"RE-RELEASE: Kerry Washington"

The incredibly talented actor/producer Kerry Washington joins us this week to give us a safer-sex education. Sean becomes our next Barbara Walters, Will makes a promise he’ll never break, while Jason confirms the level of college education in the group… and we’re just a few credits shy, folks. That’s why it’s called SmartLess. Kanpai! This episode was originally released on 8/1/2022.

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

• 0:01Sean Hayes?

  This episode of Smart List is sponsored by Google Book. You know, I'm lucky to have a lot of friends and having them over is great, but with hosting comes all the tedious stuff. The planning, keeping track of who's coming, managing schedules, making sure everything actually comes together. That's where Google Book comes in. It's a whole new kind of laptop. It comes with Google AI Pro, so you can create custom tasks with Gemini. For example, you can tell it to track RSVPs and manage your calendar, and it does that for you, even when the laptop's closed. So there's more time to focus on the fun parts of hosting. Basically, Google Book works hard, so you don't have to. Visit googlebook.com. Available in the Gemini app to Google AI Pro users

• 0:44Sean Hayes?

  in select regions for 18-plus users. Check responses for accuracy. Supervise closely; interrupt when needed.

• 0:54Sean Hayes?

  Did you ever notice the best deals are just obvious? Like hotels.com. What do they do, you may ask? Hotels on the internet. And a lot of them, like hundreds of thousands. I don't know why I just turned into Sean Hayes. Plus, if you join for free, you can save up to 20% instantly with member prices, and you earn rewards every time you book. So your next trip basically starts paying for itself. It's simple, and you get more out of every stay. Sign up for free and book today. Hotels.com. It's all in the name.

• 1:34Sean Hayes?

  The place you call home is important to you. So it's important to Allstate. Because home is where you make all your memories. Things like inviting your friends over for game night and discovering that one of them takes charades way, way too seriously. It's these memories that make a house feel like home. If it's important to you, it's important to Allstate. Switch to Allstate, and you could save hundreds on home insurance today. Not available in every state. Potential savings vary, subject to terms and qualifications. Allstate North American Insurance Company and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.

• 2:10Sean Hayes?

  Sitting in traffic, huh? Watching an old lady with a walker make it further up the road than you have in the last 15 minutes? And of course, your gas tank is in the perfect spot between not a problem to stranded on the highway. Hit your booking point? Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode. Experience award-winning reliability, fly with the best crew in the sky, and never worry about change or cancellation fees. Now tell that old lady to slow down. Kids live around here. Southwest Airlines, enter airplane mode.

• 2:51Jason Bateman?

  Hello, listener. My name is Jason. I will be one of three hosts. I'm an on-time host. You're gonna have a couple of tardy hosts joining us soon. If not, you're just gonna get me, just a solo episode with me. I hope that's not your future. But until then, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a Capricorn, Sag Moon. I love things sweetened with anything other than sugar. I've had addiction issues. I've got a handle on that, I think, unless you put something sweetened with sugar in front of me. It's a real trigger situation for me. I just go right down a hillside full of sand. Oh, just in time.

• 3:35Jason Bateman?

  Here are the idiots. Guys, welcome to Smartless.

• 3:56Jason Bateman?

  The listener does not know this, but this is our second episode today that we're recording. So what did you guys do in between shows? I had a, a little egg sandwich.

• 4:08Sean Hayes?

  I had pasta.

• 4:09Jason Bateman?

  That I made myself. Not an, not an egg salad sandwich like Sean would have made.

• 4:13Will Arnett?

  You had an egg sandwich. Now, now, what was the bread? Was it actual bread?

• 4:17Jason Bateman?

  Not really.

• 4:17Will Arnett?

  What was it?

• 4:18Jason Bateman?

  It was gluten-free bread that, um, eh, you know, I had to toast to within an inch of its life, so it tasted decent. Um, and then, um, I put a little fake butter on it and then the, or, then the eggs on top of it.

• 4:32Will Arnett?

  Okay, hang on a second.

• 4:35Jason Bateman?

  I'm pretty sure the eggs were real.

• 4:37Will Arnett?

  We had a conversation with our friend on a different episode of the, about enjoying ourselves and stuff, you know?

• 4:44Jason Bateman?

  But I feel it, but it isn't, but that I enjoy, it tastes great. I enjoy it. I enjoy. Now, list, last night we went out for a family dinner, uh, to this yummy little restaurant down the street that specializes in Italian food. So, I ordered a nice big fat cheese pizza.

• 5:02Will Arnett?

  Oh, you did?

• 5:02Jason Bateman?

  And I wolfed down more of that than probably I should have. And we had some pasta and I had, uh...

• 5:08Will Arnett?

  In, in BA, in BH or in the valley?

• 5:10Jason Bateman?

  Down in Laurel Canyon.

• 5:12Will Arnett?

  Oh, Little Parch?

• 5:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:15Will Arnett?

  You guys went to Parch?

• 5:16Sean Hayes?

  Oh, you went, you went Parche, not Podge.

• 5:18Will Arnett?

  No, I know, but I say Podge, you leave it off. That's how you know that you're legit, when you leave it off.

• 5:26Will Arnett?

  Hey, there's Mape and she can't hear us.

• 5:28Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Sean Hayes?

  Oh, wait, that was, hi, Maple.

• 5:30Jason Bateman?

  That was Maple, yeah. She's over here.

• 5:32Will Arnett?

  Are you guys going for dinner tonight together?

• 5:35Jason Bateman?

  Uh, we're gonna go, no, we're gonna go over to our friend's house and we're gonna celebrate our friend Sean, uh, because he's...

• 5:41Sean Hayes?

  He had a birthday a while ago.

• 5:42Will Arnett?

  He had a birthday a while ago. And, and we, ah, I wish I could be there with you guys.

• 5:47Sean Hayes?

  I know. I know, I'm gonna miss you.

• 5:50Jason Bateman?

  Well, well, you know, we'll FaceTime. You, you FaceTimed in last week.

• 5:53Will Arnett?

  I'll FaceTime, I will FaceTime again.

• 5:55Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, FaceTime and again.

• 5:56Will Arnett?

  I will, I will. This face? You gotta give it time.

• 5:59Sean Hayes?

  Who's got time for that?

• 6:00Jason Bateman?

  Does the rest of your body, is the rest of your body as dark as your face, Will?

• 6:03Will Arnett?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 6:04Jason Bateman?

  No, I didn't ask to see it. Put your top back on.

• 6:07Sean Hayes?

  I know, that is a tan like nobody's ever seen.

• 6:10Will Arnett?

  It's really good.

• 6:10Jason Bateman?

  So, do you read though? You said you read three books while you were there. Was it just for the bounce effect of the paper? Or do you enjoy reading?

• 6:18Sean Hayes?

  He just opens it.

• 6:21Sean Hayes?

  Let's the sun take over.

• 6:22Jason Bateman?

  What were the three books? Do you remember them? Were they all nonfiction? Were they all World War II books?

• 6:26Sean Hayes?

  The Giving Tree?

• 6:28Will Arnett?

  No.

• 6:28Jason Bateman?

  Again?

• 6:29Will Arnett?

  I haven't finished my third, to be honest.

• 6:31Jason Bateman?

  What were the first two? Were they just, were they just airport fiction?

• 6:34Will Arnett?

  Well, one, one of them is my dad's book, Bean Fate. Which I finally read, which is amazing. I'm so proud of my dad, Jim Arnett, who wrote a book during-

• 6:42Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, that's incredible.

• 6:43Will Arnett?

  -pandemic. And he wrote this sort of fictionalized this novel of-

• 6:47Sean Hayes?

  And got it published.

• 6:48Will Arnett?

  On history and got it published and-

• 6:49Jason Bateman?

  That's cool.

• 6:50Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it's really cool. And honestly, I was reading it, I was just thinking the whole time, I'm like, I'm so, my dad did this. I'm so proud of my dad.

• 6:57Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 6:57Will Arnett?

  So it's called Bean Fate, and it was, and it's really, really good. And-

• 7:02Jason Bateman?

  This is about the, the bean farmers of Kalamangas?

• 7:05Will Arnett?

  No, no, I think you're-

• 7:08Jason Bateman?

  It's a remake of the, the Bean War or something, right?

• 7:11Will Arnett?

  The Malagro, the Malagro Bean Killed War.

• 7:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, good for him. Cause I don't think they really got it on the last one. So, okay.

• 7:19Will Arnett?

  No, it's about boozed runners back, you know, prohibition style.

• 7:23Jason Bateman?

  Hey, Pach.

• 7:24Will Arnett?

  Back in the day, Pach. Up in Saskatchewan, in the Bronfman family, et cetera. So I did that, and then I read The Sympathizer. Have you guys read that?

• 7:33Jason Bateman?

  No, I feel like I wrote it.

• 7:34Will Arnett?

  It's, uh, it's written by Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

• 7:40Jason Bateman?

  It's about the Vietnam War?

• 7:42Will Arnett?

  And it's about the Vietnam War, and he, he himself is of Vietnamese origin.

