, um, he was like, I wonder you like him.

He's like, I don't— yeah, you think it'll break the bottom? Like, it wouldn't be fun if there wasn't some plausible threat of me ruining something. So sure enough, hooked up some ropes, fucking punched it on the pontoon and pulled the boat right off the thing. Glorious. What? I mean, again, what? Nothing. That's not productive. And I felt like a champion. You helped someone. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, it's not productive in the traditional sense. Okay. It's just like I got someone's boat off a thing, but it was like, I— we didn't know if it would work. I had to improvise. It was all very rewarding. Yeah, I loved it. So yeah, I stroll over there, I chat with him. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna drive my dirt bike around the yard. I remember dirt bike. I am so happy. And then I go, what am I supposed to do in life? Okay, am I supposed to work till 70, or am I supposed to hang out and do that? And I don't know.

Yeah, it's a way—

I mean, it's a blessing. What a fucking enormous blessing that I could get to even evaluate that. But it's an interesting thing where it's like, well, and I also love, I come back here and I love what we're doing right now. And I love interviewing people and that's really fun. And being productive is fun and being engaged is fun. But man, that's really fun. I know. And yet like at some point in your life, you gotta decide, I think.

Yeah, you gotta decide. Yeah. I, you'll know.

I guess I'll know.

I think you'll just know. I don't know if I'll know.

I think you just have to commit to one thing or the other. Really?

I don't know about that. I don't know. Okay, I'll tell you. I had the complete opposite situation. Oh, tell me. You were gone, and then also before you were gone, we had a light week, very light week, and then you were gone. So we've had like, oh, 2 weeks of like kind of not doing a lot. Yeah. And yeah, I still have to edit, there's meeting, whatever, there's things, but the actual like us doing this wasn't really happening. Happening. And, you know, I've been just like listening to this other podcast nonstop. But at one point I was like, oh my God, like we have to get back to work. I cannot do this. Like, and I was also in meetings, like we were pit— we're, I'm in pitches and we had a ton of those. And at first I was like so annoyed. I was like, oh, I was supposed to have the week off. Like I shouldn't be, I shouldn't have scheduled any of this stuff. And like, thank God I did, because I, I don't— I need to be working. Like, I just am not good without that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so what if you had gotten a part-time job while I was gone?

You saw me at Maru.

I don't know if this is a— I can't— I don't know if this is— well, you could tell me. You lived in Atlanta.

Um, I lived in the suburbs though.

Yeah, that's true. What I'll say is, in 30 years in LA, it might be a— I don't know. I was very friendly with my neighbors in the one-bedroom apartment for 10 years. We were very close together, and we saw each other in the stairwell all the time. Yeah, I went to the birthday parties, everything. But since I've owned a home, so since 2006, 20 years of living in LA in a home, neighbors here, everyone has a fence. Everyone has a fence in here, which I'll be— I can defend. Like, I was talking about fences with people in Nashville, and they're like, just in general there, it's rude, which I get. It's like, it just seems rude. It's also different. Like, yes, my argument in defense of it is like, we're so packed in. You'd have to take all of Nashville and smash it into like, you know, a 4-square-mile thing. Yeah. So when you don't have any space, yeah, you want a little compartment where you feel anonymous or not where you don't see people, right? I think so. This stress of the city kind of brings the city— brings that out different. Yeah. Yes.

Um, it's just so different.

It's like, it's completely different.

Yeah. And, and I love— like, I already love some of my neighbors in Nashville, and I think it's so interesting.

I do think what's interesting is like, you can have that here, especially, especially here. This neighborhood is an— is as close as you can get to that.

LA's not very neighborly, I'll just say that. Like, it's not like— it's not like I'm sitting it out and everyone else is in the streets chatting. That's not the truth. I'd say I'm even maybe the high water mark in the neighborhood. Like, I am chatting with Pari and I am, you know, right? And I'm starting a fucking hayride thing, you know. But it's not a neighborly city.

It's not a neighborly city. But I actually think this neighborhood is fairly neighborly. So much so— this doesn't sound good for me— but I went on a long walk yesterday up Los Feliz. You know, I went like around, not in the neighborhood. I went out, and when I was coming back, I was like, which entrance do I go in so that I don't see anyone? Oh wow. I didn't want to see anyone that moment. I knew, I knew I was going to, and I did. Yeah. So like, you know, like, I actually think this neighborhood— I've like, I've seen Casey, friend of the pod, um, my new friends, uh, Pari. I saw Pari the other day, and then he, he It was really cute. I was walking, I saw him, we chatted, and then when I was continuing, I saw him, he was inside somebody else's house. Like he was hanging out with someone.

He's very neighborly. Yeah.

And my neighbor, my actual neighbor, talked to them yesterday. Like, I feel like people are.

