‘Say Nothing’ Is at Once Painful and Exhilarating, Plus Adam Brody on 'Nobody Wants This'

Chris and Andy talk about some movie and TV news from the week, including Jeremy Allen White being cast as Jabba the Hutt's son in ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ movie (1:00) and the ‘Friday Night Lights’ reboot officially finding a home at Peacock (14:47). Then they talk about the back half of ‘Say Nothing’ and how beyond the show being about historical events, it’s about guilt, regret, and purpose (26:40). Finally, Chris is joined by Adam Brody to talk about the breakout success of ‘Nobody Wants This’ and what could be in store for the second season (1:00:46). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Adam Brody Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. Except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Preferably on Spotify.

• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 1:07Speaker 02

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk, now!

• 1:12Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, the runner-up for Paul McCartney in the Sam Mendes movies, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:28Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you for the intro. For what it's worth, that is not confirmed. So until I get the call from my team, I think I'm still in the mix.

• 1:36Chris Ryan?

  You're still in it. Really, Scott said Paul Meskell is going to play Paul McCartney.

• 1:39Andy Greenwald?

  As the internet has said also for months.

• 1:41Chris Ryan?

  We just decided, yeah. Oh, the internet's never wrong. Andy, it's great to see you. We are here at The Watch. A couple bits of admin. So today, we're in a new studio. We're doing this on video as well, so you can find us on The Ringer TV YouTube channel. Please subscribe to that. We're putting up extra bits and bobs in the next couple of weeks for people to see on the channel. That's been going great so far. I did a video with Rob and Joanna last week about kind of holiday viewing recommendations. You can all- Also, follow us now on Instagram, on the, at the WatchPod, is that right?

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, we have our own Instagram account?

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we have our own Instagram account.

• 2:18Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I thought you said Kaia was managing our Instagram accounts.

• 2:21Chris Ryan?

  She does not want to manage my Instagram accounts.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Pro. No, do you know how good that would be for us? It would just be like fun times on the west side.

• 2:31Speaker 05

  It's at the WatchPod underscore. The WatchPod and the watch were all taken.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Interesting. Who has the WatchPod?

• 2:37Andy Greenwald?

  Who's sitting on the podcast?

• 2:38Speaker 05

  It's a podcast about watches.

• 2:40Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no. Come on. Jeez, I guess we could have seen that coming.

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  At the WatchPod underscore. You can find us on Instagram. I have one more thing I was gonna say. Oh, we were gonna do our 10 best today. We're gonna do it on Monday. Today, we have Adam Brody on the show.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  Adam Brody from Nobody Wants This. You may have heard of him. You may have heard of it.

• 2:57Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth, there is no truth to the rumor circulating that I was not allowed to be a part of that interview due to a restraining order against me because of my need to affirm the role of a hot rabbi in popular culture. That is just not true.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  Adam was awesome. We talked about Nobody Wants This. We talked about season two. We talked about some other stuff that he has been up for over the years and some of his favorite shows and movies of the year. So it was a really fun chat. That's at the end of this. I talked to him. But we're gonna do some Say Nothing today. We haven't really done it together, I realized.

• 3:29Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  I talked to Patrick Raddenkeef. You talked to Sean Fennessy. Two great Irishmen.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  I was about to say, we both found our personal Irishmen for that.

• 3:38Chris Ryan?

  And so we'll do the sort of second half of the season of Say Nothing. I have a couple of pieces of news for you first. Do you want to just?

• 3:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I kind of just want to ask you how you feel about this because we're sitting in a very different way today and I wonder if it's gonna be noticeable in how we sound. Because usually, we are across the table from each other, like people.

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  Crossfire style.

• 3:57Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like people taking a deposition in the television show Landman. Like, that's the kind of energy that we bring.

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Andy Greenwald?

  Right now, we're kind of on the same side and it's making me a little bit squirrely.

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think that it's really bad podcasting to talk about how we look.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  No, not on YouTube all of a sudden.

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  I think we'll be fine, you know, and I'm happy to be bringing our brand to multiple platforms.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I know we have an Instagram account. I heard we have email, too.

• 4:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, we have an email address.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  Do we have a fax number?

• 4:26Chris Ryan?

  [email protected]. So if you guys have mailbag questions or just questions you'd like to see. Answered on the pod, or if you just have some personal tips you'd like to pass along to me and Andy.

• 4:36Andy Greenwald?

  Or if you're like just raising money for attorneys general races across the country, please spam that. Spam that address.

• 4:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Greenwald, I want to talk to you a little bit about, I mean, I made, made fun of Paul Meskell being cast as Paul McCartney, but that's really pales in comparison to the most important casting announcement that happened this week. I can't sugarcoat this. I don't want to dress it up in any fun way. Jeremy Allen White has been cast as Jabba the Hutt's son in The Mandalorian and Grogu. And I will say that I am, uh, I have not been this excited to see a son on screen since Passion of the Christ.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, wow. Well done.

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is, um.

• 5:17Chris Ryan?

  Now, when we say Pat, when we say he's been cast, I think one thing that happens a lot now is that the film has been shot. Uh, I think principal photography ended on Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  Has Pedro Pascal been informed of that?

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  I think he's been doing it on his phone from the Gladiator two promo run.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember? You know what?

• 5:35Chris Ryan?

  Where's the child?

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember when we had, this is a, this is like during peak pandemic times when we had lots of guests because everyone was available? And we had, what's his name? Tony, the guy who played Lalo on.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  Tony Dalton.

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  On Better Call Saul, and he, he called in from his iPhone that he was holding as if he was catching sunlight with a solar panel.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he was, and it was in a jungle somewhere. Yeah.

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like that's where Pedro Pascal is in terms of like his performance in The Mandalorian.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  So one thing I really hadn't considered and didn't really want to consider was the idea of Jabba the Hutt procreating.

• 6:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, the Huts are a proud family. How do you think they get so many of them?

• 6:10Chris Ryan?

  And I guess this also betrays the fact that I did not complete the Book of Boba Fett. Um, I usually finish.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, cause the end, they're just fucking.

• 6:17Chris Ryan?

  No, it's his cousins, I think.

• 6:19Andy Greenwald?

  These cousins, the Huts, they're the ones screwing?

• 6:22Chris Ryan?

  I think the cousins are like some of the antagonists of the Book of Boba Fett. Um.

• 6:27Andy Greenwald?

  Picture Evan Moss backtrack yelling cousin.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't know where to start with this with you.

• 6:31Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh. I have some thoughts, but please.

• 6:33Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that this is gonna be? Voice work, à la Pedro Pascal or whatever. Or do you think that Jeremy is going to go through a grotesque Brendan Fraser in the whale-like transformation?

• 6:45Andy Greenwald?

  If it was any other young, promising actor being cast as a evil space worm in this film, I would say this is just a paycheck job.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Andy Greenwald?

  But the thing about Jeremy, and we love Jeremy, we all love him.

• 6:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we do, sure.

• 6:59Andy Greenwald?

  Here in town.

• 7:00Chris Ryan?

  And I'm really happy for him because Juan Soto got signed to the Mets.

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so everything's coming up, Jeremy. I'm just saying that when you have an actor like Jeremy, he does the work, you know? And I feel like he is going to really, even if it is just voice acting, I think that he will want to make his body as worm-like as possible.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  But the thing is, is that he is currently shooting

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 7:19Chris Ryan?

  the Bruce Springsteen movie in Asbury Park, and he looks hot. So he's probably not in the moments that I haven't seen him recently.

• 7:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Chris Ryan?

  Expanded his repertoire, so to say.

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think that you could just turn it on and off?

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  But also, are we sure the huts have to look like that? Now, I'm currently looking-

• 7:35Andy Greenwald?

  Wait a second, wait a second. Are you suggesting there's a hot hut?

• 7:37Chris Ryan?