• 7:47Jason Bateman?

  Descent?

• 7:48Will Arnett?

  Descent and origin, and he came here when he was young. And so it just talks about the experience of, God, I honestly, I couldn't have loved it more. It, but it's not just about that. It's just about such a unbelievable story of, of,

• 8:04Will Arnett?

  I don't know, just a guy who led a complex life and, and there were so many-

• 8:07Sean Hayes?

  Are there colored pictures in it? For me?

• 8:10Jason Bateman?

  Any pictures of him sympathizing with, with folks?

• 8:12Will Arnett?

  So many incredible, incredible passages in the book that just blew me away that I would have to read out loud.

• 8:19Sean Hayes?

  I'll check that out.

• 8:19Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Jason Bateman?

  I'll bet you a thousand dollars that you don't.

• 8:23Sean Hayes?

  You won. Why?

• 8:26Jason Bateman?

  Now, how do you decide what you're gonna read when you're on the beach there? Like, reading in the sun makes me wanna...

• 8:31Sean Hayes?

  What I do is, and I'm sorry, then I just started, I'm now reading this Splendid in the Vile, which a lot of people have read. These are big books. The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize.

• 8:40Jason Bateman?

  Reading in the sun, to me, it's like being trapped in a, in a hot car with the windows rolled up, stuck, broken. I don't know when the driver's coming back, kinda have a three-year-old screaming in my ear.

• 8:53Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Jason Bateman?

  That, that, that's, that's what reading on the, on a hot beach sounds like to me.

• 8:58Sean Hayes?

  Really?

• 8:59Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, because I'm already sweating and I'm still...

• 9:02Sean Hayes?

  And I have to concentrate on like, words?

• 9:04Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, and I got the hard bounce off the paper and I can't, I got sweat, I got sunglasses on and the sweat's dripping on the glasses, I gotta keep wiping the gla- ah, and I hear all the people having fun in the water and I...

• 9:15Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, it's, I can't. You know what, though?

• 9:19Jason Bateman?

  I'm snacky. I get real hungry on the beach.

• 9:21Sean Hayes?

  You know what's amazing is our guest today.

• 9:23Jason Bateman?

  Great segue.

• 9:24Sean Hayes?

  Our guest today is so fun, I love her. She's like a big megastar, no big deal, whatever.

• 9:30Jason Bateman?

  Wait, I've got it, it's a woman, I've got it, I've got it.

• 9:32Sean Hayes?

  She's been on one of the hottest primetime dramas in the last few decades. She's born and raised in the Bronx, she's a New Yorker through and through. At a, this might give it away, at a young age she performed with the award-winning, ta-da, youth theater teen group. Uh, she graduated college with a double major in anthropology and sociology. Clearly not the right podcast for her to do. Before winning an Emmy, one of her earliest acting gigs was, I gotta ask her about this, a traveling sex education sketch group. Her last name is not only a US state, but also an apple. Please welcome the beautiful and extremely talented Kerry Washington. Kerry!

• 10:11Jason Bateman?

  Hello Kerry!

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Hi, guys!

• 10:16Jason Bateman?

  Let's get right into it. A traveling, what is it? A sex...

• 10:21Sean Hayes?

  Sex education sketch group.

• 10:23Jason Bateman?

  What is that?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  It was not sketchy, although we did sketches. Um, we were, oh my god, that's where we're starting, okay.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  I'm such a, I'm such a mega fan of this show. So I'm really excited and a little nervous.

• 10:41Sean Hayes?

  No, Mike, listen, it's, we're just hanging out.

• 10:44Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, you can already hear what idiots we are, right?

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Well, every episode, but that's why we love you. So, okay, so.

• 10:50Jason Bateman?

  Bring us up.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  I, I, when I was a high schooler, when I was a teenager, I worked for the Adolescent Health Center in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital. And it was like the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, like late eighties, early nineties. And we used to, we wrote these sketches, these skits about safer sex issues and losing your virginity and drug abuse and LGBTQ rights and.

• 11:14Sean Hayes?

  So it was like, I like, I find you attractive. I find you attractive. Hold on, let me get a condom.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  What was like, how do you ask your boyfriend to put a condom on? Or how do you put a condom on? Or how do you make that conversation sexy? Cause all the research was like, people have the information, but the behavior change is not there. So we used to write these shows where we were.

• 11:32Will Arnett?

  Me too, I would too. By the way, I've had, God, Carrie, it's like you gave me a bat and you put me at the plate and I've just been standing here and you just been throwing softballs at me. And I'm doing all my best because I want to impress you.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Don't hold back, don't hold back.

• 11:44Will Arnett?

  Cause I don't want to be just a total dirtbag and I'm just like, man.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Be yourself, Will, be yourself. This is your space. I'm a guest in your house. Do your stuff.

• 11:53Jason Bateman?

  What was, what was the, what was the draft that made it to the stage on how to put on a condom in a funny, funny way?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Well, we used to teach kids how to put condoms on by using bananas. So that always got a laugh. But it was really more like, I mean, there was, the first sketch I was allowed to do was actually a scene about whether or not, I was 13 when I started doing the show. So the only, the only sketch they would let me do in the beginning was, should I lose my virginity or not? And it was a whole sketch about like my really cute boyfriend who's kind of pressuring me and I don't know if I should or shouldn't. And, and then the cool part, and this was actually incredible acting training, was that we would, the, the problems of the show were unresolved and we would stay in character after the show and the audience would like solve our problems. We would ask the audience for advice. So they would like be in conversation.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we stayed in character and.

• 12:47Jason Bateman?

  Then doesn't that mean the show is still going?

• 12:49Speaker 03

  No, like the show would end and then we'd do a Q and A, but our Q and A would be in character. And sometimes I would be playing like more than one character. So I'd have like a baseball hat for the girl who wasn't sure she should lose her virginity. And then like a red scarf for the girl who was like, needed to tell her brother to stop selling drugs. So we had all these different like, you know, conflict issues and, and I got to develop character backstory and learn to be spontaneous and I found my yes and while doing sex education.

• 13:15Jason Bateman?

  But what was this group that sounds somewhat charitable and, uh, uh, you know, um, altruistic?

• 13:23Speaker 03

  You're judging me.

• 13:24Jason Bateman?

  No, no, but it sounds like you're like doing great thing. I wish I was doing stuff at 13 that was going around and, and, and doing, uh, you know, but doing shows. But doing shows for like hospitals, didn't you say this was like?

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, we performed at like schools and community centers.

• 13:38Jason Bateman?

  How did you get involved in that? That sounds like you were walking around with a bunch of very nice people.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  I, I might, I have a great parents. I was really into acting and my mom had read that there were auditions for this, um, children. I had done children's theater with that company, Tada, that was mentioned, which is a company in Midtown. And this was like for teenagers and my mom had seen an ad about it and she, my mother's an educator. So she was like, educational theater is a great thing. And then I came home with all these pamphlets about like gonorrhea and she was like, what is this? But I.

• 14:11Jason Bateman?

  I'd love to see the one act on gonorrhea.

• 14:12Will Arnett?

  Don't worry about it. We're gonna put a condom over a banana. It'll be all good.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  We're gonna fix the world's problems one banana at a time.

• 14:19Jason Bateman?

  Happened on the way to the theater.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 14:21Sean Hayes?

  Wait, Carrie, let's, I want to get this out of, okay, guys, I have kind of a long story.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  I was wondering if we were gonna tell this story.

• 14:28Sean Hayes?

  We're gonna do it and we're just gonna get past it because how could we not do it?

• 14:31Jason Bateman?

  Should Will and I lay down or?

• 14:33Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, no, so you guys.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  I was shocked that you asked me to be your guest because I was like, there's no way we're not telling this story.

• 14:38Sean Hayes?

  Of course we're talking about it.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  Me being punked by Sean Hayes.

• 14:42Sean Hayes?

  So these guys have no idea what I'm gonna say. So it's like, if you can hang in there for like two minutes, it's, which is a long time, but it's a long story. Cause here we go. It's one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. I was shooting a pilot last year and sent a long email to Carrie, asking her to help me out.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Let me jump in, let me jump in.

• 14:59Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Nicest email I've ever gotten in my life.

• 15:02Sean Hayes?

  He's a great emailer.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  You know the emails, you know the notes you get? You know the notes you get from a fan where you're like, I should maybe call security because this person is like, really loves me. It was that, but it was like from another famous person, so it was okay. And it was like somebody that I respect and admire, so I was like, oh my God, I was so moved.

• 15:21Sean Hayes?

  Likewise.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Deeply moved.

• 15:22Sean Hayes?

  I meant every word, so.

• 15:23Jason Bateman?

  And then there was the ask at the bottom of it.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Always, always.

• 15:27Sean Hayes?

