Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

Allison Jones (Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Veep) is an Emmy Award-winning casting director. Allison joins the Armchair Expert to discuss growing up an Irish twin in Massachusetts, her first casting job on Family Ties, and how her love of TV prompted her move to California. Allison and Dax talk about the cast of the Golden Girls actually only being in their 50s, how the highlight of her career was meeting Quincy Jones while casting The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and why jumping a car over another car is less scary than doing standup comedy. Allison explains the number one mistake actors make in auditions, why McLovin is still the most difficult role she’s ever cast, and how she stays hungry and dialed-in after over 41 years on the job. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard, joined by Lily Padman.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  Per your request, you spearheaded this, and I'm so grateful you did.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:11Dax Shepard?

  She was so delightful.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Allison Jones.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  Allison Jones, she comes up a bunch over the years. Uh, she's helped numerous people in their careers.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  She's a casting extraordinaire.

• 0:22Dax Shepard?

  Yep, she's an award-winning casting director. Just, you know, a few of her impossibly long resume. Uh, Barbie, Veep, The Office, Freaks and Geeks, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Rec.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  She does all Mike's stuff.

• 0:37Dax Shepard?

  Basically, any impossibly great comedic ensemble where you're like, where did they find all these geniuses? It's almost always gonna be Allison Jones.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  It is, it's, it's, her track record is so insane.

• 0:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  And it goes so far back. I didn't realize that. It was fun to learn about like the early.

• 0:53Dax Shepard?

  Golden Girls.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, really, really cool. And then just a sweetheart.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Love her.

• 0:59Dax Shepard?

  So please enjoy Allison Jones. We get support from Quince.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts and Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself, because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:23Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater, starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 1:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California, and I'm so excited, and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest room. Chef grade cookware, that's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:24Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern. So every single bite gets cheese and two pickles side by side. So you're never in a pickle desert.

• 3:40Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Me too. That's my order is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste it.

• 3:58Dax Shepard?

  You can taste it. Yeah. The love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 4:04Dax Shepard?

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink now $8 for a limited time only. Only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.

• 4:37Dax Shepard?

  Many, many people that you would think wouldn't be nervous.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Are.

• 4:41Dax Shepard?

  Bill Lawrence, who was just here, he's done a million and a half interviews. Very gregarious guy.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:45Dax Shepard?

  You would not think he would be nervous.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  No, I would not. And I'm working with him now.

• 4:49Dax Shepard?

  Are you?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  First time I met him.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  For Bad Monkey?

• 4:51Speaker 02

  No, for New Steve Carell Show.

• 4:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Look at you, already, I'm already in, it's already tasty.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, I don't want you to be nervous.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Who knew this one was... I did not.

• 5:03Dax Shepard?

  I did.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  That I was feisty?

• 5:05Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, yeah. I had the original eye for Monica. I was the casting director for Monica.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  You were?

• 5:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  But you first worked for Kristen, or did Dax find you for that?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Well, no, sorry, I first worked for them as a nanny. So I worked for both of them originally.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Maybe I did know that a while ago.

• 5:20Dax Shepard?

  And she was in our friendship group, but kind of a newer member.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Periphery.

• 5:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I said, "That gal's really smart." Like, she's a very smart, interesting person. Every time I talk to her, we argue, and she's a worthy adversary. Then she started babysitting, and then full-time nanny, then started working with Kristen, then became Kristen's writer, producer, everything.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  It was before Good Place?

• 5:45Dax Shepard?

  No, because House of Lies...

• 5:46Speaker 01

  It was before, because House of Lies, as House of Lies was ending, kind of, is when I started taking on more stuff.

• 5:51Dax Shepard?

  Suffice to say, Kristen was entirely dependent on Monica, to a degree you can't imagine.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Oops.

• 5:56Dax Shepard?

  And then we started this, and then it was accidentally very successful, and then I had to say, "I'm gonna have to steal her full-time," and she, of course, was generous.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  But to be like an on-mic person, an on-camera person, I asked him if the audio could be broken today, but the fact that you film this is scary.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  The camera stuff is new for all of us, actually, here, but you forget.

• 6:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the first two episodes, we were a little... Bill was one of the early ones. He might have even been the one that kind of broke it, where I was like, "Okay, I'm comfortable here, I like this. I can pretend this is my living room." But Alison, this is a great first question. So you have spent the last, I don't know how many years, since 82...

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Are we starting?

• 6:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, we're always rolling.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  We call it ABR, always recording.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Let me get this coffee, okay. Oh, God. Okay.

• 6:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, this is wonderful.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  He's so sweet.

• 6:47Dax Shepard?

  You've spent from 82 to 2024, so that's 42 years of watching humans walk into a room with a ton of anxiety, maybe the peak anxiety they'll have.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  83, thank you.

• 6:58Dax Shepard?

  83? Okay, okay.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  One less year than that.

• 7:02Dax Shepard?

  Wasn't Family Ties 82?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  But I came in season two.

• 7:05Dax Shepard?

  That makes sense. 41 years.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:07Dax Shepard?

  Of watching people come in nervous. And I guess maybe the layperson would assume that would inoculate you to nervousness, like you would somehow. No.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  The higher up the food chain you go in terms of auditioning, I get as nervous as the actor does. And when it's like a final audition, you'll hear my voice quiver like you hear it quivering now.

• 7:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Just because you care, obviously.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Probably. And I want to get the job done, too, and I want them to do a good job.

• 7:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what percentage of that nervousness for you when you've gotten to that last layer of the audition process?

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:39Dax Shepard?

  Is you rooting for someone that you are championing versus I really want the people that employed me to be very happy with where we've gotten?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  That's a good question. I would say that we always want to do a good job, but also I really want the people I'm bringing in to do a good job and that we pick the right person.

• 7:56Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  My biggest fear is we don't pick the right person. That's a common casting director fear was that they're going to pick the boner in the group or something.

• 8:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a million questions about exactly that coming later. But I want to start in Massachusetts. I have a hard time saying, but you grew up in a Boston suburb?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  I did. Needham, Massachusetts.

• 8:15Dax Shepard?

  And what did mom and dad do?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Mom was a housewife, which is what women were wont to do back then, and my father was an insurance executive. Very nice childhood, kind of predictable.

• 8:24Dax Shepard?

  A Norman Rockwell painting? Not that. We wouldn't go that far.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  That's not real for anyone.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  No, that would have been a few of the neighboring towns like Wellesley, but a lovely town, and my best friends are still my high school friends.

• 8:35Dax Shepard?

  And do you have siblings? Oh, no, I know this. You're the second youngest of six.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  I am. I have five siblings.

• 8:39Dax Shepard?

  Boys, girls?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Three boys, three girls.

• 8:42Dax Shepard?

  How wonderful of your mother to nail it like that, the ratio.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  She would let us know that.

• 8:46Dax Shepard?

  Was it every other one?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  No, two boys, two girls, me, and then my younger brother.

• 8:51Dax Shepard?

  Was it just chaos in a very fun way?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  You're such an optimist. Yes, it was chaos. In a fun way, mostly, yes. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, Boston, Mass was filled with huge families, Irish Catholic families, Italian families. Six was very common.

• 9:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. What about you guys? Can I ask you back?

• 9:10Dax Shepard?

  I'm one of three. You're allowed to ask as many questions as you want.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Monica?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Two, me and my brother. He's eight years younger than me, though, so.

• 9:16Dax Shepard?

  They both have only child syndrome.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Two would have been controversial where I grew up. It was like, two, what happened?

• 9:22Dax Shepard?

  She must have some kind of, uh...

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's going on?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  And it definitely would have been her.

• 9:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course. All men are virile.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Mom definitely has some sort of issue.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Most of my friends from high school came from very large families. And we would have synchronized brothers and sister ages. My younger brother was best friends with my best friend's younger brother.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  We can still talk about antics and all that kind of stuff back from the early days.

• 9:45Dax Shepard?

  What about dating older siblings' friends? Was that ever an issue that popped up?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  I would have been terrified.

• 9:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Me, too.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  I can't say I may have wanted to.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  The more interesting thing was my two older brothers possibly going after the same.

• 9:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Like, high school cheerleader.

• 10:01Dax Shepard?

  Were they Irish twins?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  They were, in fact. And my younger brother and I, very close in age, 13 months.

• 10:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay. What's the age gap between the oldest and the youngest?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  The oldest and the youngest would be about 11 years, I think. My mother had three kids, took a little break, and then another three.

• 10:16Dax Shepard?

  It took like a season, maybe?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  A hiatus.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I think so. A hiatus, yeah.

• 10:21Dax Shepard?

  Did you have fantasies about show business as a kid? Or how did this all come to be?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:26Dax Shepard?

  How did you end up at Pomona College?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Well, I applied to a lot of fancy colleges and didn't get in. I wanted to go to school in California because I would watch shows like The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game and Gidget, which was like, oh, my god, that girl gets to surf after school! I can't believe it. So in the 60s and 70s, everything was happening in California.

• 10:47Dax Shepard?

  Right, it was like big surf culture.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Music, serial killing, free love. Everything was happening in California. So I was like, I gotta go.

• 10:54Dax Shepard?

  That's where it's at.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And also, in those days, you didn't do the regimented thing of visiting colleges and spending a fortune on SATs and on applications. I just said, I gotta go to California. It's super cool out there. So my parents wouldn't let me.

• 11:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  So I went to University of New Hampshire for a year and then transferred to Pomona College. Somehow, they magically let me go. I think back on it, it could have been, it probably fit their budget better to wait a year and then I could go to California. But I had never been to California at all.

• 11:22Dax Shepard?

  You just had seen it on TV.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:24Dax Shepard?

  Did you love TV?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  God, yes.

• 11:26Dax Shepard?

  I didn't have access to it unless I was at my dad's every other weekend or whatever, once a month, because we lived kind of out in the sticks. We didn't have a good antenna. I had to go to a friend's house if I wanted to watch Dukes of Hazzard. But when I was at my dad's, my brother and I, all we did from the second we got up until three in the morning.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  And where was that?

• 11:43Dax Shepard?

  Detroit.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Oh, Detroit, okay.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, in Atlanta.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, suburbs.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  I was the early TV generation, for sure.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  For me, TV, I was obsessed. And now, when it's like screen time, that was not a thing. My parents were like, you can watch as much TV.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Oh, no, we were clocked in front of the new color TV, we would have called it. Oh, no, we were TV kids. What else are you gonna do with six

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  ungrateful children and no nannies. In those days, nannies, no, unless you were a Kennedy or something, but no nannies.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  TV shows were the babysitters. But for me, it was such a fantasy world. Like, I could go in and I could pretend I was in Full House and the whole thing. Did you have that with TV? Like, you were using it as an escape or not really?

• 12:23Dax Shepard?

  It was so new.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  I don't know, I just loved it. Movies were not cinema the way it is now either. My parents would bring us to movies. My father brought us to every Peter Sellers movie and Walter Matthieu Jack Lemmon movie that came out, to whom I owe my appreciation of that kind of humor. But, I don't know, I never broke it down, but I would say, yes, definitely, and probably still the reason. And also, I love, you know, we would beg to stay up to see Johnny Carson's monologue. Get in the monologue and we see the monologue.

• 12:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when you get to Pomona, is this true that at Pomona, you find kind of a comedy geek culture?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  They weren't self-aware of being a comedy geek culture. There probably is now. That sort of didn't exist at all. They just happened to be the pure, unadulterated, brilliant, science major, pre-med major, law major geeks who loved Monty Python and who loved Fire Sign Theater. And it was like, what are they talking about? But those are the first people I met that I was really tuned into that comedy. They were beautiful, smart, probably at the time highly unpopular geeks. Now they've come to the fore.

• 13:28Dax Shepard?

  Now they run the world.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Now they run the world.

• 13:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, remember Revenge of the Nerds was like this preposterous scenario where the nerds would just Feet the jocks and now the world is.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  And even then, that was like, oh, it was preposterous, but you got to see, you know, Jamie Cromwell laughing.

• 13:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  You know, and Anthony Edwards. That was the first turning point of making Geeks in the title of anything.

• 13:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So you had a visual arts major there. And what was your goal with that?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Didn't really have one. I just liked it. After Pomona, I worked night shift at a newspaper in Glendora for a year.

• 14:01Dax Shepard?

  You're inching your way towards LA.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I'm inching my way. Yeah.

• 14:05Dax Shepard?

  For people that don't know, Pomona's like 60 miles out and Glendora is like 35 miles out.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  And then I went to UCLA Business School, mostly because my father was a businessman and I thought, I think I can get a good salary after I go to business school. I truly was clueless. In those days, we did not put the pressure on ourselves that these poor kids do now.

• 14:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  I don't have a goal now. I mean, I certainly didn't have a goal then.

• 14:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So you leave there. How on earth do you end up at Family Ties as a casting director?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Well, I have a very good friend named Lydia Woodward from business school. A little core of us were just so not meant to be in the business world. I think we're all there for the same reason, just to get a job.

• 14:41Dax Shepard?

  Buy some time and get a job.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Buy some time and get a job. Yeah. I was living in California at the time and I think I only paid 750 a trimester to go to UCLA Business School as a resident. What a bargain. I got my MBA for two years for like three grand.

• 14:57Dax Shepard?

  Wow, that is incredible. I totally think that's true because even when I graduated in 2000, all in was 3,800 bucks a year.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  It was amazing. Anyway, so I get out of business school and a friend of mine, Lydia, was going right into film school at AFI. As a producing fellow is what we called it then. And I was working in advertising in New York City at the time. My year right after business school, I went to work on Madison Avenue in New York City for an agency called Doyle Dean Bernbach, which was mentioned in Mad Men quite a bit. That's why I love Mad Men so much. I was the tail end of when Mad Men would have ended, or maybe a few years after.

• 15:30Dax Shepard?

  People were still smoking and drinking all day long?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  And they had so much makeup and high heels. It was my first time ever spending much time in New York City. I was not cut out for advertising either. But my friend said, Allison, you should come to AFI. It is up your alley. You can get a loan for a low rate. So I did. In the producing section, again, no goals, just said, that'd be fun. I think I'll do it.

• 15:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're just following the next thing in front of you.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  And so I went to AFI, loved it. I've never met people like that before in my life. You're ending up with, oh, that person's uncle is somebody famous and that. Anyway.

