Utkarsh Ambudkar Is Breaking Hollywood Stereotypes

One day you get a call from your friend Lin-Manuel Miranda. “I've got this thing I'm working on,” he says. “Are you interested?” Without thought or question, Utkarsh Ambudkar jumps at the opportunity. That ‘thing' happened to be a little play you might have heard of called Hamilton. And the part wasn't just any part. It was the leading turn as Aaron Burr — a role Utkarsh originated on-stage at Lincoln Center. Unfortunately, the stage lights on Utkarsh would soon dim. Dedication was foiled by ego. Partying took precedence over the work. In a word, he just couldn't seem to get out of his own way. And so before Hamilton even really became HAMILTON, Lin was compelled to let Utkarsh go. This role of a lifetime, it seemed, would not be Utkarsh's to claim after all. It's a turn of events that ultimately brought Utkarsh to his knees. Perhaps for the very first time, he was forced to reckon with himself honestly — one important link in a chain of events that would eventually lead Utkarsh to a singular, profound realization that would indelibly change his life forever: he had to change. Not just one thing, but everything. An actor, musician, rapper and NYU Tisch School of The Arts graduate, Utkarsh is best known for his standout performances in movies like Pitch Perfect, Barbershop, Million Dollar Arm and Basmati Blues as well as television shows like The Mindy Project and White Famous. One of many South Asian actors making a recent but undeniable stamp on Hollywood, Utkarsh's latest movie is Blindspotting, a powerful new film starring Hamilton's Daveed Diggs that rocked audiences at Sundance this past winter and will be screening in select U. S. cities starting July 20. When he isn't in front of the camera, Utkarsh can be found on stage with his friends as part of Freestyle Love Supreme, the hip hop improv crew that includes none other than Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda himself, or making music — check out his EP Bang Bang and his ‘hauntingly beautiful' cover rendition of The Proclaimers' 500 Miles. Perhaps his biggest opportunity to date, Utkarsh recently decamped for a six-month stint in New Zealand where he is working on the Disney big-budget, live-action production of Mulan. Beyond his formidable performative gifts, Utkarsh has an infectious enthusiasm for life. A friend for several years, I have to come to really love this young man. It's been a privilege to observe him mature into his talent, take ownership of his life, and share his huge heart and what he has learned for the benefit of others. Today he shares his story. This is a conversation about what it means to cultivate a creative life. It's about confronting Hollywood stereotypes. And it's a frank exchange about battling and overcoming an addiction that nearly destroyed a young life and a promising career before it barely even began. Raw and unedited, Utkarsh's tale is powerful, certain to both move and inspire. My hope is that you see in him what I see — the power of true sobriety to shape a person into that which they were always meant to be. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I feel a deep sense of responsibility. I am Indian-American, and I am an actor. To deny that would be foolish. I've experienced several ups and downs as a result of my ethnic background and how people perceive that. And I feel blessed at the same time. This is not a black-and-white issue. I am very grateful to work. It's not about being a complain. It's about being a spokesman or a representative of a community that's underrepresented. That's what I'm here for.

• 1:36Rich Roll?

  That's Utkarshan Bhutkar, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  Hey people, what's going on? How are you? I mean, really, how are you doing? I really hope that this finds you well, that you woke up today and began your day mindfully, optimistically, with conscious intention, a sense of promise, a sense of possibility, as opposed to anxiety or perhaps fear. And look, it's not easy. I get it. The world is pretty crazy right now. There's a lot of chaos and confusion out there, and it can be daunting. It can be overwhelming. So, hey, if that's how you feel today, if you feel stressed, if you feel overwhelmed,

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  maybe a little depressed, that's okay too, because self-acceptance is important. And I feel you. I feel you. There's no need to feel ashamed of that in this culture. There's no need to feel bad if you don't have your hustle on 24/7. But here's the thing, if that is how you're feeling, it's important to not keep it bottled up, to find somebody to talk to, perhaps even seek some professional help if it becomes acute. If you need to, that's what I do, and that's a big reason behind why I do this podcast, in fact, everything that I do. And hopefully, you can find some solace, some comfort in this program, in this podcast,

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  in the wisdom imparted by my many guests on a weekly basis. And speaking of guests, today's partner in podcast crime is my good friend, Uddhkar Shambhukar. He is an actor, a rapper, a musician, a performer. You may know him from his appearances in Pitch Perfect, The Mindy Project, a TV show called White Famous, one of those barbershop movies. He seems to be everywhere. His profile is growing on a daily basis, and he's just a fantastic guy with a pretty amazing story I've been wanting him to share on this show for a long time. And today is that day.

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  Okay. Utkarsh Ambudkar. Utkarsh Ambudkar. I love this guy. Not only is he super duper talented, he's just got a great enthusiasm for life. And I have so much respect for what he does and how he does it. And the success and the creative flow he is currently enjoying as this member of a talented crew of South Asian actors who are really making an indelible stamp on Hollywood at the moment, including an amazing performance that Utkarsh puts in, in a new movie called Blind Spotting, that caused a huge stir at Sundance this past winter and will be coming out in select US cities next week. It stars Hamilton's Davi Diggs.

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  And what's really cool is that Utkarsh just left this past week for a six-month stint in New Zealand because he was cast in the big Disney live-action production of Mulan, which I don't believe was quite public when we conducted this conversation several weeks ago. I'm always fascinated by people in the prime of their creative expression. And so this is a conversation about just that. It's a conversation about what it means to live and cultivate a creative life. And it's a story about overcoming Hollywood stereotypes. And it's also a story about battling and overcoming an addiction, an addiction that very nearly destroyed Utkarsh's young career before it even really got out of the gate,

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  including this absolutely gripping and heartbreaking tale that Utkarsh tells about how he essentially cratered the opportunity of a lifetime. A little tiny role as Aaron Burr in a small, little play you might have heard of called Hamilton, created by his good friend Lin-Manuel Miranda. And it's about how he put the pieces back together in the aftermath of that. It's an unbelievable story. I don't want to say too much about it, but you're gonna want to hear it. So, let's let Utkarsh tell it.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  So you were on Good Morning America today? Yes, yeah, I was. What was going on? So, uh, this, so I was in this documentary called The Problem with Apu. Right. Which basically breaks down the problem of the character Apu on The Simpsons. From The Simpsons. Yeah, and how it's offensive and stereotypical and how for decades, this guy, who's a friend of mine now, Hank Azaria, a white man. Right. Has been voicing an Indian character. Forever. He's been doing that for years. How many episodes has Apu been in? I don't know. Uh, yeah, I don't know. Let's say at least a hundred, right? In some capacity. And, uh, the character, for me, growing up in this country in 1988,

• 6:59Speaker 01

  when The Simpsons dropped, Apu is the only character of Indian descent that the American populace had, was exposed to, right? Right. So if you are, and rightfully so, people in India are ignorant to people in Iowa. So it's not like some, it's not, it's a two-way street. But like, if you are an, uh, an Indian-American growing up in this country, and all your classmates, the only reference point they have for somebody that looks like you is Apu from The Simpsons, then all of a sudden, you become a slushy boy, you become a 7-Eleven clerk, um, you become an offensive and inaccurate accent, and that's who you are, and that's your identity. Now, I'd never watched The Simpsons, so when people started calling me slushy boy,

• 7:41Speaker 01

  I was like, "I don't get the joke. You seem like an idiot. Like, what, what are you talking about?" But, you know, then you're introduced to the show, and you're like, "Oh, this guy's gonna be the bane of my existence," until people grow up enough to understand humanity as a whole. Right. As opposed to these stereotypical little boxes that we, um, operate in when we're kids. And even at that time, I'm sure their parents and adults didn't know as much as they do now. So, anyway. But this whole thing, like, blew up all of a sudden. Like, yes, there was an article being written, or what, what happened? Like, why did the Apu thing suddenly become a controversy? A good friend of mine, this comedian, his name is Hari Kondabolu, he made a documentary called The Problem with Apu, which aired on True TV in November.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And we did a talkback in New York, and Whoopi Goldberg was there, which was like, I got to sit next to Whoopi, and she hugged me. It was so cool, and kissed me on the cheek. Oh, man. We were like in front of all these people, and I was like, "Hi, Whoopi." And she was like, "Hug and kiss me now. Let's give him a show." And I was like, "Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool."

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  I think I remember when you shared that on Instagram and I was like, what is going on? Why is he with Whoopi Goldberg right now?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  So stoked, man. She gave me real life advice. I mean, I'll get to that, but the documentary just breaks down the systematic racism, specifically within the South Asian country that's been done in American cinema, like Brownface and Peter Sellers, that movie and all, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, just how we've been underrepresented and misrepresented for several years. And Apu, the character of Apu, being the entry point into that conversation.

• 9:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Now, a lot of people take things at face value, so they're just like, you're just mad at Apu. And it's like, no, we're trying to make a larger point here. That was Hari's goal. So, the last episode of The Simpsons addressed this Hari Kondabolu issue. And Lisa and Marge are sitting, and Lisa's like, you know, she addresses the camera, and she goes, you know, sometimes things that used to be inoffensive are now offensive and there's just nothing we can do about it. And then it pans over to a picture of Apu with a quote that says, "Don't have a cow, man," which is what it is. And then The Simpsons basically goes, "We'll get to it when we want to." So, they had an opportunity to address the situation in a careful and thoughtful manner. And these bunch of Harvard writers, or whoever's

• 9:56Speaker 01

  writing over at The Simpsons, I think I played basketball with one of them, and he definitely didn't go to Harvard. But, they, uh, they were pretty careless and crass.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  They were sort of flippant about the whole thing.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Flippant, yeah. And so, they copped out, right? So, it created this big hullabaloo. And the only reason The Simpsons is getting this cultural relevancy again, because as we know, any consumer of pop culture knows, they haven't been a part of it for several years. But, this documentary is now shedding light on them. So, they're getting publicity because of us, basically.

• 10:29Rich Roll?

  And they had an opportunity to kind of say something interesting. Like, South Park would have taken that opportunity and, and, and sort of created something very insightful out of it, I feel like.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, ideally, I would think so as well. I mean, they've consistently hit controversial topics out of the park, like, and they've done it really well and honestly. And I think that's what's important. You know, they're also not sitting in an amusement park industry. Like, The Simpsons is a billion-dollar corporation. Like, forget a creative expression. It is a corporation like Walmart, or Target, or whatever, Viacom. It's, it's like any of those. But- So this episode came out and there was outcry and I actually played a character on The Simpsons. I played Apu's nephew on the show and that episode which aired a couple of years ago in 2016 was meant to draw some attention towards the stereotypical nature of Apu's character.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  But they copped out in that episode as well and my nephew goes, "You're a stereotype. You're a Temple of Doom guy." And then Apu's like, "Well, you're a hipster." And essentially he wins the stereotype argument by calling my character a hipster. He's like, "You're just a young hipster." And everyone's like, "Yeah." Like, the racist stereotypical trope is still allowed because hipsters suck.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And because of that, they think that I've got some sort of expert opinion on the subject.

• 11:52Rich Roll?

  Because you played Apu's nephew. Well, and you're Indian. You're an Indian actor, right? You're part of this community. And you were friends with the filmmaker who made the documentary, correct? So when you go on Good Morning America, I mean, what are they asking you and what did you say? I didn't even know this happened.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  It was a 20-minute interview that ended up being one line.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's always like that.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And the line that I said was like, you know, it was a cop-out. They were... The actual quote from the show is, "Things that used to be inoffensive are now offensive." When in point of fact, in 1988 or 89, whenever The Simpsons was created, when the Apu character was born, it was offensive then. Like, that's the part you don't realize. Is that when you decided to create this character, you were already creating a problem.

• 12:39Rich Roll?

  Well, it's almost... I mean, it's really more offensive, right? It's almost like an Aunt Jemima kind of thing because there was no other counterpoint to it. There wasn't like a Kumail Nanjiani or there weren't like a whole bunch of other people doing interesting things on screen at that time of Indian descent. Now, you know, there's more and more people. It's great. Super cool to see that. But when it's the only example in media, then it becomes this trope that I would imagine, you know, is painful for kids like yourself who have to grow up on the receiving end of, you know, jokes about it. But also speaks to a larger issue about our myopic, you know, kind of blind spot about race in America.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And that's the thing when people are like, well, what are you gonna do with the Apu character now? It's like, I don't give a shit. Like, Apu was a cartoon in 1988. He had power then. The Simpsons has got a core fanbase. They are no longer culturally relevant. You know who is culturally relevant? Aziz Ansari, who just won a Golden Globe. Kumail Nanjiani, who just got nominated for an Oscar. Mindy, who just did a movie with Oprah. Like, Riz Ahmed, who won an Emmy. Like, the list goes on and on. Hari Kandibolu, who's got a Netflix special. Like, you know, I'm working every now and then as well.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  You're working all the time.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:58Rich Roll?

