Episode 827 - Glow Writers & Creators
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckacrats?
Marc:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:The fuse of ya?
Marc:And of course, you what the fucknicks, welcome.
Marc:This is my show.
Marc:This is Marc Maron talking in your head as you drive or exercise or run or bake or whatever the hell you paint.
Marc:It's hot here, man.
Marc:It's over a hundred.
Marc:And I got to turn the air conditioner off in here in order to record to have this wonderfully professional sounding product.
Marc:Today on the show, this is the last of a series of shows that we've been doing revolving around the Netflix show Glow, the gorgeous ladies of wrestling, which I am part of.
Marc:It was a great opportunity, really, for this show anyways, to to sort of like track.
Marc:The the the creation of the show in a lot of ways, or at least understand it and be part.
Marc:I'm part of a production that isn't my show.
Marc:And I'm working with a producer that's a genius.
Marc:And I've got today on the show.
Marc:We've got the showrunners, the creators of the show, Carly Mench and Liz Flayhive.
Marc:And we've also got the the writing team.
Marc:Rachel Schuchert, Nick Jones, and Sasha Rothschild.
Marc:I actually put this in the can when they were still on the set of GLOW.
Marc:The writers, anyways.
Marc:Liz and Carly came over here.
Marc:The showrunners did.
Marc:But this is like...
Marc:This is sort of the ground level of the creation in the way that, you know, the showrunners or the creators of the show created the show.
Marc:So we can talk to them about that.
Marc:And the writers, you know, it was interesting to talk to them about how they were able to generate these characters.
Marc:There's so many characters.
Marc:And also that it was nice that they were writing while we were shooting so that they could voice my character a little bit more like me when they knew what it was that I could do.
Marc:So this is the last of the batch of the GLOW episodes.
Marc:And this is a good one.
Marc:It's good, especially if you're a, I don't want to use the word, creator.
Marc:It's too vague.
Marc:But if you're a writer who wants to get into TV writing, this should have some valuable information.
Marc:And these are good people, decent people, the lot of them.
Marc:Man, the show, people are loving the show.
Marc:I couldn't be more excited about that.
Marc:Speaking about shows, I would like to bring your attention.
Marc:A friend of mine, he's been on the show before.
Marc:He's a very funny dude.
Marc:I love watching him do comedy.
Marc:His name's Brian Scalero.
Marc:You might remember him.
Marc:Got a great voice.
Marc:scolero's got a great voice he's got a new comedy album out it's called stupid time a sketch album you can get it on itunes or all things records.com check out brian's record he's a funny guy so i will tell you what i've been up to the last couple days over the weekend senator al franken asked me to uh to moderate a conversation with him
Marc:over in Beverly Hills at the Wallace Theater, the Wallace Center for the Performing Arts.
Marc:He asked me a couple weeks ago, I said, of course, we did that at BookCon.
Marc:We got a good thing going.
Marc:I had him on the podcast.
Marc:I interviewed him at BookCon Live.
Marc:We had some good shtick going.
Marc:He's in top form, both as a senator and a guy that cares with a big heart, but also as a funny man.
Marc:Al is a fucking hilarious comedic performer and writer on top of being an amazingly big hearted progressive senator.
Marc:And I love working with him.
Marc:But it was it was sort of amazing that it did become sort of a team stick.
Marc:Like, because, you know, I knew which stories like landed great.
Marc:And all his stories, some of them are really because he's a great comedy writer, structured beautifully, almost like jokes you would read long stories.
Marc:And so by the third time I worked with him live, we really had kind of a team dynamic going.
Marc:And I didn't say this to him, but, you know, if he ever retires from the Senate, I wouldn't mind maybe hitting the road for some gigs.
Marc:He used to be in a team.
Marc:He knows how to do it.
Marc:I know how to do it.
Marc:I'm a pretty good straight man for the senator.
Marc:what was funny is that and i believe he's a great senator and you know he's he's doing great work he's got balls he's got uh courage and he's uh he's righteous in a real way and he's done some great things lately uh in terms of uh calling you know certain people out yeah it's just a line of questioning on a committee and and and
Marc:yielding some pretty amazing viral videos at the very least, but also some monumental shifts in the process of government at this moment in time.
Marc:But what surprised me was we were talking the other day and we did this didn't happen the first time we did it.
Marc:And I'm really doing this as a build up to tell a dirty joke.
Marc:So if you're thinking about fast forwarding, there's a pretty good dirty joke coming.
Marc:So Al, we're talking, I'm talking Al, and we're talking about his dad, and if he grew up with comedy in the house, and Al tells me that his dad was a great Buddy Hackett fan, and who wasn't?
Marc:Buddy Hackett was really the funniest guy I knew of when I was a little kid.
Marc:My grandmother loved Buddy Hackett.
Marc:She used to go, Grandma Goldie used to say, like, very funny, we see him in Vegas, but he's filthy.
Marc:The word filthy needs more play.
Marc:But Al's telling me that his father loved Buddy Hackett and always did.
Marc:And years after his father passed away, he ran into Buddy Hackett on an airplane and said, Mr. Hackett, my father was a great fan of yours and you made him very happy.
Marc:You were his favorite comic.
Marc:I'm paraphrasing.
Marc:And Buddy Hackett turned to Al and went into this joke, which I will tell.
Marc:But I want you to picture Al Franken telling this.
Marc:Senator Al Franken.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:It was beautiful.
Marc:I wish we had it on tape.
Marc:Guy goes into the doctor.
Marc:He's got a dot on his head.
Marc:And he says, Doc, what is this?
Marc:The doc says, yeah, I have not seen that before.
Marc:Guy says, well, what is it?
Marc:The doctor says, well, what's happening is you're going to have a where that dot is a penis is going to grow out of your forehead.
Marc:In about six months, you'll have a full grown penis growing out of your forehead.
Marc:So the guy says, well, can you cut it off?
Marc:And the doctor says, no, because it's connected directly to your brain.
Marc:And then the guy says, well, you mean, you know, in six months time, I'm going to wake up in the morning.
Marc:I'm going to look in the mirror and I'm going to see a penis hanging off of my forehead, just sticking out there.
Marc:And the doctor goes, no, you won't be able to see it because the balls will be hanging in your eyes.
Marc:The balls will be hanging in your eyes.
Marc:That's a hell of a turn.
Marc:That's a Buddy Hackett joke conveyed to me by Senator Al Franken in the context of a tribute to his father who loved Buddy Hackett.
Marc:And it gave me the opportunity to tell you that dirty joke.
Marc:Classic dirty joke with a beautiful twist at the end.
Marc:What more can you ask for on a Monday morning?
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:You won't be able to see it because the balls will be hanging in your eyes.
Marc:Get it?
Marc:Got it?
Marc:Let's get into this.
Marc:Let's get into the writers.
Marc:Rachel, Rachel, Rachel?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:Rachel Schuchert, Nick Jones, and Sasha Rothschild were the primary writers, the writers' room of GLOW, and I spoke to them at the production facility out there at the sound stages, and we talked about being writers.
Marc:If that's of interest to you, here it comes.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So, Rachel, Nick, Sasha, the writers for GLOW.
Marc:I've said the words of all of you.
Marc:I've had problems with some of the words, Nick.
Marc:I...
Marc:There was actually no real struggles on set.
Marc:I'm going to talk about me for a while.
Marc:I thought I was a real mensch.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I thought your writings were all good and I didn't fight for anything.
Marc:We were worried about you.
Guest:Were you going in?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We didn't know how ornery you would be.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you have a shockingly cheery disposition on set.
Yeah.
Marc:I didn't have to worry about much.
Marc:I thought like, this isn't on me.
Marc:If this thing craps out, it's their thing.
Marc:I just have to show up and do my job.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was a working man.
Guest:That's how we feel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I also made the discovery late in the shoot that the crankier you got, the funnier you got.
Guest:That is true.
Guest:Your crankiest day, I thought you were on fire.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What day was that?
Guest:No, we talked about it.
Guest:It was episode eight up in the office, and then I think we also did the car scene with Allie.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, right.
Guest:Car scenes with Allie always made you cranky.
Marc:Well, you're sitting there in the car and there's like my my resentment is is that I'm in a car on a trailer and you guys are sitting in your little cubby up there kind of laughing and talking about other things.
Marc:And I'm just sitting in a fucking trailer watching you guys just have a day.
Marc:It's a problem.
Guest:Welcome to being a star.
Marc:Oh, exactly.
Guest:Think about how much more you get paid than we do.
Marc:Do I?
Guest:Probably.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:I would think so.
Guest:I don't think we should go down that road.
Guest:You want to talk numbers?
Guest:We could.
Guest:You want to talk numbers?
Guest:I liked when you would yell at yourself because you would never yell at others, which I thought was a mensch.
Guest:Very mensch-like.
Marc:You're a mensch.
Marc:You're a mensch, Mark.
Guest:Who knew?
Marc:I didn't want to be one of those assholes.
Marc:So let's go.
Marc:What have you written on, Rachel, before this?
Guest:I wrote on Supergirl last season, and I wrote on this show called Red Band Society that ran on Fox for one season.
Marc:And what'd you do before that?
Guest:Oh, all kinds of things.
Guest:I wrote books mostly in magazines and yeah, as a playwright.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:You were a playwright?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you wrote books?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know.
Marc:There's a lot of playwrights because Carly and Liz are playwrights.
Guest:Well, we all know each other from that for like 10, 11 years.
Guest:Nick and Carly and Liz and I were all in the same writers group at Ars Nova in New York in like 2006.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew no one.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Sasha's a Hollywood person.
Marc:So Hollywood.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're like the outlier.
Marc:All these people are New York intelligentsia.
Marc:They're very smart.
Marc:The high brows.
Marc:Yeah, we were before we came to L.A.
Marc:But when you were doing plays, like tell me about Nick.
Marc:I'll get to you.
Marc:Don't worry, Sasha.
Guest:I'm not worried.
Marc:Nick, so tell me about your first play that you put up.