  Always, right? So, but she emailed, Carrie emailed me back, asked for my number, said, I'll call, I'd love to call you to chat more about it. Great, fantastic, wonderful response. At the same time, I was guest hosting a few episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Show. And while there, had befriended a producer named Erin, Erin Irwin, who is now a good friend. So, one night on my way home from the shows, I got a text from, on my phone saying, I'm watching on Kimmel right now and you're doing great. And I was pleased by the message, but I was like perplexed because I didn't recognize the number. And then I decided, and I deduced that it was Erin from Kimmel, who was maybe watching like a rough cut of the show. Because we just exchanged phone numbers as I left the studio, but I hadn't put her contact info on my phone.

• 16:06Jason Bateman?

  There we go.

• 16:07Sean Hayes?

  So I pulled over and saved the number in my contacts as Erin from Kimmel.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Now, I'm at home, cut to, I'm at home eagerly awaiting the call from Sean.

• 16:16Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Because this is my number one fan. I mean, my dad doesn't love me this much. And now I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a healing because somebody who loves me is gonna get on the phone with me and it's gonna change my life. And even though I'm gonna say no to the ask, we're gonna be friends forever.

• 16:29Sean Hayes?

  Right, right, perfect, right.

• 16:31Jason Bateman?

  Big load of junk food just to prop you up.

• 16:33Sean Hayes?

  Perfect. All right, so the phone rings, I pick it up, I say, hey, and I see it's Erin from Kimmel. What's going on? Erin says, hi, how are you? Your email is so sweet, I couldn't wait to talk to you. And I said, email? What email? And Erin says, the email I sent you. And I was like, I don't remember sending you an email, are you sure? And that's when the tone shifted between us and I, and I said, Erin said, is this Sean? And I said, yeah, who's this? And Aaron says, "You didn't send me an email with your number?" And then I turned into a total asshole and I go, "I think you have the wrong number. Why don't you check that email and your contact? Then why don't you get back to me?" And that's when Aaron was like, "That's probably a good idea." So I go sit down.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  I hang up the phone and I turned to my husband and I'm like, "I'm being fucking punked." Because Sean Hayes sent me the nicest email I've ever gotten in my life. I just got off the phone with him and he was such a jerk to me. And he's acting like I made up the email. I was like shaking. I was so, I was like, "Why would somebody do that? Does he think I'm untalented?" With what? I was so upset.

• 17:39Sean Hayes?

  I go sit down and talk to my husband. And I'm chatting, I'm telling, I just got the craziest phone call. And 15 minutes into the conversation with Scotty, I did all the math. And like a shot in a movie came zooming towards my face. I go, I jumped up and I screamed, "Holy shit, that was Kerry Washington."

• 17:58Jason Bateman?

  And credits. Opening credits.

• 18:02Sean Hayes?

  Yes, I texted you back immediately, explained everything. And went and begged for you to call me back. And I answered the phone and you were laughing.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  I was, I couldn't stop laughing because I was really like, I thought I was being pranked. And I was so relieved. It was so lovely.

• 18:17Sean Hayes?

  Wow. God, that was funny.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, my feelings were so hurt. And I was like, I'm being gaslit, like, "He's gaslighting me."

• 18:25Will Arnett?

  You guys have this great, now this great, like, shared history.

• 18:28Jason Bateman?

  Beautiful mystery.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Are you jelly? You're jealous.

• 18:30Will Arnett?

  A little bit jelly, because we only, we met.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Well, we had our dinner. We had our dinner.

• 18:33Will Arnett?

  We sat next to each other. We didn't know each other.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  You were there. Don't say whoa. You were there.

• 18:37Will Arnett?

  You were across the table.

• 18:38Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, but I mean.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  When you guys worked for me, you know, you both worked for me as a producer.

• 18:44Will Arnett?

  When we were free, when we did the Facts of Life.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Live in front of a studio.

• 18:48Sean Hayes?

  Wait, who was at this dinner? What are you talking about? Jason and Will were at a dinner?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  You know how we, when we did it, we had a cast dinner to kick off for our episode, which I wasn't a producer then, so I have.

• 18:58Sean Hayes?

  Oh, that's right, you were a producer on the.

• 18:59Jason Bateman?

  That's right.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  But I produced them the next two. And so these two.

• 19:03Sean Hayes?

  So sorry, tell the listener what we're talking about.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Oh, we're talking about your sister for your sister. This makes me so happy. I'm in the family.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  We, for Norman Lear's Live in Front of a Studio Audience, which all three of you have graced us and blessed us with your performances on those specials. Yeah.

• 19:20Jason Bateman?

  And if it weren't for really active producers like you and Justin Theroux, that show would not be moving at all.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  I do a lot more than Justin Theroux.

• 19:30Will Arnett?

  Let me tell you something.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  I just want to put that out there.

• 19:32Will Arnett?

  Justin Theroux, and he must be nominated for a Producer's Guild Award this year. Because, I mean, this guy got in there.

• 19:39Jason Bateman?

  He got in there.

• 19:40Will Arnett?

  He rolls up his sleeves if he had them. He would have. He would have rolled them. If he'd had any sleeves, he would roll them up for sure.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  What is it with your thing with people not having sleeves?

• 19:48Jason Bateman?

  No, just Justin. Everybody wears them except him.

• 19:51Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, every day of his life, he has a cutoff.

• 19:52Will Arnett?

  And by the way, sometimes people don't have them when they're at the gym and stuff. But not everybody just doesn't wear them ever.

• 19:59Jason Bateman?

  Even basketball players now wear sort of like a under sort of long sleeve thing over their.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Yes, with a cuff.

• 20:04Will Arnett?

  You know what usually deters people from going sleeveless? Winter. That usually, that usually gets people to pop into a sleeve or two.

• 20:12Sean Hayes?

  Not him.

• 20:13Will Arnett?

  Not this guy.

• 20:14Jason Bateman?

  Or mosquito infestations. It doesn't, it doesn't matter to him.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  He's fearless that way. He's fearless that way.

• 20:19Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Sean Hayes?

  We'll be right back.

• 20:23Sean Hayes?

  We ask a lot of our homes these days, don't we? They're offices, they're where we gather with friends, where we unwind, basically where we live our whole lives. But here's a question, does your home actually feel like you? Most of what fills a home is functional, produced for the masses, or chosen for convenience, not connection. Very little of it was chosen because it felt like you. Original art is different. It transforms your room into a self-portrait. That's what Saatchi art is for. Helping guide you to art that moves you so your rooms reflect who you are. Every work is made by a living artist in sizes and at prices that fit the rooms you live in. And when you buy a piece, you're not just decorating,

• 21:06Sean Hayes?

  you're joining a community of collectors and artists who believe a space should say something real about the people living in it. Visit saatchiart.com and get 10% off original art with code SMARTLESS. That's saatchiart.com, S-A-A-T-C-H-I-A-R-T.com.

• 21:29Sean Hayes?

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built-in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 22:12Jason Bateman?

  This episode of Smartless is brought to you in part by SkinnyPop popcorn. So, I think one of the great journeys in life is finding the snack that's right for you. You know, and it's constantly changing, but what is constant is the love of popcorn I think that we all have. So, finding a snack that tastes great and feels like a solid choice should not be more complicated than solving a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. SkinnyPop popcorn, made with simple quality ingredients, always satisfies. No overthinking required. No jigsaw puzzle assembly required. It's a no-brainer.

• 22:56Jason Bateman?

  There's the classic original SkinnyPop, made with just three simple ingredients, but that's only the beginning. Are you feeling a little sassy? Sweet and salty kettle brings just the right flavor balance. Settling in for a movie night? The butter flavor understands the assignment. And white cheddar is the perfect level of cheesy, if that's what you're looking for. No matter which bag you're opening, enjoy popcorn that's light, airy, and endlessly delicious. No notes. Let me tell you what stands out to me most about SkinnyPop. It's tasty, it's popcorn, and it's ready to be eaten. Deliciously popped, perfectly seasoned. SkinnyPop: Popular for a reason.

• 23:41Jason Bateman?

  Did you ever notice the best deals are just obvious? Like hotels.com. What do they do? You may ask hotels on the internet and a lot of them, like hundreds of thousands. I don't know why I just turned into Sean Hayes. Plus, if you join for free, you can save up to 20% instantly with member prices and you earn rewards every time you book. So your next trip basically starts paying for itself. It's simple and you get more out of every stay. Sign up for free and book today. Hotels.com. It's all in the name.

• 24:22Jason Bateman?

  And now back to the show.

• 24:24Sean Hayes?

  Kara, one thing I didn't know about you was, by the way, what a story we'll have for the rest of our life.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  The rest of our lives.

• 24:31Sean Hayes?

  But double major anthropology and sociology. And why? If you knew at such a young age you wanted to act and have you utilized that degree?

• 24:40Will Arnett?