  That's what I'm wondering.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Jabba the hot? This is an incredible pivot.

• 7:42Chris Ryan?

  And what if his whole thing is like, he's alienated from his family, he's always been too skinny?

• 7:48Andy Greenwald?

  So Mama Hut is trying to fatten him up?

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  Every time he comes home, they're like, "Are you eating?"

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, I'm sorry. Were you reaching for like a Jewish mother, like fat? You're so skinny!

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  Jeremy the Hut? Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really roll in these tattooing streets, you know? I don't know.

• 8:12Chris Ryan?

  So I spent 15 minutes on Wikipedia last night, and you got nothing for me? I mean, like, are you excited by this prospect? Do you think that Mandalorian and Grogu will be good?

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing, you know, you know this about me-

• 8:23Chris Ryan?

  This is gonna be like, for this kid-

• 8:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  The son of the hut.

• 8:27Andy Greenwald?

  What's his name?

• 8:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Rhoda, I think, Rada?

• 8:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's not Rhoda.

• 8:30Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, big stinks, right? Like, his whole thing is like, he smells bad.

• 8:34Andy Greenwald?

  Excuse me? What do you mean, his whole thing?

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I had this conversation with Mallory yesterday, I thought we talked about this.

• 8:38Andy Greenwald?

  How dare you?

• 8:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so apparently-

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  Uh-huh. Apparently, according to what? What is this based on?

• 8:43Chris Ryan?

  Wikipedia.

• 8:44Andy Greenwald?

  But that's the internet.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  It's canon.

• 8:46Andy Greenwald?

  Where was it written as canon?

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think it's like in a comic or something like that.

• 8:50Andy Greenwald?

  So there's a comic, the Jabba the Hutt has a stink son? That's too skinny?

• 8:54Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no. I made the skinny part up.

• 8:56Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but it is canonical. The Jabba the Hutt has a son and heir. Is he like a fail son?

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, you'd imagine Jeremy Allen White playing the son.

• 9:05Andy Greenwald?

  Is he Don Jr. or Eric?

• 9:06Chris Ryan?

  Which one has the...

• 9:08Andy Greenwald?

  Which one stinks?

• 9:09Chris Ryan?

  No, which one has the ex-wife who's now the ambassador of Greece?

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  DJ JR.

• 9:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:14Andy Greenwald?

  DJ TJR.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Okay, and then Eric's wife is gonna become the senator from Florida, right?

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I don't read the news anymore, so I'm just getting this in real time.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  Um, hot hut, yeah. So I think if I read Wikipedia correctly.

• 9:27Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 9:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Mandalorian and Gru Gru takes place after Jedi, as we all know. And this hut.

• 9:35Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 9:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, is the, you know, he is sort of the Kendall Roy, you know, a little bit troubled.

• 9:41Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, that's what I was...

• 9:41Chris Ryan?

  And I think stinks. I think that's like his thing. Is he reeks.

• 9:46Andy Greenwald?

  That's not a thing that you, that's not like your, your, your power move. Or maybe it is. You walk into the boardroom, sorry, you slither into the boardroom. Okay. I have a couple of thoughts here.

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Andy Greenwald?

  Where are you with huts generally? Like, do you enjoy, have you even seen the, I think now the official, final boss version of A New Hope? That Jabba is in? You know about this, right? That like...

• 10:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 10:13Andy Greenwald?

  That, that like in the seventies, Lucas filmed a scene with an actor playing a part called Jabba the Hutt that confronts Han before they leave Tatooine, and then they cut it because he's like, no, no. Worm technology hasn't evolved where I need it to be.

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:25Andy Greenwald?

  And then once it had, they went back and they drew a weirdly mobile and quite slim, actually, so maybe this is relevant. Jabba over that actor.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:34Andy Greenwald?

  So that scene is now, is now canon.

• 10:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:36Andy Greenwald?

  So do you generally like more Jabba?

• 10:39Chris Ryan?

  I think like a lot of things in Star Wars. And we can, we, you know, we, we talked about skeleton crew a couple of weeks ago. So I don't really know how much meat there is on the bone, no hut. Uh, to talk about Star Wars again.

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  But what happens is that there will be a passing reference. A character is in the background, a character is like a sort of like, oh, look at that big worm who gambles.

• 11:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then they make that into like a show. You know, they're like, what, like, what can we scrape here?

• 11:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  To make into a show or a movie, what if this happened? Sometimes that works out great, like Rogue One.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:13Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes it's about a time period or a factoid or footnote that is never really even occurred to me is interesting. But yeah, like I think that this is sort of, the reason why we keep talking about Star Wars is really interesting. People get involved with it and do things in it. And then the reason why we keep laughing at Star Wars is because they play Jabba the Hutt's smelly son.

• 11:34Andy Greenwald?

  This is exactly what I'm saying. You know me, all the listeners know me. New friends on YouTube, get to know me. I don't like to overreact to small bits of cultural effluvia. But we are deeply cooked as a people, based on this newsflash alone.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  Because the Huts.

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, just that like.

• 11:52Chris Ryan?

  The Huts have taken over.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  This sunken franchise manages to get one of the rising actors of his generation to be a part of it? And he's playing a fat, stinking worm son? That's what you got for me?

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but maybe, like I said, like maybe there's some wrinkle to this character that I don't know about.

• 12:13Andy Greenwald?

  There are a lot of wrinkles. Have you seen the Hutt family dermatology?

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  Also, the weird thing about it is that Jabba the Hutt speaks Hut, I think, or like they have like their own.

• 12:20Andy Greenwald?

  I believe it's Hutties.

• 12:21Chris Ryan?

  And they have their own native language. It's just like, you're really just getting the Jeremy Allen white timber in this. It's not even like, if he's doing voice acting, I wonder if he's gonna be speaking in this language.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that maybe the natural order of things is once you play an iconic musician like Jeremy played, is playing Bruce Springsteen? Then you become, you know, enmeshed in the CGI Star Wars universe? That Paul Meskell, after he's done playing Paul McCartney, will take on the role of Salacious B. Crumb? In an origin story for the weird rat guy that hangs out next to Jabba?

• 12:51Chris Ryan?

  See, this is the thing is that you act like you hate Star Wars and then you know Salacious B. Crumb's name.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know his middle name. I don't know what the B stands for.

• 12:58Chris Ryan?

  Maybe it's like world beef freak.

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  I think it stands for business. Salacious business.

• 13:02Chris Ryan?

  Stand on business.

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  Crumb.

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  So you're like, we're cooked, we're in the sunken place, this is dark, we're never gonna get out.

• 13:10Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm excited about the new senator from Florida, but other than that, yeah.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Well, I'm glad I did all that work to to set this up then.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Where else do you want to take this?

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were gonna be like, we need to bury this. You know what I mean? Like, we need to get out from under this.

• 13:23Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, we do. Oh, I see what you mean. You thought instead of just like resigning myself to slipping into the pit of Sarlacc, so to speak.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  I would say we need to just dig ourselves out of this like Bane?

• 13:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but how? How? How can we do this? I completely agree.

• 13:39Chris Ryan?

  I think like I've always said, this just thing needs to go away.

• 13:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  It needs to go away for five to 10 years or seven years, split the difference. And they need to redesign this franchise. They need to think about how they want to move forward. They probably need to move off of Skywalker. But everything about contemporary Hollywood tells us that that's not gonna happen. Because if there's any juice left in the lemon, they're gonna squeeze it.

• 14:01Andy Greenwald?

  Also, the only thing that causes reboots, like genuine reboots, is cleaning of the house. And, you know, I I'm not advocating for anyone to lose their jobs. But like, the current regime at Lucasfilm is pretty entrenched.

• 14:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Andy Greenwald?