Guest:Well, I mean, I started doing plays in college that I wrote and starred in and did in the multipurpose room.
Guest:Yeah, like Orson Welles.
Guest:Like Orson Welles, but much worse.
Guest:And then I came to New York and I started doing puppet shows because I couldn't figure out how to do plays that required all the resources that I had in college.
Guest:So I actually was like a puppeteer when I met these guys.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You had a trunk full of puppets?
Guest:Well, I had this group called Jolly Ship the Way Bang.
Marc:He was dating a puppet.
Guest:And it was like a rock band with puppets.
Guest:I did that for like 10 years.
Guest:Hand puppets?
Guest:Yeah, they were like rod puppets you manipulate from below.
Guest:And for a while, I wanted to be a puppeteer.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I was like, I want to be a puppeteer musician because I figured like that's something no one else is.
Guest:And
Guest:The bar is very low.
Guest:I was like, no one will know if I'm not the best in the business because I'm the only one in this business.
Marc:Well, it just sounds like there's that angle and there's also the angle that you wanted to guarantee your failure.
Guest:Yeah, and I sort of was doing both.
Guest:I was hedging my bets.
Guest:So you did some puppeteering, some rock puppeteering.
Guest:Yeah, I did that for my 20s, all my 20s, basically.
Guest:Did you have a following?
Guest:I don't... I mean... You did.
Guest:It was successful for what it was.
Guest:10 or 15 people that were always there.
Guest:Were there shows that you... Yeah, I mean...
Guest:I kept doing it with my friends because it kept leading to interesting experiences.
Guest:I wasn't making money, but it was like... Like what?
Guest:Like someone was like, I'm putting together a puppet festival in Bangkok.
Guest:Would you like to come out here for a month?
Guest:So yes, I will.
Guest:So we did that.
Guest:I ended up going... You played Bangkok with the puppets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to Ireland.
Guest:I went all over.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And then Ars Nova eventually produced the show.
Guest:And it was a success for what it was.
Guest:And then that led to getting an agent.
Guest:Writing for humans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eventually, like painfully, I've learned how to write for humans.
Guest:Barely.
Barely.
Guest:Without much nuance, because I didn't learn that, because you don't need that with puppets.
Guest:No.
Guest:The puppets don't talk that.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:It's just television.
Guest:Yeah, the puppets don't have notes.
Guest:Do you miss the puppets, Nick?
Guest:I mean, you should stop by my house.
Guest:The puppets are still there.
Guest:He still lives among them.
Guest:I just took them out of the boxes, and I'm trying to find a place for them in my life again.
Marc:Okay, so when you were doing this, who were your heroes?
Marc:Were you thinking like, this is a career that I respect creatively.
Marc:I'm going to emulate that.
Marc:Was it like a Jim Henson?
Guest:I mean, everyone loves Jim Henson.
Guest:I wasn't emulating him because I wanted to make a puppet show that didn't look like the Muppets or those plush puppets that are in everything.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Is saving Sarah Marshall somehow based on you?
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, and that was the bane of my existence at the time.
Guest:Because that's when I was like deep in it.
Guest:And for a while I was very proud to be a puppeteer.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:Whatever, you enter a conversation at least with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was my calling card.
Guest:And women love it.
Guest:Women loved it.
Guest:It was the best of times.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:i was in my my prime but then sarah marshall came along and that hijacked the conversation if i if i mentioned the puppet shows they're like oh have you seen sarah oh really forgetting sarah marshall rained on your brain yeah and then we'd have to talk about that fucking movie instead of me the important work you were doing with puppets yeah uh-huh so where'd you come from sasha you're like um you have a like assorted history don't you
Guest:I sure do.
Guest:I come from Miami Beach.
Marc:We're really going way back.
Marc:That's the worst start I've ever heard.
Marc:South Beach.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How does that happen?
Guest:I was born in the swamps of Everglades City.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And then when I was three, we had to flee to Miami because my father wrote an article for Rolling Stone exposing all the drug dealers smuggling drugs up through the swamps of Everglades City to Miami.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Pretty happy about that accomplishment?
Guest:He wasn't.
Guest:He was just... He thought it was a good story.
Guest:He didn't actually fully think through.
Marc:He was a journalist.
Marc:He was a journalist.
Marc:Right.
Guest:He was not anti-drug.
Guest:He just was a journalist.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So ended up growing up in Miami Beach and knew that I... Undercover?
Marc:Like...
Guest:no run he once we got to miami it was sort of it wasn't he was i you know what i don't know why no one killed him actually he was safe for for whatever reason and continued to be that sounds like a good story in and of itself it is he'll tell that story he could tell you that protecting him i know yeah well well he uh
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I still don't know all the details of what really went on.
Guest:But a crazy place to grow up.
Guest:He was a writer.
Guest:I knew I wanted to be a writer.
Guest:I knew I wanted to write for television.
Guest:So I moved to L.A.
Guest:when I was 21.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And immediately started waitressing.
Guest:Right, of course.
Guest:And waitressed at the Improv years ago where I crossed paths with you, but you didn't.
Guest:You weren't aware of my existence, but I was very aware of your existence.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I was not a big waitress.
Marc:I didn't get involved.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:You were smart.
Marc:Well, I knew it happened, and it's not like it didn't happen in my life, but I just didn't do it.
Marc:Because how many of those conversations were you like, who am I following?
Marc:you know like we're not on stage but i mean literally yeah which guys do i know sure yeah and then and are they funnier than me there's that yeah like you fucked him yeah right he's not he's a hack you can't believe you fucked him totally so all right so you fuck some comics
Guest:So I fucked some comics and learned how to write a joke.
Marc:Is that one of the reasons you took the gig there?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I was an assistant on a late night show and I knew that I would never be a writer on that show because they would never hire me as a writer.
Guest:The Late Late Show with Craig Kilbourne.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I learned a lot about joke writing by watching the writers but knew I wouldn't get a shot.
Guest:And I thought my time is going to be better served actually cocktailing, making a little money, listening to comics all night long.
Marc:Did you learn?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:I learned why jokes land.
Guest:I learned the rhythm of jokes.
Marc:Just on your own?
Marc:No one was telling you?
Guest:No, just by listening.
Guest:Just by listening and absorbed.
Guest:And then was having a hard time breaking in.
Guest:to tv and then was having a hard time breaking into movies and then started writing articles and immediately got uh la weekly yeah um and i wrote a couple articles for playboy and i wrote a couple articles for maxim and um back when there were places like when they were actual magazines and then one of my articles took off it was called how to get divorced by 30 um and then within one week i got a movie deal at universal and a book deal at penguin so it took 10 years to be an
Marc:That's pretty low.
Marc:That's like a good number.
Guest:It was a good, yeah.
Marc:It can take a lot longer now.
Guest:It can take a lot longer than 10 years.
Marc:For me, I know it was 25.
Marc:So I was on that plan.
Guest:You were on the 25-year plan.
Guest:Well, you're doing pretty well now.
Marc:I'd given up on it.
Marc:But it was, yeah, it's 25 years.
Marc:So, okay, so there you were.
Marc:You got these deals, but deals don't necessarily mean anything.
Marc:Was the book a bestseller?
Guest:No.
Guest:The book was not a bestseller, but it did okay.
Guest:And then from that, and then I wrote the movie script, which, of course, the movie's never going to get made, but it put me on the map for features, and then I've continued to write movies, and then from there have sort of consistently developed in TV, and then... All right, well, let's not... We'll just brush over that.
Marc:Okay, all right.
Marc:So have you had any movies made?
Marc:No.
Marc:How many movie scripts have you sold?
Guest:Seven.
Guest:Seven movie scripts at seven studios all across town.
Guest:It's pretty impressive.
Guest:Every now and again, I get a call that so-and-so just attached themselves to something.
Guest:And then I get another call in three months saying, that's not going to happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Seven scripts you got paid for and they're still sort of active.
Guest:I would say two out of the seven are active.
Marc:And then what was your first TV job?
Guest:My first TV job was actually selling a...
Guest:a half hour to nbc with a friend of mine um and that was called my best friend's a lesbo because she's a lesbo and uh that did not go to series but it was a great experience that was four years ago
Marc:So this is sort of as the heyday is ending of making huge money on half-hour development deals and selling scripts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I had such a great experience working in TV, even though it didn't end up airing, that I really focused on TV and then got a job working on Carrie Diaries, which was a delightful show, which was the prequel to Sex and the City about Carrie Bradshaw.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which was really a... And that was just a couple years ago?
Guest:A couple years ago.
Guest:Last gig I had, Carrie Dyers, and then Development.
Guest:And then this show, I actually watched Glow as a child and loved it.
Guest:And so when I read this pilot, I thought it was amazing.
Marc:Why did you love it?
Guest:As a little girl.
Guest:As a little girl, I thought that some of those women were so...
Guest:pretty and fancy and their outfits were so shiny and sparkly and i would just watch them come out and this sort of glitzy glamour and then get like down and dirty and sweat and be badass and it really spoke to me in a way of like sort of the high low of it all like oh i can be pretty but i can also kick ass and grunt and grunt and um i i
Guest:I remember Chainsaw Loving and I remember the Southern Bells towards the end of the later series had the Southern Bells with their big hoop skirts and Hollywood and Vine.
Guest:I love the Bad Girls.
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:And you watched it as a kid too?
Guest:Or no?
Guest:No, I remember it.
Guest:I didn't watch it a lot.
Guest:I remember my mother seeing them on Donahue, I think.
Guest:And thinking it was hilarious and telling me all about it.
Guest:And then I watched it, I think, a couple times.
Guest:But I was a little bit too little.
Guest:I remember the appearance on Married with Children.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you a wrestling guy?
Guest:No, I wasn't.
Guest:I should have been, but you would think I was, but I wasn't.
Guest:What was your last TV gig?
Marc:We didn't go over your TV history.
Marc:We went over puppets and we stopped.
Guest:Well, I was on Orange is the New Black for four years.
Marc:For four years.
Marc:Yeah, until now.
Guest:And that was your first TV job?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I developed some things too, but it was my first staffing job.