• 16:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  In the student films, I enjoyed the casting part of it. And again, the same friend, Lydia, said, I think you can get a job in casting. I was like, no way. That's a real job.

• 16:11Dax Shepard?

  Your friend is like your guidance counselor.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  She is my guidance counselor. She's a great friend. She's a very successful writer, producer. But yeah, we hit it off because we both flunked one of our tests together and we were singled out.

• 16:22Dax Shepard?

  It's a bonding.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sure is.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  It was a total bonding thing. Yeah.

• 16:25Dax Shepard?

  It's like friendships forged in war.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 16:29Dax Shepard?

  Do you remember what about the casting process interested you?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I just dug it. We were casting a student film. In those days, AFI had sort of a little SAG connection, but not really. We're talking 1982 or 81. You really had to pester people to get anything done in those days. There was no email. As you know, it was just calling people up and getting hung up on that kind of thing. But every time I watched a TV show, like I would see somebody on Marcus Wel BMD and then I'd see her in a Spearmint gum commercial. It's like, oh, she's doing a commercial. How does that work? I didn't know what casting was as a kid, nothing.

• 17:00Dax Shepard?

  That's why I think this episode will be so fascinating because you just are presented with this show. You're very far removed from Hollywood. In the best case scenario, you're just buying into the notion, these are real kids in high school in Beverly Hills, 90210. You're not even considering, oh, that's an actor.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 17:14Dax Shepard?

  The notion that there's a whole rung of this industry that's in charge of scouting, finding and getting those people in.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Hugely important, especially for the talent. You don't really realize that until you come here and you're like, oh, wow, casting directors and casting is a huge component of this.

• 17:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the first big gate.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Dax Shepard?

  That's being cast.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  You guys appreciate that, but not many other people.

• 17:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Or even know it.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't know.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. But anyway, I thought the casting process was really cool and creative and required a certain level of discernment and taste and realizing, wow, one actor can completely change a student film versus another actor. I went to Larry Edmonds or something and got a little catalog of casting directors and producers and I started typing my letters to casting directors. And I think I sent out like, you had to put a stamp on the envelope and mail it out. And then I think I got two answers. And one woman hired me, Judith Weiner.

• 18:11Dax Shepard?

  She was the casting director for Family Ties?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was. And that was at Sunset Gower. And I remember walking in on the Gower entrance on Sunset Gower and looking to my left and there was the Hollywood sign. So it was like, wow, this is cool.

• 18:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Again, goalless, but just like, this is bitchin'.

• 18:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  A word I never heard till I moved to California.

• 18:29Dax Shepard?

  Made very popular in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 18:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you start working on that show, and I imagine you're doing a lot of the work that's not picking.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  The first thing you do as a casting assistant, back then, it was answering the phones. And my first office job was with Judith, and we shared an office with the late Tim Flack, who was the casting director. And they were doing the pilot of The Cosby Show.

• 18:51Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  And we were working on a show called Benson, all at Sunset Gower, which was an amazing old historic studio to work at, because even today, it looks the same as it did probably in 1925. Literally, inside, if you've ever shot anything at Sunset Gower, looks like you're in the 1920s. The old school payroll windows and stuff. It's really, really cool. And they shot some magnificent old movies there, including The Three Stooges, which was my big comedy influence, growing up as a kid with a bunch of brothers. We hit each other all the time. And it was all because the... Very physical comedy. We were joking and not joking.

• 19:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think it led to a lot of trips to the emergency room that show. I know my brother and I would try that, like, because you go like this, and the defense was this. But I was five years younger, so those fingers were longer than this, so...

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that was what we worshipped.

• 19:38Dax Shepard?

  And people are calling, I'm sure, and they're pitching people.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  They're calling. Those days, I was learning how to put people on hold and say, "Hold, please," and get back to someone. And my boss would say, "Don't keep anybody on hold for more than two seconds." So I'd be going back and forth, "Hold, please, hold, please, hold, please." It was like, oh, my God, there's a big agent on the phone. What do I say to a big agent? So it was a lot of answering phones. It was nowhere near as hectic as it is now.

• 20:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's gotten more hectic.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Much more hectic. You have tenfold more agents, managers, representatives calling you all the time. So much so that you can't get your job done. So we've had to pretty much switch to email and texting. But back then, in the early 80s, we were working on a show called Benson. Was doing the pilot for The Cosby Show and we were doing a show called condo and a pilot. So there was a lot of casting sessions to set up and in those days you had called the agent, talked to the agent's assistant, give the time, the place, leave the sides at the Gower Gate for the actors to come pick up. In the days, there was no facts.

• 20:33Dax Shepard?

  Sides are the lines for people who don't know.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the sides are the lines. I still, I assume they called sides because it's two sides of a playbill or something. I'd never figured that out. Me either.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  We'll find out for the fact check.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I think it has to do with one side, two sides of something.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 20:48Dax Shepard?

  Now, this huge explosion in the amount of managers and agents and whatnot, is it proportional to, because when you were on Benson, you're casting The Cosby Show, there's only three networks. The three networks only have five days of airing and four shows. So you're talking 20, maybe 60 shows are on television and now we're at, I don't know, hundreds of shows. So do you think it's proportional or does something else happen?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  That happened way before we came into streaming.

• 21:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  I mean, managers started getting busy on us about 25 years ago, I think. Actors, for some reason, they decided they needed an attorney, they needed a manager, they needed an agent as well. And so I remember sometime in the 90s when suddenly The Breakdowns, which is a service that sends to agents the parts that we're casting and then they submit headshots.

• 21:32Dax Shepard?

  And an 18 to 24 year old.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And that is how they disseminated the casting calls, basically. For every new project that came along, it was Breakdown. There's kind of a monopoly on that one company. Suddenly, for some reason, I remember the first manager I ever heard of was Keith Addus, who represented Sting. He never would bother any of us, but it was like, oh, what does a manager do? Anyway, so then for some reason, there was just like an onslaught of managers who started to call us. You'd have an agent calling about the same client that a manager would call about.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  What are they saying? Like, hey, you should really think about my client. And you're like, yes or no. And then they call back and say, actually, you really should.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  All the time. And then the manager would call and say, this is the person.

• 22:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when you were at Family Ties, I'm gonna ask you some juicy questions.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Please.

• 22:16Dax Shepard?

  Famously, Leonardo DiCaprio was on Family Ties, right?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  No, he was on Growing Pains.

• 22:21Dax Shepard?

  Growing Pains, I fucked that up.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  That's sad. You wanted to ask about an early Leonardo DiCaprio.

• 22:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I want to know.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Young River Phoenix was.

• 22:28Dax Shepard?

  He was on Family Ties? Maybe that's who I'm thinking of.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  And Tom Hanks.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Oh, and Tom Hanks.

• 22:32Dax Shepard?

  And Tom Hanks.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 22:33Dax Shepard?

  And you already had Michael J. Fox.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  And this was all my boss Judith Weiner and her associate at the time, Donald Deline, who's now a big producer.

• 22:39Dax Shepard?

  My favorite person in show business. He produced Without a Paddle.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Oh, he did, right!

• 22:44Dax Shepard?

  What a gentleman!

• 22:45Speaker 02

  He's hilarious and was just as funny then.

• 22:47Dax Shepard?

  Wait, Deline did the pilot of Family Ties?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  He was the associate at the time.

• 22:50Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  I think he was the one who probably turned Judith on to Justine Bateman as being a good one in the group, because sometimes associates would pre-read the people, which doesn't so much exist anymore. Now you'd call it self-tape as a pre-read.

• 23:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I got a question about that.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Anyway, many, many young people came through the Family Ties coffers. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think as a seven-year-old, played a bully with the...

• 23:10Dax Shepard?

  Ah!

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Do you guys even know Family Ties?

• 23:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I grew up watching Family Ties.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  You didn't?

• 23:15Dax Shepard?

  I did.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Reruns, I assume. I don't think you can get it anywhere now. And it's a show that would catch on because of the conservative-liberal thing.

• 23:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it would.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Right?

• 23:23Dax Shepard?

  Because Alex P. Keaton was a conservative.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  And Michael.

• 23:25Dax Shepard?

  And the dad was liberal. The whole family was liberal, right?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 23:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was really funny.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  And it was Gary David Goldberg's family story, basically. He was liberal and a hippie, and his kids were conservative.

• 23:34Dax Shepard?

  Ah!

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I believe so.

• 23:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that is very interesting. You know, that was 82 to 87? No, 89, so I was seven till 12.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  So you loved Alex P. Keaton?

• 23:45Dax Shepard?

  I liked Justine Bateman, I liked Alex P. Keaton, then he was in Back to the Future. Who was Skippy?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Mark Price.

• 23:50Dax Shepard?

  Yes, of course.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  He's literally the definition of the goofy friend next door.

• 23:53Dax Shepard?

  A few years later, you're on Golden Girls.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yes, with Judith, we did the pilot.

• 23:57Dax Shepard?

  You would be privy to one of the great, kind of funny debates now that happens with the Golden Girls. A, the Golden Girls is this enormous thing, right?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:06Dax Shepard?

  Like, it's had all these different lives, which is great. And I watched it as a kid. But again, I was seven to 12. They look like grandmas to me. Now that I'm 50, or closing in on it, everyone points out, some of the cast members were in their 40s or 50s.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Estelle definitely made herself look like an old granny.

• 24:23Dax Shepard?

  So what was the conversation behind closed doors about what age you were going to cast as the His grandmothers.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  It was not even discussed. The women that were considered were all probably in those days considered elderly and they were in their 50s.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  It's the reality of the times. It's not like anyone was kind of.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  No, it's the reality of the times.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  You still see that from time to time, though. But then it was not even a question. There was just people in their 50s were going to be the elderly people. But Estelle came in to audition for Something on Family Ties. I keep everything in my storage units and I went back to see the way we got to Estelle. And she had auditioned for Something on Family Ties. I saw the producer session, which I typed on a selected typewriter and then you make copies of it and then you pass it out. She had come in for a part that she did not get, but then about a week later Judith brought her in for Golden Girls just to pre-read her. We didn't tape or anything. We had to bring them back in person for all the producers, Tony Thomas and Paul Witt. Susan Harris didn't come to the sessions.

• 25:16Dax Shepard?

  Sam Harris's mother.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Wait a minute. Oh, Sam. I'm sorry. What does he do now?

• 25:20Dax Shepard?

  Sam Harris has an enormous.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Other than the comic who's not that Sam Harris.

• 25:24Dax Shepard?

  Right. He became a neurologist. He has a huge podcast, but he has also famously on Bill Maher all the time arguing. He got into hot water arguing Ben Affleck about Islam. He is a very outspoken, provocative intellectual.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:37Dax Shepard?

  Most people go the other way, by the way. Most people know Sam and I'll say his mother invented Golden Girls.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Sam. I think the reason she got into writing was because she had to support Sam.

• 25:47Dax Shepard?

  Yes, single mother.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. She said, I can do that stuff. And she wrote a spec script for one of their shows at the time and then she just got huge. She created soap and she was a very, very important person, not just female, very important person in comedy.

• 26:00Dax Shepard?

  A titan, yeah, and that kind of.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  And she and Paul Witt made the greatest comedies in the 80s and 90s and they had the third floor on Sunset Gower.

• 26:07Dax Shepard?

  So by the time we get to 1990, I guess I'm wondering, so you already pointed out something that happens, which is fascinating. You come in for one thing, you're not right for it. And that's its own thing that actors need to understand.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  All the time. It's almost the rule, not the exception.

• 26:21Dax Shepard?

  It took me directing things and casting people to really fundamentally understand what's going on in the room. I wish I would have started directing because it would have taken so much of the pressure off of auditioning, which is like, you're kind of right or you're wrong. You have some range of talent, but.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 26:36Dax Shepard?

  What can happen, which is encouraging, is. You, as a casting director, go like, well, they're terrible for this role, but they're good. I wanna keep a mental note of them.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Oh, we're keeping that in our heads.

• 26:47Dax Shepard?

  If you starred in 83, and by the time we get to Fresh Prince, you had seven years of kind of accumulating people that you've liked.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Seeing every movie and every TV show and memorizing every actor. Anytime I'd go to a movie, this was before Internet Movie Database, I have a ton of little notebooks. I stay at the end and I would write down all the cast. I noted like Roseanne Barr. Her first bit was on Johnny Carson and I wrote, Roseanne Carr. And then I wrote, riding vacuum cleaner.

• 27:12Dax Shepard?

  That was her bit.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  So I remember her bit was riding vacuum cleaner. And then I ended up seeing her at the Comedy Store. Anyway, everything was handwritten those days. So I had tons of writing down everybody. Ellen DeSomething, I didn't think I could spell her name, but I wrote it down.

• 27:25Dax Shepard?

  DeGeneres?

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Oh, this is so funny.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have all kinds of little notebooks.

• 27:31Dax Shepard?

  And you don't have a computer, so it's not like you can put all this in a spreadsheet and break it into categories and stuff. So anytime you have a new project on your hands and you've got 13 roles to cast, how do you keep track of this huge handwritten stack of paper?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  I would say that most of the folks I started out with, Sally Steiner and Meg Lieberman and Donald, who started in casting, we just had scraps of paper everywhere. Later, I would get Time Out New York, when that started, and I would rip things out about the comedy people that they would talk about. That's how I remembered people like Rory Scoville and Ben Schwartz. I still have their little things ripped out of the Time Out New York.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Some of these things, like, I think should be in the Smithsonian.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Ellen DeSomething? That's fantastic.

• 28:13Dax Shepard?

  I think the Smithsonian has a whole TV thing to it.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have the Archie Monkers chair.

• 28:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right. Then they definitely do.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  But it was all scrap paper. Our walls were covered with little thumbtacks with somebody's name.

• 28:23Dax Shepard?

  Names.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:24Dax Shepard?

  Every time you're watching something, you're on the lookout for someone that's talented. Does that ruin seeing stuff? Are you too preoccupied?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't ruin it for me, because I still love it. But at those days, you had to stay. Sometimes I'd have to see a movie twice, because you can't go to IMDb, and I'd have to look at the...

• 28:39Dax Shepard?

  And it's going fast.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's going fast.

• 28:41Dax Shepard?

  And the lights might not even be on yet.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. So I would have to go sometimes twice. And there's many people who I would bring In the next week and they got apart.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so that's one approach is you're paying attention to who's and what. Are you also going to comedy clubs?