  You know? I mean, even in comparison to like, a year ago, like, your career is on this crazy trajectory all of a sudden.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It's, um, it's sometime, you know, my team or my friend Nick Collins, who's also my agent, he just said, you know, sometimes things click, and you can actually hear it click. And he was like, somewhere around like, last October, like, I just heard a click.

• 14:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  And from then, it's been like, a pretty, it's been a blessing. You know what it is? Like, you work hard, you're under the radar, you're just sort of chipping away, dropping the-

• 14:28Rich Roll?

  It's the ten-year overnight, you know, overnight success story.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it's like, every day. It's like, Rich Roll, anybody who follows you on Instagram or knows what you do, every day, it's those hand paddles.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  Hrah!

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Hrah!

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Hrah! And then one day, someone's like, whoa, hand paddles, that's a great idea. Wouldn't, like, that's, that's a new thing.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  Well, you know what's so funny about the hand paddle? Now, like, people mock me, or they, they do it themselves, and then they tag me in it, and then I give them a grade on how well they execute upon that.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Dude, that is my, that is such a soothing sound to me. The hrah of two hand paddles. I didn't know what they were.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, everyone's like, what are those things? What are you doing?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Why's this guy got floaties?

• 15:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I thought you were, they were like, foot things, and you run in the water.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I thought it was like, some Navy SEAL training that you'd learned in, like, Galapagos or whatever.

• 15:16Rich Roll?

  I wish. That would be a much better story.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  No, hand paddles are good.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  Speaking of like, uh, you know, lack of familiarity. I mean, I've known you for a number of years. But I think, you know, for a while, like, we have mutual friends and I was kind of around you and I knew like, oh, this guy's like, he's like an actor or something like, I don't really know what you did. I knew like, oh, he was in Barbershop or something like that. But then I was listening to a Radiolab podcast, which is like a geeky science podcast. And it was an episode about like this beetle. I can't even remember exactly, but it was like, we went down the rabbit hole about a beetle. And then they kind of, the whole episode culminates with this, like, little rap that Lin-Manuel Miranda and yourself,

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  and who's the other guy? Like, was it just the two of you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's like, and like, the hosts are like, yeah, it's gonna be Lin-Manuel Miranda and Utkarsh Ambudkar. Ambudkar, that's how you say it, right?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, close enough.

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  And I was like, wait, Utkarsh, like, is that the same dude? Like, I go, there can't be another dude named Utkar. And I was like, oh, my God. And I heard you do this rap with Lin-Manuel Miranda. I was like, wow, that dude's talented. Like, that was super cool.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  That's a deep cut. That was a Valentine's Day episode of Radiolab.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  It was a while ago.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Lin and I just basically sent like, bootleg garage band vocals back and forth to each other for like 72 hours and came up with that, which is great, you know?

• 16:46Rich Roll?

  Did they just approach you, like, can you do a rap song about a beetle? Like, it's like, you know?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 16:51Rich Roll?

  It's like the weirdest thing.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Tommy Kale, who's kind of like the glue between all these guys that I'll introduce you to, I'm sure during the course of this conversation, came to us. And it sort of started where, you know, Google Zeitgeist? They've got this big, sort of, whatever, summer camp feel.

• 17:09Rich Roll?

  It's like a TED conference for like, super amazing people.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Bill Clinton speaks, spoke there when we were there. So basically, our group, Freestyle Love Supreme, performed at Google Zeitgeist.

• 17:21Rich Roll?

  What year was that?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  That was 2000 and... I wasn't. It's a while ago, though. Yeah, it was it was 2012 or 2013. Uh huh. And they had the Radiolab guy, whose name is escaping me right now. Uh, like Jad Abumrad or something like that? Sure. Yeah, okay. He, um, he, uh, he, I guess, reached out and was like, we have this fun idea and we think Lynn and, uh, you know, whoever else would be great for it. Right. Tommy put it in my lap and I was able to execute. So we had a great time and Freestyle Love Supreme is this collective of like, super talented dudes. I mean, it's incredible what the men in this group have done

• 18:04Speaker 01

  of, uh, essentially like improvisational rappers. So it is long form improv. Um, we have games that are songs, subject based songs, and then we just freestyle rap for the entire show. It's about an hour long and I've been in that group for 15 years. The member of that group, oh, yeah, I'm a camera so I can show you. We all have this tattoo. Oh, wow. This is the Freestyle Love Supreme insignia. It's like a mic, yeah, that. And then the INC is my moniker, Utkarsh, the Incredible Incendiary, Incapacitated, Incorrigible. [laughing] Incredible predicate. And so essentially, it's like improv rap, right? Like, you're just completely coming up on the fly with.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  It's freestyle rap, so, uh, the members of the group, just to, just to brag. Right. Literally no other reason, just to get my validation from the, your hundreds of millions of listeners. I wish. Go ahead. Shout out to Iceland. Um, it's, uh, Christopher Jackson, who played George Washington, uh, in the Broadway musical, Hamilton. Davi Diggs, who won a Tony Award for Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette in the Broadway musical, Hamilton. James Monroe Agarhart, Tony Award winner for playing the genie in Aladdin and currently playing Jefferson and Lafayette in Hamilton. Anthony Venicialli, who is, runs the Speechless Improv, um, uh, program and also the Freestyle Love Supreme School. He's, uh, one of our de facto leaders.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Um, Bill Sherman, who is an Oscar away from getting that EGOT. He is the music director for Sesame Street. Chris Shockwave Sullivan from The Electric Company, beatboxer, vocal performer, Arthur Lewis, incredible hermit and also magical musical mind. Um.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is just nobody, right? No, nobody's ever heard of that guy. Yeah, right, Lin, Lin, and then me. I think that's the whole crew. And we have a couple alternates, but I think that's the core crew right there. And so you guys, do you guys all get together as a group from time to time? Yeah, what happens is once a year, all the stars align. I'm in LA, Anthony's in San Francisco, Lin is all over the world all the time, although he currently has shingles, which is amazing because two weeks ago I got adult chickenpox. And now we're both. I can't, I know, I couldn't believe he got chickenpox. We have shingles? That's bizarre. You and I are in constant synergy. It's strange. But um, we get together maybe once a year now and it's a sold out show within five minutes.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  It's always been a sold out show. Some 15 years ago when I was a 21 year old kid being introduced to the group and showing up at a 150 seat theater and being like, whoa, this is what a packed house feels like in New York? Because I'm playing to like my girlfriend and my friend's girlfriend and nobody else. And it was such a trip. And the thing about Freestyle Love Supreme is it's freestyle rap. And just to like speak about it quickly, I come from like a battle rap background. So when I met the guys, I was, you've seen the movie Eight Mile? Yeah, of course. I was doing eight mile raps, which is essentially, can we curse on this podcast? Yeah, of course. Which is essentially dick swinging, right? It's an ego, it's an expression of all of the fantasies of one's ego.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And aggressive, masculine, hyper raw and, and very much about, very narcissistic, right? Very much about me. Well, it's alpha, right? You're trying to take the other guy out. So it's like, yeah, I be spitting and ripping and just the Indian revving his engine. I'm better than anyone getting attention, like dispensing these rhythms, uh, suspending your disbelief. You smell like a queef. I mean, I would never say that, but like, but like, you know, I'll bury you, I'll carry you. This is a, you know, it was mean, mean spirited. So I auditioned for the group and like, I don't, the reasoning was that Lynn needed a replacement because he was going to do In the Heights. This was years ago.

• 21:51Rich Roll?

  Way before Hamilton.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Oh, way before Hamilton was ever an apple in anyone's eye, I suppose. And so I joined the group and Lynn and I rapped together and I rapped with the guys and it was sort of instant like, okay, cool. Like, these people do what I do. I didn't, I didn't know people like me existed and vice versa.

• 22:08Rich Roll?

  And were you like a freshman at NYU then, or how?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  I was graduating early from NYU. I was 20 years old. So I was finishing school. I graduated a semester early.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  You did.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  A year early.

• 22:20Rich Roll?

  Like a good Indian boy.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? A year early technically, but I had to do a little experimental theater program, uh, just to see if I, if I could get a little bit more juice out of the educational experience. Turns out, no.

• 22:34Rich Roll?

  No. Well, let's take it back. I mean, I have a pretty good sense of, of, you know, the, the sort of time and place in which you grew up. Cause I'm from Maryland as well.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Whereabouts?

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  Bethesda.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  You went to BCC?

• 22:47Rich Roll?

  Uh, I would have gone to Whitman. I went to a private high school.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Sidwell Friends?

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  No, I went to Landon.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I wish I'd gone to Sidwell.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I went to Wooten.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  It was a cool place. But you went to Wooten. I had friends that went to Wooten. I swam with kids that went to Wooten. Um, I've been to Wooten. I know that high school.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:02Rich Roll?

  And I, I, I know the kind of surrounding area there. So I have a mental picture of, you know, where you grew up.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  White Flint Mall, baby.

• 23:12Rich Roll?

  That was like my jam. Well, I would train every morning, swimming at, you know, you know Georgetown Prep on Rockefeller Pike? So my club, my club rented that pool there. So I would go, I would go there every morning and I had like 5:00 AM some practice there. And White Flint Mall is like just down the street. Is it still there?

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, dude. When that Cheesecake Factory opened up, it was like, it was pandemonium. And then it would be like, you'd go to Cheesecake Factory and like all the, the, um, the rollover, whoever couldn't get into Cheesecake Factory would be at PF Chang's. All sad about eating their dumplings and satay. They'd be like, ugh, PF Chang's again. We missed out on Cheesecake Factory.

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  That's crazy, man. Well, just to date myself, you know, I remember when White, when White Flint Mall opened, like when it was built.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  What year were you born?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I'm 83.

• 24:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I was swimming at, I was training at Georgetown Prep when you were born.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  No way.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Cause I, well, I graduated high school in 85.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  So you were two when I went to college.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 24:11Rich Roll?

  Yes, that's the differential here. So that's why I was like, wow, it's still there like, cause I go way back.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I thought you were so much younger than that.

• 24:19Rich Roll?

  I'm an old dude, dude. Alright, so you're growing up out Rockville way, pretty much.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Yep, right there.

• 24:25Rich Roll?

  And so are you like, uh, like, so when do you get into like the battle rap? Are you like breakdancing? Like, I just picture you being like, I picture you in high school, and correct me if this is wrong, cause this is total projection. You're, you seem like the kind of kid who you're not gonna be like, wearing a letter jacket and being like the super varsity, you know, alpha athlete dude, but you're funny and you're the kind of kid who like, knows how to make friends. So you were somebody who could like gravitate between all the cliques and like be friends with everybody.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not a projection. It's pretty close to reality. Yeah, I was, uh, just gregarious. I was the type of, I was the dude who would like run down the halls singing songs and just like high fiving everyone. And I, I took pride in that everyone knew who I was, right? It was one of those things where it's like validation by committee, like, please, if I know everyone, then there's meaning in my life. And there was real joy in it. Like, I don't, you know, I was, um, I really wanted to play basketball. And then freshman year, I didn't make the team. I went to see, um, the High School Musical that year and I was like, oh, I could definitely do this. Like, this is something I could do really well.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Or at least I thought I could. And then the next year, I started doing theater and I fell in love with the community and the people and the friendship. I had moved in the middle of eighth grade to Montgomery County from Howard County. So everyone at that age, you're like 12 years old and you're like going into high school and you're all clicked up. So I was pretty lonely for the first year, but when I found that theater community, I was really, I really got that, that I had something special to offer people, you know? And I did all the dance competitions and like, yeah, I definitely was a popper and locker and like, we won every year, me and my buddy Camby Gathesha, with a blend of comedy and skill. We weren't the best by any means.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  But your entry point wasn't like comedy per se, it was more like theater, song and song, dance, like that kind of stuff.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  It was comedy. For sh- it wasn't stand up, but it was comedic acting. So what I would do, and I, I can't believe my teachers let me do it. Like, I can't believe the directors let me do it. Like, we'd have this play, we'd have like a Shakespeare play. And then I would just improvise on stage. Every night I would just, I mean, I would stay within the boundaries of that Shakespeare play, but other plays I did, I would just improvise. I would come up with whole bits on stage in front of the audience, in front of nine, nine hundred to a thousand people.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  You just go off script on Shakespeare?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Off script, dude. I'm just bugging.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  The one thing, no improv.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I'm bugging out, like, well, in between the lines, like, I'd do the Shakespeare things.

• 27:01Rich Roll?

  Iambic pentameter, bro.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  I would do like the iambic pentameter, I would do the verse, and then in between, I would just do whatever the hell I wanted.

• 27:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  And the audience responded. And that drug of laughter, you know, the joy. I had this image in my head of a woman sitting in like the third or fourth row, miserable look on her face. And halfway through the first scene, she starts to smile. And she starts to look happy. Like, I'm a bad actor at this age. I still am a bad actor in the sense that like, as I'm acting, I'm totally looking at the audience. If I'm in a play.

• 27:34Rich Roll?