  And the longer they keep kicking the can down the road in terms of actually making something that is attempting to be like a cultural footprint of like, this is what we do here. This is how we move this forward. This is how we reclaim our place at the forefront of global pop culture. Then the more time they have to sort of dick around in the margins with stuff like this. And, you know, I, you know, I mean, I I appreciate that this podcast is moving forward a little bit with Instagram and email. But, you know, the real heads get their news only from their Facebook feeds.

• 14:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 14:42Andy Greenwald?

  And I get a lot, a lot of Star Wars content service to me, which is just like, state of the franchise. But it's like, attempting to be exciting. And it's like Mandalorian Grogu, it's coming out soon, there are huts in it. And then it's like, the new Jedi Order, Daisy Ridley stars in this exciting film set 50 years after episode nine, currently on its fourth screenwriter. Like, that's, that's, honestly, this is like being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.

• 15:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Andy Greenwald?

  Like, your uniforms are very, very cool, but every year, it's the same disappointing shit.

• 15:13Chris Ryan?

  That is the best way of putting it.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  It deserves better, as do the fine people of Pittsburgh.

• 15:17Chris Ryan?

  Um, you're just talking about reboots, let's get off of Star Wars, because I feel like we've kind of, we've kind of hit the pinata a lot. I, I do want to talk to you a little bit about the Friday Night Lights reboot, because news broke today on Deadline, um, that that will be making its way to Peacock after a bidding war between Peacock and Netflix.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  You don't often see Peacock outspending Netflix for something.

• 15:38Chris Ryan?

  I was wondering whether or not there was some nuance to that negotiation where Peacock having some kind of, would Peacock, would Universal have to get paid off either way? Because they own the rights to the whole franchise?

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  Universal gets paid either way, yeah, but I, I, at least, assuming, I mean, I have no knowledge of this deal whatsoever, but at least, assuming it, that, that this town still runs under the same rubric it's run under for the last 10 years, the studio is getting, is seeking the best deal possible, even when it's within the same corporate ecosystem.

• 16:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Andy Greenwald?

  Um, so generally, Netflix wins those.

• 16:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so Universal Television's producing the series, it comes from Jason Kadam's, uh, obviously the original showrunner of the, of the beloved series. Pete Berg and Brian Grazer will help executive produce the new series, I wonder if he'll return as a director, he's got a series on Netflix coming early next year called American Primeval. The new iteration of Friday Night Lights, uh, will be set following a devastating hurricane, when a ragtag high school football team and their damaged interim coach make an unlikely bid for a Texas high school state championship and become a beacon of light for their town. So, that's just a logline.

• 16:50Andy Greenwald?

  He wasn't damaged in the hurricane, right? We don't have any?

• 16:53Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it's supposed to be like a difficult man interim coach, you know?

• 16:57Andy Greenwald?

  I'm listening.

• 16:58Chris Ryan?

  Obviously, there will probably be some connective tissue to the original, so while nobody is like, kind of been announced as returning to West Texas, I would be surprised if they did not have people coming back, you know, at this point.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Chris Ryan?

  Would any of the original high schoolers have children who are in high school now?

• 17:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, some of the members, some of the characters were, you know, quite promiscuous. So it's possible.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  That's not what I meant.

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's very possible.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  I just can't remember how old they were.

• 17:29Andy Greenwald?

  Like on the show, in the show timeline?

• 17:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the characters were like 18 in 2006, so it's 2024.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 17:36Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, I think.

• 17:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's possible.

• 17:38Chris Ryan?

  Could Tyra's kid be?

• 17:40Andy Greenwald?

  Tyra went off to college. She's, she's living a professional life.

• 17:43Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:44Andy Greenwald?

  I think that, I think that she got out of.

• 17:45Chris Ryan?

  All right. I definitely imagine that there are going to be people coming back.

• 17:48Andy Greenwald?

  There are going to be people. And yes, of course, they could fudge that because who knows when the show's actually going to come out. And let me say also, I was kind of surprised by this. It did feel, and obviously, we're still a ways away from getting any actual casting news or evidence that it's being shot. But the fact that there was a bidding war, the fact that there's a logline suggests that this is much further along than anyone had anticipated. I think word broke like a few weeks ago that this was a possibility.

• 18:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Andy Greenwald?

  And I kind of thought it was just like a lot of these other, you know, kind of maybe we should bring it right back.

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  It's like a test balloon.

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, or that it's something that everyone would like to do if they could find the right take.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 18:24Andy Greenwald?

  Like, like Battlestar Galactica reboot or whatever the reboot du jour has been over the last few years. And no, they seem to have it and they're, they're running with it and it seemed to have been attractive enough for Netflix to be involved. And I would also say that the Netflix involvement definitely, definitely backs up my personal gut feeling assertion that the show is much bigger culturally than it, uh, ever was when it was on the air.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that it's a highly influential show. You can still see traces of it, for instance, in Taylor Sheridan shows, especially Landman. I think obviously it serves as like a graduating class for a bunch of really significant actors, most specifically Jesse Plemons and Michael B. Jordan. The logline does remind me of the Voodoo plot.

• 19:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  Uh, which is interesting, which was one that was pretty quickly discarded, I think, after.

• 19:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was kind of a misfire.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Sort of half a season, right? But it was an interesting one. Um, that was all just hot, right? Was Voodoo?

• 19:22Andy Greenwald?

  Was it?

• 19:23Chris Ryan?

  Thought it was.

• 19:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's amazing. I didn't realize that. I, I was just going to say that the, the cultural footprint of it is even bigger than I realized because I don't know if I've mentioned this, but recently I've been working abroad and, uh, the majority of the people that I'm working with. Could not name a single position on an American football team, but fucking love this show.

• 19:43Chris Ryan?

  Have watched Friday Night Lights.

• 19:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and I think it actually proves, it's like proof of concept, right? Because even when Friday Night Lights premiered on NBC all those years ago, there were articles about how sports shows aren't for quadrant. You know, they aren't going to appeal to everyone, and the show continually did that.

• 19:59Chris Ryan?

  Do your British colleagues think that all of American football is just Hail Marys at the last second?

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  With explosions in the sky playing, which, you know what I do actually sometimes in down, down moments in the room is I show them footage of the 2024 Eagles passing offense. They're like, well, this doesn't look poetic at all.

• 20:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, is Matt Saracen better than Jalen Hurts?

• 20:18Andy Greenwald?

  In certain situations, perhaps.

• 20:20Chris Ryan?

  So that's interesting. I didn't have anything else really except for.

• 20:23Andy Greenwald?

  Well, but so are you pro this? Like, do you feel like this is a, is this a perpetually seaworthy vessel? That could be rebooted many, many times.

• 20:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I definitely think there's a world in which Friday Night Lights could have just been an indefinitely running series. You would have to get over, you know, allowing Coach Taylor to go to Penn or wherever he was coaching.

• 20:45Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like he went to, oh no, she went to Swarthmore or whatever, right? And then he was coaching high school at the end. I just did this on Stick the Landing.

• 20:50Chris Ryan?

  Coordinator for a college team at the end, wasn't he?

• 20:53Andy Greenwald?

  I just did this for Stick the Landing, like within the calendar year. And I could not tell you where he was coaching.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Did you ever contemplate it?

• 21:00Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sure I did, but it was hard to see through the tears in my eyes.

• 21:02Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 21:03Andy Greenwald?

  Such a beautiful finale. But you didn't confirm, that was Aldisaj as Ray Voodoo Tatum.

• 21:08Chris Ryan?

  That's right. So I think that that show could have just gone on forever. You know, you could have just kept bringing in, there's no reason why Friday Night Lights couldn't have been Grey's Anatomy.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  I agree, and I do like, not to harp on that one line in a log line, but the idea that they're actively steering away from the head coach being a saint, basically, in the way that Coach Taylor was and saying that he is damaged.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Andy Greenwald?

  A little, a little Bad News Bears-y, maybe?