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Oh, all the time. That was then. You had to do it on your feet. You had to go into the Comedy Store. When I was working for Judith, she let me do some sort of new, which never really aired, late night comedy show that NBC wanted to put on adjacent or after SNL at the time. Talking 1980s. That was my first flat-out comedy thing. I had to learn comics like I learned my multiplication tables in the 60s.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  I went to the Comedy Store and improv every single night for weeks. I'd park up above the Comedy Store. I never went to the main room because those were the acts that everybody knew, Robin Williams. But I would go to the back room and sit there from like 8 o'clock to 2:00 in the morning. And I would see always like a 19-year-old, 20-year-old Jim Carrey. It was the same lineup half the time I went there. It was like Jim Carrey and then it was Jeff Altman, Damon Wayans, who was very young at the time, as I recall. I just sat in the back. I had to have a two-drink minimum, no comps back then, and I was just a casting assistant. So I would sit there and I would sit until the end. And usually, I think it was Sunday night, I forget when Sam Kinison would come on at 2:00 in the morning and be screaming.

• 29:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  And then I would leave and go home and do it the next night. I just made a point to do it solid for like two or three weeks so I could learn comics. You had to do the legwork then. And I have very fond memories of that kind of stuff.

• 30:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so that's positive because for every Jim Carrey, you're also wading through two or three that are pretty rough and people are bombing. Some people are thinking like, oh, I'd go to a comedy show every night.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:18Dax Shepard?

  If they're rough.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  And that was in the days preceding you, maybe not, where the goal of a comic was to get a deal at a network.

• 30:26Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  First of all, to get a spot on Johnny Carson.

• 30:28Dax Shepard?

  Yep.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  And to get called to sit on a couch. Second of all, I remember we would also go back and sort of go to the ladies' room and then the comics were always out back in the hallway smoking and talking about their sets.

• 30:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  God bless the comics, but they're insecure. And these are now the biggest comics in the world.

• 30:43Dax Shepard?

  They're pretty mean, too.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  The Marc Maron and the biggest stand-ups in the world were all back there at the age of 21.

• 30:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, gossipy and mean.

• 30:50Dax Shepard?

  Insecure and scared.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Very few females, they even had just a female night. That was all you had for the female comics. I think it was the Belly Room. I remember when Whoopi Goldberg first came, it was like, oh, my God. Remember Donald Delaine telling me, there is this comic, this female, who is unbelievable. You should go see her. Her name is Whoopi Goldberg. And I was like, okay, Whoopi, Whoopi, okay.

• 31:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Whoopi Goldberg.

• 31:10Dax Shepard?

  And you put her in The Color Purple.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  I wish.

• 31:14Dax Shepard?

  Did you get good at delineating who's gonna work? Cause it's a big leap between stand-up and acting. And it goes very well for some and it goes really bad for others. Do you feel like you got good with your thin slicing or your radar? Was there anything you could tell on stage that was gonna be predictive of whether they could do it or not?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  For me, the bar was how funny they were. And for example, I did not know how good Jim Carrey would be as an actor, but I brought him in. I did not know how good Dennis Leary would be as an actor. There's an actor who needs a better career.

• 31:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  He's got a good one, but deserves it better because he's unbelievably good actor. As most many comics are good dramatically. What is more terrifying and difficult than stand-up comedy? Nothing. Nothing.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:04Dax Shepard?

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• 32:46Dax Shepard?

  If something tricky comes up, you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026, and trusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax. Again, that's gusto.com/dax. We get support from no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a Post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 33:29Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole no bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 34:06Speaker 01

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• 34:11Dax Shepard?

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• 34:18Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.

• 34:28Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything? Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 34:49Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds recently. That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 35:23Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 35:26Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around. All night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 35:41Speaker 01

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• 35:48Dax Shepard?

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• 36:31Speaker 04

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• 37:16Speaker 04

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• 37:35Dax Shepard?

  I've said it before, but I'll tell you. I had a scene in this movie I directed where Kristen and I are in an off-road race car and we've got to drive through a barn door. And it's a real barn door. We're gonna break through a barn door and on the other side, there's ramps that are this wide. And then we're gonna jump two cars. And I'm directing, so I'm actually doing the whole thing. And it's dark inside the barn. It's gonna be very bright when we crash through the thing. And then I gotta hit these little ramps. And we're sitting in the car right before we're about to go. And the stunt coordinator, my friend, a caster, goes, "How are you doing?" I go, "I'm good." He goes, "How nervous are you?" And I go, "If stand-up is a 10, I'm at a 4." And that's a real comp for me. Jumping a car over other cars is like 40% as scary as stand-up.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yes, wow. I have always admired stand-up. Also because their hearts are on their sleeves. No matter how tough their act is, or how tough and edgy their jokes are, every new line, they're scared about.

• 38:24Dax Shepard?

  It's just you. And when it goes bad and you know you have another 18 minutes, there's really nothing like it.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  I admire them greatly. I also sort of relate to their insecurity and all that kind of stuff. Most people who gravitate to Hollywood, I think, have a lot of insecurity.

• 38:39Dax Shepard?

  Yes, totally. Yeah, looking for a lot of approval.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Because the one thing I find about Hollywood and kind of Los Angeles in general is it's for accepting of all the freaks. And I like that.

• 38:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, big time. That's very true. You might think it's gotta be a town of a bunch of people who really thought they were awesome.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Completely not the way it is.

• 38:54Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Completely the opposite.

• 38:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so by the time you get to Fresh Prince, my question about that is, the show starts with Will Smith?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yes, it started with Will Smith and the late, great Quincy Jones. I mean, the highlight of my career was getting to meet Quincy Jones.

• 39:09Dax Shepard?

  Right, cuz he was the producer of that, right?

• 39:10Speaker 02

  He was the producer and the creator. I think he grabbed Will and said, "What can we do?" My partner in crime, we casted this show together, Sally Steiner, we drove up to Quincy Jones's house, I think it was Mulholland, but we were so starstruck.

• 39:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  I was always starstruck, and I still am starstruck.

• 39:25Dax Shepard?

  You are still.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Come on. But I only met you once on an audition years ago and you don't remember, I'm sure. But you came in.

• 39:32Dax Shepard?

  Wanna hear.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Pitched from Endeavor as the guy from Punk'd.

• 39:38Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And those are the days where it was like, you sort of didn't do that if you were a sidekick on Punk'd. Now, everybody and their brother from a TikTok video wants to be seen.

• 39:46Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  You had much longer hair.

• 39:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I did.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  And it was probably about 2003 because I remember I just finished the pilot of The Office and Mitch Hurwitz had asked me to do the pilot of Arrested Development and I couldn't do two pilots at once. It was too torture, so I couldn't do the pilot. Deb Barilsky did the pilot. Many podcasts named me as the person who did the pilot of Arrested. I just did the seasons. After season one, she did the pilot and a beautiful job she did.

• 40:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. What a cast.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  I was doing a pilot. John Landgraf was the producer. It was FX, the early days of those places like FX. And it was called DICKS, D-I-C-K-S. And I just remember thinking, DAX, D-A-X, coming in for six.

• 40:24Dax Shepard?

  That's a lot, yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Visual learning. You came in and you were very good. And I remember thinking, oh, wow.

• 40:30Dax Shepard?

  I find that so hard to believe. This is exciting. I'm blown away that you would remember that.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Of course. I remember specifically the agent pitching you when it was Endeavor.

• 40:38Dax Shepard?

  Greg Siegel, it would have been.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yes, he would have said the guy from Punk'd, which of course I didn't know what it was.

• 40:43Dax Shepard?

  Right, of course.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  But I had known Ashton Kutcher because there's all these stories that you could connect everybody to everything when you start out.

• 40:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  I had met him on a wonderful pilot called Advances in Chemistry that the very brilliant Richie Rosenstock did, again, ahead of its time. But he came in to audition for The Handsome Kid and he didn't get it because, God bless him at the time, not an actor. He was only 20 or 19. And then Meg Leremin brought him in for that 70's show and that rest is history. Within like two days.

• 41:10Dax Shepard?

  I was gonna say, I think his story is, and we're very good friends.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Oh, you are? That's so cool.

• 41:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  How do I not know that?

• 41:15Dax Shepard?

  We stayed very, very close. You want to talk about casting? So I didn't make it through any of the rounds at MTV for Punk'd. I was in a discarded pile of tapes that didn't get advanced to the producers and Kutcher had seen everyone they had basically circled and he's like, no one has the vibe. Let me see the people that were rejected. And I was one of the people rejected. So my entire career.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Ashton had done that? No, he hadn't done that.

• 41:37Dax Shepard?

  He had done 70's show. He was like, and he had done Just Married. So he was like, newly a movie star. He was kind of hot at the time. Oh, enormous. Definitely physical.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Hot at the time. He also is in the zeitgeist.

• 41:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So he dug me out and so, yeah, my gratitude for him is off the charts. But what I wanted to own my baggage with casting directors.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  You do?

• 41:56Dax Shepard?

  I do. I'll tell you why. It's all my insecurity, which was, I was auditioning for nine years in commercials and I couldn't get them. I just couldn't book anything. I booked two in nine years. I came to view casting directors as people who didn't get me. I'm like, they don't get me. I can't get through this layer to anybody. And then the time that I finally did break through, it turned out, if we believe Ashton, I still hadn't gotten through the casting directors. So I just had it in my mind, they don't like me, but I have to believe hopefully these creators might like me. Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's in everybody's head about everything.

• 42:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes. I was so insecure. I had been almost a decade.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  That in the world.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  I know. It's so true.

• 42:36Dax Shepard?

  I just had it in my mind because I was so insecure that for whatever reason, they don't like me.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  And then maybe you were also going in and because you thought they didn't like you, you might have been being mean.

• 42:46Dax Shepard?

  I don't think I was stupid enough to be mean.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  But you might not have been warm.

• 42:50Dax Shepard?

  I don't think I was dumb enough to not be warm. I just really had it in my head.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So did you have a chip on your shoulder, would you say?

• 42:57Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yeah. I felt like casting directors knew people I was friends with and no one really knew me and I was so insecure. And so I got it in my mind, I've got to get to the other people.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Go past these people.

• 43:10Dax Shepard?

  Somehow I gotta jump over this gate that's in front of me and get to those people. Because again, when I finally got hired on a TV show, it was from the creator of the show.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:19Dax Shepard?

  I got such limited data and I'm telling this huge story based on this very limited data and I'm completely wrong. And then I come to find out like, you're saying you liked me, which is.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I was like, wow, this kid from Punk, he's really actually a good actor.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  That's so funny. I had the opposite feeling towards casting.

• 43:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, we talk about them all the time. Like you know the names of so many casting directors.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  I knew about you way before I moved to LA. I was like, oh my God.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  That is shocking to me.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  She's the person and if I could get an audition, like even just getting an audition with, I remember when it happened and I was like, oh, this is the craziest day of my life. I was so excited. But to me, casting directors were almost. Like teachers, the teacher I wanted the approval from, the person who was gonna give me an A plus. And obviously I wanted the job, but I really wanted the casting director to like me so much.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Which I think backfired a lot, cause like then I wasn't just me. In commercials, this is probably bad to say, I did really well in commercials because I didn't care that much.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I just went in and did it. And then lo and behold, you do pretty well when you don't overthink, or you can just be you. Yeah, I had the, I was like, "Casting directors, please love me."

• 44:25Speaker 02

  She's a good actress, though.

• 44:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes, I've hired her.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 44:28Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I put her in Chips.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Sure did.

• 44:30Dax Shepard?

  And I put her in the only commercial I ever directed.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  I love Chips.

• 44:32Dax Shepard?

  But I can't do it. Oh, God bless you. Okay.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Nobody did.

• 44:36Dax Shepard?

  Curb Your Enthusiasm, 99, you were still on to the end.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  I started in season three. Jeff Garland is a good and wonderful friend. He brought me on in season three. And then I was on for many, many seasons, except for a couple of seasons where I wasn't available.

• 44:50Dax Shepard?

  But were you there when Monica got to do Curb Your Enthusiasm?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very sweet.

• 44:55Dax Shepard?

  So jealous.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Her the best. You would've had to play yourself on Curb.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:58Dax Shepard?

  I don't think I was famous enough to play myself, and then I was too famous to play.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Now you're too famous, you can't not play yourself.

• 45:03Dax Shepard?

  Now the show's over.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got in the sweet spot, right before it ended, too.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  But I did a lot of my self-education then, too, cause I tried to know every improv person in the universe. Cause I was lucky enough to be doing The Office, Curb, and Arrested Development, starting with season two. If you go back and watch then, you'll see the same season, everybody does Curb, everybody's Arrested, all the same people. That was when, from my own history in comedy, nobody got improv actors, nobody brought them into the fore until it was like Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. For me, it was all casting sitcom pilots, and it was always tough. Tough to find anybody funny, tough to find anybody who can pull off the sitcom, and in those days, tough to find anybody great-looking enough for a network to approve them.

• 45:45Dax Shepard?

  Right, you had to have a lot of things.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you did have to have a lot of things. So that was when Judd and Adam McKay and Paul Feig, they started appreciating the fact that most improv actors or comedians who then got into improv was not in the fore of comedy either when I started. Again, it was all stand-up comics.

• 46:01Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Improv was still Second City, and it was Groundlings, which were sort of character-oriented.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:05Dax Shepard?

  You're right. There was this huge talent pool that no one was really looking at.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  No one until sort of Second City started to move. I was trying to pluck people out of Second City in the early 90s. I remember going there to see Second City the first time when we were looking for Carlton on Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

• 46:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  And they said, can we just go to Chicago and look for some of these kids? Because I don't know. And so I went to Second City for the first time, and that's when I met Jeff Garland. But on main stage at that time was Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and Amy Sedaris, and Paul Donello, Jeff Garland. It was crazy. And Mitch Rouse. Anyway, that history of comedy. But when I started to do a lot of comedy shows and bringing a lot of the improv comedy was when The State had started and when Kids in the Hall had started.

• 46:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  That stuff all came through, basically, what was then called the Comedy Channel, I think, was Comedy Central, but at the time it was called something else.

• 46:53Dax Shepard?

  The Comedy Network. There was a great little boom because it was Kids in the Hall, and then The State, and then Ben Stiller had a sketch show, and then you had Mr. Show.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  He started it all as well.