  This is a great question.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  I, so it's actually a little more complicated than that, but that's the easy answer that I give people. I designed an interdisciplinary major called performance studies. And it was inspired by, it was based on the graduate programs at NYU and Northwestern. So it was like the study that performance plays in different societies and cultures. And that's what interested me. But you have to, to design your own major, you have to write this whole thesis and defend it because they want to just make sure you're not trying to get out of taking statistics. So I had to kind of really work with all these academic mentors and come up with this program and design a curriculum for myself. And yeah, I'm just, I'm super interested in how we perform professionally, all of us,

• 25:26Speaker 03

  but also how we perform just in our everyday lives. And yeah, I think I have used a lot of it. I mean, I think, you know, what we, for me, I tend to think about characters in the kind of social science context. Like when I'm playing a character, I like to think about how she's become who she is and how she thinks and how she lives in the world and how society impacts who she is. So I do feel like I use some of my, I feel like such a nerd. I've been talking too long about this.

• 25:55Will Arnett?

  No, that's okay.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  I use some of my social science.

• 25:57Will Arnett?

  I was about to talk about my character room that I have here and I go into my character room. And I've kept all the costumes of my great characters, all my costumes.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Yes, through the years.

• 26:08Jason Bateman?

  Wait, now Carrie, I'm the dumbest of the four of us. Will you define anthropology for me?

• 26:14Will Arnett?

  Pause, pause, he is. Go ahead.

• 26:18Jason Bateman?

  Anthropology is the study of society, yes?

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Sociology is more the study of society.

• 26:25Jason Bateman?

  Ergo, the name.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  And culture, yes.

• 26:26Jason Bateman?

  But what about anthropology is? More about ants? Is this just about ants and the ant culture, right?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  I mean, no. It's more, anthropology is more indigenous cultures and historical cultures. So not present day society, but more the role of kind of how societies have evolved through time.

• 26:47Jason Bateman?

  Sociology would be the modern day version of anthropology.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  More modern day.

• 26:51Jason Bateman?

  That's enough, Will.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Anthropology has a little more ritual, like study of ritual.

• 26:57Sean Hayes?

  But it's also a fabulous story.

• 26:59Jason Bateman?

  See, there's my fellow dum-dum right there.

• 27:02Sean Hayes?

  Hi.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  I like anthropology, I like their stuff.

• 27:04Will Arnett?

  Well, You'd Like the Sympathizer is a great book. Oh, hey, actually, I'm kidding you.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  One of the Pulitzer.

• 27:11Will Arnett?

  Did you go, it did, did you go to NYU? Is that what you were saying?

• 27:15Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I looked, they, those, NYU and Northwestern were the schools that had graduate degrees in performance studies that I admired and was interested in, but I didn't actually want to go to graduate school. So I tried to just skip ahead and do it in undergrad. I went to GW, GW in DC.

• 27:31Will Arnett?

  GW.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  GW.

• 27:33Jason Bateman?

  GW. Now, did you finish with a degree in anthropology and sociology?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  I finished in a degree in performance studies. I got to actually, like, I wrote my own situation.

• 27:43Jason Bateman?

  Got it.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  I created my reality.

• 27:45Sean Hayes?

  Wow, does anybody call you K-Dub?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Yes, especially because I went to GW, yeah, people call me K.

• 27:51Sean Hayes?

  Right, I just thought of that.

• 27:52Jason Bateman?

  Now, wait, are you the only one with a college degree on this chat?

• 27:56Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Jason Bateman?

  Sean, what's your excuse? How far did you go?

• 28:01Sean Hayes?

  I went four years and then I got an honorary doctorate, but I never graduated.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  I got one of those too.

• 28:06Sean Hayes?

  You just show up.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  I got one of those. Yeah, if you give a speech, they give you one. You can get one of those, guys.

• 28:10Jason Bateman?

  Sean, I understand. You went for four years. How did you not? Isn't that how long it takes?

• 28:14Sean Hayes?

  I was, I was two or three courses shy and I just did not have any more gas in me to go.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm fascinated because you seem like a competitor to me.

• 28:23Will Arnett?

  I spent a lot of time with you and you seem to have a tremendous amount of gas.

• 28:26Jason Bateman?

  You got plenty of gas.

• 28:27Will Arnett?

  I, I, I, especially with the, with the amount of tuna salad you eat. Are you kidding? With plain chips?

• 28:35Jason Bateman?

  And he lights a fuse with that glass of milk and off he goes.

• 28:38Will Arnett?

  Nobody kills a bag of plain chips and a glass of 2% milk like Sean.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Did you really drink a glass of milk? Is it real milk? Like, just like cow's milk?

• 28:46Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, all, every day.

• 28:47Jason Bateman?

  He's gonna get in his Plymouth and drive off in a minute.

• 28:53Jason Bateman?

  But wait, Sean, so you ran out of gas, two credits short. Will, how, how, how far did you get?

• 28:59Will Arnett?

  Oh, I made it half a year.

• 29:01Jason Bateman?

  Half of the first year?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Half of a year.

• 29:02Will Arnett?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 29:03Sean Hayes?

  Because college to me wasn't all just about the studies. It's about the social, it's about growing up, being on your own and like figuring stuff out.

• 29:11Will Arnett?

  I'd already been out of the house. You know, I, I went away to school first when I was 12.

• 29:16Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Now, I heard this story on the show about your clothes being taken to across town. That was, I was like, that's kinda child abuse, no?

• 29:25Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it was different.

• 29:26Jason Bateman?

  And then they made him, then they made him plant trees and fix sewer pipes too.

• 29:29Will Arnett?

  Yeah, we did a lot of stuff. I mean, look, I didn't have a, it's not that bad, believe me. And I, but I was 12 when I left, so.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  You've been on your own a lot.

• 29:38Jason Bateman?

  Someone's running around in your house.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  That's Emily.

• 29:39Jason Bateman?

  Your bogey. Locations go to two?

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Emily's actually, she was, she has listened to your show longer than I have.

• 29:48Jason Bateman?

  Hi, Emily.

• 29:48Will Arnett?

  Hi, Emily.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Emily, they're saying hi.

• 29:51Jason Bateman?

  Hi, Emily.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  She's saying hi. She's geeking out.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  When I was at dinner with you guys, when I was at dinner for the cast for Live in front of a studio audience, I actually had not listened to a single episode yet. And I was embarrassed. And so I faked having listened to a few episodes.

• 30:14Will Arnett?

  You told me you loved it.

• 30:16Jason Bateman?

  She's got skills. She's a professional liar.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Well, I'm an actor. But I knew, just from hearing Emily talk about it, and also hearing my husband, Namdi, talk about it, I had enough context clues and like, reference points to pretend that I had seen. But I hadn't. I hadn't watched and listened. And so then I went home and felt bad. So I started listening. And then I was like, this is the best.

• 30:37Sean Hayes?

  That's okay. Jason, tell Carrie how much you love Scandal every episode.

• 30:41Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, I've seen as many episodes of Scandal as you have seen of Arrested Development, Sean.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Ooh, I have watched Ozark.

• 30:49Jason Bateman?

  Now, well, thank you. Now, what do you guys do about that? Because we all know a lot of people and are friends with a lot of people that do a lot of stuff, and you can't possibly see it all.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  You can't watch it all.

• 30:58Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Do you feel bad about that? Do you lie about it? Do you make an effort? I'm just, I'm terrible about it.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Well, I've just admitted that I lie sometimes. But I try not to.

• 31:09Will Arnett?

  Yeah, I mean, Carrie lies.

• 31:10Jason Bateman?

  I don't think you really lie.

• 31:11Will Arnett?

  And now all her friends, it's out there. They know. And she just lies. And that's fine. What I do is, you know, what's hard is, Sean, you know, this one is like, when you go, when somebody says, I'm doing, you know, I'm in a show on Broadway, or I'm doing a play or whatever, I'm always reluctant to go because you have to go and say hi to the master.

• 31:29Sean Hayes?

  Well, now, Carrie, talk about that. I've changed, Will, since we talked about that. Like, I know somebody, I won't say her name, very extremely gigantically globally famous, who came to one of my shows. And she didn't come back. And I was like, I get it. We don't really know each other. Why would she come back?

• 31:46Speaker 03

  It makes me spiral. When somebody doesn't come back, and I'm, maybe that just means I'm an insecure person. It freaks me out.

• 31:54Jason Bateman?

  No, but how do you know that they're there? Because that's the part that

• 31:56Speaker 03

  They tell you.

• 31:57Jason Bateman?

  So listener for

• 31:58Speaker 03

  The house manager tells you.

• 32:00Jason Bateman?

  So Tracy, when you're doing a show on in New York.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  I love Tracy.

• 32:04Jason Bateman?

  I think specifically in New York or is it in Chicago too, Shawnee?

• 32:06Will Arnett?

  Anywhere.

• 32:07Jason Bateman?

  You end up finding out if there's anybody who has a SAG card that's sitting in the audience and whether you've invited them or not.

• 32:16Will Arnett?

  SAG card, Tracy sidebar, Tracy, that's a screen actor's guild card.

• 32:19Jason Bateman?

  Double Tracy sidebar. So if they don't come back, like you have to go back and say that you love the show, even if you don't know the people in the cast. I just found that that ritual to be weird.

• 32:32Will Arnett?

  Well, that's what I mean. So I don't want to lie. So I just, I'm like, I just end up not going to stuff.

• 32:38Jason Bateman?