So here's my question, but I guess I already have an answer because Aaron lives in a pretty liberal neighborhood and his neighbors are very commingling and no one has fences and everyone's in everyone's backyard. Yeah. But there's only two things I can observe that I know specifically. One is it's conservative there and it's liberal here. That's like one thing I know about the differences from where I'm at in Nashville and where— and then it's more rural versus city.

I think it's more that.

And it's funny because those two things are related in general, like cities are more liberal than rural. And I just don't know which thing is which. And I'm curious about it.

I think that's why the suburbs are a good thing to look at because they're not rural and they're not city. They're like so specific. And normally you do know like a couple neighbors and they're—

they're a nice middle ground too. I think of super conservative and super liberal suburbs.

It's like more— yeah, I would say when you're in the—

when you're in the country and the farm, you're very Republican. Yes. And when you're in downtown New York City, you're very Democrat.

Yeah, you're very— yeah, probably. And, and then, yeah, you kind of maybe don't know as much when you're in the suburbs. It depends on where you are, obviously. But yeah, like, my county where I grew up is a blue county, went blue, right? So yeah, anyway, um, and you know, like, some of your neighbors kind of, but not really.

The Padmans weren't dialed in. Yeah. But were you seen as you drove through your neighborhood like a bunch of other neighbors in someone else's garage, or do you see them congregating together? Um, you were trying not to be seen.

Yeah, not really. Like, my very, very first house, um, when I was a baby. Yeah, my dad— I feel like people would do that a little more, and like, my dad would hang out with the neighbor a little bit, but not— it's also, if you have kids, it's different. Yeah, Kids definitely go hang out with friends in the neighborhood, and then that starts that thing, you know? So like, like my— one of my best friends who lives in Georgia lives in a suburb, and like her kids go next door and they come. So like, yes, if there's kids involved, yeah, yeah, I think that—

but that doesn't happen at all in LA. I mean, virtually at all. I don't know anyone in our pod whose kids hang out at a neighbor's house.

Well, no, Erica's— Erica's kids go down the street to the neighbor's house. Do they? Yeah. And then like they sometimes all come over to her.

The Ridgertons don't, and the Hansons don't, and we don't. Calvin's got a friend down the street. Yeah, he does. Some people. And he walks over there. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

I think it just depends. Yeah, I think it depends. But also, you know what's a big part of it? I'm just putting two and two together. Schools. A lot in the suburbs, you're on the school bus to get— like, everyone's going to public school. Yeah, yeah. So the kids in the neighborhood go to the same school. Yes. Yeah. And then they come and they hang out with each other and stuff.

They take a bike ride. Yeah.

Like, you hang out. I mean, I used to— in my neighborhood, my best friend Ashley lived in the neighborhood, and we hung out every day. And I walked to her house every day. And like, we went to this other old Kim. I loved it. Yeah, it's great, but it's a result of the school bus and school. Like, it's— the problem is not problem, but some people go to all different schools. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So scattered.

Yeah, I don't have any judgment over either side or think— but I will say I do think it's nicer to be neighborly, as I've experienced it. I think that's preferred. And just the little ways we're looking out for each other. Like, there was a dog death. Oh, of a, of a very good friend's dog. I get a text, hey, is it cool if we bury the dog on your property? Of course. We're gonna dig a hole. And now I'm going, that's not gonna happen. Yeah, it's all granite. Like, we had to blast— you have to blast anything. Like, if you're gonna put a pool in, you gotta blast granite. It's all granite. So I'm like, yeah, go ahead. And in my mind I'm like, they're not gonna be able to dig a hole out there, um, but I'm not gonna get in the way of this. Their morning— what? I just— I'm staying out of it. Okay. And then sure enough, they went over to, to, to bury the dog, and they had some picks and stuff, and they were working for quite a while. And then my buddy Nate, whose boat I pulled off, he saw what was going on.

Oh, and he went to help.

He's in construction. Oh, that's nice. And he had a little front-end loader.

That's very nice.

And then he said, can you guys want me to bring the machine over? And, and he did. He spent a bunch of time digging a hole.

Yeah, that's very sweet. It's like, it's so lovely.

And then, you know, he can't get his boat off and I'm there and I say, hey, you want me to get you? Like, I just— it's very beautiful.

It's very nice. Yeah, I think it's really nice. Yeah, I do. I like it. Yeah, I, I don't think it can't be that way here. I just think it's not as— it's not as set up.

Um, yeah, like, I'm not trying to say, oh, people in LA are bad, or liberals are bad. I, I'm, I'm just curious on what forces create these different outcomes. That, that interests me. Yeah. And I like this outcome. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you can also have a bad neighbor. Oh, and that really sucks. Really? Yeah. And it really sucks if you don't have a fence. Like, if you just have neighbors all over the place that aren't—

if you're, if you're at war with your neighbor and you have to see them all the time. Yes.