• 47:01Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  I mean, Ben Stiller, very important in comedy. And I think they owe the biggest debt to Mr. Show.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  To Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, which would air at midnight on HBO.

• 47:12Dax Shepard?

  A whole new genre.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we had Jack Black on, and I was telling him, you know, I used to go to the live tapings of that show, and it seemed like just the most penetrable.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  I passed him today on the street.

• 47:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I did.

• 47:22Dax Shepard?

  Was he in tie-dye?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  He's hard to miss. I had cast him in a couple of day player roles when he was first starting out. And he was very singular, Jack Black. And he could deliver one line and you'd remember it.

• 47:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  And he was with the Gage Group very early on in his career. In every casting office, you have people that you remember and keep bringing in and bringing in until they get the part that really propels them into a long career.

• 47:44Dax Shepard?

  So that was going to be one of my questions. Do you get a swell of pride when you see like a Chris Pratt?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  I do.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  You have to.

• 47:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. You cast Parks and Rack.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:55Dax Shepard?

  If it's not obvious, you're the only casting director we've ever invited in.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 47:59Dax Shepard?

  And largely because I have someone who didn't learn about casting directors like Monica did. I started noticing, I'm like, this Veep cast is impossible. Who on earth figured out that all these people were this level of brilliance? And that's why I think Veep, when I was like, oh, it's you, you're, and then I was like, oh, and right. And the other impossible cast would have been Parks and Rec. Wow, you did that. And you've had several of those.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 48:24Dax Shepard?

  It's just impossible, the level of collective talent and unknown. And I realized, oh, you're a big, big, big piece of that. It's kind of like for me, when I realized, oh, John Bryan, the composer, might have as much to do with the Paul Thomas Anderson movies that I like. Because Eternal Sunshine, I also like in the same way, and he has composed both. That's like a revelation. Oh, maybe I love John Bryan.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, when all of your favorite comedies, you look and it's you who's casted.

• 48:51Dax Shepard?

  What gets suspicious.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, yeah, I think this might be about her.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  The music connection is interesting, though. I do love certain soundtracks, starting with Alfred Hitchcock movies. And they are what connect your fandom, I think, a lot of the time. That's a great point. In features, casting directors always get credited, it seems, the card right after the music. The music editor. And I love that.

• 49:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you do, you get a swell of pride when Chris.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes. And I bore people with all the stories I'm boring you with now.

• 49:17Dax Shepard?

  No, I love it.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  It's fantastic.

• 49:19Dax Shepard?

  I guess here's my question, because Kristen and I were at a hotel once, and he and Annie were there. And we ended up hanging out for three days. I'm like, this guy's so radical. He's so real. He's from Oregon, he was a wrestler, he's a hunter, and he's funny.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Pickup truck. He needs to show his funny side again.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  I know. I've been thinking that a lot lately.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  And Jack Black needs to show his dramatic side. We have all these thoughts, casting people, we talk about this all the time.

• 49:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What does Kristen need to do? Keep on keeping on?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  She's doing pretty good.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  No, keep on keeping on, but she would be great in a down and dirty drama.

• 49:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Wouldn't she want to? I would think she'd want to.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  She's such a good dramatic actress.

• 49:54Dax Shepard?

  She would, and then I always talk her out of it.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Do you really? Why?

• 49:56Dax Shepard?

  I don't talk her out of it. I remind her of what life she wants, which is she wants to be at home seeing her kids. She does not want to be on location. She wants manageable hours. She wants to know she can drive the kids to school if she wants to. So going away to, you know, Georgia for four months is a down and dirty drama.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Universe for Kristen. She should be do a real movie, indie movie or something. Queen pins was great for her.

• 50:20Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, you cast that?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  I did.

• 50:21Dax Shepard?

  We love Kirby.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Oh, Kirby's the best.

• 50:24Dax Shepard?

  Kirby's a diamond.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Kirby, we've hired forever. The richest talent pool is comedy.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Frankly, my argument, and you would, I think, agree because you've directed now is so many drama actors. Some of them are brilliant at comedy. Going the other way, comedy to drama is much more frequent and much more a surprise.

• 50:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Sacha Baron Cohen is very good in Disclaimer.

• 50:46Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's because comedy requires you to be.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  It requires a lot of pain.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  It does.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  And a lot of experience and a lot of beating yourself up and a lot of stuff to draw from.

• 50:57Dax Shepard?

  And I'm gonna add, and people will be mad about this. Comedy is straight up harder than drama.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Beyond straight up harder than drama.

• 51:03Dax Shepard?

  There's so many tools that can be employed in a drama to help you. You could have no look on your face and do the perfect push in and the right song.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  People think you're a genius.

• 51:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 51:14Dax Shepard?

  There's no cheating a joke. You can't cheat a laugh. You can put a fart noise in or something, but in general, it works or it doesn't work. There's no manipulating it. You can't put the perfect song in and all of a sudden it's funny.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Though they try.

• 51:25Dax Shepard?

  They do try. And it's generally generic. Okay, can you think of some people that you really went to the mat over? That didn't get it, that then turned out to be huge? Do you feel like you've got some great vindicated stories?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  You should have a group casting director thing because people would be shocked at how many people slumped first and then got the big, it's tenacity, tenacity, tenacity. It used to be in pilot season, the people who didn't get the roles, the next season would get the roles. And the next season, the people who didn't even get as far as the network would get the roles.

• 51:56Dax Shepard?

  That's good to know.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  It's a cycle, though. It is tenacity.

• 51:58Dax Shepard?

  Can you think of someone that you were like, you just battled and lost?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Battled for Elizabeth Banks to get many things. It was mostly like women whose studios didn't think were pretty enough, like Elizabeth Banks. We finally got her in.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  She's like a forty year old virgin.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Is her pretty enough?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. What the fuck?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, or Amy Adams.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Or funny enough. Both, by the way, wickedly funny. Elizabeth does a lot of comedies, but Amy needs to get back to some good comedy. Because she's wickedly funny.

• 52:25Dax Shepard?

  She needs to just have some fun, maybe.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:27Dax Shepard?

  For a few months.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  I'm sure she would like to. Comedy is a little bit in a coma now these days.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Dax Shepard?

  It's not a great time.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  So not many opportunities. Brie Larson is who I was gonna mention.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Was never, I mean, this is a gorgeous, talented girl. And she was never good enough for a studio to approve her. They just didn't think she was the leading lady. And then, boom, an Academy Award later and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, that I do love.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  It would be so hard for me for them to be passing on Brie Larson and Elizabeth Banks and Amy Adams. I would be like, guys, why are you doing this?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Wait a minute, you're approving Seth Rogen and you're passing on these people?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. I would be saying it.

• 53:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you've navigated lots of different eras in this business.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  We say it all the time.

• 53:04Dax Shepard?

  So if you're working with a director, they're casting their third movie or show, and you've cast hundreds. How do you manage not saying like, you're wrong, you're gonna have to trust me, this is my expertise?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I try never to go there because once I said you're wrong to somebody and I got screamed at. Don't you tell me I am wrong.

• 53:26Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. You deal with a lot of egos, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't you ever say I'm wrong and I'm not wrong.

• 53:31Dax Shepard?

  I've never been wrong.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  And by the way, you was dead wrong.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  And that actor became a huge star.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you deserve to have the ego. Your resume.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  No, we, casting directors fight, fight, fight so much for actors. I brought this up recently. I wish actors could appreciate how much we do fight for them.

• 53:48Dax Shepard?

  I gotta tell you this, this is the truth. Generally, I research people. And then in the process of researching them, there's some curiosities that kind of surface. I've never sat down and just had questions like I have for you.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  No, please.

• 54:00Dax Shepard?

  Have you developed a radar for who's gonna be problematic? Like, they might be genius level in the room, but do you think you've gotten good at going, yeah, this person's talented, but is not gonna be worth the work?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  You can tell when certain people are annoying in the room when they're auditioning, that they're maybe a little rough on a director. Directors can tell that, too. Somebody will read and ask questions or ask the wrong questions. The way you can read people in general, even though somebody who waits on you at McDonald's is like that little prick.

• 54:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, right, right. I bet she's a great mom.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Exactly. The way you can read people, it's just a people-reading thing. And yes, I do. I believe I have instincts for that. Though, in terms of behavior in the past, I don't ever repeat it unless I've seen it, or it's been on a movie that I've worked on. Like, somebody will say, "Don't ever hire that actor, they're difficult."

• 54:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  I want to make sure it's accurate. So many actors get a bad rap because they didn't get on with the director, or a producer, and it's actually the director who is the problem.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  It happens so much to women.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, is that true? So more often you'll hear, "Don't work with her than him."

• 54:59Speaker 02

  This woman is difficult, and, come on, you know.

• 55:01Dax Shepard?

  Because she has an opinion.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  And then you hear the director's name, it's like, come on.

• 55:04Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Women still do not have a leg up.

• 55:07Dax Shepard?

  What pisses you off the most in the casting process?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  I'll never work again. All the casting executives, the levels of people that we have to go through.

• 55:14Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  And the levels of people that we have to CC and update.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  And you're talking about in a studio?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  I'm talking about in a studio or film, television. There's so many levels, and it really throws me off my game. And this has been for decades, frankly. In casting, you need, like what we're doing now, we're tracing people back for 30 years.

• 55:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  We need to do that in our brains. And if you're constantly concerned, as I am, about, oh my god, I forgot to put a name on a list. Oh my god, this person thought of this person. Oh my god, this person's cousin wants to be seen. Oh my god, this person's manager asked me to see this person. You have absolutely the shortest synapses you could possibly have. You lose that long-term thinking of, who is this person? I loved in that show, and I can't remember who it was. That's what I want to spend my brain power on. And we are exhausted by the end of the day, and that is the only time we have to do it. It's so much more difficult now to actually be creative.

• 56:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, what are your thoughts about improvising in an audition?

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Only if you know it's okay. Do a little bit of research. People see me and they think I can improvise, but I will, I will say, okay, this one, don't improvise.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's good.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  You know, because some actors will do it. All these beautiful comics, most of the time, they come up with funnier stuff than is on the page. People like Jed Appetow and Paul Feig and Mitch Hurwitz and Adam McKay, they appreciate that.

• 56:29Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  They want that, Larry David wants that. But I will warn them before coming in, or tell their agent, and I pray to god the agent tells the manager who tells the assistant who tells the assistant who tells the assistant to the actor to the actor, "Don't improv."

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:44Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  There is a line between comedy people who want to hear every line they write, and comedy people who don't care. And they say, "You can't make a wrong step, just do whatever you want." So, you should ask.

• 56:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Please ask.

• 56:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Otherwise, they'll think you can't ask.

• 56:59Dax Shepard?

  Do the thing.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:00Dax Shepard?

  Which, maybe I can't.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 57:02Dax Shepard?

  I've kind of gone like this, and again, I'm not giving this advice to any actor at all. I don't think this is a good strategy. Here's what I told myself. At some point, I'm like, I'm better if I can make this thing a little bit mine. I'll be different. It might anger you, but I'll be memorable. I've got to be me because this is who you're gonna deal with. So actually, it's a favor for all of us if we find out now. There are other people that are much better at this. If that's what you want than I am. Here's the thing I can do well. Maybe that'll appeal to you or not. Like, at some point, I feel like, and maybe it was just an attempt to get some control over the experience, which feels very powerless, of like, I'm gonna give you what I am, and maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll hate it.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think that's great. I do, depending. If you're in there for Judd or somebody, you should absolutely do that because I find myself, I'll publicly apologize to Beck Bennett now because once he came in for a pilot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and after the audition, I said, wait, Mike, can he do it again? Because he can be better. It just came out of my mouth. Bring it way down, something like that. And then he was great. He had chosen to make the character big, and I love Beck Bennett.

• 58:06Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Get the guy a major movie and a major show, if I'm allowed to say that.

• 58:09Dax Shepard?

  And when you say Mike, you're talking about Sure?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Mike Sure, yes.

• 58:11Dax Shepard?

  We love.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  The best of the very best.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  That's why his shows are spectacular. Plug for the new Ted Danson show, which is spectacular. You guys are gonna love it.

• 58:18Dax Shepard?

  Kristen just did a little thing on it, I think.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I know. I didn't get to go to that, but I know she did a little bit. But yeah, Mike Sure is a director who's a dream because he wants to see who you are. And he doesn't care about the words. He does ultimately, but he doesn't. Because you find stuff there that you would bring to it, or that Beck Bennett would bring to it, that is not on the page, and you do need to show them who you are.

• 58:37Dax Shepard?

  And you gotta be able to do the thing. I totally get it.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  You have to be able to do the thing.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  I think a mix is always good. Like, if you, for the most part, stick to the sides the whole time, but maybe you improvise on the button, or you add a little something.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  You better ask.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Okay, great. Okay.

• 58:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  They will say, I've had major comedy people go, he changed my line. And I'll always be defensive of the actor, always.

• 58:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Like, I don't like it when they make fun of an actor. I just, I'm always defensive.

• 59:03Dax Shepard?

  When they leave, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 59:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, what do you think about coming in character and foregoing the chit chat?

• 59:12Speaker 02

  What are actors like? Because I always try to make an actor feel at home when they come in, but I realize I should ask the actor, do you just want to come in and do it and then talk?

• 59:20Dax Shepard?

  It's gotta be project-specific, right?

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Drama, no chit-chat.

• 59:23Dax Shepard?

  I've come into things, I remember I almost got on True Detective. So I go into that and I'm like, you know what, I want to get to the acting as quickly as possible because I am funny in real life and I'm joyous. And then I don't want to have that huge radical shift. For you, I'd rather just come in, be polite, and do the thing and let you see that I can be a badass and then leave. But I don't know, I feel like it's project-specific.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  I mean, I've always just been, I think, empathetic to actors when they come in because no matter who it's in there, it's a dead room and coming in to audition for comedy is ridiculous. You're in a vacuum and you're trying to be funny.

• 59:57Dax Shepard?

  And they've seen it 45 times.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Exactly, and it's a ridiculous task. So that's why I also think self-taping is beneficial.

• 1:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Great, that was one of my questions.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  But you come in and then I should ask actors, can I say something and make a joke? I always try to just make some sort of joke or mention, I just saw them in something, but I do have a feel for if they kind of just want to start. Because what I am cut off from is, I appreciate it, but how much preparation you folks have done and how you've talked yourself out of it and how you beat yourself up.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  The whole car ride there. The lobby is the worst. The lobby is, you're listening to other great comedians.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  And you see the same people. Can I tell a small anecdote?