• 21:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, it might be actually, I wonder how much it might even go back to the Bissinger book, which I think has been pretty thoroughly adapted at this point. And, you know, like the Riggins character, I, you know, it'll be interesting to see whether they make any of the kids echoes of the original characters.

• 21:48Andy Greenwald?

  I also think that for the large, the bigger picture industry stuff, I don't, again, I don't know anything about what went on behind the scenes, but it speaks well of Universal and NBC and its various tentacled forms and Peacock, that they recognize that this is a cornerstone franchise for a certain network conglomerate of businesses, and you have to keep it in-house. I feel like Peacock's on a hot streak because Kaya's minutes are up watching the service, I know, and Day of the Jackal got a Golden Globe nomination.

• 22:21Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 22:22Andy Greenwald?

  And so now, bang, bang, bang, here we go. But I don't.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  He makes a trend and we start talking about it on this.

• 22:28Andy Greenwald?

  But I do think about, I know this is, seems like really, really reaching, but I do think about a lot, the time when NBC let Fox outbid them for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that I honestly didn't watch very much of, but is perfectly enjoyable and good. But that, like a Mike Schur comedy with a Saturday Night Live alum leading it, should never have left the building. I'm sure this is what Yankees fans are feeling right now. And ultimately, it did come back to NBC. But I do think, for, maybe this is just such outdated thinking, but I still, for whatever reason, think that NBC has a certain, uh, brand identity.

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they have a very strong, kind of like, like you would recognize it on the shelf, in terms of like, the logo, the catch tune. I think that their comedies still have, or their comedies did have a certain kind of recognizable patina, but like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what a Peacock drama is right now.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's Bel-Air, season four. So maybe now it will be this.

• 23:27Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 23:28Andy Greenwald?

  Good for them.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Do you want to get into Say Nothing?

• 23:30Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I just want to say one thing that you were, yeah, I, you know, I feel like people say that I don't give you credit enough for things. I heard you say that right before we started recording, in terms of just promoting.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  The podcast that we have.

• 23:42Andy Greenwald?

  Or you, just like, you being out there.

• 23:44Chris Ryan?

  Look at these noodles. And it's like, you also did a podcast today.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I don't, you know, I'm a very modest person. I didn't make the noodles. You know? It's fine.

• 23:53Chris Ryan?

  You could just direct all the praise on to me.

• 23:56Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, Chris really carried me this. You saw one.

• 23:58Chris Ryan?

  You could just be like, I am the like, the ramen guy. You know what I mean? Look at him.

• 24:01Andy Greenwald?

  This, this week, there was one set of footprints in the podcast sand. That was because Chris was carrying me. That's most weeks. No, I want to say that I am grateful that you reminded me that What We Do in the Shadows now in its final season.

• 24:13Chris Ryan?

  I talked about that with Joe a couple of weeks ago, and it is, it is just a remarkable series. Talk about a show that could have gone on forever.

• 24:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and I think they did their best to do that. I mean, they gave it like a multi-season renewal. Six. This is season six. I think it's ending next week.

• 24:26Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 24:27Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to just apologize. You know, again, I'm accountable. I kind of walked away because I just wasn't feeling the Guillermo is turned plot in season five.

• 24:35Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 24:35Andy Greenwald?

  And then it just walked away. So dumb.

• 24:38Chris Ryan?

  Have you?

• 24:39Andy Greenwald?

  This season.

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  Which one of like, because they've done a bunch of really amazing parodies this season. Which ones you, have you enjoyed?

• 24:44Andy Greenwald?

  I really am enjoying the Wall Street stuff. The, the railroad episode also is so good. And I, I was enjoying the season. I'm not, we're not going to spoil anything, but to be this, not just this funny for this long, but to be this fucking stupid in the best way.

• 25:01Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 25:02Andy Greenwald?

  Is outrageous. And there was, I don't know what, I mean, I don't know what any of us were thinking in 2020, but I went back to like the Jackie Daytona episode in season two, which was, I think for some people, the moment that they started becoming aware of the show.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think the big jumping, like the biggest sort of splash it made was when it had all the cameos as the other vampire.

• 25:20Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, and like Nick Kroll and the.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  The vampire council.

• 25:21Andy Greenwald?

  With the hat. Oh, oh, oh, that one. Oh, when Taika showed up and, and other celebrities.

• 25:26Chris Ryan?

  I think Tilda Swinton was in it. Yeah.

• 25:27Andy Greenwald?

  Tilda Swinton was on it. For sure. I just went back to the Jackie Daytona episode in which Matt Berry's character Laszlo runs away from Mark Hamill's character, who's mad about basically an unpaid Airbnb fee. And in the span of one act of the show, and the show is like 20 minutes, so one act is maybe seven and a half minutes. He moves to rural Pennsylvania, opens a bar, and then gets incredibly invested in high school girls volleyball.

• 25:55Andy Greenwald?

  And for some reason, when I was remembering it in the years since I first saw this episode, I was like, ah, a masterpiece of arch comic timing. I watched it again, having forgotten that the real linchpin of the episode is that when he puts a toothpick in his mouth, no one recognizes him as a vampire.

• 26:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  Fuck, God bless. God bless them.

• 26:12Chris Ryan?

  Was that in Altoona? Is that where you opened the bar?

• 26:14Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't named. It definitely had like Lancaster-y vibes.

• 26:17Chris Ryan?

  You spent any time in Altoona?

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  No, why, why you mention Altoona? It's been in the news recently.

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  It's like pretty far west, right? In Pennsylvania?

• 26:23Andy Greenwald?

  I always thought it was sort of central. Were you worried about like smearing our beloved hometown with bad national news?

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  It is a very specific place for him to go to, but I guess, you know.

• 26:33Andy Greenwald?

  What is your, I feel like you don't really mess with Pennsylvania writ large.

• 26:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm trying to think of like, I don't think I've been to that many places in Pennsylvania. I've been everywhere in Philadelphia.

• 26:45Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, twice.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  And I've not been that many places past like Valley Forge.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  I think I've been to Harrisburg once.

• 26:52Andy Greenwald?

  How was it?

• 26:53Chris Ryan?

  Didn't leave an impression.

• 26:54Andy Greenwald?

  Did you really make an impression?

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  I'm not trying to be a dick. It just really didn't. I don't even know if I've ever been to Scranton, if I'm being completely honest.

• 26:59Andy Greenwald?

  Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 27:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'm a, I'm a Nipa native. Lived there to the ripe age of one. You can, you gotta tell it in my cultural attitudes and mannerisms.

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• 27:40Chris Ryan?

  I really want to talk to you about Say Nothing. Let's, let's get serious here.

• 27:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 27:43Chris Ryan?

  We kinda gave this show a short shrift because of travel, but also because it was a binge watch. You can never really tell.

• 27:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  Where people are in this story. We're gonna do full spoilers, so if you haven't watched Say Nothing, we're gonna be talking about things that happened in the second half of the season.

• 28:00Andy Greenwald?

  But before we do.

• 28:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:02Andy Greenwald?

  You guys should wa-- I'm gonna turn to camera. You should watch Say Nothing. Say Nothing is one of the most exceptional shows of the year. I think we are going to be talking about this more.

• 28:12Chris Ryan?

  On Monday, yeah.

• 28:12Andy Greenwald?

  On Monday, when we do our top 10.

• 28:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Andy Greenwald?

  I know that few networks are as savvy or as thoughtful about like user interface and user data and how to get shows in front of people than the FX Disney Hulu Corporation. But I do feel like it was kind of a bummer that it was just dumped as a binge.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that this could have been one of those like 3-3-3.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Like, I think that there could have been some argument to be made that this could have gone up in batches.

• 28:41Chris Ryan?

  I watched the first five, I think, when I talked to Joe or something like that. And then, pretty evenly, like, one after another. I would say the second half of the season is incredibly dark. And there are some episodes where you're just like, I just do not want to start another episode of this right now.