Yeah, it can go bad. It can go bad. Yeah, it can go bad.

But I think that's the thing I like about it. It's kind of like relationships a little bit. It's like you enter a neighborhood going like, these aren't people I picked to be friends with, I got assigned this, but I know we all live together, so I'm gonna have to be a little extra patient, a little extra kind, and all these things. Yeah. And I think those are good virtues to just be practicing and have on display.

Yeah, for sure. Just not everyone does it, and then it gets tricky.

Okay, want to do some facts?

Um, oh yeah, let's do facts. I forgot. Okay, these, these are for Jenny Garth. So did the Shackley Soup have— I looked up Shackley Soup because I was like, why would they go into the soup game, right? But then they had like 7-day healthy cleanse. Like, I think they're including the soups as like this overall health thing.

Okay, that makes sense, is the soups are part of a cleanse.

Yeah. Okay, okay. I looked up her part in Growing Pains. What are you doing? I forgot my comb.

Betty, you're buying paste. What do you need your comb for? Hey, you never know. You're gonna be running into a couple of babes like them. It's not a shot. Hi. Well, uh, how are you two ladies this evening? Okay. Okay, you underestimate yourself.

Oh, we're just buying a little paste.

Sticky, sticky, sticky.

Oh, she just said sticky, sticky, sticky. Yes.

Oh, and then they walked away. So she was right. She did say hi first though, so she had multiple lines.

Yeah, she had multiple Do you think they kept it under 7 or 5? Definitely. Yeah. And under 5. Sticky, sticky, sticky. Hello. Hi. They probably were surgical. Hi.

Sticky, sticky, sticky. Yep. 4. Oh, wow.

For people who don't know, there's categories. You have to pay you a certain amount if you say over 5. Yeah.

Under 5. Under 5. Maybe it's changed, but that, okay. You know what's funny though? So this was, you know, a family show. I loved it. Yeah. This is how things have changed. Like when he says they showed the girls, there's a pop-up that says two available girls, babies Americanus. Yeah. And then, and they're like doing like boing sounds.

Yeah, you had to back then. You didn't know it was comedy.

Okay, then they show him and it says dude is horniest.

Ben Siever, dude is horniest. That's pretty good.

It's Funny, but it's that, like, that wouldn't be on today. It wouldn't. No, it wouldn't.

I think they could bring that back. That's, that's pretty good. Yeah, it's funny.

Okay, when was Beverly Hillbillies made? 1962 is when it premiered.

Wow, that's an old show. Yeah.

Brady Bunch, 1969. Choice. Green Acres, 1965. And Bewitched, 1964. Okay, so all '60s.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. I know. And I was watching— I was home from school sick in '82. Yeah, so 20 years after The Hillbillies were—

and it held up.

Really did. Also, there was no other options, right?

Exactly. Okay, how old was Gabrielle Carteris in 90210? Ah, she was 29, and then when it was over, she was 34— or when she left, she was 34. Okay, so she she was older.

She was older than a high school student.

Yeah, she was playing.

So it's not weird. It's great. It's great.

It's great. It's great. Okay, we talked about shame, and you said like the beauty of, of group therapy is that you say something like that you think is horrible that you've done, and then, you know, people are like, no, that's fine, like I've done that too. Have you seen the movie The The Drama. No, what's that? Okay, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. It's out now. Okay, I can't say anything about this movie, like, at all.

Everything would be a spoiler.

Yes, but I recommend it. Okay. And it, um, it's called The Drama.

Okay.

And it flies right in the face of that concept.

Oh really? Yes. Oh, it's really interesting.

Oh, I want to see it.

Did you at the Vista?

No, I saw it at the Americana.

Okay.

It's only an hour and 45 minutes. God bless.

Oh really? Because it's too intense?

No, I just hate movies that are too long now. I like can't do it. Oh wow. I was supposed to see Project Hail Mary. I really wanted to see it, and we're driving there and I was like, I don't know if I can sit for that long. How long was that?

I saw it. I didn't feel long enough. Didn't feel like it at all. Great movie.

I want to see it, but I'm I'm not gonna—

will you watch it at home? Is that—

yeah, I think I will try to watch it at home. It's being in a theater for 2 hours, I don't know why I'm just like mad. I'm like, guys, can we please just get movies back to 2 hours?

It's funny you say that. I think that's a very common opinion, but when I think of— if I did my top 10 movies of all time, they're generally longer. Really? Yeah, Pulp Fiction's long, it's the number one movie. Uh, you know, most Tarantino movies are long. Once Upon a Time is long, and I want more.

I mean, Good Will Hunting is like perfect. Yeah, on the dot. Perfect.