• 1:00:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes, please.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Donald Lyon's movie, he did a movie of Yogi Bear.

• 1:00:36Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Which was lovely. People should discover that for their kids or put it on Netflix. And I was bringing in the greatest comedy people ever. Dan Aykroyd was willing to come in and read for Yogi Bear. He was perfect. But of course, the studio thinks they have to hear him do it, which is ridiculous. That's the other thing. I'm like, just hire this person, but that never works. He came in and then Rob Corddry came in and he said, I have to follow Dan Aykroyd? And I instantly was like, God, I know.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Cause my generation, I was starstruck to even meet Dan Aykroyd.

• 1:01:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  But you see who's coming in, who came in before you.

• 1:01:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's so rough.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  It's the worst.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  It's such a mindfuck.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're already nervous and then you see, these four guys are definitely better than me.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  I have to cut myself off from her else I'll just be too much jelly of sympathy.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  I was gonna say that.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Is how much preparation and when they leave, it always just blows me away. Somebody who gives an incredible audition and who you can tell worked on it so hard. That is impressive. That is how you audition.

• 1:01:35Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't take on everyone's ener- the amount of energy, oh my God.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  But God bless actors from A to Z.

• 1:01:43Dax Shepard?

  It's very gracious.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Honest to God.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  It's gracious.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Well, some of them come in not prepared at all.

• 1:01:47Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  And then you're like, just leave. You're a jackass. Yeah.

• 1:01:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What's the number one mistake you see actors make?

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  I would say, not with me, but when you're in with a big director, a big producer, doing it and saying, "Oh, I didn't like that. Can I do it again?"

• 1:02:00Dax Shepard?

  Good tip.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  People can do it, but sometimes.

• 1:02:03Dax Shepard?

  You better be fucking great that next adjustment you gave your.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  I think so, and I think sometimes you sort of want to wait for the director to do that. Get a feel for the room, be prepared and don't come in, and I know you can be nervous and I will try to help. Is that the camera? That's what actors do.

• 1:02:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  I would say just sort of read the room sometimes.

• 1:02:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  And don't come in and say, "I just got the sides last night, so I'm not prepared." That's an old trick some actors have done for decades.

• 1:02:28Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  I will already know which actor's gonna come in and go, "Oh, I just got the sides last night."

• 1:02:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. These are great tips.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  And don't chew gum in an audition unless it calls for it. A lot of people are insecure and they'll eat food or chew gum in an audition.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Eat food?

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 1:02:43Dax Shepard?

  Bring a big sandwich.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  Oh, you asked me about, what do you think about coming in in character?

• 1:02:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Dax Shepard?

  I can see freaking people out or I can see it really working.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  And you mean coming in in character, being the character, not dressed like a policeman or something?

• 1:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's two questions, I guess.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Well, self tapes, I think it's fine to look like the person because studio executives who approve these parts, you're in a cop uniform, they're gonna think, oh, he can be a cop.

• 1:03:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it does a lot of the work.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  God bless them, but most of them think surface things.

• 1:03:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're juggling different things.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And then you do have a group of executives who are unbelievably tuned into the creative part of it, but many are not. But I would say come in in character with comedy, I think it's okay. I wouldn't say you have to. But for example, JB Smoove came in to audition for Curb as the character he had made up. And he came in, Larry, Larry David.

• 1:03:30Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  He came in instantly, Larry was on the floor.

• 1:03:33Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  He had the part immediately, basically.

• 1:03:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  So you gotta be pretty confident when you do it. You gotta be good and you gotta be confident, because then it won't hurt you, in my opinion.

• 1:03:42Dax Shepard?

  I could see someone going, this is a little scary, I need to know the real person.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Frequently also, when the scene is done, you get a feel for the person.

• 1:03:50Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  The way in Borat, Ken Davision, who played his assistant in Borat, in the first Borat movie, came in with Sasha did not know, but with a very authentic Eastern European accent. And then after he was done, after he got the part, we told him he was American.

• 1:04:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Oh, that's great.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  So that was smart, and Sasha was blown away, because we ALG'd him, I mean, we...

• 1:04:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what's the hardest role you've ever had to cast? Meaning you read the most amount of people and traveled the greatest distance?

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  McLovin.

• 1:04:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Everybody knows what McLovin is. Yes.

• 1:04:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  I would say it was the toughest role ever to cast, because it took months and months. Pre-internet, I think we did some sort of a MySpace thing, that was the first big internet thing, right? MySpace?

• 1:04:35Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  And it turned up nobody. Those are the days you still put up flyers in high schools and things like that. And I knew I wasn't turning up a good geek, you know? I know I can recognize a good geek. And Judd was like, no, no, no, no, no. Michael Cera first came in from McLovin, and then it was apparent he was perfect. That was right after he finished Arrested Development, so he wasn't a star yet. We still had to read every kid in town to play Seth and Evan. Judd first only wanted kids who were actually 18 or 19, so at the time, Jonah was a little bit too old. We wanted him to do the table read, and no, Judd wanted kids younger. I sort of ignored kids who were older than 19 or 20, and then it did dawn on Judd, wait a minute, Jonah looks like a baby, of course he can do this. And then Michael Cera came back and read as Seth, and of course, wait a minute.

• 1:05:16Dax Shepard?

  Or Evan.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Or Evan.

• 1:05:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, one of the two.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  But McLovin, I wanted to find the most amazing nerd ever Greg Mottola did too. And I knew I wasn't turning anybody up. Casting people know when they're not delivering, you had to keep looking. And so we put up flyers in high schools and I still have a copy of my flyer. It was that, "Attention nerdy high school boys. Call this number or fax, fax your picture to this number." The little headshot of Christopher Mintz-Plasey came through a bad fax. His forehead was stretched out.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Okay, we're gonna see this kid. We had sent, and my associate at the time, Delia Frankel, had looked up improv classes in high schools. So we had sent them around to high schools and they were calling us. And I think the way he got was one of his friend's mothers said, "There's a flyer for a nerdy high school kid, Christopher. I think you should submit it." So he came in, Judd saw it instantly. Other people did not. I did, Judd did. The reason I thought he was funny is because part of the scene was he had to name his character McLoving. He said McLoving and instead of McLovin. It cracked me up just the way he said it. Those are the little things you recognize in comedy.

• 1:06:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  And he was just like Coke bottle glasses kind of a kid. The same way that Martin Starr was. He read for all three male roles in Freaks and Geeks, all the geek roles. And he was just like, bingo, he's one of them. And knew what he was doing. He came in and he was like, wow, look at the way this kid looks and he can act.

• 1:06:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Same with Tim Simons when he came in for Veep. Thank you for that compliment, by the way. Veep and Parks and Recs knocked me out, those casts. And I'm not saying it to pat myself on the back.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  They're unreal.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  It's all an act of faith, all of it. And they knocked me out.

• 1:06:52Dax Shepard?

  We heard he was a casting assistant.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  He was at some point. I think he was, I don't know specifically.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  But not for Veep.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  But, I mean, you know, Tim. The way I found Tim, and it's a great sort of casting story. I should get into the Phyllis story too. Am I taking you over too much time?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  No, we love it.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  One of my associates at the time, Peter Kusakas, who's now a great manager at Mosaic. He said, "Would you meet my friend, Tim Simons? He's in..." Did you see that Abraham Lincoln commercial? When she says, "Does this make my butt look big?" And I said, "Oh yeah, that tall guy. He's cool. Of course I would see him. I'd love to see new people, of course, as all casting people do." And I met him, I think we just... Brought him in to read for something and it was like, oh, he's really good. We put that in our headbank and I brought him in shortly thereafter, I think, for one thing that he didn't get. And then I brought him in for the Veep pilot, which was written as like a short, stalky chain smoker.

• 1:07:39Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Any good casting director, you don't really read the writer's description because you need to just bring in good people.

• 1:07:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  So he came in and he was killer funny. We read great people for the Veep pilot because that writing is Amande Unuchie. And Julia came in for the sessions and read with people.

• 1:07:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  So that was very enjoyable, but Tim came in and killed it. But his competition was stiff and when we got to the network at HBO, he was great. And after talking, I was able to hear how they came to the conclusion that Tim Simons was the way to go. And again, against some very big comedy people. And Julia would talk about it and how she wanted to act with these people. Julia was a large part of picking that cast. She said about Tony Hale versus the competition for Tony Hale, "I would not be embarrassed to ask Tony Hale to get me a Tampax."

• 1:08:25Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  And that's how he decided he would be the perfect bagman.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  She said, "Tony would not embarrass me. The other person might embarrass me." And it turns out that we ended up using all the runner-ups in recurring roles on Veep.

• 1:08:36Dax Shepard?

  What a frigging cast.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Wait, do you want to tell Phyllis?

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Oh, Phyllis. I don't know if this is generally known. I think it is that Phyllis was my associate for seven or eight years. And we were casting the pilot of The Office. With Ken Quappas, we were in the room reading. We had two days of final testing for all the different combinations we could use for The Office. I was reading and Phyllis was filming. And Ken Quappas just sort of tiptoed over to me and said, "Let Phyllis read with the actors because I think she might be good in the background." It was like, of course she would. Look at the people in the British office in the background. They're real looking people.

• 1:09:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  And so, yes, we let Phyllis read. And she went in to read with the test between like Krasinski and Jenna and a lot of other people. I had previously been reading with Steve and a few other people. And she was great. We were so excited. And then Greg, when he faxed over the pilot, and there was one line for Phyllis. We went.

• 1:09:24Dax Shepard?

  How exciting.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Because at the time, Phyllis was going to make like $630 for the day. And that was exciting, SAG-Scale.

• 1:09:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, in 2003, right about the time I met Dax Shepard.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:09:45Dax Shepard?

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• 1:10:29Dax Shepard?

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• 1:10:56Dax Shepard?

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• 1:11:39Dax Shepard?

  From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace That works for you. Visit Walden U.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts. The stuff that gets in the way of the actual work.

• 1:12:17Dax Shepard?

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  They never are.

• 1:12:39Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff. But there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there, inside your email, your docs, your browser.

• 1:13:20Dax Shepard?

  You don't go to it. It's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it, and it pulls the key points. About to send something important? It flags what doesn't add up before it leaves your hands. It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed, at your service, not after your job. So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 1:13:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, I mentioned a new thing. This wasn't one of my questions, but it just occurred to me talking about technology. Clearly now, a big driver of who gets cast is like what their following is.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Not in what I work on.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 1:14:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  I wouldn't have a clue. And if somebody says to me, oh, they have so many followers or they're this on TikTok, it's not a negative for me, but it means, well, they're not a trained actor.

• 1:14:15Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Maybe they're funny. I'll look at a clip and it's like, that person's not gonna be able to act. And I've been wrong many times.

• 1:14:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  But usually, it's a version of that.

• 1:14:23Dax Shepard?

  How about this? What percentage of the roles on the shows and movies that you're casting already have stars attached?

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Almost 100%. Movies have to have a star attached to get it made. To get any financing, you probably need two or three, no matter how low the budget. Even maybe the lower the budget, you need the financiers to say, we got Kristen Bell, you know?

• 1:14:43Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  We got Deck Shepherd.

• 1:14:44Dax Shepard?

  Right, well, let's not play it too fast and loose.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  We got Monica Padman and Deck Shepherd.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  That's a good comment.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Now we're talking.

• 1:14:50Dax Shepard?

  We're adding up to like half a Kristen Bell.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Kristen in the mix, all three. It's looking pretty good.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  And TV frequently now, for the streamers, they probably have a project attached to, like I'm currently doing Bill Lawrence's show with Steve Carell. But we're casting everybody around him.

• 1:15:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes. So what is your preference? Do you like to start with a clean slate? Or do you like that it-

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Oh, I'd love to start with a clean slate. The Office, we started with a clean slate.

• 1:15:10Dax Shepard?

  And would you prefer to break unknowns?

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  In comedy, for sure.

• 1:15:13Dax Shepard?

  It's gotta be more rewarding for you.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  It's so much more rewarding to give someone a break.

• 1:15:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Earlier, you said, I love meeting new people, as all casting directors do. But I don't think that's true. I think you're an exception. I think a lot of casting directors, they don't necessarily want to see anyone new. They want reliable people they already know. And I think it's special.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  I don't know about that. I couldn't speak for other people.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's special.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  You may be more of an expert in that than I, but I know that we all have our favorites based on how we perceive the talent and how they can deliver and how they haven't been given a shot to do it yet. I'll read something and think, oh, this is perfect for Monica Padman, or this is perfect for Rory Scoville or something. And they haven't been given that huge shot yet.

• 1:15:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I think that's an exception. I really do.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  You really do?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  I think it's special.

• 1:15:57Dax Shepard?

  Have you had people who you know are so talented and you've seen them be so talented, and they just can't audition?

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Oh, plenty, especially in comedy.

• 1:16:05Dax Shepard?

  And is it heartbreaking?

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  It's heartbreaking because my job then is to talk the director into it and to show them stuff or another audition where they've done it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't. People will listen to you and then people won't listen to you.

• 1:16:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I gotta say, one of the, I think, more difficult things about this job is I don't know how good Daniel Day Lewis is as an auditioner.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  He would probably be the worst auditioner.

• 1:16:27Dax Shepard?

  He probably would be. It's a different skill set. It's almost the closest they'll get to stand up. They don't have any of the environment, they don't have the other actors.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  There's the reverse. There are people who are great auditioners who then on the set, you don't get anything more from them.

• 1:16:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get the line reading from the audition. However, a kid who was great from the time he was 12, Leonardo DiCaprio.

• 1:16:46Dax Shepard?

  Wow. Okay, so let's talk about Once Upon a Time. I gotta say, in the last 10 years, the performance that has blown my mind more than any other, and I watch the movie all the time, is Once Upon a Time. Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie is so next level. I don't think people are recognizing that he's playing three levels of actor. He is an actor, playing an actor, who's okay sometimes, and then he has a moment where he's great. But he's not as great as Leonardo DiCaprio can be great. He's as great as that actor can be great. When you see what's going on in that scene and what he's having to juggle, it's so impressive.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  He has never given a bad performance. He's always almost better than some of the movies he's in. Killers of the Flower Moon, any other actor in that part would have been like they were doing a role from a sketch in Hootenanny. You know, it was like, are you kidding me? He was heartbreakingly good in that role. And he was so over the top. And the version of that in comedy is like Steve Carell as Michael Scott. So over the top, but still unbelievably real and good. You gotta be a genius to pull those off.