• 28:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it is almost anti-binge.

• 29:00Chris Ryan?

  Especially the hunger strike episode. You're just kind of like, alright, I need to take a break.

• 29:03Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel like your guy, Pat Keefe, who was on the show.

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Andy Greenwald?

  And Josh the Tumor, who's the showrunner, have said in other interviews that like, they did view it, even though it's not an even number of episodes, that basically through five, it's, well, it's not a party, but it is a, again, not a party, not a celebration. I want to be careful, but I'm trying to phrase it correctly because what they did say was the back half is the hangover.

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and I think that the way I would phrase it, and one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, was this show does a pretty astonishing job at illustrating how you pay for who you were when you were in your twenties, when you're older in life.

• 29:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  And I think that that's like a universal phenomenon of both, in terms of the things that you regret that you did, the things you regret you didn't do, the way your body starts paying for your vices and your habits.

• 29:56Andy Greenwald?

  And your sacrifices.

• 29:57Chris Ryan?

  And your sacrifices. And I think when, you know, the show starts, and I'll talk like as if people have watched some of it at least, but-- You know, Maxine Peake plays an older version of Dolores Price, who is essentially the protagonist of the show, not the hero. And it starts out as a framing device. I think it's kind of like cool. There's this thing called The Belfast Project, where people who were in and around the troubles in specifically the 70s are talking to a man and basically leaving like an oral history of the times that will be only heard long after their death. At least that's the premise. And you're watching and you're like, good, good framework for a show.

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  It kind of works as a nice little nesting device. And then there is a switch essentially in episode seven, if I remember correctly, where one of the great needle drops in recent TV history happens. And we essentially jump into-

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  Is this the suede needle drop?

• 30:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah.

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  And we jump into the older Dolores Price's contemporary reality, like her moment, which is in and around the time when the peace agreement was basically being negotiated, which is also really like around when I was in Ireland for six months. Not that that matters.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel like you played some role?

• 31:20Chris Ryan?

  No, but I remember the time very vividly. And so it's interesting to see some of that stuff get played out when I kind of remember reading newspapers there when I was there. And I thought it was remarkable. I thought it was a remarkable thing to take something where you're like, oh, I can kind of see this is like the typical prestige TV flashback within a flashback thing, but you never really have that moment. And instead, they use it as a fulcrum, like a turning point for the entire series.

• 31:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Chris Ryan?

  And turn this into a show about guilt and regret and drama.

• 31:55Andy Greenwald?

  And purpose.

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  And purpose. And the- The way that the older actors play these parts where when they were young, they're so vibrant and they're so honestly romantic and sexy and exciting and thrilling. And now they're all compromised or they're all falling apart. I thought it was just an amazing feat. Before we get into anything about recreating historical events and everything else, like that is important.

• 32:23Andy Greenwald?

  This show is a masterpiece of construction. And again, that's another reason why it's, I'm not just dinging the binge strategy, the, the, the, the binging, the dumping and binging strategy because it hamstrings us as podcasters. But because so much careful and very intelligent thought was given into how to break the story into a television story. It's not just the first half versus second half. It's the way every performance speaks to each other across time. You know, we will speak specifically about some of the actors and how it's just uncanny, how they were cast. Not just that they look like their younger counterparts, but that they look like, they, they embody the faded glory of those counterparts so that they are the same person, even if there's physical differences.

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there are these little, like little tricks or filigrees that if you've been watching Prestige TV for a while, you will pick up on. And one of them is if people have started the series or finished the series, you will know that it starts with, literally with a bang. It is an incredibly attention grabbing opening, which details the real life abduction of a Belfast mother of ten named Jean McConville. And what you don't, in that moment, I was like, aha. Again, I knew nothing about this project or how it was going to play out. I was like, well, this is how you do it. If you're telling a historical story, you do the thing that we have started to criticize as a trope in other television shows,

• 33:47Andy Greenwald?

  which is you start at the most exciting part and then say three months earlier, six years earlier, just to, just to wet the whistle and get people interested. At no point did I understand that we were witnessing an action that would come to represent everything about the series, that it was correctly chosen. And I think Patrick Raddenkeif chose that as a linchpin moment of his book, but also for the dramatic arc of the series. That they would be true to the history, or at least the history as portrayed by Raden Keefe in his book, but that we were being let, we were being placed onto a ride that was considered throughout.

• 34:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  The show was going to end with echoes of the way it began. It's, it seems like a small thing, but it felt really, really significant and I just walked away from it admiring it so much. The other point is one that you said about like all of the emotional weight of the back half of the season. Someone early on, whether it was FX, the producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, Josh the Tumor, everybody involved, they were like, history doesn't really work as a TV series. History exists, there are smart historical shows, but the very best ones, the ones that elevate and transcend the kind of biopic nature or the Wikipedia the series nature, and I'm thinking specifically of Chernobyl, and I think you're like, these shows have a lot to say to each other, including they share some cast members.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  Is that they are first and foremost, like all good TV shows, about the emotional journey of characters.

• 35:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Andy Greenwald?

  And of people that you come to care about in all of their conflicted glory. And then the troubles, the setting, the history and the history lesson, which it was for me, become not secondary, but the backdrop to those journeys. These were decisions made at the highest level early and then executed, and I cannot say enough about that because neither of us are qualified to sit here and be like, aha, if you want to know about the troubles, check out this nine-part FX series on Disney+ this weekend, it's a fun ride. I learned a hell of a lot, but I've also now, you know, supplementing it on, by looking at Wikipedia and other places that you recommend on the internet. But what I can say is that this is just a absolutely brilliantly constructed television series.

• 35:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  About all the things that I'm interested in as a television viewer.

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about that idea of what the responsibility is of any work of storytelling to historical accuracy. I think that we've discussed this in a variety of different circumstances. I, I have a pretty high tolerance for, I guess it's like authorial independence, you know? Like I'm watching something for the purposes of being entertained, not for the purposes of being properly educated. And if there's any justice, like what'll happen is people will watch this show and then they'll inform themselves by reading the book, there's lots of incredible works to, to read about the troubles. There has been some criticism about not only the

• 36:41Chris Ryan?

  the sort of balance that you're talking about where it foregrounds the characters. The characters do some expository dialogue, but I think it's stylishly done. I think it's well done. But there is less kind of like, here is the everyday kind of the oppression of the occupying British forces. Here is, you know, like what happened to Helen McConville between age 15 and when she's reintroduced to the story later in the series. There's less, um, maybe blow by blow documentation of bombs going off, people getting shot like that. It's really all about what these sisters experience.

• 37:22Chris Ryan?

  And then later on, like what this family experiences at the, at the very end of the kind of, of the series. Any thoughts about whether or not Say Nothing had a greater responsibility to document or depict what was happening in Northern Ireland at any given moment?

• 37:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's tough. It's a very tough one. And it's very, again, it's easy for us to commentate on it from this vantage point. I think it's worth noting that the, the angriest voices about this show, one of the McConville children.

• 37:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Michael.

• 37:49Andy Greenwald?

  Michael is furious about this show and considers it a violation and a re-traumatization of his family. And also Marion Price.

• 37:59Chris Ryan?

  I believe she's suing Disney.

• 38:00Andy Greenwald?

  Is suing Disney over the depiction of her character in the show.

• 38:06Andy Greenwald?

  I guess, isn't there like an old journalism thing about like, it's good if everyone's mad? That's, that there's some, there's some truth to that.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  The show also obviously had to put a title card at the end of every episode saying that Jerry Adams has denied any involvement in these crimes. Yeah.

• 38:20Andy Greenwald?