  Not in the moment.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I'm like, hey, how you guys doing? Yeah, do you guys like, do you like me? It's like, it's one of those things where, you know, when I see actors who immerse themselves in a role, like a Daniel Day Lewis, who's like, I am Abraham Lincoln. I don't think I could ever do that, cause I'm like, hey, guys.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  Are we good? Are we good? Is this, is this connecting? Is this working for you?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Okay, guys, am I Abraham Lincoln?

• 27:56Rich Roll?

  As a total, like, aside tangent, I saw on your IMDb, you did a short film called Real Housewives of Shakespeare.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  It just like, made me laugh.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  That was with my.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  I didn't see it, but uh, that's a hilarious title.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, my friend Jamie King, a very, very good friend of mine and writing partner, wrote this whole thing for his thesis at Loyola Marymount, um, grad school, and made this whole show in verse. And it's the Real Housewives, but with all the Shakespeare.

• 28:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, my god.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Shakespeare ladies. And I played Puck in that, and Puck was like a, you know, like a rapper or some sort of like, public figure. Um, yeah, it was one of those things where we like, we're in a hotel. For like fifteen hours. And I was like, Jamie, I love you. I love you, bro. And he knows this because I said it to him. I was like, I'm never doing this for you again. I was like, we're not doing this again.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Well, back to this validation thing. I mean, sort of a trope like, oh, performing arts theater, you know, actor, singer, dancer dude, like, you know, feeds off validation, like, of course, but, you know, I see, you know, you share, you always share on Instagram, like, when you go home and you visit your parents or when they visit you, like, your parents seem super supportive.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:03Rich Roll?

  Like, it's not like, oh, I didn't get it at home, so I had to get it somewhere else.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I think that that is indicative of where we are now in our relationship, my parents and I.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  So.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  They had to, you, you put them through it.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  This place.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I was not the most present or positive son. And they'll disagree. Because they'll be like, that means we weren't good parents. But they were. And they were supportive and they tried and they were loving. But we're also talking about two people who, at the age of twenty eight, moved to a new country with very little money. They moved to Baltimore, Maryland, which is not the nicest city at the time in nineteen eighty in the United States of America. And they worked on postdoctorate salaries, which was maybe ten to fifteen thousand a year. For the first month, the processing system thought that they both were one person because they shared the last name. So they were working off of one check.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And they move into a brand new country. They have a child who's boisterous, loud, energetic, uh, out of control, very happy.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And they have to raise this new human as an American in a country that they are just beginning to understand. So, so many of the experiences that I had at a cha- as a child, they had no reference point for. So when I'm twelve or thirteen and I'm like, yo, I got to have a girlfriend. Everybody has a girlfriend. My mom and my dad are like, well, we're the only people we've ever known. You can't have a girlfriend. You gotta have, what can we control? Studies. You have to have good grades and anything that gets in the way of your progress academically. As far as we know, because of our experience, will impede your ability to live a fruitful life. Like, all this social stuff you wanna do, we don't know what the fuck that is.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's like, I mean, that's, you're just like a Martian.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  They know how to raise you to be an engineer.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  A PhD biochemist.

• 31:05Rich Roll?

  So, did they get their PhDs in India and then come here?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  They got their PhDs in India, and that's where they met in grad school. They got married, they were separated for two years. Not, I mean, because my dad had, my mom had to finish school and my dad had to work. And then they moved to the US, and then I popped out. And it's like, I'm not-

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Did your mom work at NIH or something like that?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  They both work at the National Institutes of Health. My dad was at Johns Hopkins. My mom is in the National Institute of Dental Research, and my dad is in the National Cancer Institute. So, he's working with antibiotic resistance strains of cancer, chemotherapy resistance strains, and trying to figure out how cancerous cells become resistant, right? And my mother, what happens is, this is like, taking a deep dive, when cats get radi- cats, when people get radiation treatment, their salivary glands die, and they're unable to produce saliva, which, as we're talking now, like, everyone can hear how wet my mouth is. If it was dry, like, and I had no ability to swallow, it'd be a problem. You get mouth

• 32:07Speaker 01

  infections. So, she's trying to look at the calcium channel of the parotid gland in the salivary gland, to figure out how to turn it on and off, essentially. Where is the protein, the minuscule microscopic protein, that you can turn on and off? So, to put that into the context of my life, Take Your Kid to Work Day was like, uh, sit down at a table, get four pins, get a rat, put the pins in the rat's hands, dissect the rat, with the rest of her staff, with the rest of graduate students and like, PhDs, and just sit at a table at nine years old and cut out the parotid gland, and then get a bucket of liquid nitrogen. Throw rubber gloves in it.

• 32:50Rich Roll?

  And you're like, where's the microphone? Like, do you have any tap dancing shoes?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? And I'm just joking and I'm like, fun, fun, fun, happy, happy, happy, people, people, people. I love people and it just took a while for them to see where my skill set was. And you know, part of that was stubbornness. Like I fought and I clawed.

• 33:10Rich Roll?

  Like a war of attrition.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just like, no, I'm gonna be it. I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm doing theater.

• 33:16Rich Roll?

  But did you have a clear picture? Like, this is what my life is gonna be? Like, when you started doing theater in high school, where you're like, that's it? That's, this is my, this is gonna be my life? Right, wow.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  As soon as I got on stage, I was like, I'm in water. Like, whatever it is for you, like, I am, this is oxygen. Like, I am breathing right now. I've never been so comfortable in my life.

• 33:36Rich Roll?

  And did you get, was there a good theater department at your high school to support you? Like, did you have a drama teacher that could see, like, hey, this guy really wants this? Or this guy has some talent that I can foster? Or were you just trying to figure it out yourself?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  No, I had, Carol Solomon was an English teacher and Harriet Middleberger was my drama teacher in high school. And this man, I think his name was Herbert, but I definitely know his last name was Weisgerber. Henry Her, I don't know, Weisgerber. And I had friends and I had people in my peers to sort of work with and compare myself to. And then there was this thing in DC called The Young Americans of Washington, which was like the Juilliard of Maryland. And I went and did a show with them and was around these people that were really, really talented. A lot of, many of those people made it to Broadway and like are working today. And I was just like, okay, like, you know how it is, like, even with swimming, you're like, okay, I can, I can hang. Like, I can swim with these, with these guys.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Like, I'm, I'm okay here. Like, Charles Barkley talks about, I'm a huge basketball fan. And Charles Barkley talks about, like, when you're in high school, you like play and you play and you're like, okay, like, I'm a pretty good high school player. Like, I'm like at the top, like, I'm in the top 5%. And then you get to college and you're like back at the bottom. And you work and you sort of see how people play and you're like, okay, like, I'm pretty good for the college level. And then you get to the pros. And it's a much, the rules change. The rules in the pros are, how do you look? How tall are you? What ethnicity are you? Um, what is our worldview of what someone like you is capable of doing?

• 35:15Rich Roll?

  How do you communicate with the fans and the press?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, um, so the rules in the pros are a little bit different as far as acting is concerned. It's not merit based. It's not as, it's very subjective. It's not as objectively like, I jump higher, I score more points. It can be like, oh yeah, you're much funnier than him, but he's a white guy and we need a white guy to be the lead of the show. We can't put an Indian dude on a billboard. Are you crazy?

• 35:46Rich Roll?

  But the point you're making is essentially that you felt comfortable here. You knew you could hang. And as you started to like, kind of move up from high school to college, et cetera, like you were at home. You never felt like you were out of your depth.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And that comes from my parents. And I will say this as, um, not a negative, but that is an entitlement that they gave me. And it's a confidence and a belief and, and probably it's their love and support that allows me to walk into most rooms expecting to get a job. It's an insane, I know it's an insane irrational confidence, skill or gift or mental quirk or, um, I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't exist in any other form or place in my life.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  Like, how did they instill that in you? And what does that look like and feel like?

• 36:33Speaker 01

  It just feels like I'm going to be okay. It's a real feeling of like, no matter what happens.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  You can do this.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, mom and dad will be there. Like, I think it's from a very young age of like, if I mess up, mom and dad will be there. Now it's my responsibility now as an adult to not have that be a constant safety net, right?

• 36:52Rich Roll?

  Or to let that, let that turn you into being an asshole.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. Which happens to a lot of people. Now my mom and my dad and I have a wonderful relationship and I think that they can rely on me and expect me to be a certain person every time they see me as opposed to some erratic, uh, loco friggin firecracker of a human being.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  Well, I feel like you had to earn the success that you're experiencing now in a kind of an interesting way that we're gonna get into in a minute.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  Um, that probably grounds you and allows you to be a little more connected with humility than somebody who just hit the ground running and-

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Well, cuz of guys like you, for sure. It's like, I didn't know who you were. You're just like the soft spoken dude with pretty good hair. It's great. Your hair is just incrementally-

• 37:38Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to, I just modeled my haircut after you.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Dude, I know this is a podcast-

• 37:42Rich Roll?

  You don't think I should grow it back long again?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I, I mean, you can, but this is so suave, Matt, my friend. You should be in a tweed jacket at all times with this haircut.

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  I'll think about it.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  I know this is an audio podcast, but, um, your boy Rich Roll is looking good, ladies and gentlemen.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  All right, man, back to you, dude.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  All right, fine, fine, fine.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  So-

• 38:02Speaker 01

  So what was your childhood like?

• 38:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, I'm happy to come on your podcast when you decide that you're gonna get back and do it again.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Oh, man, okay, so what, what were you saying?

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  But like, here's the thing, so, so you go to Tisch, you go to NYU.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's pretty fucking dope, like, to get into Tisch.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  Did you get right directly into the acting program?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  I did, and the road to that was-

• 38:24Rich Roll?

  Did you apply to a whole bunch of drama oriented colleges?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  What happened was, is I was sitting in the back of the minivan and, uh, told my parents after a show, I'd like to be an actor. This is what I'd like to pursue for my life. And my mother said, as, to speak to what we started this podcast with, the only Indian on television is Apu on The Simpsons, and he's a fucking cartoon. What makes you think you as a human Indian can make, get anything done?

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  That's some truth talk from Momkarsh.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a-

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  Because it's like, look, she, you know, engineer, lawyer, doctor, you know, we're immigrants, we wanna make sure that our child is educated and upwardly mobile.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 39:00Rich Roll?

  He wants to be an actor, there's absolutely no Indians on screen at the time.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's a pretty logical-

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:08Rich Roll?

  -conclusion.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  And my, I don't know, again, I don't know what it is, but there was no doubt in my mind that I'd be able to succeed. And I, I don't think that that's some- I don't know what that is and I don't champion it.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  I mean, that sounds like something that goes beyond just the way your parents parented you. Like some deep conviction, like some past life shit.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  It's like a supreme stupidity. It's like just the, it's as dense as you can possibly be. It's single minded.

• 39:36Rich Roll?

  But not a hope like a knowing.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never had a hope. It's always been just there. And that's what's gonna happen and it will happen.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  What was the idea? Like what was, if you had to visualize what that looked like in terms of where you saw yourself?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  At that time, Will Smith, like that was my hero. I was like, yeah, I'll do this Fresh Prince thing. Like I'll go, I'll be a rapper. I'll be a TV guy. Like I'll go do it. And now like, you know, there's a, it's a good life. And I mean, at that time, my parents, my mother had no clue what acting was like. And my parents were like, all right, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. You want to do this acting thing? My father, now I know, was like, if he's passionate about something, you let him do it. That's what it is. At the time, he was like, you know, you're like, he couldn't say, he couldn't be like, yeah, yeah, chase your dream. That's what I did. My father came from a small city, waking up at 6:00 AM and basically wrote his way out of a tiny city into the preeminent spot in his field.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  In the United States of America.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to be at NIH doing cancer research. I mean, that's, that's the top of the heap.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  If you look up my last name on Google, it's my dad, my mom, and then me.

• 40:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is cool.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  We also might be the only people with our last names on the planet. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean,

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Did they, did they ever say, listen, okay, you want to be an actor? Well, maybe you should go back to India and do the Bollywood thing.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  No, because they knew my Hindi is horrible. Like I can't really dance. I can't hang with those dudes.

• 41:04Rich Roll?

  No accent at all.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Hell no. I would, I'd be tossed aside. I'd be cast aside like many Indian Americans who've tried to do the same thing. Like they're like, uh, we're good.

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  But all right. So you're at NYU. That's like the perfect place for you.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, what happened was is they made me apply, just real quick. They made me apply to 15 schools or 16 schools, half academic and half acting. And I did all my auditions myself. I didn't have any help. And my mother was like, I don't know what to do. So she went to this director, Harriet Middleberger, who's actually the art teacher at school. And was like, do you think my son can be a professional actor? And this poor woman, Harriet Middleberger, who is an art teacher at a high school in Gaithersburg, Maryland, or Rockville, Maryland, has to decide my fate. And she

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  What she says will determine.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And Harriet Noberg is like, yeah, he's got focus issues, but he's talented. If he puts his mind to anything, he'll be good at it. Like the diplomatic answer. And that was enough for my mom to be like, okay. And then getting into a school at that time, when it might still be as prestigious as NYU, was a big deal in building their confidence.