  So you're happy to go.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Because you don't want to go and not like what you see and then have to lie about it.

• 32:42Will Arnett?

  Because I

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Oh, aren't you a person of integrity?

• 32:44Will Arnett?

  No, I'm not.

• 32:46Jason Bateman?

  Can't you, but can't you go to a, to a, to a show?

• 32:48Will Arnett?

  I just don't want to get busted for lying.

• 32:49Jason Bateman?

  Can't you go to a show without anybody knowing that you're there? I mean, like, who's clocking the audience?

• 32:54Will Arnett?

  Which is why I go into my character room.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  It depends on the show and the audience. Like for me, I could never in my life go to a show that has a black cast and not go backstage. Because they will know that I'm there.

• 33:07Jason Bateman?

  But wait a minute, you're saying if you were in a show and somebody in the audience is, has a SAG card and doesn't come back, you, you take that personally?

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's an actor who I knew had come to see a play I was in called American Son, and he did not come backstage. And unbeknownst to him, I held it against him for like a year and a half. I was like, I, I just thought, how, like, why? It was, you know, why? Why?

• 33:35Jason Bateman?

  Did you ever run into that actor and ask him?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Well, I then found out, because I'm friends with his wife, that she was the only one who had come and that she was running straight to the airport afterward. And that's why she texted me. And so I was like, oh my God, I've been like

• 33:49Jason Bateman?

  He's been dead to me.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Inside my heart, snubbing him at parties. Yeah, he's been dead to me for a year and a half for no reason.

• 33:55Will Arnett?

  You know what I'm going to start doing? I'm going to start going and taking in a lot of theater and, and making a point of not going backstage.

• 34:03Will Arnett?

  But hanging around outside a lot for a while and then leaving and then going like, not only did he not come back, but he fucking, he didn't even run off.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  He was here.

• 34:11Will Arnett?

  He was, he was here for a while milling around.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  What I learned in that is that I have to be more generous, right? Like, and I try to be more generous in my attitude toward people, but that was a really good reminder of like, you don't know what's going on in people's lives.

• 34:24Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Like, even if somebody really snubs you to your face, you don't know if they just had a car accident or like, it just was a reminder, like, be generous, Carrie. The world does not revolve around you and your Broadway performance.

• 34:34Jason Bateman?

  You, you seem constantly happy, sunny. You don't seem like a, like a, like a dark person. How, what, what, what, what would get the, what would get the real ire up in you? What, when are you the, when are you the nastiest?

• 34:49Will Arnett?

  Finally, we're gonna meet the real Carrie Walker.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 34:52Jason Bateman?

  Is it traffic? Is it people that cut you off in traffic?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 34:56Jason Bateman?

  Is it?

• 34:56Speaker 03

  I'm not a traffic, because I'm not a very good driver, so I have to be generous when I'm driving.

• 35:01Jason Bateman?

  Okay, what really pisses you off?

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Um, you know what? Dishonesty. Like, to circle back, like, if I feel like I'm being gaslit or people are keeping information from me.

• 35:13Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, right.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  In that way, you know how like, people really like to infantilize actors? Like, they don't want to talk to the talent, they don't want to tell talent things or like, just in my life, throughout my life, whether it's because of my acting, if I feel like people aren't being honest with me, it really upsets me.

• 35:28Jason Bateman?

  This is, this is what makes you a good producer, right?

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 35:31Jason Bateman?

  Somebody who's like, holding the information and then sort of disseminates it throughout the production, you, you understand what a, what a value that is and how bad it is when you're on the other side of that, not getting it.

• 35:42Will Arnett?

  Carrie, I, by the way, I can relate to that. I'm like, tell it to me straight.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:45Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Just let me know.

• 35:47Will Arnett?

  Tell it to me fucking straight and let me, I'll decide how I react.

• 35:50Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  By the way, honestly, Will, if you come to see me in something, like, let's say accidentally, you stumble upon a play that I'm in on Broadway, you don't know I'm in it.

• 35:58Will Arnett?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  If you came backstage and you said, I, I'm not crazy about this one, it would, it would make me feel closer to you than you leaving. And I, I appreciate the transparency.

• 36:11Will Arnett?

  I'm making this pledge to you today.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  You're gonna tell me when I suck.

• 36:15Will Arnett?

  I will always be honest with you. I will always be straight up with you about what I think about where you're at. And I want you to know, and forget about performance on stage and in your life.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  This is amazing.

• 36:26Sean Hayes?

  Carrie, the worst thing, wait really quick, the worst thing anybody could ever say when they come backstage, "Boy, it looks like you're having a lot of fun up there."

• 36:37Speaker 03

  That's the kiss of death.

• 36:38Sean Hayes?

  That is the worst.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Or like, or they're like, "You guys did that. That was, you did, wow, you did that."

• 36:45Will Arnett?

  You do this how many times a week?

• 36:47Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Well, that's the thing too, is it's so, you're so vulnerable. When you're on stage, you're so, there's no edit room, there's no score to hide the moment that wasn't fully honest. Like, you're just so vulnerable up there. So I think that's probably why I was also like, a little more raw than usual.

• 37:03Sean Hayes?

  Yes, yes.

• 37:04Jason Bateman?

  Now, in the world of not being told everything that maybe they should be told, in the world of series television, Tracy, oftentimes actors will not be told how that particular season is going to end. Now, you're a producer on that show, so you probably have more access to storylines. But have you had that instance with the, with the head writer about, you know, "Let me know what my finish line is as an actor, so I can calibrate what the arc is to get there, instead of waiting to read each episode, you know, piecemeal."

• 37:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I was not a producer in the beginning of Scandal. I became a producer later on in the life of this show.

• 37:42Sean Hayes?

  And director.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Yes, and director. And, but I, my favorite example of not knowing was we had a guest star named Joe Morton. And Joe Morton is, is an actor I'm a huge fan of. He did an incredible John Sales film called Brother From Another Planet.

• 37:59Will Arnett?

  Oh, I love Joe Morton. He's so good.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  So, he's, he's a, he's a stellar. And he came on, he was like the one guest star that came on our show that I called home to mom and dad. And was like, "Oh my God, Joe Morton's on the show." And he was, I was never in scenes with him. He was always in scenes with these other characters on the show. And I, every table read, I'd be like, "God, I really hope that we can do a scene together." And he'd be like, "Me too, me too." And I knew that he had been in talks to do Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, and he had dropped out of that to come do Scandal. And I was like, "He doesn't even get any scenes with number one. Like, why'd he drop out of this play on Broadway? He's got no scenes with me. Like, why'd he do that?" And I just was super like, "What's going on?" At the end of the scene, the very final line of that season was I get in a car, Joe Morton is sitting across from me and he says hi and I say with a question mark at the end,

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Dad? Cause he was my father on the show. And he knew from the beginning, from his first phone call with Shonda Rhimes, he knew that he was gonna be my dad.

• 38:56Sean Hayes?

  And he never revealed.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  I didn't know until our very, until our table read of that episode. Like live in the room with everybody. It was incredible. Yeah, so wonderful.

• 39:04Sean Hayes?

  It would've been cool if they'd pulled like a Star Wars and didn't tell you till you were actually filming the scene. Right?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  That would've been amazing.

• 39:10Jason Bateman?

  Is that how it happened in the scene?

• 39:11Will Arnett?

  Is that what they did in Star Wars?

• 39:12Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, Empire Strikes Back, they had...

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Well, you mean in the movie, but not on set, right?

• 39:16Sean Hayes?

  No, on the set Darth Vader just blurbed something else and then in post, they put, um, you're my, you are, uh, Luke, I am your father. So that the crew, so that the crew didn't know, nobody knew until the movie came out. Right, and I think...

• 39:32Jason Bateman?

  Mark Hamill knew?

• 39:32Sean Hayes?

  I think Mark Hamill knew, yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 39:34Sean Hayes?

  Isn't that wild?

• 39:35Jason Bateman?

  They were trying to protect the, the crew from leaking that to the fanbase.

• 39:40Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I don't, I think that's what I'm saying, but I don't know if that's true, yeah.

• 39:43Will Arnett?

  Hey, Sean, any more, uh, great tidbits from fucking, uh, the winter circle?

• 39:48Sean Hayes?

  From 70 years ago?

• 39:49Will Arnett?

  Also, um, what are you trying to do?

• 39:53Jason Bateman?

  What about Chris Pine's, uh, audition process for Star Trek? Let's bring Scotty in, he could give us some light on that.

• 39:59Will Arnett?

  And do you know that the bridge on the Enterprise actually wasn't a bridge at all?

• 40:03Sean Hayes?

  Jerry, was Scandal the first thing that kind of changed your trajectory? Or was it something else that made people really take notice? Or do you, do you think that that's the thing that really launched you?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  That was the thing. I mean, I had a really great film career before that. Cause I had been in like these Oscar nominated films. Like I, if I had a joke that if you hired me to play your wife, you would win an Oscar. Because I was with Jamie Foxx in Ray and I was in Last King of Scotland with Forest Whitaker. And, um, so I, I had done, and, but nobody connected that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the girl from Ray, was the girl, like, I was, I was kind of a character actor. And it was like sort of disappearing into these, you know, really fun... Very different films with accents from all over the world and but TV is just different, especially before streaming, right? Like TV was a different beast where all of a sudden I was in people's living rooms every single week. Like, how many people do you have in your life that you

• 40:57Speaker 03

  actually spend an hour with every week, other than your shrink? Not a lot. So it's a very intimate relationship.