  They, it was vetted, it was considered. And, you know, I've seen Josh the Tumor talk in interviews that like the, the, the book, the bestselling book was not only, you know, rigorously vetted by its author, a New Yorker reporter, but also has existed in the public sphere now for over five years and has been argued over and picked apart. So they felt fairly confident in what they were doing. But the, the, the deeper question is one that is, it's really hard to answer. I mean, I think in a weird way. The broadest, my broadest response is that the creatives have responsibility only to their creativity and to their emotional sense of artistic and aesthetic truth. Like, in a grandiose way that like, when David Lynch makes Twin Peaks: The Return,

• 39:04Andy Greenwald?

  and the people speak a certain way, because that's true

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Andy Greenwald?

  to him, that's also comparable to Josh the Tumor's being like, "This is how Belfast should feel in my television show."

• 39:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 39:17Andy Greenwald?

  It gets dicey.

• 39:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Andy Greenwald?

  Because we are dealing not just with real people, and real trauma, and real violence, and real loss, but we're relatively close to a lot of it. You know, Jerry Adams is still very much alive, denying that he was ever involved in the IRA, even though it seems like that one is a little bit tougher to hold water. I think, and I saw, and maybe responding to as well, like, New York Magazine has covered the show very well with a lot of interviews, like Anthony Boyle had a good interview on there. Nicholas Quad did a great interview with Patrick Radenkeef and Josh the Tumor that I recommend checking out. Nicholas also wrote a rave review of the show. And then more recently, I think you probably saw this piece, Roxana Hadadi had a piece basically criticizing the show, which I think is a valid and interesting argument, where she was basically saying, "Context matters in a show like this."

• 40:01Andy Greenwald?

  And the show let everyone down by not giving more context. Now, part of me, the person who, you know, still works as a writer-producer in television is like, "That context would have added $100 million to the budget of a show"

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 40:14Andy Greenwald?

  "that I feel like was a tough sell no matter what, even to deep-pocketed Disney in this economy." But secondarily, I don't know if showing all of your work, and showing the ripple effect of every action within a larger contextual community of like, the cost of all the violence, what it felt like to live under British rule outside of a few very deftly drawn strokes, if that helps. In fact, it might muddy it, because then it suggests that you are, in your nine episodes, trying to tell the definitive story of the troubles, when the thing that I can't get over about the show is that it makes a really, really, not radical, but deeply compelling and surprising point about youthful political radicalism,

• 40:56Andy Greenwald?

  which is that, in some ways, it's like falling in love, or like, getting into theater, in that you give yourself to it so completely in the hopes of finding transcendence, and then life keeps going.

• 41:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, and I also feel like the two Price sisters are a very, very effective...

• 41:17Chris Ryan?

  Pair of lenses to look at that through. Because for Dolores, it's perhaps, there's a romance to it. There's a main character part to it. There is obviously a glamour to it.

• 41:29Andy Greenwald?

  She wanted to be an artist. She married to an actor, Stephen Ray.

• 41:32Chris Ryan?

  For Marion, it's different. I think Marion is her father's daughter and I think Marion is a true believer in this show. And I think all the way up until the very end is like, no, like, I made a decision what to do with my life and for what I'm fighting for. And I'm, and I'm going to do it all the way to the end. Um, and I think that there is, they're, they're one of like, the great depictions of siblings I've seen on TV in a long time. I, I thought both the younger performers are obviously so vital and they have so much vitality and like, they're so exciting to watch. And then the older actresses who take on the roles are just, they are exactly how you think that would wind up

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  once those people got into late middle age.

• 42:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and the, the inflection point, the moment that changes, is a moment when they don't die. Right? And there's a absolutely brilliantly filmed, brilliantly staged, devastating to watch hunger strike episode that ends with them surviving.

• 42:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:35Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, others have talked about this, that like, the way it's depicted, like, this is almost like a sliding doors glitch in time moment. They planned to be martyrs, you know, and the, and the glamour of it and the romance of it and the self sacrifice and the political ideological certainty. And then they didn't. And then what? You know, it's like the, it's the graduate ending of the life of a young, uh, soldier, basically.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Andy Greenwald?

  And the way that the show articulates conflict, I don't just mean between, um, unionists and the, the provisional IRA, but like, uh, conflict between the, internal conflict between people.

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Andy Greenwald?

  How you love-

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  Between Brendan and Jerry and between Dolores and Marion, yeah.

• 43:21Andy Greenwald?

  How you love people deeply by, both by blood and by circumstance. But maybe when life goes on for a long time, as it doesn't for everybody, you might not be on the same road anymore. You know, and suddenly you look up one day and you're in completely different places. You're at completely different levels of society, in case of Jerry Adams. I mean, it's, it's- It's a remarkable, it's a remarkable story about time.

• 43:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Andy Greenwald?

  As much as anything else.

• 43:45Chris Ryan?

  There's, there's, you know, there's moments where characters have to say like, this is the state of things right now and explains like where the peace process is.

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  And characters are always watching TV news when they're doing other stuff.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  They're like, they're making cake while the, the thing that is being said about them.

• 44:00Andy Greenwald?

  But that's like you in a hotel room.

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 44:02Andy Greenwald?

  You always got it on.

• 44:03Chris Ryan?

  But

• 44:06Chris Ryan?

  there's also a lot of real subtle beauty here. I mean, there's a moment when the McConville children, now grown, think that they've

• 44:16Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:17Chris Ryan?

  found the remains of their mother. They've been told that they might have something at some like car park that's been built over like a cliffside.

• 44:24Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't want to interrupt you though. It's just, it's just really remarkable to have a show that is, gives you the, the, the edge of your seat. Like, oh, this is, we're watching a crime movie.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Andy Greenwald?

  And when people disappear from the screen, it's like, well, this is what happens. There are bodies in crime movies. And then there's hours left and the people who those bodies left behind are saying, where are our loved ones? And then they become

• 44:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  the emotional anchor of the show and searching for the bodies.

• 44:47Chris Ryan?

  And also the tonal shift to go from a real rock and roll first four episodes that culminates with one of the best episodes of this, of the year to me, which is Evil Little Maniacs, the, the episode that's set in London when Marion and Dollers go to, to bomb London. It turns on the hunger strike episode when they are in prison in the next. And then the, the change of this tone of this show goes from one of frankly youthful celebration. I mean incredibly hot people doing, you know, like trying to change the world to broken people trying to figure out what their lives meant.

• 45:29Chris Ryan?

  And the ends of some of these characters is so heartbreaking. And on top of that, you know, so I was describing that scene where the McConville kids come to this car park. You can get the sense through a couple of gestures and one or two lines that they're not very close.

• 45:45Andy Greenwald?

  You know, brilliantly done.

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  And it's not like, oh.

• 45:48Andy Greenwald?

  They were split up.

• 45:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because they were split up when they were kids, but also just because like some of them are trying to move on and some of them are still obsessed with finding the truth and, you know, they all are basically corralled together in this, this trailer while they're waiting for somebody to dig up a parking lot to see if her, their mother is buried there. And they're, you know, telling stories and stuff, but you can tell like they're all going through their own personal experiences with this. It was, I thought that was really, this show did not have to go there and it did, and it was, it was really rewarding.

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  And the thought and care in it. Like, again, and I'm not specifically arguing against one well articulated thing in Vulture, but like, you only have limited resources. And I think that there's certainly when it's like pie in the sky, you can do anything. You're planning your show. You're trying to put your fence posts down within the confines of the story that, that was in the, the Say Nothing book. You're like, well, we can also show this happening. We can show these bombs going off. We can show the police presence. We can show more people's houses being searched. We understand the anguish. Or you can take some of that time and resources and you can find the right actors to play Archie McConville as an adult.

• 46:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:56Andy Greenwald?

  A guy who has maybe less than a dozen lines and less than five minutes of screen time, but they're indelible. And they're considered. And it's, it's not just showing respect to the family and the story. It's showing respect to the viewer because that is the show that they are, that they are making.

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Andy Greenwald?