Guest:So you went to the school of Genji?
Guest:I went to the school of Genji.
Guest:I moved to LA for Genji for that job once I got it.
Guest:I've been here like four and a half years later.
Marc:But you did a few.
Marc:We already talked about it, right?
Guest:Yeah, I did a couple.
Marc:Yeah, but this is the first.
Marc:You love this one more than the others?
Guest:Yeah, it's much more like me.
Guest:Because it's one thing to work on sort of network television that's like a little bit.
Guest:I mean, not bad, but it is what it is.
Guest:It's like this is how you do it.
Marc:Real network television is a nightmare.
Marc:Yeah, it's, you know, and then you got to deal with showrunners who think they know everything.
Marc:And then you got to deal with, you know, executives that don't know anything, but have to pretend like they know things.
Marc:And it's the worst.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I didn't even have to deal with that.
Marc:I was at IFC.
Marc:So how did you get this gig?
Marc:Well, I mean, you were in house almost.
Guest:I mean, I was in house, but also like Carly was on Orange is the New Black last season.
Guest:And, you know, we were already friends.
Guest:And Carly, our showrunner, Carly, our leader, one of our leaders.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:One of our leaders.
Guest:And I was actually on a hike with her in Griffith Park when she got the call that Netflix was going to pick up the show to series.
Guest:you know that's a holy shit moment yeah and obviously i'm i'm thrilled for her but i'm also like fuck well i guess you're not going to be coming back to orange next year right right you know and she was one of my you know allies yeah and you need allies in a writer's room you do as
Guest:Why are you saying to me?
Guest:As Sasha will tell you.
Guest:No, I don't know what I mean by that.
Guest:We're all allies in this room.
Guest:In this room, I think we're all allies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've had the experience where two people agree more often than two others.
Guest:And if one person calls in sick, then suddenly there's not enough of the people on your side to push a bill through.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:But isn't that really kind of relative to the showrunner?
Guest:I mean, is it really kind of... I think, yeah, I do think... Well, the showrunner is not always in the room also, you know?
Guest:Like, the showrunner has so many duties that, like, while the showrunner's away, you know... The room runs itself sometimes.
Marc:Oh, see, I never had that experience.
Marc:Because, like, my room was, like, I had my showrunners and there was me and three other guys.
Marc:That was the whole crew.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So they were there for all the writing.
Marc:And they were writers.
Marc:Right.
Guest:sure on it and it would go through me and then it would sort of go through them but we just sit there looking at each other there was no real clicks you know everyone yeah that's good that's bad well i think there's a good room there's a couple versions of that though because sometimes it's it's just like a it's not like calculated or anything it's just like an affinity you know like you just get along better with something you connect with somebody better
Guest:And then there's the other version of it where there really is this like insane political clusterfuck where people are being like strategic about who they sort of suck up to and who they shut out in the room.
Guest:And that's the worst.
Guest:I mean, that's like the horrible.
Guest:That's when it feels like you're going to work in like Game of Thrones and people are like forging alliances against you.
Marc:Well, this doesn't feel like that because there's not that weird network pressure.
Marc:And clearly Netflix is like, here, have some money.
Marc:You need more money?
Marc:Here's some more money.
Marc:Do you have enough to eat on set?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It feels really nice.
Guest:I also think that Carly and Liz did a good job of hiring the right people for the right reasons.
Marc:Where do you meet with them?
Marc:How did you get the job?
Guest:I got a call from my agents that this Genji show was, you know, Netflix based on this thing called Glow.
Guest:And I was like, holy shit, I know about Glow.
Guest:I was obsessed with Glow as a little girl.
Guest:And I read the pilot and they had read my HBO pilot.
Guest:So they brought me in for a meeting.
Guest:And I just sat down with Liz and Carly and Tara, who's Genji's producing partner, and just...
Guest:said i love this script and i want this job and i kind of was very forthcoming and not like trying to be cool or play games and um no one else had said that no one else said they liked it i think when
Guest:you go look when there's staffing season and you go from meeting to meeting meeting with showrunners to get staffed you can have a certain armor of like whatever you know i don't care or whatever wherever i land is fine or i have so many options and i think that having that armor is safe because most of the time you never get a job and you have to have armor but um for this particular situation i had no armor you're excited i was really excited and really
Guest:genuinely thrilled to try and be a part of this.
Marc:And I think that that's maybe what... It doesn't always happen because I think the dream of writers usually is to deliver a show of their own.
Marc:So the more you try to do that along with going in for writing jobs, you get beat down.
Marc:So if you developed a bunch of shows, you tried to sell shows and it never happened and you're going on 20, 30 years of this shit, getting a writing job is not...
Guest:that big a deal and it's just something you crankily kind of yeah yeah yeah well i think genji fosters an environment which and i think liz and carly do as well where every everyone they hire gets to feel invested yeah they're very generous that way which makes us come in with our best work you know and and
Guest:staves off the sense of being jaded and it's just a job.
Guest:I think we're made to feel like we're all making this thing together, which is amazing.
Guest:Which is great.
Guest:I didn't know if I was going to be able to take this job.
Guest:It was a very dramatic week.
Guest:Because I was on Supergirl and we didn't know if we were coming back and they kept not telling us and there was all this weird negotiation behind the scenes and nobody would give anyone a straight answer about anything.
Guest:And so the producers at Supergirl were like, look, we want we all we want you all back.
Guest:But like, we don't know what's going to happen.
Guest:So you should go on other meetings.
Guest:And if anybody gets something that they really want to take, take it and we'll let you go and it won't be a problem.
Guest:And then everything kind of happened all at the same time where I went on like two meetings.
Guest:I went on, you know, this one, which sort of.
Guest:You know, I remember you came into my house and you're like, listen, Carly just got the show picked up.
Guest:And then like UTA called me the next day and they're like, do you how well do you know Liz Playhouse and Carly mentioned?
Guest:I was like pretty well.
Guest:And it was like this whole thing.
Guest:And so then I had the meeting and then then they were, you know, taking a while to kind of figure everything out, I think, in terms of like budget or whatever it was.
Guest:And I was still waiting to hear about this, and then I got another offer on another show, and they were like, well, she has to get out of Supergirl, and so we were gonna maybe try to do that, and then I got the offer for GLOW, and I was like, I wanna do GLOW, let's do GLOW.
Guest:But then there was all this weird back and forth, because then Supergirl got picked up the same day to the CW, and they weren't gonna let me out of the contract, and so there had to be all this weird back channel stuff, and it was really tense.
Marc:That's why we have agents.
Guest:Yeah, that's why we have agents.
Guest:And I had a I was in first position on another thing.
Guest:And it had an intense weekend leading up to taking this and was actually on my way to Greenland with my mother and sister.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And was on a flight.
Guest:The Greenland?
Guest:The Greenland.
Guest:It's not like the name of a supermarket.
Guest:No, it's the actual Greenland and was on a flight from JFK to Copenhagen on the plane when I got the call from my agent saying, get off the plane, you have to start Monday.
Guest:And I raced off the plane, then took a cab from JFK to Newark, got on a plane, Newark to LA and was in the room Monday morning.
Marc:Really?
Guest:And sent my mother and sister to Greenland without me.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:I was just pacing my living room like weeping to my agents on the phone.
Marc:It's very dramatic.
Guest:It was very dramatic.
Marc:It's weird, though.
Marc:The stakes seem awfully high for something that doesn't seem to like there's no life or death to it.
Marc:But like those moments where you get a call back and you're like, well, fuck, I got to fly.
Marc:I hate that about show business.
Marc:It's like you end up doing nothing forever.
Marc:And then all of a sudden there's a panic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like a five minute thing with an executive.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, the one day you finally book the vacation is the day you get the call to get off the plane.
Guest:It's a good way to guarantee that.
Guest:You should always book a vacation.
Guest:It's like going to the bathroom and then your food comes.
Guest:But I like that when that happens.
Guest:I go to the bathroom on purpose to make the food come.
Marc:Yeah, it's a surprise.
Marc:I do realize that some fancier restaurants will not put the food down if you're not there, though.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's so passive aggressive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do they know that you're in the bathroom just to make them bring the food?
Marc:Doing a childish trick.
Guest:So it's like a game of chicken.
Guest:Who can wait longer?
Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, I had to be at a meeting, a general meeting for Fox Studios way back, and I was moving from New York for this Fox deal.
Marc:This is why I came out to LA in 2002, because I had a deal with Fox.
Marc:And we're driving a U-Haul across country to move, and the fucking U-Haul that we rented in New York broke down somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Marc:It was just horrible.
Marc:We had to...
Marc:Because it was the middle of the night.
Marc:I had to be there the day.
Marc:I only had a certain amount of days to get there.
Marc:And it was cutting into it.
Marc:We had to shift to another U-Haul.
Marc:And it was a disaster.
Marc:And it was very difficult for the woman that I was with.
Marc:But we made it.
Marc:You made the meeting.
Guest:It changed your life.
Marc:Did nothing.
Marc:I wrote a script with a guy.
Marc:It went nowhere.
Guest:In the beginning, everything's a big break.
Guest:And then you have like 20 breaks where nothing happened and you did everything perfectly.
Guest:And then you actually have something happen that just came out of nowhere.
Guest:So you're just like, whatever.
Guest:You just stay busy and things happen.
Guest:But all these meetings eventually sort of add up to some sort of presence or something.
Marc:The experience of having meetings and being known by people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So then they're like, oh my God, we love you.
Guest:Even though you had like one 15-minute conversation 12 years ago.
Marc:Yeah, that was never what they said about me for a long time.
Marc:It's like, how is he?
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:You have general meetings where you're meeting the same people who are now working at different studios.
Marc:Right, and they already know you.
Marc:Or do they?
Marc:But then you realize it's their job just to have you come in.
Marc:What do they fucking do?
Marc:They do nothing.
Marc:They do nothing.
Marc:They're just like, with comics, general meetings, they're like, well, who do you want?
Marc:Who can entertain us today?