I wonder how long that is. How long do you think it is before you look it up?

Okay, good question. I think it is— I think it's 100 minutes, give or take.

Okay, let's look it up. 2 hours and 6 minutes.

Oh, okay. 2 hours.

126 minutes. Okay, okay. 2 hours is fine. Well, this is 2 hours and 6 minutes. It's your favorite movie of all time. 25. That sounds like it's 20 minutes shorter than Hail Mary. Yeah, I just can't. It's different.

Also, now when you go to the theater, it's a full 30 minutes of ads. Yeah, when you're from your call time at certain theaters.

Yeah, at the Americana, it's 30 minutes.

I, I've been testing it. I've been looking and testing it, and I'm annoyed. That's nuts.

Yeah, it should start at the time. Start at the time. I think that works at the Vista.

Yeah, they don't do anything.

They don't play previews, and it's great. I mean, I guess I need to be sympathetic. It's hard to keep these fucking exhibition halls open. No one goes to movies. They got to figure out how to keep them awake.

I understand, but it's annoying. It's a bad cycle though, because it prevents people from going.

The experience isn't as good.

Yeah, you're right. So it's tough.

Short gain for a long-term loss. That's Shame. Yeah.

So anyway, I would— I recommend that movie. I want to— I would love to know your thoughts on it when you see it.

Yeah, I can't wait.

Um, and, uh, I'll see anything with Zendaya. I know, she's—

she picks well.

She's great. Robert Pattinson's great in it.

Yeah, he's something else, isn't he? He is.

I was like, he's a special dude. Um, anyway, check that out. Actually, don't check it out until they come on the podcast, then check it out as a reward.

Yeah.

Okay. Um, and that's it. That's it.

Yeah. All right, well, I enjoyed Jenny Garth. Uh, Kelly. Kelly. I loved Kelly. Just really at the height of my consumption of Beverly Hills 90210. Could you ever have imagined? No, I just truly— you could— even if you try to explain all the, the little steps that would lead to that, I would go like, that sounds preposterous.

Kelly. Yeah. Asking her questions. Yes.

And never inappropriate. So well behaved. The universe waited till I could be trusted with the opportunity to talk to Kelly. Kelly's been through She has.

Yeah, that's a weird— when you said 11 share— no, it's nuts.

Again, I don't— no one today can really comprehend that. A young person, they can't comprehend. That's so not the ever-presence and popularity of certain television shows in the '80s and '90s when there was nothing else.

Totally different beast.

There were CDs and there were 4 networks to watch shows on.

Would 9 90210 have been like Emmy nominated? I don't think so. So what shows were like considered West Wing, uh, back then? Yeah, I thought it was— I thought West Wing was like more—

I feel like West Wing won the most amount. I know that Tommy Schlamme won the most amount of directing Emmys of any director, but that's definitely like prestige television.

I feel like that was like the kind of beginning of prestige television, but like 90210 feels before that?

30-something was winning. Um, you know, all the dramas still.

Oh, interesting, interesting. I want to look it up real quick. Who Emmy nominations, what year?

Again, that's what's— that's what's happened in this, this upside-down world, which is before when winning an Emmy was less impressive because there was only 7 comedies to choose from. There were 24 dramas, right? Yeah, now there's 150.

Exactly.

And then conversely, in movies, it's not quite as impressive to win something there because there's a third of his amount of movies to pull from. It's all upended. Now if you win an Emmy, like, that's a shootout. Only surprised by if you win a Golden Globe for podcast.

Of course I should have known. Um, in '95— so that was in '90, I don't know, like, you know, whatever. I picked it up for 10 years. Yeah. Um, NYPD Blue, of course. Frasier, boom. Um, they were the winners.

I think Seinfeld won a lot for the comedy, right?

But I guess— yeah, okay, it was X-Files, Law Order. Law Order would never be— no, it wouldn't be.

That's a procedural, that there's 16 of them, and it would never—

and same with NYPD Blue, although that one was a bit groundbreaking, right? The X-Files, Law Order, NYPD Blue, Chicago Hope, ER.

Now, I didn't consume both like you have. Yeah, The Pit's better than ER, right? Um, are they the same?

I don't want to get in trouble. I think ER is better. Okay, simple.

Maybe simply because bigger cast, more years.

Yes, huge cast. The way they're shooting that show is like a movie, and there's so many episodes, and it's so high, it's so intense. So Like, you know, coming in in one room and moving into the— it's like, it's so well done.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And all the characters and like the drama and the no comedy and so much AIDS. Yeah. Plenty of AIDS. Yeah. A lot of AIDS. Like the pit doesn't leave the ER.

Right.

And they did leave the ER in ER. And I love it. Sometimes I went after the pit, it immediately goes to ER. You love it. All right. That's it.

Love you.