• 1:17:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, Allison Jones, this has been such a delight.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  And a delight for me. I could talk to you guys for hours.

• 1:17:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, same.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  You're the best.

• 1:17:53Dax Shepard?

  You're so sweet and wonderful. And I'm, well, I guess my single last question is, you refuted my claim of 42 years, but it is 41 years.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Might be 41 and a half, but just say 41.

• 1:18:07Dax Shepard?

  How on earth have you kept your stamina to stay hungry? And your job is so hard, the hours are so crazy. How have you stayed hungry and dialed in?

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Only because I like it. However, the past 10, 15 years, it's a different business in terms of what we do and in terms of pressure you get from top heavy things. And things have changed completely.

• 1:18:27Dax Shepard?

  You're like a doctor that has to do managed care now with a insurance provider.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:18:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Perfect. And even since streaming has started, it's incredibly different. You go to one of these streamers and we become just data entry people. Everything's put into algorithm. I hate the word algorithm. They've algorithmized creativity and you can't do that.

• 1:18:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  But they have and they've tried in terms of payment and who to cast and what's going to appeal to a certain group of people overseas or here. Netflix is doing that a little too much, I think, just in my very humble opinion.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  It's not a humble opinion. Your opinion, again, if you look at your resume is insane. I was right to be so excited to get an audition from you.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Well, you're so kind.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  You're a legend.

• 1:19:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we're super honored that you could have chatted with us.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  My assistant Hannah freaked out when I told her I was doing this.

• 1:19:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, she did.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm afraid I'm not a podcast person either and I should be because I'm a true crime person more than anything.

• 1:19:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, then you're missing out on the.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  I know, but I Googled armchair expert and I typed too fast and it said arm hair expert. I'm not kidding.

• 1:19:28Dax Shepard?

  That should be a, another show we do.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Arm hair expert.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  I need one.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  I have Arm A. It's literally insane.

• 1:19:36Dax Shepard?

  Fuck, I forgot one question I want to ask. This is a nosey question, but when you have a track record like yours and someone wants to cast a comedy, starting with you is like starting with Jimmy Burrows.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:19:49Dax Shepard?

  Do you get to participate ever in the success of a show?

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  No, and I wish I had on a couple of indies I have.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  You mean financially.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  One of them has paid off extremely well, but casting directors, we can't even get paid ads. I mean, we just don't get anything because studios don't care and they don't understand.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 1:20:07Dax Shepard?

  I feel like you should be a participant.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  You should be so rich.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  You can on indie movies because they do need you to attach some of their leads. Like that, but no, on television, never. If I had residuals on shows like Boy Meets World, Fresh Principality, or The Office, I'd be retired right now and I'd be very happy.

• 1:20:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  But no, we do not, and I wish we did. That's the next step. This year, I was able to help negotiate with the AMPTP and the Teamsters. And it was fascinating, and we can only go baby step by baby step. But when we could ever participate, especially in a cast like The Office, which you do do from scratch.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  And people do know your value as a casting person.

• 1:20:46Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  In a comedy, basically, I do know I have value.

• 1:20:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Creatively, anyway. But thank you for asking that, because no, we almost get paid within the same pay range, too. I don't get paid much more than...

• 1:20:57Dax Shepard?

  Anybody else. It's kind of like when you're a director of a TV show, you get the DGA minimum. It doesn't matter if you've had a great career. Now, if you're Burrows, you can obviously negotiate ownership of the show to do the pilot.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  That's how they make money, right? The ownership of the show. Anybody who gets to do a pilot, very good. Jim Burrows is so wealthy.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, my God.

• 1:21:14Speaker 02

  To get a pilot, he's done.

• 1:21:15Dax Shepard?

  Warner bought the fucking Red Sox.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 1:21:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Although, again, that, too, has changed.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  What do you mean, it's changed?

• 1:21:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, Seinfeld would sell into a cycle of syndication for $800 million. And in the streaming world, none of these shows that have been on the air for six years get sold into syndication. People don't get... Like, Mike Schur, one of my questions, I said, "Mike, do you ever lament the fact that if you had the exact same career you had in the 80s and 90s, you would have $800 million?" He goes, "Yeah, I think about that a lot."

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  One of my very early pilots was for a very big, then-TV producer named James Comack, who did Sanford and Son and did all the cool shows. And he had a big home in Beverly Hills that he called Casa Syndication.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  So, come on. Yeah, yeah. But that's a lovely question to ask about if we participate, because no, and I wish I did.

• 1:22:03Dax Shepard?

  No, and you should.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  And I wish I had. It'll never happen.

• 1:22:06Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of bonkers.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Not in my lifetime.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  It's crazy to me.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Or it's stock options. I'll take stock options, too.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just have something.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Netflix, okay, don't pay me, but give me a mutual fund of Amazon. Put a mutual fund out and pay us that way.

• 1:22:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  And then, when you get rich, we get rich.

• 1:22:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, Alison, I look forward to seeing you again. We adore you. This has been so fun. I'm so glad you agreed to do it.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  Likewise.

• 1:22:27Dax Shepard?

  And I hope your nerves dissipated.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  It's dissipated. I was so excited when you emailed.

• 1:22:32Dax Shepard?

  You're definitely getting called back to producers. I can tell you in the room.

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:22:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, be well.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:22:42Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's fine.

• 1:22:51Dax Shepard?

  I think he's a, I don't know what the word is.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Sturdy?

• 1:22:54Dax Shepard?

  I was gonna say fighter. That's not right. I don't, clinger. Like, maybe he's, because I wouldn't call a sloth a fighter. By God, can they hang upside down indefinitely?

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  That's true. That is true.

• 1:23:05Dax Shepard?

  So maybe he's sloth-like?

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  He wants to show up for his friends.

• 1:23:08Dax Shepard?

  And for the holiday.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Dax Shepard?

  What is that thing, Monica?

• 1:23:13Dax Shepard?

  Is that a person or a reindeer or a ram? Those horns are, should be kind of informative.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  I think he's a bear reindeer.

• 1:23:22Dax Shepard?

  It's just a big old rein, with two big horns. Or those are his ears? Or hers. I shouldn't genderize.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  I think those are ears and then he, and then...

• 1:23:31Dax Shepard?

  Some antennas.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Whore.

• 1:23:33Dax Shepard?

  I see some metal antennas on...

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Those were reindeer horns. That's our hat.

• 1:23:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and to put it on the very top, made it leave frame.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he's just sitting on some branches.

• 1:23:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's almost, he's almost summited that tree.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  He's a he.

• 1:23:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's, let's, let's call it what it is.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's festive in here.

• 1:23:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so we just, we just scrambled, right? Because we're setting up for the holiday episode.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, which we should tell, we have a holiday episode coming up. It's a bonus episode.

• 1:24:07Dax Shepard?

  It's a bonus extra episode.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:09Dax Shepard?

  On the 20th.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  That's a coming.

• 1:24:12Dax Shepard?

  That's the 20th, this one is coming.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  It will be on YouTube, though.

• 1:24:15Dax Shepard?

  Of course, it's gonna be everywhere.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  I think people should watch it on YouTube.

• 1:24:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, big time. You're gonna have some A-list singers dropping through, gonna have some present reveals, gonna have a lot of decor. This is only a taste of what Wobbly Wobb's got more stuff planned.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:24:33Dax Shepard?

  As he does. This tree has been stolen from my daughter's room. So, I had a really great meditation this morning.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:24:44Dax Shepard?

  It's been a long time since I had a great one.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  What constitutes a great? Meditation.

• 1:24:48Dax Shepard?

  I think what adds up to it is like, can I stop ruminating? Can I not think about our employers during my meditation? Can I achieve that goal? And so I got kind of, I took a different tactic with my mantra a little bit, which was no one's, and we don't need to get this in detail, but I was just literally like, say, you have to say the mantra five times. And just concentrating with some limited thing, then I could buy myself five more. All to say, when it's really great, I lose a sense of my body, which is really fun. Like, I know how I'm sitting, but I can't really feel my hands or my legs anymore. I can tell them to kind of detach from my body. And then I'll often get blasts of light.

• 1:25:31Dax Shepard?

  I'll start seeing like lights in my, there's a word for this. In TM, but I don't know what it is. I heard, I've heard Howard talking about it. But I'll get some light activity in my detached state from my body. And anyways, when I came out of it, and that's why I'm telling you about it, is when it ended all by myself in my room, I said, hey, y'all, really great meditation.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Wow, that was the first thing out.

• 1:25:53Dax Shepard?

  It was.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:25:55Dax Shepard?

  That's the power of TM. It opened up my creative channels enough to go, hey, y'all, really great meditation.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:26:01Dax Shepard?

  And then I thought, of course, need to have an app that just at the end of your thing, you hear, hey, y'all, really great meditation.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  That would be great. People would buy it. Are you done with your Christmas shopping?

• 1:26:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, man, I'm afraid to even think about that. I mean, I know I've gotten a bunch and I've certainly forgotten people and it's gonna.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:23Dax Shepard?

  As much as I, this is my holiday, as you know, it's my favorite. God, do I cherish every day of it. In fact, I hate that it's coming.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Dax Shepard?

  I hate that there'll be a day where it ends.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:26:36Dax Shepard?

  And so the girls will be like, they're in a hurry. And I'm like, no, no, guys, just pump the brakes.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Enjoy it.

• 1:26:40Dax Shepard?

  Enjoy. It's so much more fun anticipating it. But the only part I can't stand about it is the test of your love for others by your, how thoughtful your gift was. And then I was thinking, I got a little cynical for a minute. I was like, they, they really got us with this racket. I mean, what an incredible racket.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Dax Shepard?

  For consumerism, it's like you have to go buy something for everyone you care about.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Dax Shepard?

  That's the rules.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Well, it's not always the rules. You can make new rules like secret turkey. We have to make our gifts. You don't have to go out and buy. It's just, it's just taking time to think about people.

• 1:27:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What if at Christmas morning, everyone sat around and you go, I thought about you. Like that was the present.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  That would be nice.

• 1:27:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, that'd be like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Wow. Dr. Seussian.

• 1:27:34Dax Shepard?

  Seussian.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Your favorite word.

• 1:27:36Dax Shepard?

  You know, this, this is a blast from the past, but um Crosby's houseboat, which was in Sausalito Harbor in real life.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27:46Dax Shepard?

  The first time we ever shot on it, it was an actual boat. And then of course, it was on a soundstage down here, but it was originally in Sausalito. Two boats over from Crosby's boat was Dr. Seuss's boat. He had a houseboat in Sausalito.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  And he still had.

• 1:27:58Dax Shepard?

  It was still his boat. I guess it was his wife's at that point.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  His wife's still alive?

• 1:28:02Dax Shepard?

  She was in 2000, but whatever year we filmed the pilot.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:28:06Dax Shepard?

  Wobbly Wobb, give us a update on Mrs. Seuss.

• 1:28:10Speaker 06

  His second wife.

• 1:28:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  Died in 2018.

• 1:28:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's way after we shot. Another blast from the past. Are you ready for this?

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:28:20Dax Shepard?

  Some scholarly detective armcherry. People, a lot of people know this whole thing because they came in and COVID. My endless fucking thing about the American soldiers getting the English woman pregnant during World War II.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:36Dax Shepard?

  They found the book I'm talking about. You know who wrote it?

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Dr. Seuss.

• 1:28:41Dax Shepard?

  Dr. Sees. No, Margaret Mead. That's a Margaret Mead book. It's almost impossible to get. There's like five libraries in the country.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  What's it called?

• 1:28:50Dax Shepard?

  I could tell you. Tell you right frigging now, but not only did am I not insane that I imagined that whole thing. It's Margaret Mead, Godmother of Anthro. It's called The American Troops and the British Community, an examination of the relationship between the American troops and the British by Margaret Mead.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Is this the pumping the brakes thing?

• 1:29:10Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:29:11Dax Shepard?

  That her conclusion was culturally in America, women have the brake pedal, men have the gas pedal, but in England, men have the brake pedal, women have the gas pedal. You get a couple of folks with a gas pedal. I had an anecdotal experience with a gal.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  You did?

• 1:29:25Dax Shepard?

  Who I adore.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Dax Shepard?

  What a gift.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  And we used to ask all British people if they agreed with this and pretty much no one did.

• 1:29:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, I I remember it as being like 50 50, but.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:29:39Dax Shepard?

  And then there was, but in my pursuit of figuring out what the hell I had read, of course, I stumbled upon a bunch of other academic papers on this same topic because there's this huge term war babies. There was like this, yeah. And so one of the theories or conclusions was another element is that in America kissing is nothing. Anyone will kiss, kiss on a first date, whatever. But that in the steps of progression in England in 1942, kissing was very far down the road. You'd have held hands, you'd have done all this other stuff. Like, I guess kissing was like, you're there. You've committed to kissing, you're pretty much committed to banging. And so there was some miscommunication there. Where the Americans, she has, they're like, let me put one on you. And then those gals

• 1:30:24Dax Shepard?

  were like, oh, my God, this, I think we're gonna have.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:30:27Dax Shepard?

  Sessual intercourse. This is so intimate. Not as intimate as holding hands.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. For me, the most intimate is holding hands. I have to basically be about to marry you in order to hold my hand.

• 1:30:43Dax Shepard?

  That would be so weird. To be dating you, had have made out, rolled around, lots of sex, go to grab your hand and you always pull it away. That would be freaky.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  Well, this happened. I went on a couple of dates with someone and they held my hand and I

• 1:31:00Dax Shepard?

  You were ready.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Was like, what are you doing?

• 1:31:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like, let's do anal, but let's not do this.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Way too intimate, way too intimate.

• 1:31:11Dax Shepard?

  Where do you think that stems from?

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  I guess the only real memory I have of having my hand held is as a kid from my parents.

• 1:31:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Or my grandparents or someone like making sure I was safe.

• 1:31:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  It wasn't just, no one in my family just holds hands.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  They don't. Yeah, I think it's on too, but it's my life. So my parents don't hold hands or anything. So it wasn't, it wasn't a symbol of like romantic affection. It was a symbol of safety. And that's extremely intimate.