Marc:They have to justify their dumb jobs.
Marc:And they're just like, bring some writers in.
Marc:What are you doing after lunch?
Marc:It's the worst.
Yeah.
Marc:our futures are hanging I know them I shouldn't be talking like this about these lovely executives but I don't give a fuck but our future is hanging in their hands so what did you have to do to get up to speed on wrestling I knew nothing about it and I was so relieved to be told that I didn't need to like they were like no your guy doesn't know anything about it I'm like perfect
Guest:Well, we didn't know that.
Guest:I mean, I didn't know anything.
Guest:I'm a little bit of a fan.
Guest:I mean, I was a little bit of a fan of watching wrestling and knew a teeny little amount.
Guest:I was on this medical show, and that's how we used to.
Guest:And then you had the idea of the story, and then there'll be a scene with some medical, medical, and we'll figure that out.
Guest:And we had a liaison to figure out what would really happen if your liver shut down or whatever.
Guest:Then they'd put in a bunch of gibberish that the audience doesn't really pay attention to.
Guest:And then you just go on with the scene.
Guest:Anyone could do what we do.
Marc:A monkey could do it.
Marc:But the weird thing about wrestling, the thing that makes it interesting, is that how, like the big shift right in the first two episodes, is how do you take a volatile, broken trust, betrayal of a friendship, and then put that at the core of the heel-in-the-face relationship?
Guest:dynamic of wrestling i mean so like it right from the beginning it becomes a personal story but then it just translates immediately to the ring yeah well that was the cool thing that we kind of found out about wrestling is that it it does it's like the this larger than life encapsulation of like problems you know it has all this because when they go in the ring it's like there's these beefs you know and there's like this kind of soap opera and that this has been going on and so and so stole whoever's
Guest:Woman and then they were humiliated by this other person so this constant like sort of settling of scores right that you're supposed to believe is real yeah and So it was interesting to sort of take that construct and apply it to this show where there were real things happening Right that like stuff actually happened offstage and like all of that backstory that's fake in the wrestling world was real in this one
Marc:now when when you look if if it you know you think ahead like i i didn't when i was doing my show i just assumed every season would be the last season but it seems like this world as a world is completely unique uh for a lot of reasons but also you have so many fucking characters that like to fill another two seasons doesn't seem like that big of a stretch if it happens does it
Guest:Yeah, it could go on a long time.
Guest:I think it could go on a really long time.
Guest:Well, we have 15 main characters, so we could have 15 seasons.
Guest:Yeah, I think 15 seasons sounds all right.
Marc:That's right, right?
Guest:Well, I think in a way, and maybe... I mean, I think it's like the Orange is the New Black template in terms of the scope of the cast, and you can kind of focus in on different characters at different times.
Guest:With Orange, it's based on a memoir where a woman goes into prison for just over a year.
Guest:But you can...
Guest:You can have the same stories happen, but you just say, like, this episode takes place in a day or half a day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can move very slowly.
Guest:And by, when I say pace, I just mean the sort of... The time frame of the show.
Marc:The time frame of it.
Guest:Not that it moves slowly.
Marc:You're saying that this could be... We could keep this 1986, 1987 for four years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, this whole season is supposed to be, what, like 10 weeks or something?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In real time?
Marc:In a couple months.
Guest:Oh, right, right.
Guest:But back to what you said, it is cool, though, to have that sort of deeper bench.
Marc:Yeah, no kidding.
Guest:Because I think, too, coming off network television where you have these characters that are set from the beginning and there's this pressure to service every single one of them in every episode.
Guest:And some of them just don't pop or they don't work or the story you had for them doesn't.
Guest:And you still have to think of something for them to do.
Guest:It's so nice to be able to just have someone have one line in an episode and know that you'll get to them later.
Guest:Right.
Marc:When I look at the cast on the wall here, there's still so many backstories that have not been explored at all, really.
Marc:Just hints.
Marc:There's really only two or three main backstories in this season.
Guest:I think it's nice for the actors, too, to have a lot of time to feel out their characters.
Guest:So that so that, you know, in season two or three, when we get to some of those like deep bench characters, like we've thought about them and we've watched those actors performing so much that we a whole lot of stories are even suggested.
Guest:And they feel so real.
Guest:And they will know exactly how to play it.
Guest:There's not this thing about having to set them up and introduce them out of nowhere.
Guest:I mean, that's kind of the great thing about Orange is when people come forward and suddenly have stories.
Guest:You've just sort of seen them in the background already for like three years.
Guest:You're used to seeing them and it doesn't feel like this new jarring person that you have to explicate.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But by next season, they're all going to know how to wrestle.
Marc:So you can act.
Marc:And by the end of this season, I believe we're going to be wrestling like for real.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In a show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So then like next season, you'll be able to frame episodes with actual matches.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's just going to get more and more exciting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because the drama will ramp up at the same time that the wrestling violence will ramp up.
Guest:And the show will start to get successful.
Guest:They'll start to have a presence in the world.
Guest:The show within the show.
Guest:They'll start to have fans and people who are watching.
Guest:Because right now they're all unknown within the show.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:So who do you think the audience is?
Marc:Because I keep thinking, how can teenage girls not like this?
Guest:I think the audience is a lot of different people.
Guest:I think it's teenage girls.
Guest:It's older.
Guest:It's women that watched it as little girls.
Guest:It's men who are obsessed with wrestling.
Guest:It's gay guys who love the camp of what Glow used to be.
Guest:But I hope so much that young, little girls... I don't know a single gay guy who's like 37 who didn't watch Glow.
Marc:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:It was like such a gateway show for young gay boys.
Guest:A gateway show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you're right.
Guest:It was like a safe thing to watch without... Because you weren't watching beauty pageants.
Guest:No, you were watching wrestling.
Guest:You were watching wrestling.
Marc:Strong women.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You guys did a great job.
Marc:I enjoyed working with all of you.
Marc:I enjoyed saying your lines.
Marc:Was there any problems?
Marc:Anybody?
Marc:With me?
Marc:Did you have any problems?
Guest:No, no problem.
Guest:I really... Nick was sort of waiting for a problem.
Guest:There was a couple... I was delightfully surprised by your attitude.
Guest:Nick doesn't like having his only...
Guest:man in the room kind of challenged i think it's like a cock of the walk thing he was no longer he was no longer the one i used to be the the male consultant when people had questions about what it's like a man what a male character would do but i feel like i've lost my edge oh i mean not because you came in but i've just been around only women for so long i don't even remember what being a man is like well it's funny because when the first time we i did one of your scripts i i knew you were kind of ready to
Marc:take the fight a little bit.
Marc:When's the problem going to happen?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Which episode was that first one?
Marc:Because I remember there were some things where I was like, can I do it like this?
Marc:But then it came around to where yours was okay.
Guest:Three.
Marc:Who did I fight the one ball on?
Marc:Was it the one ball?
Guest:You fought me on that.
Guest:On the one ball.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's probably going to be cut in editing anyways.
Guest:That's the way it goes.
Guest:But I mean, episode three was a long haul for me.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:It was the one where you go to the party.
Guest:In Malibu.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Episodes three are always hard.
Guest:Like episode three is always the hardest.
Marc:Really?
Guest:In my experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I feel like you've got the pilot.
Guest:The pilot's done when you start.
Guest:Then everyone sort of knows what's going to happen.
Guest:Episode two is just sort of paying off the things that were set up in the pilot.
Guest:And then three, it's like, oh, now it's a show.
Guest:And so now we're always supposed to write.
Marc:You have to set up what will take you through the season.
Marc:Well, you were actually the only one, like, I don't know if it's a confidence thing or not, but like, you're always writing jokes.
Marc:or things like on set.
Marc:Like you maybe try it like that and then maybe try it like that and then we do it and then ultimately you'd be like let's just do the original one.
Guest:The truth is I actually don't have so much confidence in the written word.
Guest:I only know things until I see them in the monitor.
Guest:You're like that though.
Guest:You're always like when we would do plays you were always giving alts and things like that and I don't like to do that and we would fight and yell at each other.
Guest:Well, we've worked together, by the way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We've written plays together.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's too late to talk about that now.
Marc:But no, it's always time.
Marc:Marriage for a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:You guys were like tight and you do plays?
Marc:These two are like best friends.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We do stuff.
Guest:We do stuff.
Marc:How many are those plays?
Marc:Have they been produced?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Published.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:They're out there.
Guest:What are they called?
Guest:They're out there.
Guest:We wrote a play called The Nosemaker's Apprentice, Chronicles of a Medieval Plastic Surgeon, which is as silly as it sounds.
Guest:The ancient art of nose making.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And we wrote one about a brothel in turn-of-the-century Chicago called The Sporting Life.
Guest:Yeah, prostitutes.
Guest:Which we've turned into a pilot and are shopping around with Gingy.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Oh, that's exciting.
Guest:Oh, it's a musical.
Marc:It's a musical.
Guest:It's a musical?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A musical television show about prostitutes in old-timey Chicago.
Guest:Perversions.
Guest:Everyone's just fighting over it.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, you never know.
Marc:It's a big landscape now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:CISO will pick it up.
Marc:CISO's hot right now.
Guest:It's a place to get some money.
Guest:I heard Nabisco's getting into the game.
Guest:Oh, well.
Guest:Did you really?
Guest:No.
Guest:But do you see?
Guest:I bet we all believe that Nabisco's going to have a network.
Guest:Anything's possible.
Marc:All right, you guys.
Marc:Well, hopefully we're going to do more, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Hopefully we'll be together for many years.
Guest:We'll see each other through many life spaces.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks for talking.
Guest:Many marriages.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:All right.
Guest:This was fun.
Marc:That was Rachel Schuchert, Nick Jones, Sasha Rothschild, the writer's room at GLOW.
Marc:And they did a great job.
Marc:I mean, you saw their work.
Marc:They did it.
Marc:They did a great job.
Marc:So, Carly Mensch, Liz Flayhive.
Marc:These are...
Marc:Pretty seasoned writers, the two of them were, before they got to glow.