• 42:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine that would allow them to like, feel like, sort of exhale a little bit like, okay, NYU, great school.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 42:14Rich Roll?

  Whatever happens with this acting.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  You went to Stanford?

• 42:18Rich Roll?

  I did, yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  You did?

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 42:21Rich Roll?

  But then I went, after I finished Stanford, I went and lived in New York City and um, I dated a girl who uh, who was an NYU student in the acting program there and I had, you know, I met a bunch of those people.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Deborah Messing.

• 42:34Rich Roll?

  Not Deborah Messing, nobody you would know. But uh, uh, I got it, I got like a sense of that program and kind of what goes on there. It's so impressive.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was fun, man. I don't know how you are in an academic environment, but as a creative person, and when you're trying to express something that is so intrinsically a part of who you are, especially when what you do is so tied into the rhythm of humor and comedy, and it's not about diving into the mind of a character, it's about finding the music in the moment and finding and mining the laughter. And that's an instinctual thing. You can learn it to some degree, but the language of laughter is so, you could see I'm like contorting my body. It's so in the back of my neck and in the base of my spine and in my stomach and it's in my, like my,

• 43:25Speaker 01

  my earlobes. It's like I can, it's an energy. And so when you go to school and you have, that's the language that I spoke at the time. And people are like, you should be playing princes and you should be this and don't be a funny man, be a serious man. Do you want people to take you seriously, don't you? This is acting. And I'm like, No, I want that experience that I had when that woman came in with a frowny face and then left beaming. I do it for them. I don't want to do it for critical peers. I don't want to do it for anyone who has an understanding of how the magic works. I'm not doing magic for other magicians. I'm doing it for the people that want to be transported somewhere. So that was like a very hard thing for me to do.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Now, the vocal training at NYU, the physical training, the spine work, the Alexander technique, the core work, the breath work, invaluable for like doing a six-show week in a stage play.

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  And how much of it do you think is trainable? Like, there's this kind of ongoing conversation about like, oh, well, did you study Meisner? Or did you, what was the, you know, what school of thought did you, you know, under which did you train? And I'm always curious, like, how much of this is just, like, you just came out of the womb, like, channeling this, like, to use your phrase, like, magic? Like, there's a magic to it, there's an energy to it that you're just attuned to in a certain way. And yeah, you can learn certain techniques to hone your craft and what you do and improve and sort of figure out different ways to approach these characters. But how much of that is like nature versus nurture?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I think it's, I mean, I'm of the school that it's, you're born with, you're born with it. And some people are born with more and some people are born with less. We can call it charm, we can call it charisma, we can call it gravitas, you know, weight, depending on, there's so many different kinds of performance. And they all require a different set of skills. And how you, like, for me, like, I know that my skill and my gift is in making people feel good and laugh. That's what I do. I entertain. I'm a performer in that regard. I don't know that I'd consider myself an actor, but like, if someone wants to call me that, cool, I'll take the, I'll take the title. But like, how I use my body physically, like, it's probably very similar,

• 45:50Speaker 01

  like, focusing which area of my spine do I use for this character? Like, there are really fun ways to play with your body that I didn't know before I showed up. Like, I was a jumping bean on stage. I couldn't sit still. And then I had a teacher be like, hey, man, plant your feet. Take the space. You have so much energy. Use it, focus it. That was helpful, right? Cause I was embarrassed. I was like, here I am thinking I'm hot shit. And like my teacher goes up on stage and copies the way I look and I looked ridiculous. Like I'm like flopping around.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  It's like Yoda and Luke Skywalker. Like, you have the force, the force is strong with you. But like if the force is just, you know, oozing out of your pores and like, you know, it's not focused, it's not channeled in a very intentional way.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's also that thing of like self-centeredness and narcissism can really deter you as an artist, right? Cause once you get, so like when I was battling, right? Another like major moment is like, I'm like swinging my dick left and right. Bah bah bah bah bah, Indian dick on your forehead. And like Tommy Kale comes up to me and is like, hey, man.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I get that you come from an ego environment. I get that everything you do is to boost your own ego. We are operating as freestyle love supreme in a world in which you rapping about yourself is infinitely less important than you and interesting than say you rapping about oatmeal. If you can rap about oatmeal or the Incredible Hulk or the Los Angeles Clippers with as much dexterity and passion as you rap about yourself, then I'll be interested. And when you can do that, when you can take the focus off of you, then you, then you might, you might have something.

• 47:32Rich Roll?

  That's powerful life advice.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Dude, changed my whole game. It opened me up to a world of expression and improvisation that I up until that point had not experienced. And it took so much pressure off of me that I didn't know was there. Because ultimately like, I don't feel that great about myself. Who can feel that good about themselves all the time? I'm like a skinny Indian dude, ostracized, unattractive, like only child. Growing up in a country that my parents didn't understand, like super sensitive, never felt like I fit in and like I'm, I'm up on stage being like, I'm the man, I'm gonna beat you.

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  Well, fronting, you know what I mean?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:15Rich Roll?

  Fronting.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Faking the funk.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  Exactly. And, and, and I don't, you know, I don't really.

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  Blame you for that. Like, I think it takes a certain kind of courage and like, just like balls to go, "I'm gonna be an actor, I'm Indian, there's no, there's, nobody has paved, has paved this road in front of me."

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:37Rich Roll?

  So how else are you going to break down those doors and get noticed without a little bluster?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of just false confidence moments, for sure.

• 48:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  I'm just like-

• 48:51Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you got taken down a peg too, here and there.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Always.

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  I mean, always.

• 48:55Rich Roll?

  Was there, who was the first, like, kind of breakout Indian performance, you know, ahead of you, where you were like, "Wow, something's happening?"

• 49:03Speaker 01

  So, I mean, you have guys like Om Puri, the old school guys, like Om Puri, who did City of Joy, and then you, which was like in the 90s with Patrick Swayze, um, not a great movie, but, um, and Nasruddin Shah, and then, you know, there, Asif Manvi was there for a long time.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  But he was sort of under the radar, and he was, he wasn't on my radar. The first guy that I saw, and, you know, he loves when I shout him out, and it's true, is like Ajay Naidu in Office Space. When I saw him in this cult classic movie, I was like, "Oh, the OG's going in." Like, that's my guy. Ajay Naidu's my guy, and he's still my guy, and he knows he's my OG. And like, if, I don't know if he listens to this podcast, I mean, everybody on planet Earth listens to this podcast. I hope he does, but he's my-

• 49:53Rich Roll?

  If he does, hit us up, because I'd like to know.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  That's the first time I saw somebody with brown skin, and I was like, "Ding ding ding ding ding, okay, cool, it's possible." And then, of course-

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  What year was that?

• 50:04Speaker 01

  I want to say 97, 98. And then, of course, uh, Kal Penn broke through. And that, there was this boom in around the late 90s, early 2000s of, um, Indian-American-produced independent cinema. There was this movie called Chutney Popcorn, American Dacys, ABCDs, which means American-born confused Dacys. There was like, this little renaissance of independent Indian film.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  None of the movies, sorry guys, were that great, but that's not the point. The point is that they were being done, you know what I'm saying? And then Kal Penn blew up with Harold and Kumar, and by the time I was out of college, I think Aziz Ansari was doing stand-up, and he was already doing Human Giant, and there were people- Making moves Das Racist, the music group was around with Heems and um, Apple, Apple, no, what is it? Hari's brother, Hari Kundabul's brother is in that.

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Um, but Heems is a buddy of mine and people were making moves. But Ajay Naidu was the point where I was like, this can happen.

• 51:07Rich Roll?

  What year, what year was the Danny Boyle movie?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Slumdog?

• 51:11Rich Roll?

  Slumdog, yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Two thousand and one, was it? Or later?

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  I don't know, it seems like it's a long time ago.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Maybe two thousand and five.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Within the last twenty years.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  That had some of the, kind of the old school Indian actor dude, like the, the, like the game show host dude.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I know Kapoor.

• 51:27Rich Roll?

  Been around for a long time, right?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  I know Kapoor is the man. If anyone wants to see a great Bollywood movie, go see Mr. India. It's awesome. He can, he turns invisible.

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  It's dope.

• 51:36Rich Roll?

  So the light bulb's kind of going on and you're like, okay, like there's some, there's some, there's some people out there.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  So what happens, here's the interesting thing about Hollywood though, and, and um, stereotype, the stereotypical nature of it and the idea of boxes. And as you and I have, I, I've followed you and your career and your journey and path and boxes don't exist. Like you are all about just finding efficient spiritual ways to express yourself. And I think that is what we hope for and we strive for as people. Now, the profession that I've chosen is uh, not so amenable to that experience.

• 52:12Rich Roll?

  Well, the difference is that I can, I can speak into this microphone directly to the audience. There's no intermediary.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  Hollywood is all about, you know, doors that you're trying to break down and, you know, committees and all kinds of, you know, people that have to sign off on projects getting made and how they're made.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  So you're asking me to be your co-host?

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, anytime dude.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  I accept.

• 52:33Rich Roll?

  It's so nice to do this with somebody who's a good talker.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 52:37Rich Roll?

  It takes all the stress away, like.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  It's, it's awesome, man. But, but the, the, to speak, this is a very good um, example of how Hollywood works. So Dev Patel, the main actor in Slumdog Millionaire.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Movie wins the Oscar, right? It means Best Picture. So it is the most lauded movie of its year. And you'd expect a star of an Oscar-winning picture to have so many fucking scripts at his doorstep that he immediately launches into movie stardom. It should be that easy, right? Any other Best Picture winner you look at, guaranteed, if you have a, an actor of, um, like, a white actor, or even now, thankfully, black actors, they will have a career. So fast forward-

• 53:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they'll, they'll, they'll at least get tons of options and opportunities.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:33Rich Roll?

  And if they make the wrong choices, or they, and those, they don't execute, well, that's only gonna last so long. But the opportunities will immediately be available.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the door will open. So Dev Patel, lead of this movie, Slumdog Millionaire. Uh, cut to a year later, two years later. I'm sitting in a room with Dev Patel, star of the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, and both of us are going head-to-head auditioning for Aaron Sorkin for the newsroom. What the fuck is Dev Patel doing in a room with me? Because at that point, I have no credits. Maybe I've done two failed pilots. I've gotten a, a very fancy Lucille Lortel nomination for an Off-Broadway Acting Award. And I've won a few rap battles, and I'm in an improv freestyle group.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  But how many, but in the script, I would imagine, it called for Indian-American actor.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  So there's, how many dudes are there? There's only like 10 dudes, right?

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, and he's, why not the offer? Also, that is a TV show. And he's number eight, or nine, or 10 on that call sheet. This is the star of an Oscar-winning fucking movie. And maybe it's the decisions he made, but from my perspective, I'm like, yo, man, you couldn't have fucked this up that quick. Like, what, what is going on? So that is the type of thing, like, I'm Kunal Nayar-

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  He did book it, but he shouldn't have had to audition.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Kunal Nayar, who, uh, Big Bang Theory. This is another guy. We're talking about nine seasons. What are they making, 1.5 an episode? Like, they're breaking bank. And he and I are sitting in a room together. For a role in a Ron Howard movie, the title I can't remember. And we both meet Ron Howard and we have to meet. And I'm like, I've just come from South by Southwest. I've been rocking it with my group. I am hungover as fuck and I'm just like, ah. And here's Kunal Nair, a certified television behemoth star. What am I doing in the room with him? Why is he not just getting the offer? That's why, that's where, when it's like, we need an Indian dude. Let's have options. It's like, no, man.

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Reach out to the

• 55:35Rich Roll?

  Can we really bank on that dude?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  It's like, yes, bro. He's good. He's on the number one show on television. Why am I coming up? Why am I coming?

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a weird thing that happens, which is if it was a white dude, you'd be like, oh, well, that movie succeeded because that white dude carried the movie and has so much charisma. And when there is, you know, an ethnic actor, for lack of a better, you know, a non-white actor. Then the, the thinking is, well, oh, it was the director or it was, there's a dismissiveness. Right?

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  That gets built into the whole thing.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  You know, I'll speak to that really quickly, which I did barbershop, right?

• 56:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And that was interesting. Again, I'm the only one like me in that movie. Like I'm surrounded by amazing black actors and comedians and they're incredible, but I'm still the only Indian in the entire room. Um, and that's an interesting experience too. Like I'm always sort of the odd man out, but, and that's fine because I'm here to work with artists ultimately more than I am what ethnic background they are, right? I'm here to work with talented and great people who inspire me. Um, but I asked one of the executives of that movie, I was like, do you think Aziz or an Indian person could headline a studio film right now? He's like, absolutely not. That'll never happen. You can do an independent movie, good luck.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  But to speak to what you said about a white actor carrying a movie. So if I'm sitting in a room with all Indian people or Indians, Filipinos, you know, Asian, non-white people, and you go, hey, man, who in the group is most like Tom Cruise? We'll know, because we've been watching movies with straight white male leads for so long.