• 1:31:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  So unless you're about to propose, you're not allowed to hold my hand.

• 1:31:53Dax Shepard?

  Grab that hand when it's time to propose. I hold hands on the ride to school every morning.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:59Dax Shepard?

  If I'm in the car with them and they're in the front seat, we're holding hands.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I feel like you hold your, you hold Kristen's hand, you hold people's hands.

• 1:32:07Dax Shepard?

  I hold Erin's hand.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:11Dax Shepard?

  Hand holding is very nice.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  I think it's very nice.

• 1:32:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, very intimate for you.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  It is. It is. Um, okay. Do I have my Christmas presents done? Not really. This year, I didn't feel like I got the, there was a perfect gift for anyone, really. So I didn't really, so far I haven't got the satisfaction that I normally get in buying presents. But that's okay. You can't win every time.

• 1:32:43Dax Shepard?

  Right. And so you, you, what I'm grateful for is you have experienced how I mostly experienced buying presents. I hope they like this. This'll do. They'll know I thought of them.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Well, I know everyone will like it.

• 1:32:56Dax Shepard?

  Sure. You got good taste.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  But I, it wasn't, I wasn't like, I'm not feeling like, I'm so excited for everyone to open their gifts.

• 1:33:05Dax Shepard?

  See their faces.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  And they're gonna, and it's so thoughtful. It's like, not as thoughtful this year, but you know, it's okay.

• 1:33:11Dax Shepard?

  I've already had some mixups, so. Use your gift guide. Everyone should.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  A lot is sold. You said a lot was sold out and I was thought you were just being nice, but then I went on to buy some, to send some stuff to my mom to buy me. And because she needs, she needs a written list.

• 1:33:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  And a lot was gone.

• 1:33:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  I wanted stuff off of that.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  Virtually nothing. The only thing I could get is when I'd be on the website and then I'd start sniffing around for other items. Those glasses, those adorable glasses, which they didn't have the first time I was at that website.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Oh, they got back in stock?

• 1:33:49Dax Shepard?

  Then I was there for some other business. So anyways, I sent them to my sister in law.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Cute.

• 1:33:55Dax Shepard?

  And they arrived and they just opened up the box and then she sends me a text. I like these. I'm like, well, how could you have thought? You didn't have to wait till Christmas.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Well, she.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  But, but it's not her fault. It's not her fault. Slow down. Slow down, Dex. She goes, oh my God, I'm so, your brother feels terrible. So what happened was the box came, my brother just opened it. He knows I didn't get him fucking set of glasses.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Dax Shepard?

  So he just said, I had to, thanks, guy, these glasses. But, um, but clearly it's Christmas. You want to hear the gross thing I did too?

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  What'd you do?

• 1:34:28Dax Shepard?

  She's like, oh, I like them. And then I'm like, I need her to know they're not kids. I didn't get those at my. I didn't get them at a fast food restaurant. I'm like, those.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  They're nice.

• 1:34:38Dax Shepard?

  I respond, yeah, those are Monica's fancy glasses. Like I, I, I enlisted you. I was like, yeah, she'll, she knows if I said these are Monica's, she's going to go like, ooh, he spoiled me.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice. Uh, that is really nice.

• 1:34:54Dax Shepard?

  Is that store not in America?

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 1:34:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. So this is a grievance I have. I went nuts there. And they use DHL, which I guarantee is a phenomenal service. This is no shade of DHL, but it's, I think it must work easier in Europe. This is a ton of texts and it just standard is a signature. No.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  Fucking standard is no signature, guys, unless I say signature. So then I gotta go, every single item I bought from that place, which is a lot. I had to go and fill out the forms to make sure that they could be left on the porch, but after, but I have my texts from DHL. I probably have 40 texts from DHL in the last week. And every time I think, no, no, this one's just an update. It's not the consent form for the no signature. I already did that.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Yeah. The signature can get very stressful.

• 1:35:44Dax Shepard?

  Listen to my complaints in life.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:35:46Dax Shepard?

  I just got completely ashamed of my complaints.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:49Dax Shepard?

  Like, we live in an era where I can see something that's gorgeous and then it'll arrive somewhere. And I'm like so flummoxed.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Like, I have to sign for it.

• 1:35:55Dax Shepard?

  I had to click my phone twice.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  It's true. It's true. But this is what happens with technology. We just get accustomed.

• 1:36:05Dax Shepard?

  To it being quicker and quicker and quicker and easier and easier.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we want it to be, I mean, again, we've talked about this a lot, but like, the amount of minutes my brain has spent on wishing there was teleportation and really wishing, like thinking like, I think that's coming and that needs to come now.

• 1:36:21Dax Shepard?

  And like, it's about time. Like, actually frustrated.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Dax Shepard?

  Where is it?

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. When I try to explain to the kids that like, yeah, I had a cassette tape. It was 60 minutes long. If I wanted to listen to my favorite song over and over again, I had to rewind forever. And then who knows where you land?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Who knows?

• 1:36:39Dax Shepard?

  You can't land on your song.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:36:41Dax Shepard?

  You're always gonna be listening to the back half of a song you don't wanna listen to.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Sure. I know. Wild. Um.

• 1:36:47Dax Shepard?

  You're in all black today.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think these are.

• 1:36:51Dax Shepard?

  You look great.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:36:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, very smart outfit.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Thank you. But I think these are actually dark navy.

• 1:36:57Dax Shepard?

  I don't wanna do this.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  They are. They are.

• 1:37:00Dax Shepard?

  Let me guess, your shoes and socks aren't white. They're titanium white.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  I bought these at a store and when I bought them, they were navy.

• 1:37:11Dax Shepard?

  On the description.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:37:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  I want to be honest and say, I don't really remember, but I'm pretty sure they were.

• 1:37:18Dax Shepard?

  I'm ensnared in it. Here we go. There's no way those are navy.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Hold on.

• 1:37:25Dax Shepard?

  I can't sit here and have you saying those are navy. It's the same color as your shirt.

• 1:37:28Speaker 06

  On the TV, it kind of looks navy.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  It does?

• 1:37:30Dax Shepard?

  Here we go. This is a constant double cross from Wabi.

• 1:37:34Speaker 06

  I don't know if in person though. Well, blown up. It's just kind of shimmery.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you, Rob, for being honest, speaking your mind.

• 1:37:44Dax Shepard?

  You have something on Rob. There's something behind.

• 1:37:47Speaker 06

  You both have gray points. I think it could be both.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Look, I will say, I know. I will say that normally I'm more, it's navy. Like, I feel very definitive about it.

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  I'll give you that these, a couple of times I've thought, are these black? But then they're not.

• 1:38:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I would prefer you, you go like, these aren't navy. That's the kind of reaction.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  You prefer me to say, these aren't navy than are these black?

• 1:38:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just think it's funny to go, like you've been duped years ago. These aren't navy, just to yourself.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:29Dax Shepard?

  You don't think that's funny?

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  I just think it's literally the exact same thing. This is like what happens on sets where there's a line written. And some, the person, normally the writer says like, oh, this is the best way to say it.

• 1:38:44Dax Shepard?

  Writer.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Sometimes me.

• 1:38:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, me. Sometimes me.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And says, well, no, this is, I've dissected that this is the funniest way to say it.

• 1:38:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  And then the actor, whoever will say the same line. And then the original person is, is like, oh, no, no, no. Can you go back? Can you say?

• 1:39:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, unfortunately, that's actually the script supervisors.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Navy?

• 1:39:11Dax Shepard?

  Job, which is so unfair because they don't give a fuck what you say.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  I don't care.

• 1:39:15Dax Shepard?

  And they're pitted right between the actor and the writer.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, this isn't Navy and is this black?

• 1:39:20Dax Shepard?

  Those are pretty substantively different.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 1:39:25Dax Shepard?

  I think so.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 1:39:26Dax Shepard?

  Like, if you had written the line, say your line again.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Are these black?

• 1:39:30Dax Shepard?

  That's really good. You sold it this time. So I'll try that. I'll do, I'll do one your way and then you pick in the edit.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:37Dax Shepard?

  Are these black? That's kind of a new read on it, yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  New read. Oh, is this Navy?

• 1:39:44Dax Shepard?

  It was like an acting exercise. I didn't want to do exactly how you did.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Do the Navy one now.

• 1:39:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, didn't I? No, I was doing yours.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Oh, but I want you to do both so I could pick in the edit. My God, you told me, you set this up.

• 1:39:56Dax Shepard?

  That's lunch, everybody.

• 1:40:00Dax Shepard?

  We didn't get to it.

• 1:40:02Speaker 06

  I was leaving for lunch.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:40:18Dax Shepard?

  We get support by Peloton. You know that feeling when you're spiraling over a problem and you just can't figure it out? When that happens to me, I need a change of pace and I've found that running is the best way. It takes my brain out of the driver's seat and I come back with a fresh perspective. Running can be freeing and cathartic and Peloton helps you feel all of that. And now that feeling fits wherever you need it with the new Peloton Tread Flex. It's movable and foldable, designed to fit your life. So next time you feel stuck, you can go for a run literally anywhere, whether that's in your office, living room, or even the attic. Plus, they have classes with expert instructors and programs to meet you at any level and keep you moving.

• 1:41:00Dax Shepard?

  Let yourself run. Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

  I like the idea of that Rob leaves for lunch.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  That was like, oh, that was such a Rob joke.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  It wasn't a pun though, but it was like a behavioral pun.

• 1:41:25Dax Shepard?

  A baby, a baby pun, a baby behavioral pun.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow, that was, that was great. Okay, wait, so.

• 1:41:31Dax Shepard?

  Back to why you're in all black. No real reason, just that's your outfit.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is just like.

• 1:41:34Dax Shepard?

  No one passed.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. It's, I just thought it was chic.

• 1:41:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Dressed to impress, dressed to impress.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yep, I did, I do that. People wanna.

• 1:41:46Dax Shepard?

  Why did you look down at your?

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Cause I have a fuzz.

• 1:41:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. I go, dressed to impress, and you go?

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  This is my outfit.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  I'm just repeating what, what just actually happened. We could rewind the tape.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Okay, I looked down, this is my outfit, and then I saw I have a bunch of fuzzies on.

• 1:42:03Dax Shepard?

  Tell me I dressed to impress, even though you know where it's going.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  You dressed to impress.

• 1:42:15Dax Shepard?

  Wouldn't that be a wild?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  If for me to, for me to look at my outfit and not look at my boobs, I'd have to like.

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay, fair, fair.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  I feel so conscious now.

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:42:33Dax Shepard?

  I'm sorry if that was inappropriate.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:42:35Dax Shepard?

  Anyway, I know where we're at. Really great meditation.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  That was so long ago. Um, yeah, well, I'm glad you had a great meditation.

• 1:42:45Dax Shepard?

  Good, me too. I watched A Christmas Story last night.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:51Dax Shepard?

  No one will watch it with me. I mean, the kids won't watch it with me.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:42:55Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, why don't they, they know good shit. Why are they acting like they don't like this movie? I really couldn't accept it. And then I was watching it and they weren't there. And I was like, yeah, it's probably a little slow for them. I could admit that. And it made me very nostalgic for back when there was like a downtown and it was decorated. Cause when I was a kid, Detroit still had like Hudson's did a big Christmas display. You could go meet Santa and you go to Saunders Ice Cream and have a cream puff. And there was a whole thing. There was a, there was a parade and then Cobble Hall had this thing. And I, you know, that opening shot where they go, it's a wide, it's in Cleveland in the 50s. Higby's, you remember they had their, their department store was Higby's and it was lit up, lit up beautifully and a really great window display with train sets.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:40Dax Shepard?

  It made me so nostalgic and sad.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry. Well, also to them, like the 50s is like the 1900s to us.

• 1:43:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  I don't want to watch a movie about the 1900s.

• 1:43:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you know what? Instead of like trying to get my kids to like it, what I do, I go, oh, my father-in-law was born in Cleveland and this is the era of his childhood. So I'm like, hey, do you love A Christmas Story? He's like, who doesn't? I go, yeah, but you particularly, you grew up in Cleveland. And then he was like, is it set in Cleveland? Then he sent me this whole thing. He's like, oh my God, you're right. Higby's. I used to go to Higby's every, and then he had a whole story about Higby's.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  That's cute.

• 1:44:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  So then you just text it throughout the whole movie?

• 1:44:20Dax Shepard?

  Because it's slow and boring. It's not a good movie. No, it's so good. And Ralphie, if anyone's gonna, has yet to watch it and they're still gonna watch it, what I want people to dial in most specific, the cutest thing he does, Peter Billingsley, i.e. Ralphie, his tongue is so busy in that movie and it is one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Like when he's doing the decoder ring and he's like, eh?

• 1:44:48Dax Shepard?

  And they, and they know it too, because they always use go to extreme close up of his little mouth with that little tongue darting around. And anytime he's reading out loud or he's thinking, he's in front of his class, he's like having this fantasy that his teacher loved his essay. And she's on the chalkboard right, A plus, A plus. And they go to him and he just wistfully thinking of this. He's like, His little tongue is darting around his face. Oh, is it cute?

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Acting used to be so easy. All you had to do is move your tongue around.

• 1:45:16Dax Shepard?

  Dart it around.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  And it was considered good acting.

• 1:45:20Dax Shepard?

  No, he's, he's impossibly good for a nine year old in that movie. It's crazy how good he is. But just anytime he's thinking, the shepherds, we stick our tongue out when we're concentrating really hard.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  You do?

• 1:45:30Dax Shepard?

  You've not noticed that?

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Uh uh.

• 1:45:31Dax Shepard?

  I don't have it quite as bad as my dad and my brother and my uncle, but yeah, if I'm really going after something, my tongue comes out.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  And we all do it. Yeah. So his just seemed like the thing he does when he's like distracted.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Hold on. Do a roll. Do it. Do it as if you're, yeah, I want to see it.

• 1:45:52Dax Shepard?

  This would be out all of a sudden.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  It's a little out. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:56Dax Shepard?

  Like I'm expressing like, like I wanna.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  I guess I have seen that face.

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  This is kind of become an inappropriate fact check and I want to apologize to the Christmas listeners.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:46:08Dax Shepard?

  Cause of my previous thing about you going like this. And then now I'm just going like, like it always in that look kind of inappropriate and I just want to clean it up for the holidays.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Since when do you want to clean it up?