Marc:Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
Marc:Liz Flayhive wrote on Nurse Jackie, Homeland.
Marc:She was a playwright before that.
Marc:You may know her plays.
Marc:From Up Here and The Madrid are two of her shows, her plays.
Marc:Carly Mench wrote for Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Orange is the New Black...
Marc:And she's also a playwright who wrote All Hail Hurricane Gordo and Len Asleep in Vinyl.
Marc:Seasoned writers in at least two disciplines.
Marc:And they created The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the show that I am on.
Marc:And this is me talking to them here in the garage.
Guest:Music
Marc:Are you guys nervous in front of microphones?
Guest:Have you never... I've never done this before.
Guest:I've never done this, and I don't think I like the sound of my own voice, so I'm sure they'll be there.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:But I'm psyched.
Marc:You're psyched.
Marc:I have talked to the other writers about you guys specifically at length and how difficult you were to work with, and I think we should just address that.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:Go for it.
Guest:Hit hard.
Marc:So, all right, Liz Flayhive, Carly Mensch.
Marc:I don't even know why I'm setting up like this.
Marc:So you guys created and were the showrunners of GLOW, which I'm on, which was good.
Marc:Good experience for me.
Marc:How was it for you guys?
Guest:It was pretty idyllic.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I feel like getting through making the first season of your first show, and I only cried once.
Marc:When did you cry?
Marc:When Trump won?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:The night that everything fell apart.
Marc:That was a tough day on set.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, it was really brutal.
Guest:It was real tough.
Guest:14 women.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Everyone was just sort of like, what?
Marc:What happened?
Guest:No, everyone just slowly crumbled.
Marc:Disbelief and horror.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We were pretending it's 1985 on set, too, so it felt like we were retreating back to where we actually were setting the show.
Guest:It's all relevant again.
Guest:Well, it's funny, because when we pitched the show, I remember we kind of started with, well, we're on the verge of having our first female president.
Guest:I mean, I think we literally said, this is a great time for women.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah we're about to elect our first female president right by the show so all right so tell me how like where did you guys know each other from not working together on a show but from how we met in new york we were both at a writer's group at ars nova which is this off-broadway theater and they started a writer's group for a bunch of playwrights and i heard about this did i talk to somebody else who was in that was steven carram in that did you tell me he's not in our later our year had
Guest:we were the first year and it was two writers on our show yeah nick jones and rachel shuker that's right yeah but williamon lin-manuel miranda liz merriweather oh lin-manuel miranda was in it yeah and he would riff on the piano when i think nick brought in a play about he brought in a musical he brought in a musical called little building yeah and he's like i wrote this musical but it has no music and we're like well how do we read it and lynn was like well i'll just get on the piano and make stuff up and we all improvised
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I played in airport, I remember.
Guest:And we all just improvised, like, songs and arias.
Guest:Then we had to read my shitty play afterwards, and I was like, Jesus.
Guest:Oh, that's the worst.
Guest:It's a bad night to have brought something in.
Marc:Was it, like, were you reading the whole play, or just parts of it?
Marc:It's, yeah.
Guest:I think we all brought in snippets of things that weren't finished, and it was also, like, my jokiest, dumbest play about Sally Struthers.
Marc:Like, it was the... And right after Lin-Manuel riffed a musical.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like, Carly, can we go over yours now?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, can I hide in the bathroom?
Guest:But it was a great place.
Guest:I mean, they gave us free beer and pizza twice a month, and we all hung out there.
Guest:And it was just like a place that we could actually be.
Guest:And workshop stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And even when we weren't there, I was like, I need to read this pilot.
Guest:Can I have the space to do it?
Guest:And we'd bring people together.
Guest:They were just very supportive of their people, and they still are.
Marc:And did you guys, you didn't write together, though?
Guest:No, never.
Guest:Not until this.
Marc:And did you write whole plays?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they were produced?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how were they received?
Marc:What was your first play called?
Guest:My first play was called From Up Here.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:And Ars Nova was the first producer on it.
Guest:And then it sort of outgrew their little space.
Guest:And then we did it at Manhattan Theater Club.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In 07, 07, 08.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And is it done now?
Guest:It's done now.
Guest:There are a lot of young characters, so it's done now, sometimes regionally, but a lot of colleges do it.
Marc:So you have a French's book?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, we're both at Samuel French.
Guest:That's why we shot a scene there in the pilot.
Guest:That was our biggest location.
Guest:We're going to shoot at Samuel French.
Guest:It's going to be thrilling.
Marc:That was the scene with the acting class?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were very precise about what plays were in the background.
Guest:No, we were not precise.
Guest:We were picky as shit.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Like, take that poster down, take those plays off.
Guest:We want these plays over here.
Guest:Like, we made set deck insane.
Guest:We moved whole shelves of plays.
Guest:We were nightmares.
Marc:And what was your play, big play?
Guest:My first play was called All Hail Hurricane Gordo.
Guest:It was in the Humana Festival of New Plays.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought it was going fantastically, and then we got a review from Charles Isherwood at the New York Times that I think was like three sentences that said something along the lines of,
Guest:I tried to find something nice to say about this play.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:He actually said that?
Guest:No, that's verbatim.
Guest:I tried to find something nice to say about 23-year-old Carly Mench's whimsical play.
Marc:Then he threw you under the bus on the age thing.
Guest:Right, you know.
Guest:They'll do that.
Marc:So is yours being performed?
Guest:That one?
Guest:That one actually does get performed.
Marc:Was that the plan, though?
Marc:Were you guys like, we're going to be playwrights?
Marc:Or were you young, ambitious, forward-thinking people that were like, well, this is just a stepping... Theater's going to be the future.
Marc:No.
Marc:Was it a launching pad, or you really thought theater was going to be the future?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, the people that I knew who could support themselves doing theater had a...
Guest:either had a trust fund or taught at universities or wrote TV.
Guest:So I was like, well, I don't have a trust fund, and I don't know about teaching, so maybe television.
Guest:So that was sort of what I tried to jump on and off of my first play and see if there was anything.
Marc:And how did you get that gig?
Marc:What gig did you get?
Guest:I got Nurse Jackie.
Marc:So that was it.
Marc:That was your first gig.
Guest:My first gig, and then it was my gig for seven seasons, and I grew up on that show, which was great because it shot in New York.
Guest:It was Edie Falco.
Guest:The showrunners were great.
Marc:Who were the showrunners?
Marc:Who produced that thing?
Guest:It was Linda Wallum and Liz Brixius.
Marc:And people like that show.
Marc:I've not seen an episode of it.
Guest:That's okay.
Marc:Oh, I feel bad sometimes.
Marc:I don't know how people find the time.
Guest:I don't either.
Guest:I mean, it's cool.
Guest:But I mean, it was a great show to work on and I learned everything.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:She's spectacular.
Guest:Everybody was.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like to make a TV show in New York feels like a unicorn situation too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How many people were on the staff?
Guest:It ballooned.
Guest:It was like big at first and then it contracted.
Guest:It was like eight people and then it was six people and then it went back up again.
Guest:You know, it depended on the year and it changed.
Guest:And it started writing out here and then it moved back to New York.
Marc:So that was it.
Marc:That's what you've done.
Marc:You've written two plays and Nurse Jackie.
Guest:And then did Homeland for a minute and then created Glow.
Marc:You did Homeland for a minute?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did drama for a minute.
Guest:It was crazy.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was the shift like?
Marc:What happens?
Marc:What's the difference?
Guest:I mean, I went from being great at my job to being terrible at my job.
Guest:That was the biggest shift.
Guest:But they were very cool to me.
Guest:I mean, I got to, you know, produce something in Berlin.
Guest:I got to come in for half a season.
Guest:They let me co-rate a finale.
Marc:Less collaborative than comedy writing?
Guest:just different i mean like the way you have to break like i had never broken an action sequence before and that was i don't even know what that means exactly and it's just like it's stop drop and roll yeah right but you're like so they're in the tunnel and then these guys are you know these guys are here and this information is here and we've got to get all these people and it just it's really they're and they're they're good at it but they're really rigorous and
Guest:painstaking it's as rigorous as the action on screen the writing process is mentally rigorous it was really rigorous and you know you can't come in with like a nugget of delight or like this delightful thing that we can blossom into a story it was just very poetic no where's the gun but they but i had to give a note which was also maybe the last time i'll do this which was like can we just lift that gun up higher so we can see it like i'll probably never give that note i don't know i might lose my shit in the second season of glow i should not say that now we're gonna have to have a yeah you're gonna lift a gun up to my head
Guest:I mean, the wrestling sequences are action-y.
Guest:They are.
Guest:I mean, that's the closest I think I'll ideally find.
Marc:Very beautifully choreographed.
Marc:I found myself, and I say it all the time, it was like watching a ballet of some kind.
Marc:I found it to be moving.
Guest:As theater people, we only exclusively talk about the wrestling in terms of dance choreography.
Marc:Well, I told you guys when we got in there that it felt like a stage, that the ring is definitely a stage.
Guest:It is a squared circle.
Guest:It's like a sacred space.
Marc:It definitely had that feeling, you know, and when you're in it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, all right, so where'd you go?
Marc:You wrote your four plays, and then what happened?
Guest:Actually, the first play, another playwright, Rollin Jones, who was working on Weeds at the time, came up to me after the play and said, I'm working on Weeds.
Guest:I think Jenji would love this.
Guest:Can I pass her your play?
Guest:And until then, I hadn't even thought about TV, to be honest.
Guest:Like, I was living in the bubble of this could work.
Guest:I was going to Juilliard at the time.
Marc:You were?
Guest:I was.
Marc:As a playwright?
Marc:Right.
Guest:As a playwright.
Marc:That's fancy.
Guest:Yeah, it sounds really fancy, and then really you just meet once a week for three hours and feel bad about yourself and then get a stamp at the end.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:It's like being knighted.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And did you get knighted?
Guest:I think I got knighted too early.
Guest:I think I hadn't really found my voice.
Guest:I had never studied theater, so I felt a little bit like a fraud while I was there because I didn't know plays that well.