• 57:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  That we know which one of us is Tom Cruise. We know who the Will Smith is. Like, and straight, you know, Will Smith is an outlier, right? He's like this, a movie star.

• 57:29Rich Roll?

  Well, he's transcended race.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Denzel, right? And so like, why does he have to transcend race? That's the crazy thing. But anyway, like, we'll know. We'll be like, yo, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. But if you sit with your friends, with, in a white group, a group of white males, and you're like, which one of you guys is most like Jackie Chan? Can you answer that?

• 57:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, that's tougher.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Right? Because you haven't had the experience of empathizing and being in the shoes of Asian Americans for your entire life. I've been doing this my whole life, comparing myself to a white ideal, or, in some cases, a black ideal, because those are the predominantly the two choices you have when growing up in this country. And you pick a side. You either wear a polo shirt, or you wear, you know, Timbs. And like, that's kind of like, tho- those are your choices. So, that's just, that's something that Dante Bosco, who is an actor and a friend of mine, also, he played Rufio in the movie Hook. He brought that up to me.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  We worked on a song together recently, and I was like, that's so, that's on point. If you sit down with a group of white people, and is like, which one of you guys is most like Utkarsh? They're gonna be like, none of them. Why would anyone want to be like Utkarsh? I don't want to be an Indian dude.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  It is an interesting, like, reversal of perspective, though. Yeah. I want to think about that a little bit more. But I think, you know, look, it is changing. It is improving. Perhaps not as quickly as it, as it should. But I think it's an interesting time. You know, look, Kamel had, you know, The Big Sick was super lauded. More people should have seen that movie.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  It's a great movie.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  And if you haven't, you should. And you're getting, you seem to be getting quite a few opportunities, like, the doors are opening for you, so. You know, you're having success, you're on the cusp of bigger success. How do you think about how you carry that mantle of being, of being a, you know, an Indian American actor? Like, do you feel like a certain responsibility and how you communicate around that? And do you think of it in terms of, of, you know, how you advocate for change? Or like, what is your disposition around the whole thing?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  I feel a deep sense of responsibility. I am Indian American and I am an actor. To deny that would be foolish. I've experienced several ups and downs as a result of, you know, my ethnic background and how people perceive that. And I feel blessed at the same time. This is not a black and white issue. I am very grateful to work. I'm not saying that like, this is what a lot of people are like, you work all the time, what do you have to complain about? It's not about being a complain, it's about being a spokesman or a representative of a community that's underrepresented. That's what I'm here for. For instance, this Good Morning America thing, like, Hurry is in Chicago. They wanted to talk to Hurry, Hurry said no.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  So they asked me, now, I could be like, I don't want to go on Good Morning America. Like, I got, I don't want to eat a cheesesteak and go to bed. But somebody has to show up. Somebody has to represent the community.

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  Do you think about that, like, 14-year-old Udkar Shat home?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  Who doesn't have any role models, who might be tuning in to watch that?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're speaking to the exact reason.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Because as a kid, like, Will Smith was my role model, Michael Jordan was my role model, Michael Jackson was my role model, Bo Jackson was my role model. Like, maybe, uh, who else was there? Jean-Claude Van Damme. You know what I mean? None of those guys look like me, right? But the amount of people now who are like, hey, man, I saw you in Pitch Perfect, or when I saw you on Mindy Project, young people, you know? Your podcast really means something to us. Please keep doing it. Like, it's so good to know that somebody like us is out there going through the same stuff that we go through as creative people every day. That means a lot. And I'm sure you get the same type of response in your field. And as you know, like,

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  That's, I mean, it's really, really helpful. It's super helpful as I go through my own life, knowing that I'm not alone. And that the work that I do is not being seen as either good or bad.

• 1:01:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  It's being seen as a representation of possibility.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  It would be great to kind of contextualize it a little bit because if you look at your IMDB and you're like, oh, this dude works all the time. Like, look at all his credits. This guy goes from one thing to the next. And I know you well enough to know that that's not necessarily, you know, it hasn't been this like linear upwardly mobile trajectory for you. So like, what do people, you know, who have some familiarity with you or your work, like, what do they not get about like what you've had to do to get to the place that you're at?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  What do they not get? You mean like how?

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  Well, it's sort of like, oh, yeah, you're Indian, but it doesn't seem to have been a barrier for you. Look at you, you work all the time.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Oh, but you just don't see the nose, my friend. Like, you don't hear the nose.

• 1:02:46Rich Roll?

  It's a business of nose.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't, you, this is part of that nuclear pellet thing, right?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Richard Dreyfuss came and spoke to my college class and he looked sad. I don't know what that man was going through. Someone asked a question and he was like, I had a nuclear pellet in me once and it died. And I've never been able to get it back. And he said that shit and I was like, this sad motherfucker.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  What year was that?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  This was 2003, 2004?

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  I went to his house for a project and it must have been 2000, 2000, maybe 2006? It was around that same time. And I had a similar experience with him where I left kind of feeling.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Bummed out.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  A little bit.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Bummed and just totally, I was like, you're gonna sit in a room full of open sponge minds and say some fucking horrible shit like that? Keep your god, like, be of service, teach. Anyway, my nuclear.

• 1:03:42Rich Roll?

  I think he is a teacher now.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 1:03:44Rich Roll?

  I think he's like a professor or something.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  I tell you what.

• 1:03:46Rich Roll?

  Anyway, go ahead.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  My nuclear pellet isn't gonna die because I get to be here and share with you, someone who inspires me and fills me up. I get to go and hopefully be willing to be educated, but the no, right? The no is constant. I've done 13 pilots, 12 of them have failed and every one of those pilots had a price tag attached to it, right? This is what it's gonna be. I've worked with some of the best people on projects you will never see. Every year, pilot, fail, pilot.

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  Right. For people that are listening that that aren't quite familiar. When you do a pilot, you, and as a lawyer, I used to negotiate these deals. I mean, you're basically signing a contract for the next seven, seven years of your life.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Rich Roll?

  And as an actor, like literally, your life would change in such an unbelievably dramatic way, literally overnight, if the pilot gets picked up and goes to series. If it's a network show.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you go from having a lot of free time and making, let's say, let's say on a good year, you make $50,000 to making $1.2 million a year for seven years.

• 1:04:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Immediately. And still living in a one-bedroom apartment for $1,200 a month. Now, I don't know what it's like, because that's never happened. I did finally break through that ceiling this year with Showtime's White Famous. We did one season, it got canceled.

• 1:05:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, it got canceled? I didn't know that.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  That's a win for me, dude. I just did my first full season of television after 10 years. 13 pilots of being like, is this one gonna go? Is this one gonna go? Is this one gonna go?

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  Of all those pilots, what was the one that you thought like, this one is incredible, it's gonna go? Or the people involved, it's just too good to not, to not go?

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Two years ago, Kevin Connolly, Vanessa Williams, myself, Jamie Lynn Siegler, Tim McCalliffe, writer, Fantasy Life, it was called, based on the Fantasy Football Guys, um, book, whose name I can't remember right now. But everybody's yelling at their car stereos right now. We know, where are you idiot? This is who it is.

• 1:05:49Rich Roll?

  I know, calm down, people.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  It was a show about Fox Sports Network shot about football. And on Fox, it was like, it was like Fox, it was like, here we go. Here you go. Single camera, just spoon feed success into you. And we got football players, Rob Gronkowski was there, Russell Wilson was a guy. Like, we could have just gotten anyone all the time. And for some reason.

• 1:06:17Rich Roll?

  Didn't get picked up.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Didn't get picked up.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy, that model, though. They spend so much money and then they don't pick these things up. Nobody ever sees these pilots. They go to some graveyard somewhere. And because the network owns the story, it never goes any further. Like, I feel like with all of these outlets now, there should be more fluidity with all of these pilots that don't get picked up. Where there's some flexibility that they can be sold to other places and get developed and come out of shows.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  I mean, that's kind of what happened to me. That's sort of the process I'm in right, excuse me, in right now, which is,

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  which is where I'm at. I mean, to really speak to like, why my career has like gotten better, like, you know, I know you have a history with booze. Like, I was, I was not living a good lifestyle. And I'll tell you, like, the most poignant story is this. If, it's a little bit long.

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  This is what I'm here to talk about, dude.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  So, to speak to Freestyle Love Supreme, what happened is, about seven years ago, six years ago, Lynn does this Alexander Hamilton song at the White House.

• 1:07:29Rich Roll?

  Well, let's back it up even further a little bit.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:07:32Rich Roll?

  If we could.

• 1:07:35Rich Roll?

  Where do you first meet Lynn?

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Oh, in that room.

• 1:07:38Rich Roll?

  And that was it. You didn't know him before that?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  No, we're like two dogs sniffing each other's butts and being like, I think we might be from the same litter.

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  And where does the partying come in? Like, when you're in New York and at NYU in high school?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  I would say that I was full-blown. By eighteen or nineteen. Uh huh. I would say I was like going hard in the paint. So you were you were ramping up in high school, then you get to New York City, which is just like Disneyland for alcoholics. Yeah, high school, I was a pretty good kid. Mm hmm. And then, once I got to New York, by sophomore or junior year of college, I had completely checked out. Like, I was like, you know, whatever it is, to all the shrooms, all the acid, everything, right? Like, I I tried. I don't need to get into specifics, but, you know, we did a lot of crazy, like, fish-related behaviors. You know what I'm saying? Or like. Fish, like P H I, like Fish the Band. Like String Cheese Incident. Yeah, I got you.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  I'm freezing. I don't even know what that is. I know String Cheese Incident, and I know Fish, Sound Tribe Sector Nine. I'm trying to remember all of my friend Chase's favorite bands, because I just went wherever he went, because that's where the stuff was. Um, so, yeah, by the time I'm twenty twenty one, this is my lifestyle. And I feel guilty about it. I'm like, I probably shouldn't be doing this. Like, this isn't what a good Indian kid should do. Like, you know, I'm not able to show up to things with as much gusto. But it's who I am. Like, this is hip hop. This is New York. This is like twenty two, man. This is what we do. Smoke weed every day. Like, this is the lifestyle, you know, and like, when you don't,

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  uh, when you're not getting work, you can always sell, and you can make at least enough money to like, stay stay afloat. You're not losing money, that's for sure. Go to jail a couple of times for like some little things. Yeah, but like, no biggie, dude. No biggie. Yeah, so what? I was spray painting in the Lower East Side. It's like. It's what you gotta do. The dumbest. For some cred, right? Yeah, I was in this hip hop group called The Beatards. Bad name. Um, I love those guys. Um, and we spray painted on the wall in big gold letters, "The Beatards will outrun you." And then in two seconds, it was like, whoop, whoop. And we did not run, we did not skip, jog, or walk. We stayed stationary and went directly to jail.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  And it was like little things like that. Like one time I had an open container on the subway. And that's nothing, that's a ticket.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  That's nothing. I thought you could still, can you not do it in the brown bag?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  No, they can't do that anymore. I see.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  We got, we got pinched, but here's the thing, I had a prior from that spray painting incident. So you go directly to jail. Now what, and where I got lucky, and I have never told this story before.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  That's crazy because the one thing about New York City cops is they got their eyes on like the most important shit. Like they can't be bothered with some dude in the subway with an open container.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Me and my buddy went to jail.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  How did you like, that's amazing that they would even care.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what we did. But I will tell you this, like for the white people listening, you guys really have an ability to yell at cops that the rest of us don't. And you should appreciate that and use it as much as possible. If I was a white person, I'd be yelling at a police officer at least once a day. I would just be like.

• 1:10:59Rich Roll?

  I still don't think it's a good idea if you're white, but certainly not as dire as it would be if you were to do that.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  At least three times a day, you should say something mean to a cop and just be like, ha ha, that's my privilege in life. Um, I'm only half joking. But, uh, so that was a, one of those experiences where, look, we get pinched. We're only there for an overnight, but here's the thing, I've got weed on me, which is a misdemeanor, but I've also got a bag of cocaine in my pocket. And it was like in that little coin pocket that you have in your jeans. And I was like, my friend Charlie is yelling at the cops and he's being, you know, obnoxious. And I was like, you have to shut the fuck up. Like I'm actually in a problem situation here.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  And lucky for me, by the grace of whatever, um, obviously it's my luck because at this point, I'm the center of the universe and I've done enough shrooms to know that I'm Jesus, but like, the cop searched my jeans with rubber gloves. And when he went into that pocket, he didn't feel the bag. So I'm sitting in jail with cocaine in my pocket and nobody knows.

• 1:12:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  And they let us out six hours later. And I'm just like.

• 1:12:13Rich Roll?

  So if you, if you had been busted for that felony?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not going home that night.

• 1:12:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  That's for sure. There's no way.

