Episode 1174 - Rhea Seehorn
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fuck tuplets?
Marc:Are there any of those?
Marc:Any what the fuck tuplets out there?
Marc:I choose to obsess on the little things.
Marc:That's how I ground myself spiritually.
Marc:The relief was short lived.
Marc:It's still there.
Marc:I think there's a bedrock of relief about what transpired in the national election here in the United States of America.
Marc:But now, not surprisingly, we have to deal with whatever the fuck this goddamn manic, narcissistic, compulsive, delusional fuck is.
Marc:is going to put out there in the next couple months.
Marc:I'm eating crappy.
Marc:I'm festering.
Marc:I'm getting obsessed with the little things.
Marc:The cast iron obsession has reignited.
Marc:And that's not great.
Marc:I'm not excited about that.
Marc:But this is the way I've always been.
Marc:What is your spiritual discipline?
Marc:I'll tell you.
Marc:I find something to get obsessed with, something specific, whether it be learning how to do something on a guitar, a particular band whose records I need, cast iron's another one, fucked up a cast iron pan.
Marc:So now that's a whole rabbit hole that I've been down.
Marc:I don't know if I need it.
Marc:I could just buy another pan.
Marc:But you have this time invested.
Marc:Like, look at the seasoning I put on it.
Marc:But it's like it's fucking gunk and it's fucked up.
Marc:You got to start over.
Marc:How do I get the gunk off?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I scraped some of it off, but it didn't all come off, and then I re-seasoned it, so I sealed some of the gunk in.
Marc:Now it's got this texture to it.
Marc:So now I'm trying to decide, you know, do I commit to this pan, this $25 Lodge cast iron pan to fucking break my brain, cause me frustration, give me a goal?
Marc:Are there bigger goals?
Marc:Yes, I'd like to help out.
Marc:Did I mention that Ray Sehorne is on the show?
Marc:Ray Sehorne, the lovely Ray Sehorne.
Marc:She plays Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul.
Marc:We talked before the election.
Marc:It was a lovely talk.
Marc:I'm trying not to freak out.
Marc:Just got to focus on that pan.
Marc:But is it cognitive dissonance?
Marc:If I know the reality, yet I'm choosing to focus on my life and choosing to focus on what I can do within that life.
Marc:And all lives are limited now because reality is limited because there's a fucking plague running rampant on the planet, but insanely rampant in this country.
Marc:No one seems to give a fuck, really.
Marc:We've got a president quickly eating himself to death and feeding a fucking delusion
Marc:to sort of 80, 90 percent of his followers that somehow the election was rigged with no proof whatsoever.
Marc:Believe what we believe is real, despite evidence of the contrary.
Marc:Break your fucking brains forever by taking big heap and shitty spoonfuls of cognitive dissonance provided for you by this administration.
Marc:Fuck it, man.
Marc:I get up.
Marc:I put my shoes on.
Marc:I put my pants on.
Marc:I dress like a day is happening.
Marc:And I do shit.
Marc:I do this.
Marc:Got Ray Sehorne.
Marc:He's going to talk to you.
Marc:I'm going to talk to her today.
Marc:I got the Bowie movie coming out.
Marc:That's the other thing.
Marc:It's fucking eaten me a little bit.
Marc:It's like I made this Bowie movie.
Marc:Stardust, it's called, with Johnny Flynn.
Marc:I play a music publicist named Ron Oberman.
Marc:Johnny plays David.
Marc:It's not a biopic.
Marc:It's a small slice of David Bowie's life.
Marc:But this weird pushback that this idea that this movie has to be garbage without seeing it or knowing anything about it because the family didn't sign off on providing or allowing songs to be used.
Marc:That it was against David Bowie's wishes.
Marc:David Bowie was an artist.
Marc:He created art for the public sphere for decades and decades.
Marc:David Bowie has had has sought and has been and made himself available to be reckoned with as a fucking artist of the highest degree on many levels.
Marc:You know, you can write books about Bowie.
Marc:You can criticize or appreciate his music, his acting, all of it.
Marc:There's oodles and oodles of articles written, pictures drawn, books written.
Marc:It's open for interpretation.
Marc:So the idea that they didn't want to sign off on the rights to music for the film, fine.
Marc:It gave our director, Gabriel Range, more freedom.
Marc:But the truth is, every artist seeks interpretation.
Marc:This is an interpretation of a story based on a true story that happened to David Bowie that was done with nothing but love for the guy.
Marc:Yet the weird sort of contempt prior to investigation, you know, holding this line that you can't make an interpretive piece of art about one of the biggest artists of the 20th century.
Marc:Fucking grow up.
Marc:Don't go see the movie then.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:Why is the man angry?
Marc:I'm not angry.
Marc:I've just had enough of some things.
Marc:All right?
Marc:It's different.
Marc:Ray Sehorne is here.
Marc:You can watch episodes of Better Call Saul on AMC.com or at the AMC app.
Marc:And again, I need to preface this by saying we talked before the election.
Marc:This is me and Ray Sehorne, who I love.
Marc:You holding up okay?
Marc:You at home?
Guest:I'm in my garage where I hide and make things.
Marc:What do you make in the garage?
Guest:Well, I can't show you.
Guest:I designed a massive piece of furniture with built-in shelves and a desk to hold all of my different furniture.
Guest:supplies to do things, whether it's pretend that I'm going to write a script one day or a ton of art supplies, a lot of art supplies here.
Guest:I sculpt and paint, just got back to oil painting thanks to the pandemic.
Guest:Thanks, pandemic.
Marc:So is this structure for the garage?
Guest:This structure was I have only rented in Los Angeles and this structure was built for my last place.
Guest:And actually it comes apart.
Guest:It has coming from New York and D.C.
Guest:and being only a renter my whole life.
Guest:Everything I do has to make minimal wall damage.
Guest:So I built it to it interlocks in pieces.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So, I mean, you have a future in furniture design.
Guest:I had a good time doing it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:One of my first day jobs in D.C., I flat out lied to someone.
Guest:I was asked to help.
Guest:I went to school for art and understand color design and composition and stuff, but had not done any carpentry or craftsman stuff.
Yeah.
Guest:I was dating this guy who was looking for someone to decorate his his new basement apartment in DC.
Guest:And I completely lied and said that I had done it before.
Guest:I spent so many days at Home Depot in the front where they have all the books.
Guest:And it was like like it was like early Barnes and Noble style, just sitting down and reading all of them and not paying anything.
Marc:And were you successful in pulling off your scam as a phony decorator?
Guest:Yeah, it took like two and a half weeks to do something that I'm pretty sure is supposed to take two days.
Marc:So wait, did you grow up in D.C.?
Marc:No.
Guest:No, but I was there for a huge chunk of my budding adult life.
Guest:I was born in Norfolk, moved to Japan immediately, then Arizona, then Virginia Beach, and then...
Guest:I went to school at George Mason and I did theater for 12 years in Washington, D.C.
Guest:before moving to New York.
Marc:Do you remember Japan?
Guest:I do.
Guest:Even though I was young.
Guest:Some people act like they have crystal clear memories and other people have none.
Guest:I have a couple of memories from like age two to five.
Marc:I have one of being hit in the face with a can.
Guest:I don't know why I'm laughing at that.
Guest:I think I thought the next thing you were going to say, and then I've never remembered anything again.
Marc:But I was very young for that.
Marc:I think I have a couple of memories, but they're just like bits and pieces.
Marc:Why did you go to Japan?
Guest:We were civilian, but my dad was a naval intelligence agent.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:NIS.
Marc:NIS, you mean like the TV show?
Guest:Yeah, now it's NCIS, but at that time it was NIS, yes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He was an agent for 33 years.
Guest:I think the last five, he was a superior advisor, not in the field, but he was in the field when I was younger.
Marc:But that's a civilian gig?
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:I mean, he was ROTC and then he was ROTC for Army and went to Virginia Tech and then was recruited as a ranger and then went to Vietnam.
Marc:Really?
Guest:and switched to by the time he was in vietnam he was doing intelligence work and he was in the tet offensive holy and after that there's not a lot of stories that i would hear but we definitely moved like we moved to virginity for the walker spy family you remember that 1980s crazy cuckoo case
Marc:Yeah, I kind of do.
Marc:What was that about?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Like, yeah, they were.
Guest:It was like two brothers and one of the brothers, one was Navy, one was CIA.
Guest:The wife was kind of involved.
Guest:They sold schematics to Navy ships and like all the way to prison said like, I didn't get anybody killed.
Guest:This isn't, you know, but they were selling schematics that show where the weak points are on the ships.
Guest:Like if you were to bomb them, here's how to take it down.
Marc:To where?
Marc:To Russia?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I kind of do remember that.
Marc:So your dad was on that case?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But like in terms of like his like he was an army ranger that went into intelligence.
Marc:And I mean, he sounds like a pretty.
Marc:So he was in the forces.
Marc:He's an impressive guy.
Marc:He was in the army.
Guest:He was, but he was not enlisted.
Guest:And I know I'm going to get some of the terminology wrong.
Guest:He was not enlisted in the Navy and not.
Guest:And we were civilian by the time he was an agent.
Marc:So Noah.
Marc:So you're telling me that all the information you have about his experience in Vietnam, you just gave me.
Guest:I have a few more things, but they're as secretive as my animated show.
Guest:No, I'm kidding.
Marc:You mean if you tell me that you might have to kill me, that kind of thing?