Guest:But I was just at the point where I was getting really excited about them.
Guest:But it'd be like I'd come into school and be like, have you guys heard of this guy, Tennessee Williams?
Guest:Because he's...
Guest:He's got some shit that I think we should talk about.
Guest:A couple of really good ones.
Guest:And I didn't really know Shakespeare.
Guest:And the actors would get so excited over Shakespeare.
Guest:And I'd be like, I just can't understand these plays.
Marc:I have a hard time with Shakespeare.
Guest:I'm so confused why you guys are so excited.
Guest:These are so out of date.
Marc:The biggest problem is drifting.
Marc:And then once you drift for five minutes in Shakespeare, you're like, I'm fucked.
Marc:This is all pointless.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was barely understanding it to begin with.
Guest:I have premise problems, too.
Guest:Like, I can't get on board with it.
Guest:When you start unwinding a premise, we're done.
Guest:Like, King Lear, like, I just get so pissed at that first scene where it's like, who starts a play by saying, like, who loves me the most?
Guest:Like, I don't care about this guy.
Marc:What do you mean we just started a presidency like that?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's very relevant, Carly.
Guest:It's a very relevant play.
Marc:Couldn't be more relevant.
Marc:Yeah, the sort of angry ambition of aging people is why we're in the mess we're in.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:I've had this conversation with her a lot of times.
Marc:I bet.
Guest:Over and over again.
Guest:Well, and then I took this one class at school where I was in opera class.
Guest:And she said, anytime you're not enjoying opera, walk out.
Guest:Preserve your ability to love it in the future by just sparing yourself the pain of sitting there.
Marc:So you've never seen an opera all the way through.
Guest:I've never seen an opera all the way through, but I applied it to Shakespeare.
Guest:So now I kind of like, I don't let myself sit there getting angry.
Guest:Like if I'm connecting and getting it, I stay, but then.
Guest:I think that's smart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I do that with my kids too.
Guest:I'll go home and try to read it.
Marc:You leave your kids if they're not engaging.
Marc:I do.
Guest:I was like, well, this is not working for me.
Marc:I'm going to walk out.
Marc:You guys are boring me.
Marc:Maybe take it up a notch, do something fun and exciting.
Guest:Like where's mommy?
Marc:It's like she couldn't, you weren't doing it for her.
Marc:Not enough drama.
Marc:There can't be a shortage of drama with kids.
Guest:There's not.
Marc:So you've got two, right?
Guest:I've got two.
Marc:And now you have one in your stomach.
Guest:I do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Coming around a month.
Marc:Are you excited?
Guest:That's also a great question.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh good, sounds like it.
Guest:Excited, confused, anxious.
Marc:Confused?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:You know how it happened.
Guest:I think it's because I've been in denial for most of the months of this pregnancy, including while we were on set.
Guest:And it's so abstract.
Guest:It's abstract.
Guest:And then I went to that birthing class where they show you the 18-minute video of a couple late men.
Guest:And then you're like, mathematically, that doesn't make sense.
Marc:I don't know how you women do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, my original goal was just like, just go to the hospital and tell them to just get it out as fast as possible.
Guest:I think that's fine.
Marc:That's what my mother did.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Cut it right out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't need to be a hero.
Guest:To the next 18 years, I don't.
Marc:How did you do yours?
Marc:Regular?
Guest:Regular.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Through my vagina.
Marc:Both of them.
Marc:So what do you tell her?
Marc:What's the advice you're getting from your pal?
Guest:It's one day.
Guest:That's the good one.
Guest:She keeps telling me it's one day.
Guest:It's one day.
Guest:It's like if everyone freaks out about their, it's one day of your life.
Guest:It's one day.
Guest:It's like what are you going to focus on, the wedding or the marriage?
Guest:It's like the birth or the life of the baby.
Guest:It's one day.
Guest:It'll be what it is.
Marc:I imagine you hit a threshold of pain where you just transcend...
Guest:It's called the ring of fire.
Guest:There's a name for it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I've learned the terminology.
Guest:I remember I did a lot of, um, I would like have contractions and just hit things rhythmically to like get through it.
Guest:And then stop.
Guest:My husband fell asleep for a lot of my, I was like, so how long was that?
Guest:He's like, I don't know.
Guest:I fell asleep.
Guest:I was like, all right, well, here we go.
Guest:This is going to go.
Guest:My plan is to watch the great British baking show.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:That'll really hope that at some point during the season, the child will have slipped out.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Just like, oh, look.
Marc:Oh, that was that hilarious scene.
Marc:And what was it?
Marc:What's that Monty Python movie?
Marc:I don't remember what it was, but there's just a woman washing dishes and there's nine kids around and one just falls out of her.
Marc:She's like, oh, there's another one.
Marc:It was the meaning of life, I think.
Marc:All right, so you're both writing on these different shows, but you knew each other, and then how does it evolve?
Marc:Where do you make this decision?
Guest:Well, I had moved up in the ranks on Nurse Jackie.
Guest:The creators had left, and then these other EPs had come in, and then I got promoted to EP and got to help them hire the room, and one of the first people I ran after was Carly, because I'm like, I get Carly in this room.
Marc:But was she working?
Guest:You were not.
Guest:I was a playwright, which means.
Marc:But wait, this is before Weeds?
Guest:After Weeds.
Guest:After Weeds.
Marc:So you had done TV.
Guest:So I done three years of Weeds.
Guest:Then I was taking a year off to write some plays.
Guest:Then I did Nurse Jackie.
Guest:Then I did Orange.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Oh, so you brought her... It's like folded in there.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:So you were like, fuck TV.
Guest:I was like... She says no.
Guest:I mean, you do... Like, you said no to a lot of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You really had your heart set on being a big playwright, huh?
Guest:Not even a big playwright.
Guest:There's just something romantic about being in New York and writing things no one will ever read or see.
Marc:Yeah, romantic.
Guest:Reaching almost no one.
Guest:I find theater like this ritual special space that I can't let go of in terms of... Like, I'm someone who is...
Guest:That's the closest place to spirituality I have.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I kind of find it.
Marc:Do you go a lot?
Guest:I go all the time.
Guest:And it's the one thing I miss the most about New York.
Guest:I think I see like three plays a week at least in New York when I'm there.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, she lives in Midtown, but it's like you can just do that.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You're just there.
Guest:It breaks my heart what I'm missing right now.
Guest:I know.
Marc:But as I got older, even maybe when I was younger, I was sort of like, is it good?
Marc:Because I don't know if I can... You see so many duds.
Guest:You have to put up with a lot of shit to get to the good stuff.
Guest:But then I feel like the good stuff is so... So much better than anything else.
Guest:It's so magical, yeah.
Marc:It's just... I don't want to feel bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:When I see bad theater, it's not sort of like, this sucks.
Marc:It's like, oof.
Guest:You're trapped.
Guest:You're in a room that you can't leave.
Marc:Yeah, because sometimes you literally are.
Marc:There's like four other people.
Guest:When I see a bad play, I literally try to go across the street and go to the movies and eat as much candy and popcorn and be like, fuck you, theater.
Guest:I'm having so much fun.
Guest:I'm being entertained.
Guest:I can eat.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:I'm very moved by it.
Marc:And I would go more.
Marc:Maybe if I lived in New York at this age, I would go more.
Guest:Something to do.
Marc:Yeah, and it's human.
Guest:It's very human, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, there's something about seeing spit.
Guest:Like someone made that, I can see.
Marc:Seeing people, like the actual spit come out of their mouth and seeing them shuffle around, you hear the boards.
Marc:It's exciting.
Guest:And being in rehearsal is kind of the best.
Guest:I mean, I like having plays perform, but I love a rehearsal room.
Guest:Time just works differently, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, that's why it's so essential and why it was always considered essential is there's a real humanity to it.
Marc:That the power of people on stage with their own voice to move stories and elevate is, like, it's amazing.
Guest:It is, but...
Guest:Because I feel like I get asked this a lot, like, how is theater and TV different, and do they inform each other when you work on both?
Guest:And I find TV very human, too, and mostly because you can use a camera to get up in someone's face and really see... Well, yeah, you have a lot more... There's an intimacy that you can't... It's a different type of humanity, but I...
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I see what you're saying, but I'm just like, the point is... It's very handmade and very kind of... Well, there's a distance.
Marc:Your engagement with it is your decision.
Marc:Whereas a play, I mean, your engagement with it is pretty present.
Marc:You may be drifting, but there's someone demanding something of you on stage.
Marc:Whereas a TV, you're like, mute it.
Marc:You can't mute the guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You also can't meet the people in the bathroom after your play talking about your play, which I actually kind of like, I used to hate and now I kind of love.
Marc:That's the second act, the second play, the sequel.
Guest:Yeah, the sequel.
Marc:Has anyone done that?
Marc:Where the first act is like the play and then this entire second act is the bathroom.
Guest:This is the bathroom of people talking.
Marc:That'd be funny.
Guest:Not bad.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So she's on Nurse Jackie.
Marc:You hired her.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then we did that for two seasons.
Guest:And then we just started talking about, I mean, we loved working together.
Guest:But we never wrote together.
Guest:We just kind of worked together well in a room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it just felt organically fun.
Marc:So where did the concept come from?
Guest:Yeah, so I was watching this documentary.
Guest:It felt insane that this world of women's wrestling in the 80s hadn't been explored since.
Guest:It felt like it hit a lot of themes and places we wanted to go.
Marc:The GLOW documentary.
Guest:The GLOW documentary and just the world of...
Guest:We've been talking about because we'd both written for shows about badass weird women.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't think we'd ever talked about maybe going back into the 80s and looking at like what was life like for women in the 80s.
Guest:Anyway, I saw this insane thing.
Guest:I came.
Guest:Liz was on maternity leave.
Guest:I was home with my colicky daughter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I needed some stuff to do.
Guest:We watched it within 30 seconds.
Guest:We're like, we should work on this.
Guest:I think that day we sent Jenji an email.