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  And so.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  You got spared there. Alright, so let's fast forward to, to Lynn.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So to, to, to basically like, so I meet Lynn, blah, blah, blah. We do that. We're there. And then seven years ago, Lynn's like, I got something for you. I got something good. I'm working on something special. I got something for you.

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  And was Lynn a student at NYU?

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  No, Lynn went to Wesleyan. We met, we met when I was a senior, coming out of senior year in college. So I met all those guys. I met Lynn, Chris.

• 1:12:50Rich Roll?

  Freestyle Love Supreme.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we did that. We went to Vancouver for Just for Laughs Festival. We, uh, we performed, we performed a lot. We've been on stage together hundreds of times.

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Um, and then Lynn's like, I got this thing. I got this thing. You know, this Hamilton thing. You want to do it? And I was just coming off of Pitch Perfect and I was hot shitting it. And I also at this point was like, living a lifestyle, which was a daily, I was in a daily lifestyle at this point.

• 1:13:20Rich Roll?

  Daily using.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, daily drinking. And we did, um, Hamilton, what became Hamilton, excuse me, at, um, Lincoln Center. We started that. And I was like.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  So it was like you're developing the material with him and like.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  David and like, who else is there?

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that first time it was me and Chris, John Rua, James Monroe, Iago Hart.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  So basically just freestyle Love Supreme dudes.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah.

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  Lynn's like, I got this thing. Did you have a sense like, whoa, this is like, this is a thing?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  So at first, when we did it at Lincoln Center, when we did like a Hamilton mixtape, I think is what it was called.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  And for an audience or you're just workshopping it there?

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Full audience. And I played Aaron Burr, which is the lead role that won the Tony for best actor. Um.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, it was good. It was like, yeah, Lynn's dope. This is my friend. He's dope. I'm dope. Like, we're all good. This is gonna be good. Like, I have no context. I'm like, I just did Pitch Perfect. My movie, like, I'm blowing up. Like, I'm good. I'm on the Mindy Project. About, wait, maybe I hadn't done Mindy Project yet. I was full of Vim and vigor and ego and Full of that shit. Um, and I was more concerned about where the party was at after than the work itself. Which is what I learned later on when I stopped drinking, is that what happened after was so much more important than the experience itself. I wanted to know where we were going, what we were doing, who we were doing it with, and whatever happened on stage is like the least of my fucking interests and priorities. So, fast forward a few months.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  And a total lack of appreciation for this unbelievable opportunity that just fell into your lap. All day, every day. Appreciation, you should be so lucky to have me. Like, so, few months pass, and then we go up to Poughkeepsie to New York Stage and Film, um, to workshop again. And then now we've got sort of what became a lot of the core group. You got Chris Jackson, Davi joined. I was there. Um, Joshua Henry, who just played Aaron Burr, uh, here in LA. If you guys got a chance to see him, he was, he's incredible. Um, and several other folks who I can't remember right now. But you've got Tommy Kale, you've got Alex Lacamoire, the music director. You've got Lynn. And here's the thing, I'm not a trained musical theater guy.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  It's not like I can just show up and be dope. I have to work. And like, I have a few skills which help, which is to say that like, if I hear something, I can mimic it. I've got sort of like an audiographic thing. At least that's what Alex says. But if you're drunk at nine in the morning, or 10 in the morning, that skill Ain't gonna work. No, man. So, I went through that week with great, uh...

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  With an inability to perform in the way that they wanted me to and knew that I could. My-

• 1:16:09Rich Roll?

  Did people like David like show up understanding like, oh, this is, this is gonna be like a big thing. Like, I'm here 110%.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. People took it seriously. And Chris Jackson sat me down and he was like, you know, this is their life. This is Lynn and Tommy and Alex. This is their future. This is how they're gonna put their kids through college. This means the world to them. And you know, it's not some little shit. It's Tommy Cale and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Like, we already done been through In the Heights. You saw what that was. You're fucking up. And I was like, Lynn's songs are too hard and I can't sing them. He's like, you know every yelp and whoop to every Michael Jackson song ever written, don't you? Why can't you learn Lynn's stuff?

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  Who's telling you this?

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  Christopher Jackson, who played George Washington, who's my big brother in Freestyle Love Supreme.

• 1:16:56Rich Roll?

  So he's trying to have your back and go, look, man, you can do this. You have the skills, but you gotta sort your shit out.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta focus. And meanwhile, I'm at the bar every night, unable to do that. So, we perform. Um, I am underwhelming in my performance, right? And to fast forward quite a bit, obviously, I'm not sitting here talking to you about my starring role in Hamilton. They had to go in a different direction. They were, it wasn't for me at that time. I was unable to meet the moment because of what was going on in my life, which is really embarrassing and hard to say to a bunch of people in their cars who just yelled at me for not knowing a fantasy football guy. Um, but-

• 1:17:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, everyone likes to think that, that they would acquit themselves differently, but I think it's, it's so- Powerful, man. And it takes courage to tell that story and I appreciate you sharing it with everybody.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  So what happens then is like,

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  you were sorry, were you? But yeah, but I'm just saying like, you know, that it's such a palpable thing like to not, to be so in your immaturity and your disease, to not really understand the opportunity in front of you and to be unable to avail yourself of your God given talent to just show up and do what everyone else is doing. And then in retrospect, you know, fast forward several years later, to look back through the rearview mirror and to see and truly appreciate what Hamilton became. It must have been very difficult for you to not do the, you know, coulda, shoulda, woulda, what would my life have been like?

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Well, of course I did.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  Showed up sober.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Of course I did that. What happens is, is I get sober. And as I'm getting sober, and for anyone who's dealt with substance stuff or who's struggling with it, you know that when you, and you know, when you first turn off the booze and the drugs and stuff, you're a babe, you're a brand new person. Everything is raw. What am I? My routine was based on this behavior. I now have to change all my behaviors. Who am I? So I'm this brand new person in the world and I'm like, look at me, I'm brand new and I'm special and I'm clean and I'm doing everything I gotta do to be a good guy and a cool guy and a nice guy.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  And everywhere I look, everywhere I go in this new experience, the specter and shadow of my biggest mistake is over me and blocking out everything else. Cause people know, you do a quick Google search, it's like, oh, you played Aaron Burr? Everyone knows I'm friends with Lynn, we're homies, we're very good friends. So it's not like, and they supported me, right? Like they fully, everyone is like, nobody was like, hey, man, you should probably keep drinking. Like everyone was supportive. So it's one of those things where now I'm sober, Hamilton is blown the fuck up.

• 1:19:56Rich Roll?

  But did Lynn fire you or like, how did that go down?

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  They just kind of, they just kind of moved in another direction. And I called Tommy and I was like, hey, man, like, what's up? Like, we're going to the public? And he was like, no dude, like, I'm really glad I know now why. You dropped the ball the way you did, but what you did, we had to move on.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't work for us.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  And I was like, can I audition again? He said, yeah, but I mean, I knew I wasn't gonna get it.

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Ship is sailed.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  But I flew myself out to New York. I prepped the material, showed up early. And I sang and I did my best. And it was fucking humbling as shit, man. It was one of those like, and they walked out of the room and I was changing and I had nowhere to go. I was like in New York for a day. I was newly sober. I was just trying to get my shit together. And I know that that went a long way for them. Of like, whoa, this egotistical piece of shit.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  Right, that's an act of humility. You know, it'll be like, hey, I'm gonna suck. I fucked up. I'm gonna come up and hat in hand and like.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  And I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. Honestly, like, it had to be explained to me by Tommy. He had to be like, when you did it, this, this is how I felt. So Hamilton blows up and it hurts, right? I'm like, there, I get to see the show and like, they're giving me love.

• 1:21:15Rich Roll?

  It's unprecedented. It's like, nothing, nothing, in culturally, it was, it was just the biggest outlier ever.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  It blew up in the way that it did.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  And it's all my best friends in it. So like, they're sending me birthday messages in costume. Like Lynn, like Lynn and I, basically, the way we communicate is through freestyle rap videos.

• 1:21:36Rich Roll?

  Like you text them back and forth to each other?

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Back and forth videos. So I don't know how many we have at this point. Like, if someone, anyone ever archived it, it's like five years.

• 1:21:45Rich Roll?

  You should put that together. That would be amazing.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should. We should, but I don't, it's like our thing.

• 1:21:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  But like, anyway, like, we, like, for instance, this week was a chicken box and a shingles rap videos. We're done. I don't know if anyone would find them interesting except for us.

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  Dude, I would, I think you are underestimating how much people would be into that.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Well, I'll, I'll talk to him about it and I know he'll be like, really dude, let's not. But he's like, I say some fucked up shit.

• 1:22:13Rich Roll?

  Well, there is something kind of nice and beautiful and pure about just having like a private, like friendship like that, that's not for public consumption.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  It's just, it keeps us in touch in a fun way.

• 1:22:25Rich Roll?

  Go ahead, I interrupted you.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  That's okay. So. It it blows up and um it hurts. It hurts a lot to not be there and like to see your really good friends doing something that you were a part of and it's great success and at the time like I'm not really like doing that much. You know, I'm doing some pilots here and there and like no TV show is ever gonna be Hamilton. You know what I mean? And you're just seeing people blow up like David deserves it. He's a homie. We just did a movie called Blind Spotting. Right, you were at Sundance. I want to talk about that in a minute. Um, let me, so I'll blaze through this story. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And what happens is, is it culminates, I've never watched the Tonys, but because I wanted to beat the shit out of myself, I watched the Tonys. Just to torture yourself.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. I watched the Tonys and I see Leslie Odom, who's so talented, by the way. Like when I watch him play Aaron Burr, I realize and understand why I'm not playing Aaron Burr. Like, let's not get it twisted. That dude is for real ferocious. And if I had stayed with the project, the character would have been vastly different. But that's not what happened. They went in a different direction and Leslie, I could never play Aaron Burr today. I don't have the chops. But I watch him get the Tony for best actor and I cry. Cry woe is me tears. And how long had you been sober at that point? Two years, two years, maybe, little less.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoo, me. And I'm so sad. And as you know, from the work that we do to keep our minds right, I put pen to paper and I started writing and I kept writing. What is, what is the story? Where are the feelings? I wrote four or five songs. I wrote what ended up being an eighteen, nineteen page treatment, basically a graphic novel. And if I wrote a hip hop musical about a guy who missed out on being in the biggest hip hop musical of all time, about sobriety, about missed opportunities, about how we deal with being a new person in the world when the one thing that you wish you had

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  is ubiquitous, is everywhere. It's like if you broke up with a girl and you missed her and on every street corner was her face. Right. And I took that story to Tommy Kail.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Who directed Hamilton? And I was like, hey, man, you know how much it hurts. You know what it is. Here's what I did. What do you think? And he said, well, I fired you from the first job. Let's do this. He's like, I think this is self deprecating. It's honest. It's true. It's funny. It's sweet.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  In many ways, it's like a love letter to Lynn.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Because otherwise he wouldn't let me do it. I got Lynn's blessing. And, you know, we developed it just to speak to what you were saying earlier. We developed it at Amazon. Amazon underwent this huge change. And now they're not going with like quirky, great shows. They want to do like Lord of the Rings style. Whatever they're called.

• 1:25:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're gonna spend a billion dollars on that.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Amazon was like, yeah, we're not really gonna do this now.

• 1:25:34Rich Roll?

  So they bought it.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  They bought it and they gave it back.

• 1:25:36Rich Roll?

  Oh, they did give it back because I remember when you sold it.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now we have it.

• 1:25:40Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  We have it again.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  And we're, we're going out with it. But that, the point is, is it's like, that's the best case scenario. You dropped the frigging ball. You tell a story about dropping the ball. And then the person who fucking dropped, like, who was like, you dropped the ball.

• 1:25:55Rich Roll?

  It's more than that, Utkarsh, because what it is, is it's taking ownership of the character defects that led to that situation. It's writing about it in an open and honest and vulnerable way to take even deeper ownership of it. And then finding a way to convey that story in a way that can be instructive for other people to understand, you know, what you went through and what you've learned from that.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  I nearly.

• 1:26:24Rich Roll?

  It's like, it's like a beautiful act of service done through the lens of your art form.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Thanks. I mean, I, I hope so. I mean.

• 1:26:33Rich Roll?

  But to take like that thing that, that I, I mean, I just can't imagine, like the, the scope of the pain that.

• 1:26:42Rich Roll?

  To like, to like, literally every day have to see Hamilton everywhere you turn.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Rich Roll?

  Like, I just, I can't imagine that. And the thing is, dude, you stayed sober through that. Like, if there was ever an excuse to drink and say, fuck it.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  But it's the opposite. The Hamilton is the excuse to stay sober. Hamilton is the reason. Like, when you look at it and you go, fuck it. We all have fuckits. Ah, fuck it, man. I want some champagne. Goddamn, wine's good. Come on. Blue Label? Gimme. But then you go, um, do you remember Hamilton?