Guest:You know, he died when I was 18.
Marc:Oh, he passed away when you were 18?
Guest:Yeah, he passed away.
Guest:And so all I was going to say is I am aware now.
Guest:I'm hyper aware now that we mythologize the dead sometimes.
Guest:And so some of my memories are probably conflated with the lore of him and other people's tales and other agents that would say stuff about him.
Guest:Movies, probably not so much.
Guest:His own stories were weird enough.
Guest:And at the end, he was pretty, pretty paranoid.
Guest:And unfortunately, he died from alcoholism.
Guest:So I'm not entirely sure of the stories towards the end, what were true and what were muddied.
Marc:Oh, he had gotten himself – his brain had started to go?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was only 52, so it wasn't dementia.
Marc:It was alcohol.
Marc:That's sad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your mom?
Guest:She's awesome.
Guest:She's super funny.
Guest:Both my parents, very, very funny, great storytellers.
Marc:Was she in the – what did she do?
Guest:She was a paralegal and different high-level –
Guest:assistant and secretarial and administrative quality control stuff for the government, also a civilian for many, many years and retired recently.
Guest:But she's still an active Avon lady.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:That's important.
Marc:America needs them.
Marc:I'm glad.
Marc:I thank her for her service.
Guest:Listen, she's 77 and still loves to get her little lipstick samples out.
Guest:And I love it.
Marc:Oh, that's hilarious.
Marc:Where does she live?
Marc:Like Florida?
Guest:She's in Chesapeake.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Stepped up.
Marc:Oh, so when your old man died, were they together?
Guest:They were not, and there was no love lost.
Guest:There was not a lot of tears shed from her at the funeral.
Guest:No.
Guest:They were, no.
Guest:Were your parents, are your parents around?
Marc:They are.
Marc:They are.
Marc:They're around.
Marc:They're not together.
Marc:No, they're not together.
Marc:And my mother's with a lunatic down in Florida.
Marc:My father's with a saint in Albuquerque.
Marc:And my mom's like 70-something, and my dad's like 81 or 82.
Marc:And they're kind of hanging in.
Guest:Are they being good about quarantine?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, I don't know if my dad's wife is per se.
Marc:It seems that she may be going to church.
Marc:But my mom and her boyfriend are definitely being good.
Marc:And my dad doesn't go out anyways.
Marc:OK, they're being safe.
Marc:They're OK right now.
Marc:You know, how about your mom?
Guest:My mom is very similar to the moms I'm hearing about from a couple of friends and some dads that they're... And by the way, it's not just assigned to her age bracket either.
Guest:There's some adults, my peers in my life, people have a different definition for what they think is playing safe.
Guest:And it's a pretty...
Guest:Big range.
Marc:I find a lot of leeway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like my mom says stuff like I'm not I'm not even I'm not even going out.
Guest:I'm I'm complete.
Guest:I I literally go to like Walmart twice a week and maybe three or four grocery stores and that's it.
Guest:Like, why are you going to five?
Guest:shopping she lives with just her husband and as many people from that generation do she is a full like bunker of food the second freezer the second fridge right right she could live and she does this on purpose for 60 days out of her garage second kitchen um so i'm like well why do you you're only cooking for you and ken you know what do you what's going on there um
Guest:Well, Ray, if I have coupons and let's say one grocery store has beans on sale and the other grocery store has bread on sale and the other one has green beans, I have to go to all three.
Guest:I'm just like, can you please save 13 cents and your lungs?
Marc:She still needs to have her hobbies and chasing coupons.
Guest:That is what it is.
Guest:Not willing to give it up.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And she also she talks to everyone.
Guest:She knows everybody at Walmart.
Guest:And so I think it's partially that she just needs to go see what Fran's doing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Marc:Like, I know that's like it's dangerous to some degree, but she wearing a mask.
Guest:She is.
Marc:She is.
Guest:And she wears one glove to grocery shop and keeps the other one behind her back.
Guest:She's like, so I don't waste two gloves.
Guest:My gloves are going to last twice as long.
Yeah.
Marc:i i think you gotta i think you have to do calculated risks to maintain your sanity do you know what i mean yes i do i do honestly to admit though i mean like i'll go to three supermarkets basically i'll go to i go to ralph's down the street i go to whole foods and i now go to fish king you know what do you mean why
Marc:Well, I mean, just because it's like helpful because if I have a coupon, yeah, if I have a coupon.
Marc:No, I go to Ralph's for the watermelon and if I need some organic veggies, I'll go there quickly.
Marc:In and out quick.
Marc:Whole Foods, there's a couple of things that I stock up on, but I'm going there less and less because there's just a tornado of fucking activity with the people that buy shit for other people at Whole Foods.
Marc:So you never know what day you're going to be caught up in this whirlwind of weirdos with these tinfoil bags running around.
Guest:You're talking about people that are working for Postmates and Instacart, not the people that...
Guest:Right.
Marc:I don't know who they work for.
Marc:I don't know if they work for Amazon or what.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:It's a service.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I've also got now I've got like an N95 mask and a face shield that I will wear.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, that's who I am.
Marc:So like in order for me to, you know, go out and use my coupons, I will wear a space helmet because I don't want to change my life.
Guest:I've had, I only recently had this couple that are best friends of mine and my fiance's over and we did the whole, but it was just four of us total at a picnic table that's eight feet long and one couple on one end and we're on the other end and socially distance and the whole thing.
Guest:And we ordered food in and ate outside and it was nice.
Guest:I have to say it was really nice to see someone in person, but then I,
Guest:Someone else had a going away party for somebody and has a huge, enormous backyard.
Guest:Mine's like postage stamp size, but this person had a huge, huge yard.
Guest:And there were like eight adults all sitting at a very large outside table.
Guest:And I freaked out.
Guest:I thought I would be fine.
Guest:And I went and I freaked out to the point where I had to apologize.
Guest:I had to like text and call people to apologize the next day because I didn't understand what
Guest:what was going on and instead kept just drifting away to other areas where there were less it was like a bad game as soon as three people started to talk to me i would move to the cluster of two and then move to the cluster of one it's horrible feeling it was really strong yeah i was just wildly uncomfortable but i was so curious as to why i couldn't just say it like why i felt
Guest:embarrassed to just say, you know, I think I made a mistake.
Guest:I think I'm not okay.
Marc:By coming.
Guest:And I'm going to go.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Because I can't handle it.
Guest:I think a part of me wanted to be okay.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Marc:There's a part of you.
Marc:It's weird that there's this moment where it's like, why am I the one feeling shame?
Marc:I'm the one scared and doing the right thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what the fuck that is.
Guest:Well, I mean, everybody was lovely when I, you know, said sorry.
Guest:They were like, you got to do exactly only what you're comfortable with.
Guest:And the other thing is I'm so terrified
Guest:I don't want to be a hypocrite, but I'm also terrified of looking – I have, like, massive imposter syndrome anyway my whole life that's just, like, I'm always not sure, like, is this who I really am or am I secretly, like, awful?
Guest:And it's all a sham that I pretend that I'm not an absolute terrible person.
Guest:And so I'll see pictures on the news of people –
Guest:Having massive parties or clustering on the beach.
Guest:And I'm like, God damn it.
Guest:Don't they realize?
Guest:And then the second I even have two people in my backyard, I'm like, oh, I'm one of those people.
Guest:One of those people.
Marc:I have to stop.
Marc:I'm on the news.
Marc:We should all be in water.
Marc:An above ground pool with 20 other people.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I act like the helicopters are going to break up my yard party with three people.
Marc:Is that a real thing?
Marc:What is imposter syndrome?
Marc:Do I have it?
Guest:You have to know.
Guest:I remember listening to you on our great... You had a great NPR interview where you were talking about that you're sort of
Marc:regular like idling place is on is discomfort right no no i do i do live but like the imposter syndrome is not it's not just about being a fraud in what you do like creatively or for a job it's literally like no one sees that i'm a monster
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I'm sure some people have it just in their job, but yeah, this idea of... You don't match your outsides.
Marc:What's really inside of you is this fragile, awful thing, but everybody thinks there's something else.
Guest:Yes, and especially if you get to a place where people perceive you as added value in the room, be it your skill as an actor or writer or interviewer or God help you as a human, then it makes me back up even further and go, oh, wow.
Guest:Who fooled them?
Marc:Really got them fooled.
Marc:Yeah, it's good.
Guest:I am one scene away from being found out.
Marc:I'm glad that that for most of my life I was never considered added value.
Marc:I would say I would say for about 40 years of my life, added value was not on my resume.
Marc:It was the opposite.
Marc:Like, let's rethink the Marin invitation.
Guest:But see, that's where my head is.
Guest:But people will tell you otherwise.
Guest:And the more intelligent and more lovely the people, which you at this point in your life and for years now are surrounded by and have been surrounded by.
Guest:Very intelligent, lovely people who seem to really know what they're doing.
Guest:So are they idiots that they've invited you to join the project?
Guest:Dialogue in your head.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But you know what that I've also realized, though, like in terms of like why I wasn't successful for a long time or whatever, is that, you know.
Marc:they're only going to understand the part of you that you're making available that they can use so on some level i mean it there's a truth to it like because for years people would try to box me in like you know you're the cranky guy you're this guy you're this and i'm like i'm much broader than this and you know and a lot of it's a lot of levels of cranky right a lot of it's completely out of control and unattractive and
Marc:But like, but you behave in relation to your expectation that their expectations of you, these particular people, but a lot of them don't know you really.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's a certain amount of ego to even think that they care.