Guest:It was like Liz, not even a pitch.
Guest:No, it was a one line email.
Guest:I was like, do you want to make a TV show about women's wrestling in the 80s?
Guest:And I think her response was just yes.
Guest:And then we basically went away for a year.
Guest:We had to deal with the rights and then looking into that.
Guest:But then we just went away for almost a year and worked on the pilot.
Guest:And kind of had to make it our own and get into the story.
Guest:And rewrite it a million times and re-break it a million times.
Guest:We both knew nothing about wrestling and also didn't like wrestling that much.
Guest:So it took us a while to kind of find our...
Guest:Our way in that felt honest, but also kind of embracing the insane circus.
Marc:And that way in was through the personalities of the women in a way.
Guest:And I think on a meta level, we chose a specific show about women who knew nothing about wrestling who became wrestlers.
Guest:So we could kind of go on the journey with them as they figured out what the hell this...
Marc:And also the premise being that it was put together as a TV show, really.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That helps that.
Guest:A lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then there's something about being on set for me, those outfits, and I was conscious and awake
Marc:Like in the 80s.
Marc:I graduated high school in 81, so I'm already like 23 when that's happening.
Marc:And they were so... Like, I like that you guys played it so straight and it wasn't campy other than the nature of it, essentially.
Guest:That was a big part of it for us.
Marc:To not overplay it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To just play it straight.
Guest:Well, we have the ring, which is this heightened, campy space.
Guest:So then the fun of the show seems to be finding how to use the ring versus real life as a way to...
Marc:To casually deal with the 80s fashion is difficult because it was so just casually what women did with their hair just to go out in the morning.
Marc:That was crazy.
Guest:That was a big conversation when we were just talking to, you know, when we were hiring makeup heads and department heads.
Guest:We were talking about just wanting this sort of like dusty, realistic, late 70s and 80s.
Guest:So it felt like you weren't being bombarded by like neon and studs and stuff like that.
Guest:We went through a lot of our old pictures too so that we would make sure we were...
Marc:The pastels were just unnerving.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Beth Morgan called it her coral dream.
Marc:It was just like a real... I just don't like... There were days where I'm like, how did anyone think this was a good idea?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The crew was so amazing and respectful, too, because there were a lot of women in leotards, and they were very, very cool.
Guest:But I remember I got a text one day from Christian Springer, our DP, that just said...
Guest:I just want to check in with you.
Guest:There's a lot of nipple showing right now.
Guest:It's just a little cold in here, so I wonder if maybe we turn down the AC.
Guest:Let me know.
Guest:From the beginning, one of the things that attracted us to the show is how uncomfortable we were with women in bathing suits wrestling for mostly a male audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that discomfort is where we started.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We didn't want you to be comfortable, even though they mean they look amazing, but also like it's both exploitative and empowering at the same time.
Guest:And it should never be just one.
Guest:And wrestling is like attract and repel for us, too.
Marc:It feels to me that what was going on on set.
Marc:would, in real time, them learning and them building these relationships and also doing this ballet of wrestling and creating these personas was happening both in reality and on screen.
Guest:It's why we planned the first season to go so slowly and to reflect the actual learning process of how long it would take to pick up these moves and to...
Guest:even understand the inner logic of what a wrestling match is.
Guest:I think there was a day on set where they were four weeks into training, and it occurred to Chavo, our wrestling trainer, he was like, raise your hand if you know how a wrestling match ends.
Guest:not a single person raised their hand.
Guest:And we realized, of course, it wasn't obvious to any of us.
Guest:Like, we were just learning the moves.
Guest:Like, we didn't know how you win, and none of the writers knew either.
Marc:Well, but did you know that there was a script?
Guest:Yeah, we knew that wrestling was scripted, but in terms of just, like, physically how it works.
Marc:Oh, you mean the count and all that?
Guest:Like, the count, or, like, how do you know when it's done?
Guest:And, like, what does that actually mean?
Guest:We didn't know your two shoulders need to touch the ground.
Guest:Like, no one told us that.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:They told us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we were beginners.
Guest:And it was great because we would actually go and watch them train.
Marc:Oh, but Allison, like, oh, that's the other thing I want to say.
Marc:It's like, how did you guys when kind of like, did you know how that relationship would go?
Marc:What relationship?
Marc:Me and Allison?
Marc:Because that turned into something.
Guest:We didn't know.
Guest:I mean, honestly, it was, a lot of it was, like, we had stuff in the script that we, you know, we knew sort of the primary arcs of a lot of those, you know, our main characters.
Guest:But I feel like it's also stuff that when you see, you know, I mean, it was like how vibey you guys were, how great you were together, how great she and Betty are together.
Guest:I mean, that... Yeah, we definitely took cues, but I think we had hoped that there would be some type of a connection.
Guest:We just didn't fully know what kind of a connection it would be.
Guest:And then it was...
Marc:The one with me and Allison is kind of odd.
Guest:It is.
Marc:And it's like touching somehow.
Marc:I don't know what to do with Betty in character out.
Guest:She's a force.
Guest:She's a real force.
Marc:She's amazing.
Guest:I mean, we've known her for a long time because Betty is in the theater world and she's done readings of my plays and then she was on Nurse Jackie and so we've sort of seen what she can do and now I feel like she's like, I'm excited to unleash her on the world.
Marc:So what was the casting process like?
Marc:And tell me about me, because I'd like to know, because I got that thing.
Marc:I wasn't anticipating doing anything.
Marc:I was not planning on doing anything.
Guest:We did not even bring you into a room.
Guest:I know.
Guest:We cast you off a tape.
Marc:I know, but I was told you weren't looking at people here.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:That we weren't looking at people in LA?
Marc:No, like I got a script.
Marc:Here's how this went for me.
Guest:Yeah, tell us on your side and then we'll tell you on our side.
Marc:I think somebody in my manager's office who was just going through scripts found it and then gave it to my manager.
Marc:And then he gave it to my agent.
Marc:And then they sent it to me.
Marc:And it was, I don't even know if I got the whole script or sides.
Marc:And I'm just having a day.
Marc:Wasn't looking for anything.
Marc:I was actually just done with my show and was going to take a year off.
Marc:Not even do stand-up.
Marc:I was like, I'm done for a while.
Guest:That'll show you.
Marc:Yeah, and then they send me this script and I'm like, oh, I know this guy.
Marc:Okay, I could do this.
Marc:And it wasn't even, I didn't know you.
Marc:I don't even think I knew it was Genji to begin with or put it together because I'm shitty at that.
Marc:So I'm like, I could do this, guys.
Marc:So I went down to the glasses place.
Guest:We wanted to know what.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Spectacles.
Guest:Was up with those glasses because they are a good part of what.
Marc:I immediately decided that I needed aviators.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:Some sort of aviator glasses.
Marc:Because I knew they were timeless.
Marc:And that they would, you know, there was no way I was going to find fashion glasses from 86.
Marc:I wouldn't even be able to identify them.
Marc:But I knew aviators never change.
Marc:And that this guy was going to wear aviator glasses.
Marc:And then I had Lacoste shirts.
Marc:And I'm like, again.
Guest:Did you buy the glasses or did you borrow the glasses?
Marc:No, I just borrowed those big ones.
Guest:Did you rent the glasses?
Marc:They were sort of like yellowish.
Guest:That's a big commitment for an audition.
Marc:It was the shape.
Marc:No, I know the ladies down there.
Marc:They do my glasses.
Marc:Yeah, I love that place.
Guest:They do mine too.
Marc:So, and then I actually own Lacoste shirts, and again, I'm like, these have been the same for decades.
Marc:So that was that.
Marc:And then I had the woman who's my trainer, who's an actress, read with me.
Guest:You wondered who was reading with you.
Marc:Yeah, I was like, you know, because she goes on auditions and stuff, and she's cute and good, but usually she's just my trainer.
Marc:I work out with her, and I'm like, do you want to read with me?
Marc:And that would at least lend some professionalism to it.
Guest:And you sat behind a desk, which looked... It was in my office.
Marc:I just sat at that table, and my part-time assistant shot three of them, and they decided they sent you one, and that was that.
Marc:But they told me that I didn't know where you were in the casting or whether you had considered other people or you're at your wit's end, but I was told that they're not looking at people, that I could not get in a room.
Marc:That's what I was told.
Guest:We were not yet seeing people that we liked enough to see in a room for that.
Guest:So you were still looking for the room.
Guest:Well, we should say Jen Houston, who did the casting, is a genius, and she has these instincts that are so kind of out of left field and so kind of, they're so surprising.
Marc:I've known Jen since she was a kid.
Marc:Yeah, she told us.
Guest:She sent it to us, and she was like, watch this now.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And we were like, whoa, all right, maybe.
Guest:Mark Maron?
Marc:You can be honest, go ahead.
Guest:Yeah, I was not expecting anything.
Guest:I was like, he's funny.
Guest:I don't know if he can act.
Guest:Can he play another person?
Marc:Or can he be some version of himself that is that person?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we watched it, and it was so simple.
Guest:It was just like, he's the guy.
Guest:It was like one of those things where we're like, shit, this is undeniable.
Guest:We didn't really overthink it.
Guest:And then we showed it to the writers, too.
Guest:Remember?
Guest:Because we were like, you guys, you've got to watch this.
Guest:And then we were like, oh.
Guest:And then when we would start to talk about the character, we started to talk like you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When we were pitching, we were like, oh, we're already writing it for him.
Guest:We've got to give him the part.
Guest:And then I remember we sent the video to Netflix and they said, their only question was, like, can he move around?
Guest:He's behind a desk.
Guest:I'm like, well, even if he can't, does it matter?
Guest:Like, well, can we write the part so he's always sitting?
Guest:Like, that's the problem.
Guest:If he's not an integrated performer, we'll just sit him down.
Guest:It's totally fine.
Marc:Oh, that's so funny.
Guest:But it was... And a couple were like... I mean, I feel like that was particularly... Because it was... We knew it was going to be such a big part of the show.
Guest:So to not even have you in a room, we were just like, well, this feels like it's the guy.