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Like, do you remember what you missed? Like, do you remember, do you know, like, forget the friendships lost? I mean, those are the most important things, to be honest. Like, my mother, my mother and I, and my father and I have a great relationship. My mom doesn't cry. She knows where I am. She knows that if I don't talk to her for a couple of days, I'm cool. You know what I mean? Like, my friends ask me to take care of their dogs. They ask me to officiate their weddings. They ask me to be best man at their weddings. Like, they know that when they make a plan with me, I'll show up. Like, I'm here, I'm there. But in terms of my career, which, like you said, is doing really well, I'm happy. I'm blessed and I'm grateful to be working with awesome people and to show up on set and to be a version of myself

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  that is my ideal, or at least close to it, in terms of how I treat other people. And, um,

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  you know, that Hamilton quote unquote "loss," it's a loss. Why am I saying quote unquote? It's a great reason to be like, hey, man, like, you don't want to go back on that body.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  Right, but it presents a choice. Like, that choice is gonna break some people and it's gonna make others, right? Like, you can look at that and go, hey, man, this is the biggest instructive lesson I'm ever gonna learn.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  Or you can just, like, sort of use it to fuel victimhood and tell yourself that you're a piece of shit until it's so painful that you're faced with nothing, no other choice but to drink and use.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Word. But that's the wonderful thing about getting sober and hanging out with guys like you and being on a spiritual path and being on a growth is like you learn through repetitive behaviors that are good to have some self-love and integrity and some self-esteem, which I never truly, um, had. I never built it up, so I had, like, a reserve. So the Hamilton experience maybe lowered my reserves. It certainly, but they, but I was constantly feeling, refilling by spending time with people like you. Like, we all have missed opportunities in our life. And mine is a great story. It's certainly one of those, holy fuck, bro, you fucked up.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Damn, bro, that must, you must feel like shit. Like, everyone I tell it to is like jaw drop.

• 1:29:33Rich Roll?

  Well, it's so direct, but I mean, you, you, everybody, I think you're right. Everybody does have these, maybe it's two steps removed from that huge opportunity. Because like, oh, I overslept because I was hungover and I couldn't show up for that meeting. That would have led to me meeting this other guy who would have talked to that guy, who would have talked to that guy. That then would have been this thing, like, you just don't know.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, mine is, yeah, it's right there in your face. It's like one plus one equals Hamilton. But like, but the thing is, is like, at throughout the experience, I had the support of people who understood the feelings. Who weren't just like, soldier up, boy, like, toughen up. Like, you should be happy this. They were like, wow, that's Prudhoe, man. Like, let's talk about it. What's going on? What's, what are those feelings about? You know what you can do? You can put pen to paper. I don't, I don't have the muscle of self pity. It's so, that self pity muscle has atrophied so much in sobriety. And that's one of the greatest gifts that I've been given. Is that when the voice goes, oh, man, I'm a butt head and nobody likes me.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  There's like a stronger voice that's more alive and more grown up and more taken care of that I never had before. That just goes, hey, man, like, I know you're not feeling, you're good, you're, but like, I got you. You're taken care of. You're not like, let's look at the resume. You're cool. Did you show up today for all the things you needed to show up for? Is your bed made? Is the sink clean? Did you brush your teeth? Cool, you seem like a good guy to me.

• 1:30:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Like.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  What, what was the bottom? What brought you in?

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  The bottom was, uh, I fell on my face, vanity. The bottom was vanity. I fell on my face. I woke up the next day, I looked in the mirror, I had a black eye, I was bloody. And I was like, oh no. I was like, all I have to do is keep my dog alive and not fuck up my face. And I've, I'm, I'm batting 50%, which is a failing grade. And I got a call from a friend who had been checking in on me and.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  That was it. That's the last day I drank. Yeah, I was done.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  How long has it been now?

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Three plus.

• 1:31:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's good, dude.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're, you just celebrated a anniversary recently, right?

• 1:31:41Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, I think, uh, it's weird because it's, it's messed up. I mean, I, I had that one day outing about six years ago, so I'm past six years.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  But I went to rehab in 98, so it would be, without that, be, you know, whatever, 20 years, 19 years, but

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Ah, rehab in 98.

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  Reset the clock after the

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  You gotta like

• 1:32:01Rich Roll?

  Four hour respite or whatever.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Did they have a good VHS collection at your rehab?

• 1:32:07Rich Roll?

  I don't remember. Did you go to rehab?

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  I spent, uh, I'd spent some time in summer camp.

• 1:32:13Rich Roll?

  You did? Okay. Yeah. No, no, I don't remember VHS. There was, there would be a movie night occasionally.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:21Rich Roll?

  And there was a television in like a communal room, but it was more like, you know, just going from group session this to group session that.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Exhausting.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  It's exhausting.

• 1:32:30Rich Roll?

  But part of it's awesome. Like, there's part of me now who'd be like, that would be cool to like, go to rehab now for like 30 days. Just like work on my shit.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Well, now, like, you're like, just take a week off here. Take a month off here.

• 1:32:44Rich Roll?

  You could. There were, I remember when I was in rehab, somebody came for a stint who had had like, you know, a fair amount of sobriety. I can't, I can't remember. I mean, it seemed like a million years to me.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had like 38 days.

• 1:32:56Rich Roll?

  I don't know, but, but I was like, you're choosing to come here when you don't have, like, you're not, I couldn't understand it, but now I kind of get that.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  There's one other guy from that time named Jackson, and it's like, you see that person in a room across the room, and it's like, damn, we both, I can't believe we're still here. Can't believe we made it. It's incredible. It's a, you know, it's a crippling disease.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  It's a, it's like, it's insane.

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  How did that kind of go over with the, with the parents when you had to talk about, tell them what was going on?

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Oh, man, it's brutal. It's awful. My poor mother. She's so sad.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  She was so scared. And my dad

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Really, really like soldiered like, I mean, he really like, he read every book on addiction. He read every book on like the pleasure centers in the brain and like what it is and like.

• 1:33:50Rich Roll?

  He's got to put his science mind to work on it.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  He's got to understand it because it is scientific. There's a dopamine receptor, there's a, there's a, that's broken. So like when a normal person drinks five drinks and that they're at a 10, we drink five drinks and we're at eight and we think we got to drink, we have the same tolerance. But when I drink five, I'm at an eight and I will never get higher than an eight. So I will drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and wonder why I can't get drunk. Right? Whereas my homies are like, all right, five drinks, I'm good. I need a burrito, I'm going home. Next day they wake up and they don't feel the need. The first thought in their mind is not like, oh, when can I have more of that?

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  You know, that's how my body and brain, I've come to learn works. If you put a substance into my body, it could even be Fortnite, bro. Have you heard of this video game Fortnite?

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  I have heard of it.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Have you heard of this shit?

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  I haven't played it.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  I'm awful, but I've been playing it for like a week.

• 1:34:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  And I'm terrible at it and it's one, it's the same thing. These games last, depending on how bad you are, between five and 20 minutes. Every time a game ends, it's like 12, it's 12 AM. Look to Disco, my dog, one more game, 12:30, one more game, 1 AM.

• 1:35:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's it, man.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  1:30.

• 1:35:11Rich Roll?

  That's, that's the disease right there in your face.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, 3 AM, one more game.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  Whoa.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  3:30. Well, I don't have to go to the gym tomorrow and I only have to see Rich at two. So like, that's what it is, man. If you put something in me that's going to give me a boost. I'm gonna abuse it.

• 1:35:29Rich Roll?

  Right. So what are some of your routines to keep it at bay?

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  The beast.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  I talk to guys like you who understand it.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Exercise. I play basketball three to four times a week. I'm at the gym several times a week. I make my bed. Uh, making the bed in the morning is a big one. And like med- meditate and I pray and we have uh, clubhouses.

• 1:35:56Rich Roll?

  Secret society.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have secret societies that meet every now and then and get tacos.

• 1:36:02Rich Roll?

  That's cool, man.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  And that's kind of like how it is and there's always somebody

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  who

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  is willing and desperate for help and doesn't know how to um, approach sobriety.

• 1:36:20Rich Roll?

  So, so if somebody like that is listening to this right now, and I assure you there, there are, like what do you say to that person?

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I just said, like, what I usually I'm, I'm the funny one. So if I'm like, what's going on? How you doing? Yeah. Oh, that sounds, that sounds pretty, that sounds, I mean, it just depends if some-

• 1:36:42Rich Roll?

  But if somebody's feeling stuck, like they're in that, and I know dude, because I get, I get crazy emails all the time from people. They're in that cycle of addiction. They just can't stop drinking. They can't stop using. They don't know what to do. If you- Like if that dude called you up or that woman called you up right now and said, I'm drunk right now. I'm listening to the podcast. Like, tell me what to do.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Well, there's a place at the front of the phone book that you can look for. And they meet all the time. And I would suggest that um, you go meet some people. We all know how you feel. We've all been there. I-

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  It's hard to... It was very... It felt good when I found out I wasn't unique. And not when I wasn't special. Sometimes that's very hard.

• 1:37:32Rich Roll?

  Because you look like a guy who fed on that for a long time, being terminally unique.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the best thing that's happened to me is to just be like, wow, cool. I've got a family. I've got like a real group of people and I'm so, I'm so special, but I'm not unique. Does that make sense? Like I am, there are things about me that make me who I am.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  And part of the thing that makes me special is that I get to share something and be in a support system with a bunch of people. So like, if you're feeling it's so hard because everyone, you can't, some people want tough love. Some people want sweet love. All I'll say is there's a place you can go where you can get the help that you need and it only costs a dollar.

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  Or it's free.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's definitely free.

• 1:38:21Rich Roll?

  It doesn't even cost a dollar. I mean, what I, and I agree with that and I would supplement that by just saying, if you don't want to drink or use again, you don't have to, that there is a solution available to you. It's not necessarily for everybody who needs it, it's for those who want it. So the question is, do you want it? And are you willing to do what it takes to, to get it? And if you are willing and you are desperate and you feel broken and alone, that's a great place to start. And I would encourage, you know, anybody who's listening to set aside whatever preconceived ideas or notions you have about the secret society. Find one in your area, show up, raise your hand, find somebody you can talk to, listen.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  Look for the similarities rather than the differences and, and try to find somebody who you identify with enough that you can speak to them honestly and tell them what's really going on in your life. And if you can get to that place of honesty and connection with another human being, I think that's a pretty good start to addressing what is only going to get worse unless you deal with it.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can try something new. And if you don't like it, you can go back to your shitty life.

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  You can always go back.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  You can always go back.

• 1:39:28Rich Roll?

  To whatever's not working.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  To where you are right now and continue to be miserable, no problem. But there is, there is a, there's a way out. And I think you said it best, like you just don't ever have to feel this way ever again. I took that to heart and it changed my life.

• 1:39:46Rich Roll?

  And now you're in Blind Spotting.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, now we're at Sundance. Now I'm like rolling to Sundance with the homies.

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  You're doing so, you're in like Game Over Man. You got like, you're going away for, you can't, can you talk, can you talk about what you're about to go do?

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:00Rich Roll?

  You can't.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  But I'm going away for six months to do a

• 1:40:03Rich Roll?

  It's big.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  One of those big movies. Yeah, which I'm excited about. Soon as that frigging contract gets written down, though, I'm gonna tell the whole goddamn world.

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  When is that? Cause I can wait on putting this up.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:40:16Rich Roll?

  We'll talk about that later.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  Your guess is as good as mine.

• 1:40:18Rich Roll?

  Um, and Blind Spot, so for people that don't know, Blind Spotting premiered at Sundance. Does it, do you guys have a release date? Is it, did that get a distribution deal? I mean, that was, it made a big splash.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That, um, Blind Spotting, for those who don't know.

• 1:40:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Stars Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, uh, written by Rafael as well, directed by, um, our good buddy Carlos and, uh, Janina Gavankar, who's my super homie. Uh, Jasmine Safus Jones and myself and, uh, tons of other great actors. July 27th, Lionsgate releases that.

• 1:40:50Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Game Over Man with the Workaholics Boys is on Netflix right now. That is a wild action comedy. Super gross, like definitely fun.

• 1:41:02Rich Roll?

  It's Workaholics.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Oh, man, it is so inappropriate and I do awful things in it and it's really fun. And then there's a movie I did with Brie Larson, which was just released called, um, Basmati Blues. It's a movie musical. It's a romantic comedy that's available on Amazon and on demand and all those things. And if you're in India, listening to the Rich Roll Podcast, which I'm gonna guess is like at least 1.2 billion people, like in India, listen to this podcast.

• 1:41:30Rich Roll?

  Of course, at least that many.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  You can go see it in theaters right now. It's playing in India.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  Playing throughout India?

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's really cool. And you, you have like an album coming out too, right?

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  I've got an album that I'm working on called Vanity. It's got features from Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Heems from the Sweatshop Boys, uh, the one Shanti, Calli, I think Lynn is gonna be on it, Dante Bosco. I got a lot of South Asian artists, MCs and, um, It feels good. It's just like-

• 1:41:58Rich Roll?

  Are you, are, do you have a, a label with that? Are you doing that just all independent?