  Ultimately, there was, and I'm sure it would played out in like a million little like budget decisions. So there wasn't like a grandiosity of purpose to it, but like ultimately the show is a, is a factor, is a product of the decisions to make an emotional human story whenever possible. Maybe that wasn't the intent. Sometimes maybe there were, you know, they had to cut great sequences that would have addressed some of Roxanne's concerns, but I just feel like time and time again, they chose to do the thing that to my mind is the harder thing. And, and we should say like, the cast is unbelievable. Like we are so.

• 47:46Andy Greenwald?

  We are living in an era where like, how many shows premiere where we can name the first four to six people on the call sheet, just because so many great actors are doing TV right now. We're also talking about the agency, where like the first, literally the first six people are famous and they're on the show also. Going into this, I feel like, to watching Say Nothing, I feel like maybe Rory Kinnear, who shows up in the first half of the season as the-

• 48:11Chris Ryan?

  He shows up in two episodes, I think.

• 48:12Andy Greenwald?

  As Frank Kidson. Like, okay, I know who he is. I recognize Anthony Boyle, he was on Manhunt and he's been in a bunch of other stuff that we've seen recently, but I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup. And now I walk away from the show being like, I don't know if there's a better performance this year than Lola Pettigrew as the young Dolores. I think that what Hazel Duke does as Marion Price, and then again as the older version to the Maxine Peake you mentioned as the older Dolores, Helen Bean as the older Marion, like, it's not just that they're good performances, they are true performances. And so unselfish in terms of maintaining the same presence as real people, both to the audience and to each other. Anthony Boyle as Brendan Hughes and then Tom Von Lawler-

• 48:53Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to say something about Tom Von Lawler, because like, you know, this is another character that if you're just watching the first few episodes, you're like, cool, like, Dark is still there and is another narrator-

• 49:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah, the older version, yeah.

• 49:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And that character's demise, I guess, but also the last few episodes that he's featured in, where he has been shrunk, almost by the weight of history, and it's not even guilt as much as just kind of like, I can't believe like I gave my life to this thing and this is what it wound up being, after the peace process is over. And his last episode, where he's just kind of like absentmindedly like kind of patting around his pockets and looking around his apartment before he goes to his construction job-

• 49:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Chris Ryan?

  And dies of a heart attack, is like- This guy in the first five episodes is this lion. And everything that you would want to kind of like imagine the heroic Republican, you know,

• 49:52Andy Greenwald?

  impassioned.

• 49:52Chris Ryan?

  warrior as, and then like at the end of his life, he's like, somebody get me a fucking cup of coffee. Like, I'm just, I'm really like.

• 49:58Andy Greenwald?

  I'm part of a construction crew.

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Andy Greenwald?

  Just, just building a new part of Belfast.

• 50:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Andy Greenwald?

  He, I don't know if it's a cautionary tale, but he doesn't burn up, he fades away. And it's, it's painful, it's painful to watch. I, I also think that there's such subtleties to the performance. Again, like in the, um, I feel like you do this as well, but like the, the, the deep dive of research after you finish something, but like I try not to be spoiled by history if I can help it. And then all of a sudden I want to know everything that, um, that Dark Brendan, you know, when he was imprisoned also, um, did a hunger strike.

• 50:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Andy Greenwald?

  And they thought about portraying that and then they realized, you know, dramatically, they needed to focus on Dullers and Marion and make that episode what it was. But then they basically asked Tom Von Lawler to play a man who has been on a hunger strike.

• 50:48Chris Ryan?

  Skinnier, yeah.

• 50:49Andy Greenwald?

  Skinnier, but also diminished.

• 50:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and has a different relationship with his body. And he does that. These actors are just wild. And like, uh, the guy who plays Joe Linsky.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  Adam Bess, right?

• 51:02Andy Greenwald?

  His name's Adam Bess.

• 51:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's in Black Doves and he's also in Kneecap. He's incredible in Kneecap.

• 51:07Andy Greenwald?

  And I just want to watch him all the time. It's an incredible marriage of subject matter and place and then also community.

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  Of actors, be pulling actors from Ireland and Northern Ireland.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  I'll say this on the, as like a last point is I definitely have been thinking a lot about Marion Price and Michael McConville's problems with the series.

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:28Chris Ryan?

  And maybe problems with the. The fact that like a bestselling book that was critically acclaimed and now a series on made by a major media conglomerate, one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world.

• 51:39Andy Greenwald?

  All Americans, basically.

• 51:41Chris Ryan?

  Is, you know, this is a money-making program and, and that their lives are changed because of it. And I think it's pretty easy to say, well, you're either on this side of this, or you're on that side of this. And in terms of how they feel, not in terms of, um, of the conflict itself. And I think it's just worth, I think it's just okay sometimes to just be like, that's very interesting that that's what their takeaway is.

• 52:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Chris Ryan?

  And that that's how they're feeling about it. And I like, definitely acknowledge that. And it certainly uh, impacts the way I talk about the show. Like, I'm trying to be a little bit more careful and a little bit more open, uh, precise about my language with it. We've seen in a couple of circumstances over the last couple of years. Um, you know, this, this situation reminded me a little bit of We Own This City. Where the end of that series, the, we had George Pelikanos come on the, on our show and talk about the end of that series and what it showed. And his confidence that what they showed was what he believed to have happened.

• 52:45Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:45Chris Ryan?

  Uh, despite certain people who are involved in that case, being like, that is not what I think happened. I think everybody has every right to what they believe. It's, I think it's tough when you see something like, say Monsters, the Menendez Brothers story, and it becomes

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  almost like we need to now rectify things, or people almost get involved with these true crime stories as if they're not real people. So, I don't, I don't really know if I have like a statement or a question for you right there. It's just more like, I, I think that the way that the series ended and then reading about the series and reading about how some of the people involved feel about it is important work just because it makes you a little bit more tempered and you're like, it is not, it's not just a show.

• 53:30Andy Greenwald?

  They've done something rare in that this is ultimately a project that celebrates, um, complexity and messiness and ambiguity. And in fact, that is, that's the show's.

• 53:44Andy Greenwald?

  Language that it speaks, you know, you could walk away from this as we have feeling absolutely turned around about every single person that's presented. I guess maybe other than the McConvilles who just suffered.

• 53:57Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 53:57Andy Greenwald?

  But, you know, the show even, the show gives a certain logic, cold and calculating, but logic to Jerry Adams, you know, to the point of like, well, the peace process demanded these things.

• 54:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:11Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and if the result is peace, then that was always the goal or what was the goal, you know, and then you go back and then you see these moments land on characters like Dollars and Marion's father, you know, who I think is a fascinating character that haunts it, who raises his children to be revolutionaries.

• 54:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  And then also is given the dignity of just kind of growing old and fading away. And the deep disappointment of that.

• 54:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it's also like the compression of like the time in this series is fascinating because you do have characters and you feel that way when you're reading the book too. Where people are doing spells in jail and getting out and then having to get on with their lives or like this father is seeing this younger generation both achieve something he never thought would be achieved, but also not quite the way he wanted it achieved.

• 54:59Andy Greenwald?

  There's a moment late in the series when Marion Price is, is back at it, basically. And first she's sort of razzing her teenage kids who are just more concerned about what they're going to wear to school. And then she sees the SWAT team pull up and she lights a cigarette and tells her daughters to go upstairs because mommy's about to get arrested.

• 55:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Andy Greenwald?

  And the way that that moment is performed is one ultimately of relief that the world is snapping back into a place that makes sense.

• 55:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:26Andy Greenwald?

  Cause that is what is meant to happen and that gives her a sense of purpose. And that's a wild thing to observe. And just ultimately, I think you're, you're asking the right questions. I think the show asked the right questions and the I mean, look, in 2024, end of the year, I'm excited that we're talking about an amazing show that is uncomfortable, that isn't easy. Another show that is likely to be on both of or some of our top 10 lists, or at least honorable mention, is Black Doves.