Guest:Why do they, they don't even know that like you cry in the corner late at night.
Marc:No one gives a shit.
Marc:It's our job to be professional.
Marc:We can't lean on them as if they're our lost parent.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And don't get me wrong.
Guest:I am not someone that shows up to acting work and I don't get that you are either and treating it like therapy.
Guest:That is that's that's not me at work.
Guest:No, I mean, for me, it's a freaking break from my real thoughts.
Marc:I do what we're doing right now for therapy.
Marc:I do I do stand up for therapy acting.
Marc:I'm just surprised anyone buys it.
Marc:I mean, it's like I wasn't an actor.
Marc:It came so much later.
Marc:I just like, you know, I learned to listen and I can show up and turn things off in my personality.
Marc:But, you know, acting is like it's definitely not therapy.
Guest:When did you start?
Guest:When's the first time you did acting like that?
Guest:You would not consider your stand up.
Guest:Oh, I mean, you didn't like you weren't doing like a shtick.
Guest:You were actually acting in a scene.
Marc:I guess Almost Famous was probably that little bit I did in there.
Marc:But I never even had an agent forever.
Marc:I don't even know if I was represented.
Marc:I just realized early on that in terms of what comics were available for, which was like one or two line parts in movies or sitcom roles, you know, there's really people that, you know, I didn't give a fuck about one or two line parts.
Marc:It was just silly.
Marc:You go in for these things and you're like, it's coming from the sky.
Marc:You know, like, what is that?
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:You know.
Marc:Did you get that part?
Marc:No, I should have.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That's some shit.
Marc:But then there's these sitcom parts where it's just like, there are guys better than me at this.
Marc:I don't want to do this.
Marc:I was cast in a movie recently to play this sort of beat up cheesy lawyer guy.
Marc:It was in two scenes and it was in New York.
Marc:I'm like, you could hire a guy that's really this guy.
Marc:Wait, so...
Marc:I just you know what I mean?
Marc:So like and I felt bad to take even going, you know, making myself available to take work away from from actors on that level because I was really fundamentally comic.
Marc:I always wanted to act, but I didn't pursue it.
Marc:I just I just didn't because I was not confident enough.
Marc:And I just always assumed that in the TV world, there were people better than me doing it.
Marc:Which is true.
Guest:That's not an immovable object.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I mean, I've gotten better, obviously.
Marc:I'm okay now.
Marc:But now it's because I got nothing to lose and I don't give a fuck.
Guest:I haven't seen Glow.
Guest:My apologies.
Guest:But I have seen you in Sword of Trust and you're amazing.
Guest:You're amazing.
Guest:I love the film.
Guest:I met you and Lynn for the first time together at the Spirit Awards.
Marc:She loved you.
Marc:I mean, she would like, you know, she would like, you know, we'd watch Saul and she'd be like, I got to do something with her.
Marc:It was like she really wanted to do something.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:My condolences to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, I wrote her after I saw I was very late to your sister's sister and I watched it.
Guest:and Sword of Trust was just coming out and I followed her on Twitter and she was tweeting something about Sword of Trust coming out and I wrote, oh my God, your work's amazing.
Guest:I'm so excited.
Guest:I can't wait to see it.
Guest:And she ended up, I forget if it was a DM right away or it was a regular tweet, but she started talking about Saul and I was so excited that she watches it because her...
Guest:proclivity for finding the smallest intimacies in scenes and coming at storytelling from a character base instead of a plot base.
Guest:Not that there isn't plot in her movies, but that's the in always.
Guest:It was so beautiful, and it's something that I strive for in the show I'm doing now.
Guest:And then we immediately were like, we have to do something together.
Guest:We have to, we have to, we have to.
Guest:Then the pandemic hit and yeah, I have some lovely messages from her when she would watch episodes of Saul.
Guest:She wrote me once, she was like, I just burst into tears.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I think I was sitting there when that happened.
Marc:So but like, you know, in terms of acting with you, like it seems like you have a lot of other interests.
Marc:You're painting, you're doing things, you're building.
Guest:Yeah, I have to because of what's going on right now.
Guest:I'm I'm I'm quite I'm quite restless playing myself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's but you like it.
Marc:Did you come out like was acting always the thing or were you just like a generally expressive person that ended up, you know, doing the acting?
Marc:I mean, was there another plan?
Guest:Yeah, well, much to my parents' chagrin, my backup plan was to be a painter, which is not a very lucrative pursuit either.
Guest:But at one point, it was flipped.
Guest:Growing up mostly in Virginia Beach, by the time I started to think about what I wanted to do- Oh, I forgot to ask you real quick.
Marc:I forgot to ask you about Japan.
Marc:What do you remember?
Guest:Oh, I remember being in a Quonset hut at first, and my mom-
Guest:really getting aggravated that my dad wasn't pushing.
Guest:We were supposed to get a house in a regular civilian neighborhood instead of stay in a Quonset hut.
Guest:And I think he was dragging his feet.
Guest:And I remember playing Barbies in my room and my mom coming in extremely calmly and saying, because I have one sister, girls, pick up all your stuff because the house is on fire.
Guest:We're going to wait outside.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:And she was super calm.
Guest:And we waited in the street and like and she had a bag packed already and stuff.
Guest:I've never asked her about it, but I'm pretty.
Guest:It was a pizza box that was in the oven and the oven got turned on.
Guest:Anyway, we moved to a house immediately.
Guest:And what else?
Guest:I remember feeling my first earthquake.
Marc:Huge earthquake.
Marc:I remember feeling that in Alaska when I was like.
Marc:I was probably seven.
Marc:How old were you in Japan?
Guest:I was two to five, but I totally remember it.
Guest:What a bizarre sensation.
Marc:It's the worst.
Marc:It's still a bizarre sensation.
Guest:It still is.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, it's literally your world shaking and the only time that that's not a figurative statement.
Guest:You're just like, what?
Marc:It's like, yeah, it's a real brain fucker.
Marc:You're like, there's no stability anywhere.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the moment before you register that that's what's happening is also super weird, which has happened to me now in California, too, where you're like, am I?
Guest:Did something happen to my brain?
Guest:Oh, it's an earthquake.
Guest:Like that little second before.
Marc:So it's so I lost it.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:I also remember hating, there's a thing in traditional Japanese cultures that when you go to visit a man's house and you're trying to pay respect to his position, and in this situation it would be my dad, and businessmen were coming over, you are supposed to give the most lavish gift you can to only the eldest daughter.
Guest:I am the youngest of two, and I used to scream bloody murder.
Guest:My sister has beautiful presents.
Marc:You got nothing.
Guest:I got nothing.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I remember Bonadori festivals, and that's about it.
Guest:It's a beautiful place.
Marc:Yeah, I'd like to go there.
Marc:So, like, how did you you got out from under the curse of having an alcoholic parent without getting alcoholism?
Guest:Well, that's a deep question.
Guest:I don't consider myself an alcoholic, but I do pay a lot of attention to when I drink and why.
Guest:And I'm trying to make sure, I am trying to make sure I pay attention to that because I've never drank like my dad did in my life.
Guest:And he wasn't falling down.
Guest:My dad was high, high-functioning alcoholic.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:can wait till the second you're off work and all of this but um definitely drank every day definitely his most irritable is you know five to seven before he can get the first drink right and all of that stuff and i have never drank like that but i pay more attention to i have had depression problems and anxiety problems most of my whole life and um
Guest:have been on and off medications for those and when i'm not on them i try to be very acutely aware of like self-medicating having three drinks instead of two you don't need that third one right right so you have to kind of self self-police yourself because yeah i'm yeah i have anxiety issues myself and i have
Marc:I don't know if I've you know, I've really thought about it a lot, but I don't think that what I've had is depression.
Marc:I think it's more it's a higher level of anxiety that manifests itself in dread.
Marc:So like I'm not I'm not like I can't get out of bed guy.
Guest:You know, I don't get that.
Guest:No, probably only very short periods of my life that were always attached to an actual thing that happened, like, you know, a death or something where it's appropriate behavior for a while until you have to put the pants on.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, that's good.
Guest:Me either.
Guest:No, but, you know, depression, anxiety, and dread, and catastrophic thinking.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And all that.
Guest:That is...
Guest:I've been told, I don't know, like a type of depression, depending on like how it manifests in your life.
Guest:So yes, I'm with you.
Guest:There's not, there hasn't been a lot of like, and if I have a job, I will, I don't think.
Marc:Yeah, busy's good.
Guest:There has never been... Yeah, but that's a little bit of a problem.
Guest:It's like as soon as stuff is still, like right now.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But I don't take that stuff to work.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:That's why I am painting and I'm trying to write and... Oh, yeah.
Marc:You're writing?
Guest:Sculpt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are you writing a lot now?
Marc:No, I'm not fucking writing anything.
Marc:Everything... Like, it's just like...
Marc:There's like this weird thing where like when Lynn passed away, I mean, it's been almost four months.
Marc:That's nothing though.
Marc:I know, but it shattered everything.
Marc:But the thing is, there's parties that are like, I should keep a journal about this.
Marc:And I'm like, I can't do it.
Marc:And then I was like sort of wondering, should I pressure myself to write?
Marc:And I'm like, don't do fucking anything, dude.
Marc:Just fucking do it if you got to do the deal.