• 41:02Will Arnett?

  She's talking to you, Sean, obviously.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  I'm talking to myself and myself. So it did, it did, it definitely changed my, like, it changed, you know, sort of the level of how I walked in the world, maybe, or like, level of fame or whatever.

• 41:15Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. And were you scared to step in a role of, of, of leadership like that? Or was it finally like, was it like, finally, ah, my God, this is like what I've been waiting for to be like, the number one on the call sheet kind of thing?

• 41:28Speaker 03

  No, I, I, really, there was all this pressure because at the time, there was all this talk, every interview was about the fact that in almost forty years, there had not been a black woman as the lead of a network drama. Every, every article in the beginning. That's what, and so, and I was like thirty-seven or something at the time. So in my lifetime, I had never seen a black woman as the lead of a network drama. And, and so that's all my pressure was my fear of like, if I screw this up, they're not going to let another woman of color be the lead of a network drama for another forty years. Like, I knew that we had to get it right, and I just had to work as hard as I'd ever worked on anything in my life. But luckily, I'd worked with amazing number ones. Like, Jamie Foxx is the best number one in the

• 42:11Speaker 03

  business. No offense to you other number ones on here, but he's just the king.

• 42:15Jason Bateman?

  No one's better than Jamie Foxx.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Django, Ray, like, having worked with him in those, he's, he's just a fun, he's, he's so generous. He's a team leader. He's a coach. He's a cheerleader. He's everybody's dad.

• 42:27Sean Hayes?

  And so you picked, you picked up stuff from him and like?

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I tried to collect, like, Forest Whitaker's a beautiful number one. Julia Stiles is an incredible number one. Like, I just tried to remember the things that I admired about the leaders.

• 42:38Will Arnett?

  Love Julia.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  The good leaders. Yeah.

• 42:40Will Arnett?

  She's so great.

• 42:41Sean Hayes?

  Oh, my God, Django in Chains is one of my favorite movies of all time. You were unbelievable in that. And I've seen it so many times. It's, it's always, Quentin has, Quentin Tarantino has, is great at the theme of revenge, right? And that scene, I watched, whenever I watched that movie, it's disturbing to see you, that character, it's so disturbing.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:01Sean Hayes?

  Any kind of fun Quentin stories? I mean, I love that he inserted himself in there in that one scene. It was so fantastic.

• 43:08Jason Bateman?

  Wait, which one? I forget.

• 43:09Sean Hayes?

  Jane, go in, Jane.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  I got a call, I was asleep in my apartment in New Orleans. We were like halfway through filming and I got a call at like two or three in the morning. And I pick up the phone, it's like, I was like, hello? And I hear Leo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx being like, yo, we need to talk. And I was like, what's happening? And they were like, Quinn wants to be in the movie. I was like, what? So that like unfolded in the middle of shooting.

• 43:33Jason Bateman?

  Really?

• 43:34Speaker 03

  We were all shocked, but it was great. He was great.

• 43:37Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, so Jay, just to remind you, in the movie, he intercepts like the transfer of the, of the, uh, of the collected slaves, right?

• 43:47Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Sean Hayes?

  And frees them or something, I can't remember.

• 43:51Jason Bateman?

  I'm so bad about remembering movies.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Oh, me too. I can remember anything.

• 43:55Jason Bateman?

  I can see a movie last week and forget the entire thing.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Same, even movies I've been in. I don't remember movies I've been in. I don't remember lines.

• 44:00Jason Bateman?

  Is it because, I like to think it's for a positive reason, that like maybe we're so good about getting completely inside that world, that once you leave that world, it stays over there? I don't, I don't know.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  That's a glass half full.

• 44:13Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it's kind of like in Memento, like how he forgets like the next, you know what I mean?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Do you have an easy time memorizing lines, though?

• 44:20Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. Jason does.

• 44:21Will Arnett?

  Jason's unbelievable.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  And do they stay with you or do you forget them?

• 44:24Jason Bateman?

  Uh, no, I can drop them just as easily as I, as I learn them. But like, it seems like all my memory skills have just been channeled into that one very narrow lane. It's, uh, it's not, it's not great.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:37Will Arnett?

  And now, a word from our sponsor.

• 44:41Sean Hayes?

  The Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com/autographjourney. Terms apply.

• 45:21Sean Hayes?

  Hey guys, are you looking to hire for a new startup or maybe a new business? Well, have I got the thing for you. If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

• 46:02Sean Hayes?

  Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  The perpetual pen tapper, the arbitrary fridge reorganizer, the holiday party planner that starts in May. Principal knows your star employees have their work quirks. Principal also knows how much these employees mean to your business. You need them. They need benefits. Work with Principal so they can help you help your team with a retirement and benefits plan that's right for them. Principal Life Insurance Company, Des Moines, Iowa.

• 46:35Sean Hayes?

  And now, back to the show. Kara, if I had, if I answered you, I mean, if I asked you this question and you had to think of something really, really fast.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 46:45Sean Hayes?

  Who's one or two of your favorite actors of all time that you worked with?

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Meryl Streep. And...

• 46:53Jason Bateman?

  Controversial.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I'm being honest.

• 46:57Jason Bateman?

  Not a lot of people agree with you on that whole talent assessment thing.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  What TikToks has she been?

• 47:03Jason Bateman?

  Have we seen her on a TikTok?

• 47:04Speaker 03

  What TikToks has she been on? And, I mean, it's hard. There's so many.

• 47:10Jason Bateman?

  You can't top Jamie Foxx.

• 47:12Sean Hayes?

  I love that that was the first one. And Jamie.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  I love Jamie.

• 47:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just love him.

• 47:16Sean Hayes?

  What was your first paid acting gig?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  My first paid acting gig, I played a cheerleader. I don't think I had a name. I think I was like cheerleader number two in an ABC after-school special.

• 47:30Jason Bateman?

  Yes.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Called My Special Angel.

• 47:33Jason Bateman?

  Oh, wow.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  I think.

• 47:35Jason Bateman?

  Who was the angel?

• 47:36Speaker 03

  I don't know. I don't remember. I may have done a PSA or something before that.

• 47:40Jason Bateman?

  God, after-school specials, remember those?

• 47:42Speaker 03

  After-school specials.

• 47:43Will Arnett?

  Jason, did you ever do one, an after-school special?

• 47:45Jason Bateman?

  I don't know if I did an after-school special. I did a few movies of the week. Those were good. Remember there used to be a CBS, NBC, ABC, they all used to make their own movies and it'd run Sunday night?

• 47:55Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, yeah. Now it's like Hallmark Channel does those in Lifetime.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 48:00Sean Hayes?

  Wait, so Carrie, and the other thing that I went on and on about before, but I'm gonna do it again because you're so amazing, was American Sun on Broadway, which I didn't get to see because I was doing something. And then, but I waited to see it on Netflix. So, first of all, it was, it was such an ingenious idea to film the play like that. It was like, it was like a hybrid of stage and film. I'd never seen anything like it. Your performance was off the chart, like it was amazing.

• 48:25Jason Bateman?

  Wait, you're allowed to do that? You can film a play on Broadway?

• 48:28Sean Hayes?

  No, it was.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  We, no, we like, so really the reason I came up with that idea was because I, I love producing. I love producing. I fell in love with producing at Scandal and the first film I produced was a film called Confirmation for HBO where I played Anita Hill. And, and then I fell in love with it. And so they came to me to do this play on Broadway, the producers, and I said, sure, I'll be in it if I can help produce. But on Broadway, producing really just means finding money. Like, you get to be a creative producer as well, but I was like, oh, I don't do the financing thing. Like, I haven't done that. But I was like, okay, I'll jump in and I'll try. And one of the ideas I had for how I could make the money to help produce the play was like, what if we film it? What if we can sell it to a streamer, sell the rights?

• 49:07Sean Hayes?

  Such a great idea.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Netflix, you know, Ted read it and loved it and he.

• 49:11Sean Hayes?

  But Jay, it was filmed not in a proscenium. It was filmed.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  No, we built us on stages. We built on stages. We kind of like built a fourth wall to complete the room. Cause the play all takes place in one room. And, and so we just completed the room and shot it on a stage in the one room.

• 49:28Sean Hayes?

  Your, your, your performance was just mind-blowing.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  It means so much coming from you. Thank you.

• 49:32Sean Hayes?

  It was.

• 49:33Will Arnett?

  Man, not that much, but I, I really wanna see it. I really, really, by the way.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  It's on Netflix.

• 49:39Will Arnett?

  I'm, I'm gonna watch it.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Do you have an account?

• 49:41Will Arnett?