• 1:46:18Dax Shepard?

  It's the holidays.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  The holidays are sexy. What are you talking about? People love to have sex.

• 1:46:24Dax Shepard?

  For singles.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  And for people in couples, they have sex by the fire and stuff.

• 1:46:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's great for singles and couples, not people with children. It's all about children for us.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but for even, right? People with children, like, don't they still have sex by the fire?

• 1:46:43Dax Shepard?

  You have sex, your days of having sex by the fire are completely over the day your first kid arrives.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  What about if they're asleep?

• 1:46:50Dax Shepard?

  Your parents, you can't fucking run the, well, why not fuck on the island in the kitchen?

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  No way. Robert, you and Natalie fucking in the open house at all?

• 1:47:02Speaker 06

  No, never.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  But do you have, do you have a fireplace?

• 1:47:07Dax Shepard?

  We do.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  Well, you should fuck in front of it.

• 1:47:11Dax Shepard?

  Buy all the clean up toys. Do you ever jerk off in front of that fireplace with no one's home? You know the thing I hate that I can't not think of, and I don't know if this is urban legend or or real, but allegedly rumor, urban legend, little boy who puts his tongue on the pole, gets it stuck to the pole, he did a porno when he grew up.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:47:35Dax Shepard?

  And I know that.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  They think it's because of that?

• 1:47:37Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't think it's because of that, but I don't like that. I'm watching this movie, and all I can think of is this little boy grows up and does a porno, which, by the way, it's fine if you do pornos. I don't even ju- I don't even know why it's, I don't care if you've done a porno.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  I'm kind of curious why it bums you.

• 1:47:54Dax Shepard?

  But I don't think when people go into movie acting, their goal is to then graduate to pornos. I think you probably come out here to do movies, you start in pornos, and maybe you graduate.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Well, that's the whole thing when your parents are afraid you're going to move to Hollywood and then become a porn actor.

• 1:48:12Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  That's like the whole thing.

• 1:48:13Dax Shepard?

  That's the stereotype.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Oh, don't go become, you're gonna get sucked into porn.

• 1:48:18Dax Shepard?

  Right. Unless it's a dad and a son. He's like, boy, I hope you find your way over to pornos.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Well, maybe then, maybe you're just following his dad's dream.

• 1:48:27Dax Shepard?

  Let me ask you this. Now, this one I I know is real.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:48:31Dax Shepard?

  Double check, Rob, so I don't get sued. But I do believe Screech was in an adult film.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  Yes, I was about to say that he was.

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And does it impact when you're watching Saved by the Bell? Are you thinking like?

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  I haven't watched it since I learned that information, but yes, I can't, I wouldn't, I can't like see a picture and not think that.

• 1:48:49Dax Shepard?

  That he did a porno.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  But I also, it's more than just like, oh, he did a porno. It feels dark. There's something that feels dark about it.

• 1:48:57Dax Shepard?

  Again, like, it's not what they were wanting or aiming to do, and that maybe they were in financial straits, and then people knew that they would be a draw. It doesn't, it sounds like someone maybe compromised.

• 1:49:07Speaker 06

  Well, he put it out. He put out a sex tape called Screeched, Saved by the Smell.

• 1:49:12Dax Shepard?

  Saved by the Smell?

• 1:49:13Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:49:13Dax Shepard?

  What a classy title. Um, it's, I'm lucky I never ended up in one. I mean, let's be honest. I was unemployed for nine years.

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  And I was, you know, I was a party animal. I could have ended up in one and boy, God.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  What'd you really have?

• 1:49:31Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I don't know. You're somewhere, you're drunk, you start, you meet like six porn stars at a thing. Everyone's having fun.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  I see you hanging out.

• 1:49:39Dax Shepard?

  You got no money, you like having sex.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  No, you'd have sex with them, but you wouldn't have them film it.

• 1:49:46Dax Shepard?

  On camera. I'm just saying that I'm, I'm lucky that never happened is what I'm saying.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Have you ever filmed yourself having sex?

• 1:49:54Dax Shepard?

  How dare you ask that question?

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Why? Why?

• 1:49:58Dax Shepard?

  Have I ever filmed?

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  People do.

• 1:50:00Dax Shepard?

  Of course they do.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  Or not, or has, has, okay.

• 1:50:04Dax Shepard?

  I had to really think about that.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  I'm surprised.

• 1:50:06Dax Shepard?

  I think I've run some video on, you know, but I don't want to say anything because it's not, I don't want to say.

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Who? We're not saying who.

• 1:50:13Dax Shepard?

  Yes, but I think I've run some video on some nudity in my day.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  Wait, what's the difference? This is like the.

• 1:50:22Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you the difference. Like, did I ever set up a tripod?

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:25Dax Shepard?

  And then.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:27Dax Shepard?

  No, I didn't do that.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  What is running some video on nudity? What's that look like?

• 1:50:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, you got your video camera out and you're like shooting in your thing and then your girlfriend's naked. And then you film her because you want to look at it later at some point.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  But it's not the act.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay. I mean, I don't have any problem with people making a sex tape.

• 1:50:49Dax Shepard?

  I think that's awesome. They're having fun.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Having sex by the fire. On holidays. Like most couples do.

• 1:50:58Dax Shepard?

  Like most married couples with household children do.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  All right. Well, this is for Allison Jones and this is our last episode of the year. I mean, sort of, we have a.

• 1:51:12Dax Shepard?

  Smorgasbord of offerings.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  No, no, no, we do, but this is our last real episode. Then we have an Armchair Anonymous coming out on Friday and then we have our holiday special.

• 1:51:21Dax Shepard?

  This is our last new interview of the year. How about that?

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  Okay. And it was a great year.

• 1:51:27Dax Shepard?

  It was a great year.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Fantastic year.

• 1:51:30Dax Shepard?

  Closed really strong.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:33Dax Shepard?

  One after another.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  We added this location. That was a big deal. That was scary. That was a big change, a big challenge.

• 1:51:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  And we're embracing it.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  It's nice.

• 1:51:45Dax Shepard?

  I like how it's going.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  2024. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I forgot to say this. Do you know that the Pantone color of the year was announced?

• 1:51:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I saw a comment yesterday.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:59Dax Shepard?

  That was like, when is Monica gonna talk about Pantone? They were like nervous and worried.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm so sorry it's taken me this long.

• 1:52:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  But do you know what it is?

• 1:52:12Dax Shepard?

  A plaque.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  No, close.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  It's called Mocha Moose, which is basically Mocha Mouse, which is basically Brown Mouse.

• 1:52:23Dax Shepard?

  Is it the color of your skin?

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  It's brown.

• 1:52:26Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of shades of brown.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Okay, fine. No.

• 1:52:29Dax Shepard?

  Hold up the Pantone color to your cheeks.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  It's not really, but, but no, that one's.

• 1:52:35Dax Shepard?

  Modest Moose? What's it called?

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  Um, it's called Mocha.

• 1:52:38Dax Shepard?

  Miniature Moose?

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Mocha, Mocha Moose.

• 1:52:41Dax Shepard?

  Mocha Moose.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  It's not as dark as yours, so.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  I'm doing tongue.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  This is a holidays. Do, do, do, and boppy de bop.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Okay, but it's, it's a little more pink.

• 1:53:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:53:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  That's a great sign.

• 1:53:04Dax Shepard?

  That we're going into the Browns with Pantone?

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  That.

• 1:53:07Dax Shepard?

  That they.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Brown Mouse?

• 1:53:09Dax Shepard?

  Brown Mouse.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  That's a good omen.

• 1:53:11Dax Shepard?

  That is a good omen. It's gonna be an incredible year.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. For all, all of the people who listen, it's gonna be a great year.

• 1:53:18Dax Shepard?

  What do you do with that color? Are you ordering items now in that color? Like, do you adjust anything in your life?

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Yes, that's the whole, you know, it's my background on my phone.

• 1:53:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so that's one thing you do. That's an actionable step.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  That's the whole, that's what I do.

• 1:53:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, there's nothing else. It's not like, when they announce this color, are there collaborations where now different companies, you can order the Pantone?

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 1:53:40Dax Shepard?

  Moose?

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Mocha Moose.

• 1:53:42Dax Shepard?

  Moose knuckle?

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Brown Mouse. They'll do some collabs. Sometimes there's, there's often a mug. I might, I might get that this year.

• 1:53:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Um, and, and yeah, so I make the background of my phone.

• 1:53:54Dax Shepard?

  Do you know what I would call that color? And again, I know this is xenophobic. It's not really, but nude. That color just looks like nude to me, like nude. Before they got wise to that's not what everyone looks like nude, but nude undergarments. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's almost like a peach.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's more peach. That's more what this year's was.

• 1:54:20Dax Shepard?

  That's this year? That's not moose knuckle? Oh, I thought you already had it.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  No, I don't get to put it on until January first.

• 1:54:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, all right.

• 1:54:29Speaker 06

  They have a bunch of collabs already. They have Motorola phone, they have Joybird, Librotone headphones, all Pantone and all those brands.

• 1:54:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Do they have the mug?

• 1:54:42Speaker 06

  Um, they have a, they have a million things. So, yeah, probably.

• 1:54:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Okay, great. Oh, I wish they made an iPhone case in it.

• 1:54:51Dax Shepard?

  See, that's exactly what I'm talking about, like.

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  That would be great because then the wallpaper, everything would be brown mouse.

• 1:54:59Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  This is this year's, that's more nude to me. I mean, the color.

• 1:55:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the one you're holding up looks very nude.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the mocha moose is nude for a brown person. Light brown.

• 1:55:12Dax Shepard?

  Light brown person, colorism. It's even.

• 1:55:17Dax Shepard?

  It's even.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  Whatever. I embrace this as me.

• 1:55:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that, yeah. Wait, hold that up again. Now it looks darker.

• 1:55:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, this is much, what has happened? Are you sure? I think you might have held up the pink.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  I promise. It's because when you zoom in, it for some reason it looks.

• 1:55:33Dax Shepard?

  Something goes, zoom out. It's like 10 shades darker. That's your, almost your skin color.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39Dax Shepard?

  That's great.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  Okay, two facts. One, she got her business degree for $750 a trimester at UCLA. Now, I made a mistake when I checked this fact before.

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  When I type in now, UCLA business degree cost, it says the total cost of the MBA program is $128,000 per year, including tuition and living expenses. The tuition is $78,000 per year.

• 1:56:14Dax Shepard?

  Could it have quadrupled since the last time you Googled it?

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  I must have, it must have been not the MBA program that I looked at. It must have been regular tuition. Cause I Googled this now like eight times because I was also confused. That's wild.

• 1:56:32Dax Shepard?

  All right, let's just say the last time you looked it up, it was 22 grand a year.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so obviously I looked up the wrong thing. Yeah, so I don't know.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  Who knows?

• 1:56:41Speaker 01

  But I.

• 1:56:42Dax Shepard?

  Just go there and then find out. When they get, when you get the bill, tell us.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  All right, and then why are they called sides? In acting, sides refers to a specific part of a script given to actors for auditions because historically actors would only receive their own lines from a scene, essentially just their side of the dialogue, which helped protect the full script from being copied or shared with competitors, especially during Shakespeare's time when printing was limited, hence the term sides. We also discovered that he's married, his wife's name is Anne Hathaway.

• 1:57:16Dax Shepard?

  That's crazy. Still adjusting to that info.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  That is shocking and I'm, I'm surprised that I didn't know that.

• 1:57:24Dax Shepard?

  Cause you're an Anne Hathaway super fan?

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  No, cause I took a lot of, I had to take a lot of Shakespeare.

• 1:57:29Dax Shepard?

  Right, from your Shakespearean knowledge.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  I should have known that, maybe I did and I blocked it, I don't know. But Anne Hathaway, well, she is a style icon.

• 1:57:38Dax Shepard?

  We need to interview her to get to the bottom of whether or not that was intentional or not.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  I agree, I agree.

• 1:57:45Dax Shepard?

  It would kind of confirm the story I've made up about her in my head. Which I feel like she was just born to be an actor.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:52Dax Shepard?

  Like, I feel like she's probably been acting since she was one years old.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  I mean Princess Diaries, she was just two years old.

• 1:57:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, is that her real age? No, I didn't see it.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  No, but she was young.

• 1:58:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  Not as young as Pepsi Girl.

• 1:58:06Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  I would love to interview her and ask her that.

• 1:58:09Dax Shepard?

  Me too. Please, Anne. Even if the interview's 30 seconds and you tell us whether that was intentional or not, we'll take what we can get.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Or if she wants to come in as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife.

• 1:58:21Dax Shepard?

  I'll dress up as Bill Shakespeare.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  That would be cool.

• 1:58:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Who could, who could I be? They didn't, I don't think they have many brown. I will dress up as

• 1:58:31Dax Shepard?

  Julia.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  A piece of poop on the floor.

• 1:58:33Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Because, because they didn't have very many brown people.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  You are.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  So I need to be.

• 1:58:39Dax Shepard?

  You are so mean to people of color. And I'm here to be an advocate and an ally.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  We're trying to be true to the times.

• 1:58:47Dax Shepard?

  I am very disappointed.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  I know who I'll be, a butler.

• 1:58:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Camber maid?

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Cause they had Indian.

• 1:58:55Dax Shepard?

  Servants?

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  They did?

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  I think. I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure back then, England, because they owned India.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Listen, I'll be a poop, a poop.

• 1:59:09Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  A piece of poop.

• 1:59:10Dax Shepard?

  No, you'll be a moose knuckle, pantommoose knuckle.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Wow, all right. Well, we aren't gonna do this again until, I guess, the holiday special, but that'll be a little different.

• 1:59:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  And then next year, 2025.

• 1:59:23Dax Shepard?

  Brown mouse is again.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  50th year.

• 1:59:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh my, so many good things. Even age number for me, I love that.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Dax Shepard?

  Brown mouse.

• 1:59:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:31Dax Shepard?

  For you.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  And 2025 feels really sharp.

• 1:59:36Dax Shepard?

  It's a quarter of a century.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's something about you being 50 and it being 25, that's nice.

• 1:59:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because I was born in 75.

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 1:59:46Dax Shepard?

  Works out perfectly.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  25, 50, 75.

• 1:59:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, all quarters.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  You should be more excited about that. All right.

• 1:59:57Dax Shepard?

  All right, love you.