Marc:So I haven't really been.
Marc:And because there's no stand-up really,
Marc:I'm not really making notes compulsively, but it's starting to come back a little bit, you know, like in terms of like, you know, having a little freedom from the daily, you know, quicksand of grief.
Marc:But like, but like, you know, I'm starting to be OK.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And maybe I'll start writing.
Marc:What are you writing?
Guest:I'm trying to write a script.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm so hamming and hawing because I am surrounded by so many brilliant writers in my life that I get very nauseous trying to say like, I'm writing a script.
Guest:I've been asked to help people with scripts and stuff.
Guest:And take a look at, like, character voice or repeated beats and a lot of that stuff for a really, really long time.
Guest:Because in theater, I was doing almost all new play development where you work with the writer to flesh out the play or work on a new draft.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I really, really love writers.
Guest:And I really love the relationship of characters.
Guest:interpreting their words and figuring out how to highlight their voice instead of make it my voice.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:So that is kind of making me think.
Guest:I wrote a short that I co-directed that was part of a trilogy that was all about in praise of quitting that I think people should embrace quitting things more.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And then, yeah, I'm trying to write another one.
Guest:And I'm also trying to write down just some essays, like short essays.
Marc:It's good to you know, it's interesting about writing, which I because I hate writing.
Marc:I fucking hate it.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I've written books.
Marc:I hate it.
Marc:But the one thing I know about it is that when you get going, you will learn things about yourself.
Marc:Like you will put things together differently than you would have thought you would.
Marc:Like there is an element of discovery to even writing about like an essay or about yourself, a memoir.
Marc:Like all of a sudden it's like, wow, that's exactly what it is.
Marc:But I never knew it that way.
Marc:You know, there is.
Marc:I like that part of it.
Marc:But it takes too long to get there.
Marc:I can't fucking deal.
Guest:Were you writing more prose before you started writing stand-up or were you writing your stand-up act first?
Marc:I mean, I usually work through most of my stuff on stage first through improvisation and then kind of it becomes something over time.
Marc:I hammer it.
Marc:I write outlines.
Marc:I write ideas.
Marc:I write...
Marc:Like a lot of different one line things that aren't necessarily stand up poetic things, little things like I write.
Marc:I used to write that kind of stuff constantly, but it's just an active brain.
Marc:And eventually things that would make it in would just make it in over repetition.
Marc:It was not.
Guest:Did you always feel like what you were writing, when you started writing, did it immediately feel like, oh, I think I'm value added?
Guest:I mean, did it all feel like, I think this is a niche where I can contribute.
Guest:It is worthwhile for me to write.
Marc:No, I always think that this is a waste of time.
Marc:No one's going to read this.
Marc:There's no real money in it, and it'll change nothing.
Guest:Okay.
All right.
Guest:You should do one of those commencement speeches.
Guest:That was beautiful.
Marc:I have done that.
Marc:I did that at this podcast festival where I was a keynote speaker, and it was all a racket.
Marc:And once I realized that it was a festival put together by old radio hacks who were just trying to sell people on an entrepreneurial fucking teaching weekend to bilk people out of money to think that that podcast is some great business idea.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I got up in front of all these people.
Marc:I said, look, man, it's probably not going to work out.
Marc:So it's very hard to get people to listen to your thing.
Marc:It was hilarious.
Marc:So anyways.
Guest:So that's not untrue.
Guest:The times that I've been asked to mentor or coach.
Guest:Actors, young actors, actor wannabes, whatever.
Guest:The majority of the time, or even if I just coach a single person and audition, which I do from time to time.
Guest:The majority of the time when someone wants to ask me something about the business, they actually want to know how to get a TV show, how to work with Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.
Guest:Before this, it was, you know, how to get in a sitcom.
Guest:And I know this is...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They want, they want, they want, what are the steps?
Marc:Do you have it written down?
Guest:They want to be famous.
Guest:And even if it's not about fame, their idea of success is an extremely narrow definition of it.
Guest:Um,
Guest:And you'll hear it even when people say phrases like, when you made it, or is this the big thing, like when you knew you made it?
Guest:Well, I mean, the first time I did a play at DCAC, a small theater in Adams Morgan, which was my first theater production that had zero to do with college.
Guest:It was not an academic thing.
Guest:It was not a teacher making a phone call.
Guest:I showed up in my backpack, and I read lines, and I got a part.
Guest:$5, no pay for rehearsal, $5 a show as a non-equity performance.
Guest:And multiple times we could not get, it wasn't equity house, but I was a non-union performer performing there.
Guest:And there's a equity rule that if there are more people on stage than in the audience, the cast can elect to not go on, to not do the play.
Guest:It was only a two-hander and we still had to have that vote.
Guest:many nights and I, I performed not well.
Guest:It was very, very early on in my career, but I performed my heart out for solo people all the time.
Guest:And I bring all that up to say, like, to me, that was, that was, that was making it.
Guest:And even if there hadn't been a play to decide that I want to not go to the party that everyone's going to, because I love
Guest:reading and rereading and rereading and rereading a script and a scene and breaking it down and trying to figure out why this person behaves the way they do and everything that everything that's going on internally while the external is happening is endlessly fascinating to me and still is and i try to tell these actors that is actually the majority of what being an actress much like being a writer it's not book signings even if you're wildly famous you're mostly alone writing
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I love to be on set and I'm I'm I couldn't be more grateful for the best part of my career and some of the best people I've ever met working with right now.
Guest:But I still spend.
Guest:90% of the time alone, reading and memorizing and trying to figure out the umpteenth different version of that line and how to say it.
Guest:And then, as you well know, how to then let all of that homework go and just be present when you get to set.
Guest:Somehow just...
Guest:Right.
Marc:You there there.
Marc:You love the craft.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So like for me with stand up, like there was no choice in my mind or in my heart as to what I was going to do.
Marc:And it had nothing to do with making a living, really.
Marc:You know, it was like that.
Marc:This was my this chose me to this is how I was chosen to do this.
Marc:I don't know what chose me, but.
Marc:But there is a generation of people and I guess there always has been that just think like, well, I just need to apply my ambition to this set of steps that will enable me to be a success monetarily and fame wise.
Marc:So help me with my ambition, please.
Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's not creativity.
Marc:That's not passion.
Marc:That's not it's just there.
Marc:And I see it all the time, man.
Marc:You know, some people are just sort of like they some people are better at hiding it than others.
Marc:And there's nothing wrong with some ambition.
Marc:But if that's all that's driving you, it's a little disconcerting.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Now, are you do you feel like you're ambitious enough?
Marc:No.
Guest:See, I don't I don't either.
Marc:But I'm good.
Marc:I just want to make a living and have health insurance.
Marc:I'm you know, I just you know, and like it happened so late in the game for me.
Marc:Like, I'm happy that I can save some money.
Marc:I have health insurance for what it's worth until the health insurance that we have goes broke because no one's working.
Marc:And, you know, but like, you know, I can kind of eat at any restaurant that I want to when there's places to eat.
Marc:So that's good, you know?
Marc:I mean, I wasn't like, I'm not a guy that's sort of like, I need more, I need to win, I need another house.
Guest:And you haven't had a day job in how long?
Guest:I mean, that's my other problem.
Marc:Since 1988.
Guest:I'm like, yeah.
Guest:Mine's 94.
Marc:But there were some lean fucking times, man.
Marc:I mean, I didn't have a day job, but I wasn't living large.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, believe me.
Guest:When I first got a sitcom and I came out here and it was ABC and, you know, you make good money, but I also had spent all, I had no savings and was broke by the time I got here.
Guest:So I wanted to save it all.
Guest:Number one, because you hear all the stories that like, well, what if the pilot doesn't get picked up?
Guest:Don't be that person that goes and buys a car.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I saw that happen so many times.
Guest:So did I. It's a real story.
Guest:And I also, you know, and this is it's a version of the imposter syndrome, but it's actually more the catastrophic thinking that we're talking about.
Guest:There's always a part of me that thinks any Monday you might be in a cardboard box.
Guest:This might all go up in smoke.
Guest:And so it's about constantly saving money.
Guest:But in reality, it really is because I don't want I had some lean times, too.
Guest:And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't want to wait tables.
Guest:And God love anybody that can do that.
Guest:But I'm purposely saving every penny and belaboring whether I should get new shoes at Marshall's because the old ones are fine because I don't want to have to take a day job.
Marc:not because i'm above it but because i want to spend that time always constantly towards the next acting job and the next creative thing yeah i've got the same brain like i it takes me a lot to like spend money but like i'm getting a little better at it because like the world is ending so i'm like it
Guest:i'm trying because i'm kind of like i think it's weird that i don't own anything like it used to be this like romantic idea i didn't have credit cards for a really long time because i watched people in debt coming straight out of college and um my dad's life insurance is what my dad didn't leave me money he didn't have money and and um
Guest:I'm not saying they're poor, but there was no like, here's a bunch of money to now take care of yourself.
Guest:So I used his life insurance policy to pay for my college in cash and was done.
Guest:So no student loans or any of that.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, huge, massive.
Guest:gift i would have rather had him but i think he'd be happy that that's what i spent it on um and so i'm coming out of college and i was like i'm not having any debt i keep watching all these people sink if i had to actually figure out how to have three job at the time two day jobs and rehearsing theater at night and then i had massive debt i my head would explode and i know millions of people are dealing with that um and
Guest:So I was like, I'm not going to have any credit cards.