Marc:I had no expectation.
Marc:I was sort of like, a tape?
Marc:All right.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:And I just went on with my life.
Guest:I think we had no expectation when we watched it.
Guest:And then I will say it kept happening over the course of the season where I was like... I mean, he's going to be great, but I mean, who knows what his range is?
Guest:Like, he's got... He's like...
Marc:You are the one.
Marc:I think he feels super good.
Marc:Liz liked me the whole time.
Marc:Liz was on board from the day one.
Marc:You.
Guest:The beauty of you from the beginning was I was like, he will be grounded and a real human, no matter what at all.
Guest:No matter what way for him.
Guest:You got a great bullshit meter and a beautiful ability to just make anything sound organic and in the moment and true.
Guest:But then you consistently...
Marc:consistently surprised us in ways that i feel like we would go back to our seats and be like whoa yeah like that scene was so powerful that wasn't even meant to be so yeah yeah i felt that happening like i and i think that was because well i think you got me at a good time because i just done four seasons of my show so like you know when i started maren i don't i was not great but like i knew how to be on set now yeah and i knew and i knew i wanted to
Marc:to be relaxed and not have it all on my shoulders.
Marc:So I was able to focus on, you know, just that guy and not worry about other shit, which was, you know, kind of tricky.
Marc:I still needed to sit near video village just to, we noticed.
Guest:Like he just wants to be closer to video village.
Guest:But you were also so empathic toward us because you knew what it was like to run a show.
Guest:So I feel like every time we look like we had the blood drained out of us.
Guest:Like, how are you guys doing?
Guest:You all right?
Guest:You OK?
Guest:It's like, oh, it's really nice when somebody asks you and you're like barely standing.
Marc:Yeah, it's rough.
Guest:It's hard.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We had each other.
Marc:It was hard for me to like, I think that you guys were, everybody was pretty open to things like, you know, suggestions.
Marc:And it wasn't, didn't seem out of hand.
Marc:And I liked that there wasn't like a fucking improv fest because I really wanted to do the work from the script.
Marc:But, you know, certain directors and certain writers.
Guest:You were word perfect for pretty much the entire season.
Guest:It was great.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, because the one thing I had in my mind, if I had any insecurity, I think that I can evolve as an actor after talking to Martin Landau in here and getting some acting lessons.
Marc:But I know I can be present.
Marc:And I knew that the answer for me was going to be, if it's not me, it's on the page.
Marc:So let it be.
Marc:And there was a couple of bits that worked out.
Marc:There was a couple of beats that I added.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:but you know that was with the writers and there was conversations around it and there was one moment where you know i i didn't want to do something and nick you know and i was like let's just do it this way and he's like and was it wasn't a fight but he's like all right okay and then like we tried to try to admire when he's like okay so now let's do it the way that that we i know exactly yeah totally but that's early on that took a lot of trust from you though because like you don't know who we are right no
Marc:well i liked that i like like i wasn't that i wasn't afraid of it because it's not it wasn't on me you know what i mean it was your character in a way and and you know there were certain there was only a couple times where i'm like and we went over it where it's just right i don't know he's gonna say that i just didn't feel right and we just it didn't matter like we we fixed it
Guest:Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I think that's a big part of what, I mean, I think playwriting prepares you for TV in a great way because you're in that rehearsal room with actors and you're working like that and you're trying to work it on the page first before you go off and rewrite something.
Guest:So you're really trying to figure out if, you know, if it's the scene that needs work, you know, what that work is.
Guest:And it's a conversation and, you know, you have to be able to have it faster, I think, with TV because you're in the middle of shooting.
Marc:Yeah, that's the exciting thing about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I didn't assume.
Guest:It teaches me not to be precious, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I didn't assume that like the funny, the amazing thing was because of the script and then just because I was emotionally available, you know, and I knew, you know, where that guy was at or the guy I was being.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That the way the relationships evolved or, you know, just happened with the different women was really kind of interesting to me.
Marc:Like, you know, because clearly, you know, Allison and I love each other in some weird way.
Marc:You guys hugged a lot.
Marc:Well, yeah, but I didn't know like, you know, like she's so good.
Marc:It's sort of like you're just doing this because for the show.
Marc:She, you know, she definitely had my number, you know what I mean?
Marc:On stage and off.
Marc:It was a genuine emotional relationship somehow that we couldn't really admit in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, ideally there's genuine emotion in those scenes and you guys found it and took it, you know.
Marc:And I didn't, I hated it when it didn't happen.
Marc:Like if we do a take and I'm like, I didn't, it wasn't open enough.
Marc:And then like there was all, everyone was different.
Marc:The weirdest one for me, I had to sign the nudity thing.
Marc:I'm like, when's this going to happen?
Marc:And then you made me show my butt.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:And I had to walk around set with a sock on my dick.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:I felt like, I remember having that conversation with you and you're like, so what?
Guest:What is it?
Guest:And I was like, so we just want to have a conversation about nudity?
Guest:And you're like, well, seems only fair, right?
Guest:It did seem fair.
Guest:I was kind of pissed that we... I was like, that's true.
Guest:It does seem fair.
Guest:Maybe we should have made you do a little more.
Guest:We'd ask the women to show their kids all the time.
Marc:I kind of knew that.
Marc:Yeah, I think the ass was about as far as I could go, though.
Guest:Yeah, it looks great.
Marc:My ass looks good?
Guest:Ass looks good.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:We definitely used it.
Marc:I was getting nervous about it.
Marc:The one thing that in retrospect that I think we should have played more.
Marc:You want to do that?
Marc:Can we do those kind of things?
Guest:Notes.
Guest:We're getting notes now?
Guest:Notes.
Guest:For season two.
Marc:I think I should have acknowledged the mess more.
Marc:Like, I think, like, the one regret I have about the whole season is that... The period blood mess or the emotional mess?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, the period blood mess.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Marc:Like, when she leaves where I'm at the door, there should have been beat where I'm like, oh, God.
Marc:Like, because it's a mess.
Marc:And, like, I was so involved with sort of, like, there was... Everything was sort of loaded because my ass was out.
Marc:So the set becomes sort of like, there's an ass out, you know, and, like... It would have helped you, too, if we poured fake blood on you.
Guest:I feel like this should be... Well, now that we know you're open to it.
Marc:Yeah, there's... Period blood?
Guest:There's always more...
Guest:There's always my period blood on this ship.
Marc:Hey, you know, it happens.
Marc:You know, you're going to do what you're going to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a very, it's a very honest scene.
Marc:I got to watch him.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So what's going to, do we, when do we know about another season?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I mean, I think, no, we don't know.
Guest:We don't know.
Guest:We'll tell you.
Guest:But they've been very, I mean, I got to say, like, that's the cool thing about, I mean, I've only ever, I've only worked at Showtime and Netflix.
Guest:But the great thing about the way we've gotten to make this show, be it like Gen.G support and having, you know, that as sort of a creative, like, sounding board and buffer.
Guest:But we have so much freedom there.
Guest:It's pretty astonishing.
Guest:And genuine enthusiasm, which is pretty fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even when we originally pitched the show, sitting in the room was this guy, Ted Biaseli, who was from the family programming department.
Guest:Heard there was a show being pitched about Glow.
Guest:He was obsessed with Glow.
Guest:Got himself in the room.
Guest:And invited himself to the pitch because he heard it was about Glow.
Guest:He's like, I have to be in this pitch.
Guest:And he's our creative contact at Netflix.
Guest:And he's someone who is so genuinely giddy.
Guest:And he's such a cheerleader, which is rare, I think.
Guest:And it makes the whole process just feel more human and...
Marc:Yeah, I felt the set was really kind of open and good and there was no weirdness really ever.
Marc:And everybody was very excited.
Marc:Now, are you guys in your head?
Marc:Do you have a second season?
Guest:In our heads right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We have stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We have a. Because so many of the characters are unexplored.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:So many.
Guest:I mean, we've just scratched the surface on basically.
Guest:Feels like there's so many characters we want to delve into.
Guest:There's so many weird.
Guest:There's weird shit about wrestling.
Guest:Weird shit about the 80s.
Guest:We've got a kind of laundry list of things we want to shove in.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Do we have the kind of the shape of season two yet?
Guest:Not yet.
Marc:I think we're... Yeah, but that's... Well, that's good.
Marc:Because there's always... That's one thing I learned about doing TV.
Marc:It's like you always assume like these geniuses have like all eight seasons mapped out.
Marc:But you don't.
Guest:Well, you don't.
Guest:But I also think like you have to respond to like what happened.
Guest:And also, I mean, just cutting the first season was really informative in terms of how the rest... You know, what we wanted from the wrestling and how it shot and how it came together.
Guest:And, you know, that's a big learning curve.
Guest:The Joy of the Writers Room, by the way, also is coming up with the ideas...
Marc:right it's fun yeah it's fun but like in your mind though do we just pick up right after that first match kind of deal like are we just going back to sort of like that went well now let's build from there no the time go by thing that's always weird like with my show i could do it like this is a year later i mean we could go either way we have some yeah arguments for both sides okay well yeah well it was great working with you
Marc:All right, do you feel good about what we've done here?
Guest:This has been fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Good.
Guest:We love you, Mark.
Guest:We were looking forward to talking to you.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I love you guys.
Marc:It's really an honor.
Guest:And it's made me very cool with the dads at school, too.
Guest:They're like, I heard Mark Maron say your name on his podcast.
Marc:No.
Guest:They're like, yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Guest:We got excited that you knew our last names.
Marc:Silver Lake dads?
Marc:Silver Lake dads are really.
Marc:That makes sense.
Guest:It's really nice for me.
Marc:All right, well, here we go.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Guest:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:there you go our final episode of glow related interviews and i think that was informative i hope you writers got a lot out of that and i hope you people enjoyed the process making the sausage dig it oh it's too hot too hot to play guitar maybe i will though i gotta put my ear plug in my ears are old are yours getting old
guitar solo
Marc:I gotta go fluff some rice.
Marc:Boomer lives!