  Well, I share it with like 20 people, but, but I, but I'm a new. I'm gonna watch it and then I'm gonna get your number from Sean.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 49:49Will Arnett?

  And I'm gonna text Aaron from Kimmel what I thought about it.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  You might be texting Aaron.

• 49:55Will Arnett?

  And I'm gonna be honest.

• 49:56Sean Hayes?

  Now, Carrie, where are you right now? Are you home or are you traveling? Are you on location somewhere?

• 50:00Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not home. I'm on location, um, cause I'm doing, we're doing a new YouTube series at my company.

• 50:07Sean Hayes?

  Really?

• 50:08Speaker 03

  Called, um, The Street You Grew Up On. And it's something I started in pandemic because my, my production company is named after the street that my mother grew up on in the Bronx, Simpson Street.

• 50:19Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  And when, when we were kids, we used to hear all these stories about like all the shenanigans that went on in Simpson Street. So I feel like that's my once upon a time. Like, my grandparents came to the States through Ellis Island. They immigrated from the Caribbean and they lived in the Bronx and Simpson Street was like, you know, where it all started, where the dreams began. So I wanna, I interview people that I really like and respect and admire, um, other than the three of you and, um, and about the street that they grew up on.

• 50:47Will Arnett?

  How do you have room after the three of us?

• 50:51Speaker 03

  So, so yeah, and I ask them questions about the street they grew up on and what their childhoods were like.

• 50:54Sean Hayes?

  Great idea.

• 50:55Will Arnett?

  That's really cool.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  It's fun. So we're doing a bunch of them today.

• 50:57Sean Hayes?

  You know what I always wanted to do, but, um, you can, by the way, you can have this idea if you want.

• 51:00Will Arnett?

  Eating an entire carton of ice cream by yourself and then do it again right after?

• 51:08Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  And, yes, and.

• 51:11Sean Hayes?

  Is, is, is, it's like similar to that idea, which is go visit with a celebrity the places they lived before they made it, right? So like go back to their apartment and knock on the door and interview the family that lived there, that lives there now and kind of swap stories about what, how you lived when you were there. And I think that'd be really cool, the, all the apartments and whatever.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I have a dream about maybe, maybe next season, going to some of the locations with our guests.

• 51:39Sean Hayes?

  Do it, do it, do it.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  The stories are incredible. It's really.

• 51:41Sean Hayes?

  But think about the stories you'd get from the people that live there.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, the people that live there now.

• 51:44Will Arnett?

  Sean, you're like, you're like our next Barbara Walters. This is incredible.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Wait, so the first

• 51:50Will Arnett?

  What do you mean next?

• 51:50Speaker 03

  The first question that I ask everybody is to learn the name of the street that they grew up on. I ask their porn names. So I want to know the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on. So can I, I want to ask you three, your porn names. Not your actual porn names that you have used in the past, because I know you have those.

• 52:05Sean Hayes?

  So it's the pet's first name and the street you lived on?

• 52:08Speaker 03

  Your first pet.

• 52:10Jason Bateman?

  First pet for me was a little bird that was a cinnamon color. And so he was called Cinni, or she was. So, and then the first street was Emerson. Cinni Emerson.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  I like that. That's kind of cute.

• 52:23Jason Bateman?

  Sweet little Cinni Emerson.

• 52:25Will Arnett?

  That's my middle name. Emerson's my middle name.

• 52:27Jason Bateman?

  Cinni Emerson receives a lot in these porn. Not a lot of giving.

• 52:35Jason Bateman?

  Mostly catching.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  She's good at it.

• 52:37Jason Bateman?

  Yep.

• 52:39Sean Hayes?

  Can catch his bird flu.

• 52:40Jason Bateman?

  Real passive.

• 52:40Sean Hayes?

  Will, what about you?

• 52:43Will Arnett?

  We had a cat, well, his cat's name-

• 52:46Sean Hayes?

  You don't have to explain the story, just what's the name of your first pet and the street?

• 52:48Will Arnett?

  He got to talk about the stupid fucking bird.

• 52:53Will Arnett?

  Fucking Cinni.

• 52:54Jason Bateman?

  And receiving and catching up.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  You guys are like my kids. He got to do it.

• 52:59Will Arnett?

  It's, it would be Minu Edgar.

• 53:02Jason Bateman?

  Minu Edgar. Now, Minu Edgar is giving a lot of pain on these porn.

• 53:08Jason Bateman?

  Cinni sees Minu coming and just starts running.

• 53:11Will Arnett?

  Johnny, what about you?

• 53:12Sean Hayes?

  Johnny, what about you? Mine's Josh Valley.

• 53:14Will Arnett?

  Josh Valley.

• 53:15Jason Bateman?

  What kind of animal's named Josh?

• 53:17Will Arnett?

  Wait, your pet's name was Josh?

• 53:19Sean Hayes?

  My dog's name was Josh, and I lived on Valley Avenue.

• 53:21Will Arnett?

  Your dog's name was Josh?

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Why did you name your dog Josh?

• 53:25Sean Hayes?

  I didn't name it. My dad did.

• 53:28Will Arnett?

  Oh, this guy.

• 53:29Jason Bateman?

  Now, Carrie, what was yours?

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Mine, the best was that I interviewed my mom for the series, and I was like, you didn't have any pets, mom, did you? And she said, no, no, we did, we did. We had a cat named Big Boy. So my mom's, my mother's porn name is Big Boy Simpson.

• 53:48Sean Hayes?

  That's fantastic.

• 53:49Jason Bateman?

  Cinni just exploded.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  I had hamsters named Trick and Treat. And I grew up on Pugsley Avenue, so Trick and Treat Pugsley.

• 54:02Jason Bateman?

  Also, very active. Trick or Treat Pugs is, uh...

• 54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:06Sean Hayes?

  Wow, that's so cool. I love that. And that's how you launch into...

• 54:09Speaker 03

  That's how we start each episode, yeah.

• 54:11Sean Hayes?

  That's great. I love that.

• 54:12Jason Bateman?

  So in a perfect balance, then, how often are you working? How often are you home? Like, how often do you like to be bored throughout the year? Because I like, I think boredom is the route to relaxation. If you can try to find...

• 54:24Speaker 03

  I think you're right, but I, so I'm not very relaxed these days because I haven't been very bored. This is, this is the main theme of my therapy these days, is, is figuring out how to schedule more, like, open, creative time. Because I, I am a doer, like, I really like to be busy and I like to accomplish things and feel like I'm being productive and useful in the world. But I also really, really love my family and spending time with them and, and being able to read a book on the beach. I'm, I'm with the reading the book and on the beach team.

• 54:56Sean Hayes?

  I can't do it.

• 54:57Jason Bateman?

  Thank you.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  I do. I'm with that.

• 54:59Sean Hayes?

  That's the worst.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Or even, uh, listen an audiobook.

• 55:02Jason Bateman?

  Sean, what if you were in, like, in a nice cabana, right? So we've got, we've got nice breathable fabric around three sides of you. We've got a nice roof over the top. We've got some sort of a frosty drink. You, you're in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

• 55:15Sean Hayes?

  I'm gonna be thinking, I know what you're asking. Could I read a book then?

• 55:17Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, and you got a nice fan on you. Maybe there's even a portable TV.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  With a fan that has the mist.

• 55:21Will Arnett?

  Believe me, Sean's never met a fan he didn't like, okay?

• 55:27Jason Bateman?

  Sean, that would work, right?

• 55:28Sean Hayes?

  I, well, let me, I'm gonna ask you the same question. You know that, but it, it probably wouldn't because I'd be distracted, right, by the beauty and the breeze. And I, I'd wanna, like, go do something, not sit.

• 55:38Will Arnett?

  You can't sit still. But here's the other thing.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  But it's not the whole day. It's just like a section of the day where you get to disappear into...

• 55:45Will Arnett?

  Carrie, Carrie, what you need to understand is Sean can't sit, sit still and not fidget, like, and do that and, and read a book and...

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Anywhere.

• 55:51Will Arnett?

  However, I have been with him on a return 14 hours each way flight to LA to Istanbul, where he played Candy Crush the entire fucking time. So he is...

• 56:02Sean Hayes?

  I'm addicted to games, like, low...

• 56:03Will Arnett?

  So he can just do, and by the way, calling that a game is like fucking, you know, like calling a pamphlet a book, it's just like.

• 56:13Jason Bateman?

  Why don't you just rip the door open and jump out somewhere over the Atlantic? And it's like, how could I still be engaged with this eight hours in?

• 56:21Sean Hayes?

  I'll never forget that flight too, because they fed us 80,000 pounds of food. Like, they just did not stop serving food.

• 56:28Jason Bateman?

  Where are you guys sitting up front?

• 56:29Will Arnett?

  I remember, I remember us eating, I'm sorry, I remember sleeping like for like six hours at one point and then waking up and being like, oh man, I really, and looking in Sean's, Scotty's same position.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Is that your meditation?

• 56:48Sean Hayes?