Guest:I'm never going to owe anybody.
Guest:If I can't afford the thing right now, I don't get it.
Guest:And that's the way I lived all the way.
Guest:And I constantly subletted apartments.
Guest:And I finally got to a place where I was the sole renter and had to sign paperwork.
Guest:And I remember it was DuPont Circle in D.C.
Guest:And the guy said, for this like hovel little studio efficiency apartment.
Guest:And he said, well, I have to run a credit check.
Guest:And I said, oh, go ahead.
Guest:I couldn't wait.
Guest:I thought it was going to be like bells would go off and they'd be like, this is literally the only person in the world who doesn't owe a single cent to anyone, not lunch money from sixth grade, like nothing.
Guest:And no, he comes back and he's like, I can't rent to you at all.
Guest:You have no credit.
Guest:I go, well, no, I don't have any debt.
Guest:I said, you have no credit.
Yeah.
Guest:And I'm embarrassed to say, I think I was, I think I was like 28.
Guest:Yeah, that's how they get you.
Marc:That's the fucking game.
Guest:It's such bullshit.
Marc:You're supposed to carry a little bit of debt just to show that you can pay off things.
Guest:This superintendent...
Guest:gentleman who had no time for me and also had to be like the janitor in this apartment building, um, sat me down on the curb in August in DC and explained credit into me and said, you've got to get a credit card and you've got to, you know, just don't pay off like $2 a month.
Guest:Just always leave this like slight running balance until you have credit.
Guest:And then just out of the good of his heart rented me the apartment.
Guest:Cause I had, I had nowhere to go.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:So going back there, so you were going to be a painter, but then at some point you decided acting was it?
Guest:You grew up in Albuquerque, right?
Marc:I did.
Guest:So did you have, and this isn't a facetious question or a mocking question, did you have any outlets where you were like, oh, that's a viable career to be a stand-up comedian or to act?
Guest:I didn't have anything like that anywhere near me.
Marc:No, I didn't think about that stuff.
Marc:I just like at some point because I was somewhat, you know, entitled and my heroes were all, you know, intellectuals and artists and everything else.
Marc:I just knew that I wanted to be, you know, educated.
Marc:Like I did photography for a while and I kind of wanted to act in college.
Marc:But no, I never saw any making money was not part of my big plan for some reason.
Marc:I just wanted to be educated and creative.
Guest:No, I just wanted to like, I just wanted there to be salons with Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker.
Marc:Yeah, that would be good.
Guest:And paint people's dining rooms red and do the whole thing.
Guest:But yeah, I just wanted to be in the arts.
Guest:And I grew up with...
Guest:Southerners as parents that were really great storytellers.
Guest:My dad, if he tells you that he got stuck in traffic on the way to 7-Eleven or my mom wants to tell you about picking up eggs, it's a great... They could win the moth.
Guest:My mom should try.
Guest:And so I was just used to that being taken on a journey.
Guest:And I remember my dad very long...
Guest:thin lanky guy and uh he would very slowly shift his weight left or right and re-cross your legs and switch the other one to the other side and that was this pause and it was literally about you know like so i drive in in the 7-eleven parking lot i'll tell you and it would be like a big shift and it's nothing nothing happened but didn't matter everyone was riveted um but it's good it's a good it's a good building device like you know yeah drawing it out
Guest:Right.
Guest:My sister's hysterical.
Guest:So my dad did, as far as I can tell, I mean, there's just no way around it.
Guest:My sister agrees.
Guest:Had to have had massive undiagnosed depression.
Guest:And he had this job where he couldn't tell people, including us and any close friends, mostly what he was doing at any given time.
Guest:And never talked about Vietnam.
Guest:I know he said that his hearing was bad in one ear because of someone trying to shoot him in the head and the gunshot was so close that it damaged his hearing.
Marc:Well, and maybe he had the PTSD, right?
Guest:He could have.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There was also stuff where... I mean, his main job was...
Guest:finding out that one of our own, including in his own office, had turned, turned the other side, you know, and was spying for the other side.
Guest:So I can't imagine you could maintain friends.
Guest:Although he was very, he was very well liked, but he was extremely,
Guest:private very funny very wry super dry sense of humor that i to this day love when people are good at that like the kind of thing where you don't even care if the person ever gets that you were kidding like he'd drive home snickering knowing that you did not get it um right super dry and what he would do when he would come home sometimes after doing we don't know what for a couple days is um yeah definitely drink
Guest:But he would go to his, what was supposed to be his office, but it was not filled with a bunch of like government stuff that was all on base where you had that stuff.
Guest:It was filled with drawing supplies.
Guest:His mom was an expert drawer and oil painter and taught it.
Guest:And he painted and drew with her.
Guest:And that is what he did.
Guest:to self-soothe, to get his feelings out.
Guest:And it was all escapist art.
Guest:It was all very Americana, Wild West stuff.
Guest:I have pieces from when he was in Vietnam.
Guest:They wouldn't let him take his sketchbooks and everything because it was extra baggage that's not necessary.
Guest:he stuffed charcoal in any pockets of any of the uniforms and little charcoal nibs.
Guest:And then when there were bombs and stuff in the street, he would take the pieces of cardboard and paper that would go flying and drew from memory these like,
Guest:cowboys on horses like very like old west americana stuff uh and and then he framed them in these irregular shapes he kept them that way and so i grew up watching him and that was a very normal thing to do when my sister and i were being uh out of control we were told to go draw all the time and so we did and then he would correct our drawings um
Guest:He even, like, shaded by, like, he would do, like, anatomical shading on my hollyhopping coloring books.
Guest:My sister and I were always horrified.
Guest:We were like, it made her look old and weird.
Guest:But it was extremely normal.
Guest:And he also, he and my mother expected my sister and I to be well-spoken and articulate.
Guest:And when some...
Guest:very powerful people.
Guest:I'm sure very intellectual people were coming over.
Guest:Not as much like you're talking about.
Guest:It wasn't like artists and musicians were coming over.
Guest:There were more government people, but they were very worldly and having these very adult conversations.
Guest:And my sister and I were always expected to participate.
Guest:And as my fiance says, his dad used to say that they needed, yes, it's good to be interesting, but you need to be interested just as much.
Guest:And yeah,
Guest:This whole swirl of things made me think, oh, I want to be in the arts.
Guest:I need to be an artist.
Guest:I have to like be able to just like discuss ideas and then I'm going to go into my studio and paint.
Guest:And I loved painting and I was good enough at it that I started getting sent to a gifted school for painting after regular school from a pretty young age and went all the way up to going to college.
Guest:And the whole time,
Guest:I was obsessed with TV and movies.
Guest:I fully own that I was raised by the television.
Guest:Snuck the television, got a restriction for watching television.
Guest:Nick at Night at the time was old sitcoms.
Guest:It wasn't children's stuff.
Guest:So I'd watch old black and white stuff.
Guest:And later it was the art house movie theaters and watching French films.
Guest:And I wanted to do... I was like, oh, that's actually how I want to tell stories.
Guest:It's that.
Guest:But American television at the time and films, everybody either seemed to already have parents who are in the business or they live in Hollywood or they look like models.
Guest:There was just not a lot of room.
Guest:And I didn't.
Guest:I was...
Guest:I mean, at the time, quite chunky.
Guest:And it just seemed – I felt sure that I would be laughed at in my face if I said, like, I think I'll be an actor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I went to school, and I was going to major in painting, and I was majoring in painting, and you had to take an elective that was not in your chosen major.
Guest:So there was an acting class, and I took it, and Lenny Raybuck was my teacher.
Guest:And I'm very, very lucky that that first class was not –
Guest:a feel good sort of emotional, uh, non-disciplined kind of class.
Guest:It was, uh, it was practical aesthetic handbook, which is the Atlantic theaters, um, craft and, and, uh, and techniques.
Marc:And I loved it.
Marc:It's all in the script.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And objectives, motivations, tactics, super objective, the given circumstance, all of these things.
Guest:And to me, I was in love instantly because I thought, oh, taking away it being just like an ethereal magic thing that you may or may not possess.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Wasn't some people that's like de-romanticizing it as an art form.
Guest:To me, it made it an art form.
Guest:I was like, oh, I get that.
Guest:I know how to sit down and work is a practical system tools.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The fact that you, and it was so relieving to me coming from a lot of chaos in my house.
Guest:And it wasn't just my dad, like just a lot of stuff going on surrounding my sister and I, and, uh,
Guest:It almost was like, psychiatrically, a really big gift to me to start actually thinking about why people behave the way they behave, and what's going on internally, even though they're saying something else.
Guest:We had people with anger issues around us, we had, of course, the alcoholic, that's
Guest:not making sense sometimes, and then other times not remembering what they said, and then other times apologizing for what they said.
Guest:I had a lot of Southern relatives that smiled through their teeth, but they would stab you in the back in a heartbeat, but it's all very, very polite.
Guest:And so it was...
Guest:My sister and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell anybody actually meant at all times.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so the acting thing, I was just like, oh, that is how you make a character
Guest:feel human.
Guest:That even when you're watching somebody and they have decided some internal choices and some internal motivations, even the ones that you'll never see that are not script related to an obvious objective, they will come alive more real to you.
Guest:There's something you will feel tactile about it, but it's like that's that's more real.
Guest:And so it was that.
Guest:And then I fell in love with it.
Guest:I just couldn't.
Guest:There was no chance I would do anything else.