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Independent.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, labels. Here's the thing. Ten years ago, we wrote songs, me and my buddies. Those songs are still on, in TV and, uh, on TV and in movies. And nobody gets that money but me and my two buddies.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  And we don't have to, we wrote a song on a plane ten years ago called dang diggy diggy da dang a dang dang diggy dang diggy diggy da dang. And those dangs and those diggies are still making this bank at the piggy.

• 1:42:29Rich Roll?

  Really? So they get licensed out to stuff?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's why the independent route.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  I've always, uh, I've always done it that way. I don't, I don't like sharing.

• 1:42:40Rich Roll?

  But you're always, like, you're very industrious. Like, you could just be sitting and waiting for the phone to ring. And you're in this weird business where you have very little control of your destiny. You're just waiting for these gatekeepers to like, say, come on in.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  But what I see is somebody who, who deals with that by creating what you can in the interim. Whether it's like making a music video with Davey, you know, the 500 Mile song.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Davey Greenberg.

• 1:43:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, our boy, what's up, Davey?

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Shave your mustache, Davey. Looks weird.

• 1:43:12Rich Roll?

  I kinda like it on him. It's endearing.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  He looks super creepy.

• 1:43:15Rich Roll?

  Alright.

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  He looks super creepy.

• 1:43:16Rich Roll?

  Um, but you're always kinda, you got like these little hustles going all the time.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, here's the thing that I, and it's great that you brought this up is like, you know, you are in the sweet spot. You create your content. You are the boss. You validate yourself every day with the krak, with the hand paddles on the ground.

• 1:43:36Rich Roll?

  But I still have books with publishing companies and there's, you know, there's other kinds of things that are somewhat analogous.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Oh, fair enough. But you travel, you, your joy is, is what you do every day.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  And to a great extent, so is mine. Like, I do what I love for a living, so I almost never work. And that's the truth. But a lot of it is based on other people. And like when we talked about the power of the poison of the no, the no, the no, the no. Problem is, is when you keep hearing no from these motherfuckers, sometimes you think that it has something to do with you. No. Oh, I'm less. I'm less. I'm less. And that's how you get crazy people out there. Crazy actors who are miserable because they seek validation from opinions of other people. If I don't get work, then I am nothing. If these people don't get me a job, then I am nothing.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  I get my validation from going into the studio and spending my money and working on a song for six hours. That feels great. Or writing a poem, or doing a podcast, or coming to do this with you. Like, this feels better. And, and what I get, the power and the magic that I get from sharing with you, someone who I inspire, who I am inspired by and look up to, is that I can go into an audition right now, be fully prepared. I care. I care about my craft. I'll be memorized. I'll be off book. I'll make strong choices. I'll go in, I'll do it. I'll throw the sides away. As soon as I leave, in the trash can, provided to me right outside the door, and I won't think about it again.

• 1:45:10Rich Roll?

  Right. That, that ability to detach from the results of your labors, right? Because you know, hey, man, whatever happens is supposed to happen. But you know what? Later on today or tomorrow, I'm going back in the studio. Like, just moving, what's the next creative thing? What's the next creative thing?

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  And that feels great. I mean, that's a wonderful way. And I always tell people when they're like, what do I do? What do I do? I go, rule number one, don't quit. When you think you're, when you quit, like, just go to bed, wake up the next day, and you'll be fine. Rule number one, don't quit. Two, don't have a backup plan. Rule number three, finish what you start. When you start it, make sure that shit is done. It might be a piece of fucking shit, but you get it done and you learn how to finish what you start. That's a big deal. And then, create your own content and find something that you love that has nothing to do with how you make money. Find something else that validates you, whether it's a relation,

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  like, if it's the relationship, or you have kids, or like, you, I don't know, you pogo on the weekends. Like, I don't know, you skydive, you do something, find something. For me, the thing I love most in the world is basketball. I can't, I'm not a professional basketball player. I'm in the chiropractor every week, as if I am a professional basketball player. But that's the thing that I do for nothing. There's no reason to do it other than to get better at it while simultaneously declining athletically.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  And learning how to play an old man game.

• 1:46:41Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  And so it's like, if I make a three pointer that wins the game in a basketball game, it's um means.

• 1:46:49Rich Roll?

  You have like a standing game and like dudes you play with and all the whole thing.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Three or four a week and like if I make a game winning shot, it feels better than booking an acting job.

• 1:46:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  Because I I know it's weird, but that's where I'm at.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I think like as as a, you know, this millennial, you know, representation of of multicultural uh creative expression in Hollywood like you're like you're you understand something that the generation that precedes you fails to fully embrace with a few exceptions, which is that on some level you kind of, you know, override this lack of ability to control your destiny, that you do have to be sort of entrepreneurial about your career with the to the extent that you can create these other projects. Right. And to be industrious in that in that pursuit, like whether it's an album or writing songs or doing, you know, the like the freestyle stuff that you do or getting up on stage like I see you

• 1:47:47Rich Roll?

  doing that stuff all the time.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:49Rich Roll?

  And it's like, as an actor, when do you actually get to do your craft, you know, in a professional capacity? Like, it's almost never, right?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  You're a fireman with no stakes.

• 1:47:59Rich Roll?

  As a creative person, how do you stoke that fire and remain creatively engaged? And, you know, to to the creative people that are listening to this, I mean, your laundry list of like things to do and not do, I think is super instructive. But to be engaged creatively with something that inspires you all the time, that doesn't require the yes or no of somebody else, I think is crucial.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  You know, it's I'll go through months, right? Like I I went through it in the month of February, where I was like, I'm going to say yes to any like literally whatever someone asks me to do, I'm just going to say yes to.

• 1:48:33Rich Roll?

  I should have known that, man. I would have asked you to do some stuff.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Creatively. So like now I'm in a theater company because someone was like, want to be in my theater company? I was like, yes. And like, I just was like, let's just muck it up a little bit, right? Kick up some dust and see what's up. Let's add, let's just add like we're getting a little too sedentary. We're a little stagnant. Like, let's do some new shit. And like, I'll do that, you know, the other big thing is like, we talked about entitlement and the dark side of that is that you think people owe you anything. And you think that people should work for you for free. No, I pay everyone that I work with. I pay them as as much as I possibly can without breaking like without going broke. People's time is worth money and a lot of creative people think that they need to have homey discounts

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  and free friend stuff is like, no, no, that's why you go, oh, yeah, he said he was gonna do it for free and he never edited it. Took six months to get the edit. It's like, yeah, that guy's gotta eat.

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  Conversely, the person who agrees to do stuff for free without valuing their own time and creative input.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:38Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a different thing. Like, sometimes it's good to do stuff for free.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a case by case thing.

• 1:49:43Rich Roll?

  Too entitled around that, but.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  I I try my best to, in some way, value the work that people do with me and and for me, if that's the case. And then also, like, it's so basic, but we don't understand. It's like, don't be a dick. Like, how as a leader or as a creative person can you communicate in a loving way? Even when things aren't going well. Like, I'm trying to get this producer to get the vocal into the beat that it needs to go on and it's so simple to me. And there's a human being out there who would go, why the fuck can't you just get this right? Thank God, I'm not that that dude. But it's just how, I think I'm rambling now, but it's like how you communicate and things like that.

• 1:50:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I think that's important. Um, how do you see Hollywood changing um in the wake of, you know, everything that's happening with Me Too? And how is that spilling into the conversation around race in Hollywood?

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I think they're totally separate. I think as far the Me Too thing is its own thing and I'm not educated enough on it to speak on it.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  I think that it's obviously important to have parity. I think it's really important to have equal pay.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  And there are much more, there are many more people who have who are smarter than me, who can talk about that in a more nuanced way than I ever could.

• 1:51:08Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  But in terms of race in Hollywood, it's still a black and white town. And I think it's okay that it's a black and white town because it used to just be a white town. And but there's still the trans community, the, you know, the gay community, the Asian community, South Asian community, Latinos, like.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  I don't know when we'll be a part of the conversation, but and maybe we're getting there. I mean, you brought up Kumail and, you know, I brought up Aziz and Riz and Mindy.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  You know, we're talking about four people out of how many people are at the Oscars. So it's um, it's slow going and I don't know when we're going to be seen as part of the conversation. We all, obviously in this country, like, we're not an equal part. We can't be the, and I don't want to compare because that's silly. It's not who has it worse or who has it better, or that's the problem is like each of our little groups and factions, we go, well, we have it hard this way and this is what's tough for us. And it's like,

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  then you just compare and then you're just a dick. Like, that's not the point. The point is to just be like-

• 1:52:31Rich Roll?

  If you just silo yourself into your particular camp and, and kind of, you know, descend into the part of identity politics that doesn't work.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Well, that, I mean, yeah, that's the thing. That's where we are right now is there are so many subcategories and each subcategory has its own set of rules and it's things that are off limits and things that are insulting and it's very tough.

• 1:52:56Rich Roll?

  Makes it tough to communicate.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Very hard. It's really difficult. So how can, so all I can do is reach out to young South Asians. If they want some advice or need mentoring, I'm here, I'm available. Anyone can tell you, like, if you reach out to me and I think you're about your shit, I will respond. Like, I'm open. I'm, I've worked with and mentored several people. I put out my own work and I try and just be a good example for who I can be. And that's all I can control. And yeah, I wish that we were like, there was more, but then like, I'm also totally cool where I'm at. It's, it's just a balance.

• 1:53:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you get to be part of that solution and that conversation.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be so cool if somebody like- It'll be cool when I'm Ajay Naidur to someone. Like when Ajay's my OG and I'll be somebody else's OG and I'll tell and he gets to be grandpa OG and it'll be fun.

• 1:53:59Rich Roll?

  I think you already are, man.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm somebody's grandpa.

• 1:54:04Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to, uh, to end it, man. If people, if, if, if somebody is, if, is that person, what's the best place for them to, to get in touch with you? Is it like Twitter or Instagram?

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Twitter or Instagram, at UTK THE INC, U T K T H E I N C on Twitter and Instagram.

• 1:54:23Rich Roll?

  Right. I feel like you could just go by one name, just be Utkarsh.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  I've thought about it, like Usher?

• 1:54:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you could totally pull that off.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  I wonder.

• 1:54:32Rich Roll?

  Especially since your last name's too hard to say, all that shit anyway.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  I might just change it. At this point, it's like, might as well.

• 1:54:42Rich Roll?

  You feel good?

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  I feel good. I'm like now it's like, I don't know, man. I don't know if I can do it.

• 1:54:46Rich Roll?

  Anything else you want to talk about?

• 1:54:48Speaker 01

  No, I think we hit all the bases. Yeah.

• 1:54:50Rich Roll?

  I think we did good.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 1:54:52Rich Roll?

  I love you, brother.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Love you too.

• 1:54:54Rich Roll?

  Thank you for coming here and sharing. Uh, it's powerful stuff and, um, I'm excited for you, dude. Like I see your future just unfolding in front of you and it's inspiring. And it's a tribute. It really is like, it's just like concrete, physical, real world validation, manifestation of like what happens when you live a sober life? When you like live the principles, when you give back, when you're in service, all of that stuff. It's like this magnet, you know, where your life just gets bigger, you know? And I'm seeing that happen with you right now and I couldn't be more psyched for you.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 1:55:30Rich Roll?

  So cool, man. So come back and talk to me again sometime.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Definitely.

• 1:55:34Rich Roll?

  Peace out, brother.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:55:46Rich Roll?

  What a beautiful man. What a beautiful story and what a beautiful rendition of 500 miles. Lovely, right? Hope you guys enjoyed that. Uh, make a point of sharing your thoughts with Utkarsh. He is at U T K V I N C, U T K T H E I N C on both Twitter and Instagram.

• 1:56:09Rich Roll?

  Utkarsh is a bit more than 500 miles from home right now, working on the biggest movie of his life in New Zealand, which I imagine might be a little intimidating. So I'm sure he'd love to hear a few words of love and support from all of you guys. So please reach out to him. Also, make sure to check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. We put a lot of work into them. They're almost a syllabus to extend your learning, your experience of the guests, your edification and entertainment beyond the conversation, beyond the earbuds, and they're awesome. So you can always find the show notes on the episode page for each respective episode at richroll.com. Once again, if you're looking for a little more nutritional direction, make a point of checking out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 1:56:54Rich Roll?

  Thousands of plant-based recipes customized to your needs. We have incredible customer service. We have unlimited grocery lists. We have grocery delivery in most US cities with international delivery in certain cities coming soon, all for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Meals.richroll.com or click on the meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. If you would like to support my work and this podcast, share it with a friend and on social media, hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel. This episode is indeed up on YouTube as well. All of this helps with the show's visibility and just extending reach and all that good stuff, so I can bring the best guests to you every single week. We also have a Patreon for those who want to support us financially.

• 1:57:39Rich Roll?

  You can find that at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank the people who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for video editing and graphics. The music by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple few. Until then, may you be true in the creative expression of your life.