  It is, I get to check out and like, I love that, yeah. That's, that's what I'm addicted to is like the solace of that.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Well, they work hard on that. They work hard all those games to, to control your brain.

• 56:59Sean Hayes?

  I know. By the way, they can have it, right?

• 57:01Will Arnett?

  Oh my god, don't worry.

• 57:05Will Arnett?

  Turns out they, they claimed there wasn't much to grab.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  They took what they could.

• 57:11Sean Hayes?

  They really candy crushed my brain. All right. So listen, we're gonna let you go soon, I promise, but I want you to talk about the Prophecy Podcast. What is it? Cause it sounds amazing. You're starring in it, you're EP on it, and it stars Laurence Fishburne, Daniel Dae Kim, and David Oyelowo.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I, I wanna, yes, so also I wanna thank so many, a lot of the folks that I work with wanted me to do this podcast, even more than I wa, I mean, I really, I'm such an Uber fan, but my, there was a guy on my team named Will who was like, we have a podcast coming out, Prophecy, so you, yeah, it's a bad name, but, um, he sounds brilliant. Will was like, because we're doing a podcast, we have to be on the best podcast. So that is part of why I'm so happy to be talking to you guys. So Prophecy is, it's a, it's a narrative podcast on Audible. It's a really cool concept. The concept is like, what if the Bible wasn't a document about things that people thought happened in the past? But what if it was a prophetic document about things that were gonna happen in the future?

• 58:09Speaker 03

  And so I play this woman, this scientist, who winds up being. Pregnant and I don't know how because my husband can't impregnate me, we know that. And um, and my name is Virginia Mary Lynn. Um, so like Virgin Mary. And there's a, there's a scientist named Jonah who gets in a situation with a whale and stays alive for three days. And there's a guy named Daniel who's a zoologist who ends up in a lion's den and they don't kill him. And it's kind of like these biblical happenings are popping up and what does it mean? And how do we deal with it? It's very cool.

• 58:38Sean Hayes?

  It was a great idea.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  It's like sci fi.

• 58:40Jason Bateman?

  And has that yet been optioned?

• 58:42Speaker 03

  We, well, a part of why I wanted to, I'm in this deal with Audible to create podcasts in the narrative space. And I feel like it's a really good way to test out story and figure out, is this uh, limited? Is it a film? I think this one is a film.

• 58:56Jason Bateman?

  Great show, are you kidding?

• 58:56Sean Hayes?

  That's cool. And is the idea then to like, maybe if it goes well, make it an actual series?

• 59:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, or a film. I think it might be a trilogy of films.

• 59:05Jason Bateman?

  That's really cool. I would watch that.

• 59:08Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I would watch that.

• 59:09Will Arnett?

  I let me look at my schedule. What do you, how long is the shoot?

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Start, start, oh, oh, do you want to be in it?

• 59:16Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, how do you feel about self taping, Will?

• 59:18Will Arnett?

  I want to be fucking number, Carrie, you were talking about number ones. And I'm like, what is she working towards here? What is she trying, and I'm like, oh, here it comes. Here comes the pitch. So the number one, blah, blah, blah. Then she pitches this show and it could be a movie actually. And then she looks right at me and I'm like, here we go. All right. So tell me, I'll tell you what, you know I'm at CAA, launch some numbers our way. And fucking let me look at the sketch.

• 59:40Jason Bateman?

  Give us something to react to.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  We'll fit it around your gulf. Try to shoot around your gulf.

• 59:44Will Arnett?

  Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.

• 59:47Sean Hayes?

  Um, Carrie Washington, you know how much I love you. You got the email.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  I love you.

• 59:52Sean Hayes?

  I love you so much. I think you are incredible and I'm a massive, massive fan as you all know.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Can I just say, I want to say as somebody who like, this is what we do all the time. We have to talk to people. We do these interviews. It's so real. I can tell every time I listen that people are, they don't want to get off with you. They're like, they love these interviews. It's a good time.

• 1:00:12Will Arnett?

  People have not wanted to get off with Jason for a long time. Oh, no!

• 1:00:17Sean Hayes?

  She did it! That was perfect.

• 1:00:20Jason Bateman?

  She self died.

• 1:00:20Sean Hayes?

  She self died.

• 1:00:21Jason Bateman?

  So good. No one has ever self died before.

• 1:00:25Sean Hayes?

  That was great.

• 1:00:26Jason Bateman?

  Carrie Washington, DC.

• 1:00:28Will Arnett?

  Carrie Washington. Oh, she had the full district in Columbia.

• 1:00:31Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:32Sean Hayes?

  So it's Carrie Washington, District of Columbia.

• 1:00:33Jason Bateman?

  Not a lot of people know that.

• 1:00:36Jason Bateman?

  So, uh, she's a dream.

• 1:00:37Will Arnett?

  Carrie Washington would actually be the great name for a, like, just like a detective series too.

• 1:00:43Sean Hayes?

  Carrie Washington, like, that's the name.

• 1:00:44Will Arnett?

  That's the name of her character.

• 1:00:45Jason Bateman?

  Well, no, you, no, no, no, but you'd spell it C A R R Y because trying to, like, keep.

• 1:00:51Sean Hayes?

  Like, she's carrying what?

• 1:00:52Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, trying to keep weight on her shoulders.

• 1:00:54Will Arnett?

  Yeah, she's got a Carrie Wa- oh, my gosh. By the way, let's pitch her.

• 1:00:58Sean Hayes?

  Get her back on.

• 1:00:59Jason Bateman?

  Can you call her back?

• 1:01:00Will Arnett?

  Yeah, we'll call, well, Sean doesn't have her number, but.

• 1:01:04Jason Bateman?

  Email her, Sean.

• 1:01:05Sean Hayes?

  Isn't that the dumbest story?

• 1:01:06Will Arnett?

  Sean, that story is so fucking, it's so good.

• 1:01:09Sean Hayes?

  I mean, it's so embarrassing.

• 1:01:10Will Arnett?

  It's so on-brand for you. By the way, you just made the leap.

• 1:01:13Jason Bateman?

  I love that Erin was on the other end of that.

• 1:01:15Will Arnett?

  Yeah, and that Erin, Erin's the other person. Did you, and obviously Erin knows the story.

• 1:01:20Sean Hayes?

  I think I told her, yeah, yeah, Erin Erwin, who's the best.

• 1:01:24Will Arnett?

  It's so good.

• 1:01:25Sean Hayes?

  Um, wait a minute, what about, um, how great she is? And she's so, she's so delightful and so smart and so gorgeous and so talented and so real and normal.

• 1:01:35Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Sean Hayes?

  I know I say that about every guest of ours, but like, I, I can't stop, that's the thing when you're surprised to me, because we know there's a lot of people in this business and, and Washington, a lot of other businesses, whatever, that you never get like the real them, and that's the real her.

• 1:01:50Will Arnett?

  Yeah, you know, I sat, we saw at that dinner, we talked about that cast dinner, uh, Jay, when you're like, what dinner did you have? When you were, you literally sat across, you literally sat across from Carrie.

• 1:01:59Jason Bateman?

  It came back to me eventually, we were at Jimmy's.

• 1:02:01Will Arnett?

  But we were at, so we were at Kimmel's and she, and I didn't know her at all, but she was producing that thing that we've all done. And I had the same, I had the same reaction, I was like, man, she is so cool and comfortable with who she is and her own skin and so real and you're getting, you just had the sense that you were getting this genuine person. Uh, and she was a delight, we laughed a ton, she was great.

• 1:02:23Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, she's.

• 1:02:24Will Arnett?

  Except she lied about watching the, listening to the podcast.

• 1:02:26Jason Bateman?

  She's a dirty liar, she admitted it, you know?

• 1:02:28Will Arnett?

  She's a dirty liar. She should, maybe she should do an arc on dirty little liars, all right?

• 1:02:32Sean Hayes?

  She's also really funny, like, she should do more comedy.

• 1:02:34Will Arnett?

  She's so funny.

• 1:02:35Jason Bateman?

  Why are we so surprised every time we meet somebody nice and normal in this business?

• 1:02:40Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, because we know too many of the others.

• 1:02:42Jason Bateman?

  But maybe, maybe that's just a vestige of what this business was and now we ought to just embrace the fact that there are actually a lot of really nice, normal people in this business now.

• 1:02:53Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Will Arnett?

  I, I don't know if it's a, it's a thing, it's not necessarily.

• 1:02:56Sean Hayes?

  I never mean the business, I just mean in life.

• 1:02:58Will Arnett?

  A result of it, but it's maybe, maybe it is, we get, there are bad people, because maybe it's just a by-product.

• 1:03:04Sean Hayes?

  By-product!

• 1:03:05Jason Bateman?

  I didn't even see it coming, Will. I didn't even see it coming.

• 1:03:23Will Arnett?

  Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Armjarf.

• 1:03:40Sean Hayes?

  Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It helps make you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit MazdaUSA.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services.

• 1:04:21Sean Hayes?

  Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise Vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. You'll then play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag! No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18+. See Play at McD.com for rules and Play at McD.com slash AMOE for info on playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.