Guest:And I didn't.
Guest:Same as you did not.
Guest:Had no idea if I could make a living on it, but it didn't matter.
Guest:That's what I do.
Marc:And so after college, you just started doing the small theater stuff.
Guest:I started getting involved with professional theaters before I even left college.
Guest:I noticed a lot of kids, you know, and it's just like, you got to take, you take the, the, the hand you're dealt of course.
Guest:And I wasn't looking for the silver lining at the time, but I look back and I think, wow, I was really kind of on my own when I was in college.
Guest:And yeah,
Guest:paying all my bills myself and trying to figure out everything.
Guest:And that made me keenly aware that there were a lot of kids there who thought they'd wait till they got out of college to kind of figure it out.
Guest:And then maybe you'll go intern.
Guest:And there seemed to be this gap between academic and professional education.
Guest:And because my school had a lot of adjunct teachers, we had almost all professional.
Guest:There was a professional painter teaching painting who had a show that night at a gallery and professional actors who were working this weekend in a play.
Guest:And they didn't have a lot of time to coddle anybody.
Guest:It was very matter of fact.
Guest:A lot of speeches like you gave to the podcast people of like, listen, you'll probably never make it, but here's how you can actually learn how to act.
Guest:I don't give a shit if you figure out how to make a career out of it.
Guest:I pushed myself to volunteer to read stage directions for new plays downtown.
Guest:I started taking the Metro into Washington, D.C.
Guest:where there's some of, I think, the best theater in the world.
Guest:Just like the most amazing theater happening there.
Guest:And
Guest:I would volunteer to read the stage directions in a basement for a new play or volunteered ushering, volunteered backstage, props, food props, anything just to be around people professionally doing it.
Guest:So by the time I was auditioning, it was a much smoother transition because people already knew me.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I talked to someone whose mom used to run a theater, Jason Zinneman's mom.
Marc:I don't know which theater she ran, though, in D.C., but it feels like it was.
Guest:Joy Zinneman is his mom, and she ran studio theater.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:How do you like that?
Guest:I had a class with her.
Guest:How interesting.
Guest:What were you talking to Jason about?
Marc:Well, he's the comedy critic for The New York Times.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I never I mean, I've read articles, but I never even connected that like that joy is funny.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:I acted in her theater.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was all about theater.
Marc:And that was the thing.
Marc:And you had no idea how you were going to get out here or do that.
Guest:I didn't really care.
Guest:I mean, I wanted to do, because I first fell in love with acting, watching things on camera, I knew that I wanted to try that as well.
Guest:But it was not like theater was a stepping stone to get to that.
Guest:I loved them both equally.
Guest:A lot of the plays that I was doing, especially the ones that were new play development, would then go to New York.
Guest:And part of the reason that I loved DC theater is the playwrights would sometimes take really big risks doing the DC opening.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it matters, and the Washington Post matters, and they're very savvy theater audiences there.
Guest:But if you fail, your career isn't over like it is if the New York Times says your play sucks.
Guest:So they would try a lot of stuff, and it was really cool.
Guest:And then those plays were transferred to New York, and sometimes they'd transfer, and I wanted to go, and they didn't – a lot of the theaters there –
Guest:Now they have to they have to sell tickets.
Guest:So they either do New York Juilliard people or they do New York named people.
Guest:So I started traveling up and trying to audition and little by little ended up just saying, you know, I'm just going to I'm going to move up there for a beat to try some theater there.
Guest:And I did and got cast in a couple of things.
Guest:And then I was doing a play for Playwrights Horizons when I auditioned on videotape for a sitcom that brought me here to L.A.
Guest:And people were saying all the time, you know, if you want if you ever want to start TV, you have to go out.
Guest:You have to fly out for pilot season.
Marc:But right.
Guest:I'm way too thin skinned.
Guest:Did you do it?
Marc:Yeah, they used to send me out for pilot season, but it was a joke.
Marc:It was just a fucking joke.
Marc:I mean, I've had TV deals over my career, but you know what I mean?
Marc:But the goal for the stand-up really was like, you want to get a show, you want to get a deal and hook up with a writer who will create a show around you.
Marc:That was always the big thing.
Marc:Because the models were like Roseanne, Ray, Brett Butler, you know, that was the model.
Marc:You your comedic persona was so honed that, you know, it was just a no brainer to make you the center of a show.
Marc:And I don't know why at that age I ever thought that I would be that.
Marc:I mean, I eventually did one on IFC that, you know, no one watched.
Marc:But but it was a good show for four seasons.
Marc:But it was almost a lot of what I've done lately in my life is just sort of like, well, I always wanted to do this and now I can.
Marc:So I'm just going to do it to check it off the list.
Marc:I don't give a fuck.
Marc:But, you know, let's let's get it done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's pretty amazing that you can.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:And I was able to do it on my terms and everything worked out good.
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:But for you, I would go out there, but it would just be like, I didn't know what I was doing.
Marc:I didn't understand how show business worked.
Marc:I didn't either.
Guest:I did not either.
Marc:How old were you when you came out here?
Guest:32 playing like 22 in most things.
Guest:I looked a lot younger.
Marc:So you were doing theater for like a decade.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Like 12, like 12 years before you even came out here.
Guest:And I am thankful for it.
Guest:I, I, I firmly understood what I was doing and what I loved about what I was doing.
Guest:And so, yeah, I wanted to, you know, do television and, and, and films, but.
Guest:It wasn't because I thought that's what I'll finally make me think that I'm that I love this or that I'm any good at this.
Guest:I mean, I'm still evolving.
Guest:And, you know, I always think like shame, shame on you if you don't get better with every single scene you do.
Guest:But right.
Guest:But I knew at the time I was like, well, I know.
Guest:I know what I'm doing enough that I will show people this snapshot of a character that I came up with and either I fit the way they're telling this story or, or, or I don't.
Guest:Now that doesn't mean to say that I didn't go in and have my heart broken a couple of times where I was like, they are wrong.
Guest:I definitely was the right person to tell a story.
Guest:And like a lot of people just, I have a, a way it goes back to the, what I told you that I fell in love with.
Guest:when I was studying acting and that's to have an internal life to have a fully and I've done sitcoms that I'm totally proud of sitcoms get a bad rap and they shouldn't especially multicams as far as like the quality of acting or whatever and it's like which ones you ask anybody what their favorite sitcom is and they're going to tell you Seinfeld Cheers all in the family all these ones that are actual multicams it's just about how smartly they're written in and how smartly people are about to what's your favorite sitcom from when you were growing up
Guest:Growing up, Maud.
Guest:I've modeled two characters in my life completely after Bea Arthur, and I'm not sad.
Marc:Which ones?
Guest:My first one in Iron With Her, there is so much Bea Arthur in that.
Guest:It's like Bea Arthur trapped in a punk naysaying butthole little sister.
Yeah.
Guest:That's what I was like.
Marc:Well, that's funny because there was an aggravated Jewish man trapped in Bea Arthur.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Her timing, anything she did or Madeline Kahn or Gilda Radner did, I was just like, that's it.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I got to learn how to do that.
Marc:Yeah, great timing.
Marc:Great comedic timing.
Guest:So great.
Guest:I was working in Brooklyn, living and working in Brooklyn at the time, doing a play, and I did this videotape.
Guest:And like I said, a lot of people didn't want much to do with
Guest:My acting, because even though I started chunky and crew cut shaved black hair, by that time I was, had long blonde hair and was thinner and fit and that shouldn't matter.
Guest:But I started getting called in for parts that were girlfriends that do nothing and,
Guest:And I would make up whole lives for them.
Guest:Like, well, clearly there's a reason why you're just standing here quietly.
Guest:So I'll be a crack addict or whatever.
Guest:Like I always had to like have a thing.
Guest:And it wasn't about, I promise you, I wasn't trying to steal the scene.
Guest:I just wanted to be active in the scene.
Guest:And people did not care for that a lot.
Guest:And then all of a sudden I got this call about this part.
Guest:And I had made up this character, Sherry, that I loved, would have done in my driveway for no one.
Guest:I would have done it on the subway.
Guest:And my agent called and said, they want you to come out to LA to screen test for this.
Guest:I was like, really?
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:And she said, well, listen, the only thing she said, I just need to tell you something.
Guest:And it's not going to be funny here, but they're telling me.
Guest:So I'm just going to tell you.
Guest:I said, OK.
Guest:She said, it's.
Guest:It's they kind of need in the studio and network test.
Guest:They kind of need to have some people for people to say no to so that they look so that the network feels like they chose the person themselves.
Guest:So there's basically some filler around them, but you have to be good.
Guest:They don't want to embarrass themselves, but there's basically no way you can get this job.
Guest:The network wants a star because it was definitely, it was like the Megan Mullaly part.
Guest:It was the joke part, like all the zingers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, like, so they want, they want to get a big name and they've got some people on hold and some people interested.
Guest:And then also the so-and-so has a friend that he wants to do it.
Guest:And I went on and on and on.
Guest:And I was like, okay.
Guest:And she was like, but you'll be in front of LA casting people and ABC people.
Guest:And you've never been to, you know, LA, all of these things are great.
Guest:And I was like, yeah.
Guest:And then I asked if,
Guest:We had to stay overnight.
Guest:I said, even if I don't even if I don't move forward, do I get to stay overnight?
Guest:And the reason was because everyone at the time was watching Sopranos and I didn't have cable.
Guest:I just wanted to know.
Guest:She's like, yeah.
Guest:I was like, OK, so like there'll be cable in the hotel.
Guest:And she said, yeah, I was like, yeah, let's do it.
Guest:And I went and they brought me in and they flew in at like.
Guest:I want to say I got in like 10 o'clock at night.
Guest:The studio test was supposed to be the next day around nine.
Guest:And they put me up at the Sheridan over in City Walk.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Yeah, I know that one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember waking up around five.
Guest:I didn't even get to sleep.
Guest:I was very nervous.
Guest:I was like, okay, I got to get some sleep.
Guest:It's like 2 o'clock in the morning, 2.30 in the morning, and I'm trying to make myself go to sleep.
Guest:And I thought, okay, I'll just... And I was still in my clothes trying to calm down.
Guest:And I thought, well, I'll just... Even though I was told I couldn't get the job, I was still very nervous.
Guest:I thought everyone would see me as...
Guest:Um, not belonging, which is how I feel everywhere.
Guest:And so I was like, I'll just get up in the morning.
Guest:I'll take a shower and I'll review my site and, uh, set, you know, so I set my alarm and then around five, like a little after 5.00 AM, the hotel phone was ringing and the woman said, uh, maybe it was like five 30.
Guest:She said, your cab is waiting downstairs.
Guest:And I said, okay, well, okay, that's great.
Guest:I have like three and a half hours still.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:This woman starts yelling behind her, I forgot to put the fax under her door.
Guest:And I said, wait, what?
Guest:They had had something where they needed to fast track this.
Guest:So they made the network test that was supposed to be a day later, the nine.
Guest:And it meant the studio test now had to be at seven, which meant the work through with the writer had to be at six.
Guest:So they needed to make it in a cab now and I'm in my Like three hours of sleep Deep trench mark sheet marks on my face which apparently are on camera in the audition because Marco Pinnett told me that he has tape of it and I am greasy and Haven't eaten and trying to wake I call my agent.
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:This is not fair.
Guest:She was like, okay
Guest:She finds out from them that they're basically like, look, sorry.
Guest:I mean, she was kind of just the filler anyway.
Guest:Like we can't change the studio network test for her.
Guest:And so my agent said, I'm so sorry, but what do you want to do?
Guest:And I said, well, how much time can they give me?
Guest:She said, you got to be downstairs in 10 minutes.
Guest:So I decided I will brush my teeth.
Guest:That's all I got.
Guest:I was like, you can't take a shower, get ready at that point.
Guest:It'll be worse.
Guest:You just look like this instead.
Guest:I was like, I'm just going to brush my teeth and then try to be calm.
Guest:And I'm just going to go do this little part and there's nothing I can do about it.
Guest:And I went and I was so tired and so hungry.
Guest:And so not understanding what a studio test or a network test was.
Guest:I just didn't understand the process at all.
Marc:You were going to be in a room in front of 30 people.
Guest:No, no idea.
Guest:And as a matter of fact, I and I now know that this isn't normal.
Guest:They told us right then and there they had to go so fast from studio to network that they told us right in the hallway.
Guest:Like you can stay.
Guest:You're going.
Guest:You stay.
Guest:You go.
Guest:You go.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And and so it's so cool.
Guest:It was pretty bad.
Guest:And they were, by the way, the people there were so nice.
Guest:I don't think it was ABC's fault.
Guest:I think it was timing or something went wrong or whatever.
Guest:So I kept asking, apparently, and I barely remember this.
Guest:It was Chris Henschey and Marco Panette's story.
Guest:It was Chris Henschey's
Guest:sitcom based around his real life of him dating brook shields um and terry polo was playing the like famous celebrity the brook shields part and um i apparently kept asking people when we would be allowed to eat because i was so hungry and falling asleep and uh
Guest:And they were like, I'm not sure, but you just made it to the network test.
Guest:I was like, that's so great.
Guest:Do they have food there?
Guest:Because I did not understand at all.
Guest:And I realized like, wow, there was like 20 people in there.
Guest:Now there's four.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And then we were in this holding room.
Guest:And then they told us to go in this other room.
Guest:They said, Ray, can you go in that room?
Guest:And the room was the ABC testing one where it's a theater, but you're entering from like the back of the house and you're going down the stairs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that where people just filed in.
Guest:But I didn't know that meant I'm going to stage.
Guest:I thought like, oh, the next room we now wait in is this theater.
Guest:Like I'll sit in the audience.
Guest:But they had a table set up with, I guess, the network's like breakfast.
Guest:It was like bagels and lox and a bunch of stuff.
Guest:So I just went to the table and started making.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I was literally supposed to be the person who comes in and goes straight to the stage.
Guest:So I just started making like a bagel and some cream cheese.
Guest:And.
Guest:kelly abc casting was her last name so nice she's sitting right there and she's like right next to me in the aisle and i just remember her whispering and she goes that um that's not for you you're supposed to be on stage was it kelly lee was it like yes yes and i turn around i go what and she goes yeah that's um
Guest:it's your turn to be on the stage.
Guest:And I said, Oh, can I, can I keep this?
Guest:And I put like my bagel on the edge on a little plate.
Guest:And I remember thinking like, I'm getting it on the way, fucking out.
Guest:I don't fucking care what anybody says.
Guest:And I go down and I still like, it's the same as what you're saying.
Guest:Like I didn't understand the business.
Guest:I did give a shit.
Guest:There's no way I could say I don't give a shit.
Guest:I just did it.
Guest:know the game right and I started to read and I realized like I looked up and I realized like oh shit there's like 30 people in here with the house lights up and it made me very nervous and I was like I did not come all this way to not do this little portrait that I like and I don't care if you like it but I like it and I'm going to do the one I want to do so I stopped I go whoa that was weird I got weird there we got to start over and everyone's like what I was like yeah hang on and I just like sat
Guest:And then calm down.
Guest:And then I went again and I did it.
Guest:And I left and I went back to my hotel room.
Guest:And about a half an hour later, it was very fast.
Guest:My agent called and said, she's like crying.
Guest:She was like, what, what happened?
Guest:I was like, why?
Guest:I was like, I know I ate the bagel and I didn't know I had to go to stage.
Guest:And she was like, she goes, no, they're all calling and saying like, does she have nerves of steel?
Guest:They were like, nothing affects her.
Guest:She blew everyone away and she got the job.
Guest:And the show got picked up and they flew me there like a month later.
Guest:I didn't know anybody I stayed at the Oakwoods.
Marc:The Oakwood Apartments.
Marc:That's a great story.
Marc:And that started you rolling.
Marc:But it looks like when I look at the resume of the stuff you did, I mean, after you did I'm With Her, that was nice.
Marc:You got your health insurance.
Marc:You got your cards.
Guest:I got my Marshalls shoes.
Marc:You got your money.
Marc:But then you were just kind of kicking around doing things here and there, right?
Guest:I actually did a lot of I did a lot of pilots that weren't picked up and some of my favorite things I was working consistently there was I want to say the following over the following 10 years you know a couple of them went for a while Franklin and Bash I did for a long time Whitney um
Marc:But there was a lot you did.
Guest:Yeah, there was a lot of pilots.
Guest:I mean, some were just heartbreakers.
Guest:I did Mitch Hurwitz and Christopher Guest's The Thick of It, which was the original American interpretation of In the Loop that later, later, later became Veep.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And thank God it did, because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a genius.
Guest:And I'm so happy that all of that happened.
Guest:But but at the time, that was a heartbreaker for me.
Guest:That's where I first worked with Michael McKean.
Guest:It was Christopher Guest and all his people and me.
Guest:And I felt like I was like a Make-A-Wish Foundation kid.
Guest:I couldn't believe.
Marc:Wow, that's great.
Marc:So, you know, it's interesting looking at all the stuff you have done.
Marc:I forget that people do those things that you get.
Marc:You shoot a bunch of stuff that doesn't just doesn't go.
Marc:Did you do a lot of pilots?
Marc:No, but you get paid.
Marc:No, I didn't do a lot of pilots.
Marc:I, you know, I was, you know, I had deals over time to create shows for me with writers and none of them ever even made it to pilot, you know, over the decades that I was doing that kind of stuff.
Guest:Do you ever want to create, would you, would you ever create work for someone else?
Marc:Nah.
Nah.
Marc:No, no, I didn't.
Marc:No, I, you know, I did my thing and I was never really in the market to be a writer.
Marc:But but I did have several sort of deals and development deals.
Marc:And, you know, I worked with writers over the course of my life before we did Marin on IFC.
Marc:I probably generated four or five pilot scripts for me that didn't go with different networks.
Marc:So I was around, but not as an actor.
Marc:You know, it was always sort of like, you're a comic, you know, what's your idea for you?
Marc:What's your persona going to be doing?
Marc:What are you going to be doing in this show?
Marc:And be like, all right, so here it is.
Marc:He's a chef, you know.
Marc:So you do this.
Marc:You do this performance and they're like, we love it.
Marc:Let's give them a deal and have them meet some of the writers and let's do a script.
Guest:And then what do you owe them for the deal?
Guest:The script and like five rewrites or what do you know?
Marc:Usually you do like you do the script and then, you know, once they decide whether it's going to go or it's not, it's done.
Guest:How many of them did you actually shoot?
Marc:None.
Guest:None.
Marc:Zero.
Marc:So but you do all this stuff.
Marc:And then how does how does Saul happen?
Guest:uh i got pigeonholed as a sitcom actress and i was very aware with whitney and bash and that stuff yeah every all the pilots that i that didn't go to um were all sitcoms and i mean franklin and bash was a one hour but still it was a comedy and um
Guest:I was thrilled.
Guest:I had a ton of friends that weren't getting called for anything, and I was consistently called in for stuff.
Guest:So I knew that I had a lot of gratitude for that, but I was also very confused because that was not a thing in theater.
Guest:You did not say somebody is a comedic or a dramatic actor.
Guest:Sometimes people split up who's classical and who's contemporary, sometimes unfairly, but I had not really seen people split comedy and drama except to the degree...
Guest:And I don't know the science behind this, but yes, there were, I didn't know any comedic actors who couldn't do drama, but I did know some dramatic actors who could not do comedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It doesn't always go both ways.
Guest:Um, but I just wasn't prepared for, I, you know, I would read a dramatic script or hear something that was going to be on and knew that I was right for it.
Guest:And they just wouldn't see me.
Guest:Sometimes they would see me and I'd get to a callback stage and, um,
Guest:the producers were just getting nervous because they'd seen me in a sitcom and there's like, you know, no, no, no, no.
Guest:We need like a dramatic actress.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the whole time there was a number of casting directors and Sharon Bialy, Sherry Thomas and Russell Scott were among those that do not see actors that way.
Guest:And they, um,
Guest:I owe them a lot of gratitude for it because they have seen a body of my work that's larger than has actually ever been on screen because they called me in for tons of stuff that I never got.
Guest:I don't think I actually booked anything for...
Guest:Sharon Bialy and Sherry Thomas in the 10 years I auditioned for them before nine years before I saw.
Guest:And I was just like, they're clearly going to stop calling me in.
Guest:And they did not.
Guest:And they would call me in for huge parts and like deep, dark monologue.
Guest:difficult, challenging, indie role, and then a broad second, all of it.
Guest:And so by the time I auditioned for Saul, Better Call Saul did a wide casting net.
Guest:It was not just calling people.
Guest:And thankfully, you know, if they had just done some offer only thing for five actresses, I would have never met them.
Guest:So I went and I auditioned and they were able to talk to Vincent and Peter about a decade of a body of work of mine that no one else had seen and how I did this and how I did that and how I adapt to this and this, that and the other.
Guest:And
Guest:It really, like, I still get goosebumps.
Guest:It meant so much to me, not just because it is part of how I got this part.
Guest:It is because all those auditions that I prepared for that I didn't have a chance of getting, I still went in with my A game because I like to.
Guest:And because I liked the character that I made up.
Guest:And you think they're just going out to the ether and they don't matter.
Guest:But collectively, they do.
Guest:And they did.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:That's a good story.
Marc:I mean, and and then working with Bob, I've known Bob, you know, since we were, you know, I've known Bob for years, like probably.
Marc:Thirty to thirty three years, you know, and he's always been a collaborative worker.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And, you know, and I knew him before he was like a serious actor.
Marc:Like I've watched him sort of evolve into this acting.
Marc:And I imagine you have as well over the arc of the show.
Marc:He's actually gotten better as time goes on.
Marc:It's sort of fascinating.
Guest:Agreed.
Guest:And I think part of that is the writers, they're seeing like there's nothing he can't do.
Guest:So they keep giving him more.
Guest:And then he challenges himself and he rises above that challenge.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So they just keep giving it more and more layers because he can do it.
Marc:He's very hard on himself.
Guest:very very very very our first season he and i know he wouldn't mind me saying he would say all the time like because i would ask we would have scenes together and i would say we would rehearse we rehearse ad nauseum um and i would talk about this that or the other like in the scene like do you want to try it that way or that way and he would constantly say like well you're the real you're a real actor so you tell me i'm like
Guest:So are you.
Guest:And I would if you ask him how he breaks down a scene, it's exactly like mine.
Guest:But yeah, you're right.
Guest:He's very hard on himself.
Guest:And in his head has this idea of like, I'm a sketch comedy guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:I don't think he feels that way now, but he has.
Marc:Yeah, he learned on the job.
Guest:Yeah, but yeah, you know very well.
Guest:He's got a self-deprecating side for sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I think that the relationship and the sort of depth of it over time between you guys on the show has been really kind of amazing because like there's this weird tension to it where, you know, as you learn more about Kim Wexler and her sort of like kind of weird side that, you know, that not self-sabotaging, but the sort of danger seeking, you know, pushing, you know.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:That you start to understand how they fit together, but you don't really know, you know, what she comes from.
Marc:You sort of know what he comes from.
Marc:So you must have put together some inner life for that character.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did from the very beginning, even when I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to be dead in the next episode.
Guest:Like, I mean, I did that every episode in season one.
Yeah.
Guest:but still you had to like i mean literally i just and patrick fabian and i both would just flip flip flip flip and then we text each other i'm not dead um and so everything was everything was a gift but yeah they're so smart at writing and they hired me and they know the way i they knew how i was going to approach it so when when the pilot had me having
Guest:Two lines, I think I say, we got it, Brenda, or something to the receptionist when he breaks in doing the Ned Beatty, you will atone speech.
Guest:And then there's the garage smoking scene.
Guest:And we share one sentence.
Guest:He says, couldn't you just?
Guest:And I say, you know, I can't.
Guest:And then it says she fixes the trash can that he kicked without looking, which I thought was very important.
Guest:I was like, oh, he does this a lot.
Guest:And she always cleans up after him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But from the very beginning, yeah, I put together a whole backstory.
Guest:I didn't want to hem myself in too tightly because I wanted to be able to take in information.
Guest:But there had to be a reason.
Guest:All of her physicality for me came from, wow, she's very specific about when she speaks and what she says.
Guest:And I don't think it's a position of weakness.
Guest:I think it's a position of power.
Guest:So if you're somebody who is that specific, I didn't have contractions in the first eight episodes.
Guest:And there was a part of me that wanted to ask him like, you don't mind if I say wanna instead of want to or gonna, right?
Guest:And I was like, no, let's see if maybe this will unlock something.
Guest:And it did.
Guest:I was like, this person is so controlled about what she wants you to see.
Guest:And what she doesn't want you to see that maybe she also doesn't really let people see what she's thinking on her face.
Guest:Maybe she's also extremely still in her body, which is 180 degrees opposite of me.
Guest:I would never win at poker and I'm an utter spaz.
Guest:And so that was fun.
Guest:And that was cool to try to figure out how...
Guest:tight I could get it and then fill those dots to constantly have a reason why she's not speaking.
Guest:And a lot of times it's because she's waiting for people in the room to hang themselves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With their own words.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just like kept going down that road.
Guest:And the relationship with Jimmy made sense to me.
Guest:They are both outsiders.
Guest:They are both
Guest:misanthropes in a way and socially very awkward.
Guest:And they both put on masks.
Guest:His is a very flamboyant clownish mask.
Guest:And hers is this armor, this suit and curled ponytail.
Guest:But they have no friends.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Like only honest with each other.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But they have this weird vulnerability with each other, too, that that that has to be unpacked every time that it's going to be expressed almost.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:The most frustrating thing about this pandemic outside of the world possibly ending is that, you know, I have to I have to wait so long for like, you know, because I get the end of last season.
Marc:We thought you were a goner and you weren't.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I didn't know if I was either.
Guest:Although I was just like, well, they would tell me.
Guest:Peter and Vince have always said they would come to come tell me.
Marc:But now it's like set up for like, holy fuck.
Marc:Now what's going to happen?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:They're in the writer's room.
Guest:I think they've broken episode five, I want to say, or six.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:You know, I just interviewed Giancarlo Esposito.
Guest:Such an interesting man, isn't he?
Marc:Yeah, he is.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I had a great time.
Marc:I just wish there wasn't this fucking plague because I was just out there.
Marc:I drove to Taos.
Marc:I could have probably had lunch with him and just been like kind of hung out.
Marc:But like now you can't like you don't ask anybody.
Marc:It's like too weird.
Marc:And, you know, you want to sit there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, maybe we'll get through it.
Marc:Maybe we'll all be OK.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Just be thankful.
Marc:Be thankful you're painting.
Marc:The great thing about you painting is that you know how to paint.
Marc:So it must be nice.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:It is nice.
Marc:It's nice to have something like that where you're like, I'm going to learn how to paint during this.
Marc:Like I play guitar and I play it okay.
Marc:And I have it, you know, when I'm sitting around, I can do it.
Marc:So it's nice to have a skill that's creative and meditative that you actually know how to do so you can get some pleasure out of it.
Guest:Yes, I would agree.
Guest:You can just sort of meditate, self-soothe, get through it.
Marc:It was great talking to you finally.
Guest:You too.
Guest:I hope we do it in person one day soon.
Marc:Yeah, I'm in, like someday when we don't have to wear masks.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But thank you for having me on.
Marc:All right, take it easy.
Guest:Okay, you too.
Marc:That was Ray Sehorne.
Marc:Watch Better Call Saul on AMC.com or the AMC app.
Marc:What a lovely lady.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I'm feeling the weight of the world around my belt line.
Marc:Fucking peanut butter.
Marc:It's good though.
Marc:It's healthy, right?
Marc:I'm going to play this guitar now.
Marc:I'm going to play it.
Guest:Thank you.
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Guest:.
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Guest:Boomer lives, Monkey LaFonda.
Guest:I miss you, cats.