• 55:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Andy Greenwald?

  And when we talked about Black, the first half, we'll talk about the back half regardless of where it is on our lists, but like.

• 55:59Chris Ryan?

  Currently the number one show on Netflix.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  Is it?

• 56:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, people, people really get killed on that show. And that is not the point. You know what I mean?

• 56:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:09Andy Greenwald?

  So for a show to be like, actually, that is ultimately the point. I mean, that is what separates Dullers and Marion's, you know, youthful idols and like gap years from Stephen Ray's or other people, punk rockers.

• 56:25Chris Ryan?

  The actress who's like, I want to play you. And then they get into the deeper and deeper into the conversation. She's just like this, I don't want to do this. Yeah.

• 56:32Andy Greenwald?

  There's, there's a, there's a different weight and a different cost. And I think that it's important actually for viewers to get used to the idea of not being comforted by the art that they see all the time. Not being told that every dead body was a bad guy who definitely didn't have family, who didn't matter, who we won't spend any time on because it's funnier to see the way that his arterial blood lands on Keira Knightley's face. I don't mean to beat up on Black Doves because I actually have already articulated and feel like that show gets its balance right and is clever and smart and fun.

• 57:00Chris Ryan?

  And it's all about what are you trying to do here?

• 57:02Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  Like, I can go either way. I can go lioness. I can go, I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like, I could.

• 57:08Andy Greenwald?

  We, we don't have to choose.

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Andy Greenwald?

  Which is the beauty of our consumer culture, but also of the wide variety of art that we have to play with these days. But like, it is good to go closer to the flame sometimes.

• 57:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Andy Greenwald?

  And particularly when, and, you know, we don't, I hope we do get to talk to more members of the creative team, but like, to the best of my knowledge and my like, just personal taste, I feel like they did, took this project on with a seriousness of purpose and a complexity of thought that is super rare. Like, I am, when, when, when we covered like the, we talked about the trailer, which was really good a few months ago. And I was sort of, couldn't believe that it was happening this fast. We had read that this was happening, but I didn't. Really understand that somehow the combination of Color Force, which is Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, and FX pushed this over the finish line with no stars, with no watering down of anything.

• 58:02Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe ultimately, you know, Bob Iger was like, just dump it all. Like, let's see what we, let's cut our losses. I don't mean to put it on him. But I mean, maybe the artistic bona fides are also why we ended up with the commercial.

• 58:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 58:17Andy Greenwald?

  Dump that we got.

• 58:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 58:19Andy Greenwald?

  Um, who knows, but I think it's, I think it's crazy that it got made and that it is as thoughtful as it is. And just to circle all the way back, like, I definitely think this is the best historical television program since Chernobyl. And I wonder if some of the friction about it is just the proximity. Because Chernobyl was done, you know, 40 years after the event and the event itself. The players, I mean, those that were remarkably survived, aren't going to talk to The Guardian. You know, or The New York Times. It feels like a world away and that distance allowed, um, Craig Mason, I'm sorry, to play with it.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, dramatize it.

• 59:00Andy Greenwald?

  To dramatize it, to tell the story he wanted to tell here. And I think this is a, it's more that than, than the other. But like, there is art here.

• 59:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think in both cases, in both, both series and both pieces of history. These are pieces of history that people were very intent on being like, people cannot know what happened here. You know, like, I think with Chernobyl, obviously, like, within the context of the show itself, but I think in generally in history, like, there was a giant, like, sort of effort to both escape blame, but say, like, it's not gonna be as bad or whatever, you know. People can go watch Chernobyl. In this series, I think that there is, the entire premise of the series is that these people are speaking for a project that will not come out until after they die. Because they cannot bear to be around, nor will they be allowed to live if it was found out that they were touts in the language of the show.

• 59:53Chris Ryan?

  So it's, it's, it's a difficult gymnastic trick to pull off where you're like, this is something that people did not want to reckon with.

• 1:00:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I think that, like, the most dramatic moments in. Humanity are these just inexplicable moments when a character looks up and is like, how did I find myself here?

• 1:00:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Andy Greenwald?

  What was the series of choices that led me here? And that's true in Hamlet, it's true in Breaking Bad, but there is something incredibly sharp about it happening in recent history, the way that the show portrays it. Not so that when we reach the moment, and I guess at the end of this long talk about it, we could talk about without too much specificity for people who are still being convinced by this long monologue, but like the very last moment of the show that really connects the Price sisters to the McConville kidnapping and everything else and all the regret and all the weight. When we get to that moment, it feels tactile, that question of how did we find ourselves here? Two sisters who love each other, and that love is remarkable and dramatic and passionate

• 1:01:00Andy Greenwald?

  and compelling, and something happens at the very end here that is, you can't really come back from it.

• 1:01:06Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:01:07Andy Greenwald?

  And yet, one of the sisters comforts the other, which is what she's been doing throughout. And if you talk about like complicity and things that make, you know, that fictionalize real life, like that is a moment when everyone is complicit in the way that really only art can do, in terms of the audience, in terms of the history and the characters made up and real.

• 1:01:26Chris Ryan?

  That's really well put. Let's end it there. Thanks to Kaya for producing us today. We'll be back on Monday with our 10 best episodes of the year.

• 1:01:33Andy Greenwald?

  No, 10 best shows.

• 1:01:35Chris Ryan?

  10 best shows of the year.

• 1:01:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Chris Ryan?

  Stay tuned now for my interview with Adam Brody from Nobody Wants Us.

• 1:02:15Chris Ryan?

  Adam, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast, man. It's a long time fan, although probably, I think I would put myself in a very like, small percentile of people who are like, huge Billy and Billy fans.

• 1:02:28Speaker 07

  That is the smallest percentile imaginable.

• 1:02:31Chris Ryan?

  Damsels in distress and Kid Detective, man, but like, it's been, I feel like you've had like this amazing run. I suppose like I would define that as like, you know, your, your adult era, like, you know, the last 10 years or so.

• 1:02:44Speaker 07

  It's my 30s is what that was.

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  That's your 30s. And, you know, you do, nobody wants this. I remember seeing it kind of pop up in my Netflix screeners and be like, oh, cool. This is coming out. This is great. I can't wait to watch it. And then it kind of puts the world in a headlock for a couple of weeks. And as somebody who's done shows that are awesome, but were a little seen, or done shows that like you have smaller parts on, you're, you're one of the leads of this. Do you have any kind of spidey sense about when something is working, or you think it's going to be received the way this show was?

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  No. I mean, the short answer is no. And it's funny to say that because in general, I do think, I think I do, you know, I most, you hear, I think it's sort of a cliche to hear, I never know, you never know. And I feel like normally I have a decent idea, at the very least of the quality, you know, you don't know how it's going to be received so much, but you know, if you're doing something good or not. And it seemed like Netflix, the Foster Sisters, who Aaron wrote this and Sarah produced it, and seemed to have a very nice, they're, they're very friendly with Ted Sarandos. And it seemed like we had fans at Netflix kind of the whole time. Not to say that they're, you know, they're, I mean,

• 1:03:59Speaker 07

  it wasn't without its, I think, occasional friction, but in general, I think it seemed like we had a lot of network support and internal fans of it from early on. So I felt like we were supported and I, we got positive feedback most of the time. But even so, even so, not, honestly, not in a million years, what I have thought, and I don't want to overstate like the cultural impact it has or anything, but still, you know, there were, I saw a few Halloween costumes. Let's put it that way. And like, not in a million years, would I have thought that was coming.

• 1:04:33Chris Ryan?

  It's basically you guys in Chapel Rowan. It's like neck and neck, you know, like as far as, I was curious whether or not, like, it's a different kind of...

• 1:04:43Chris Ryan?

  You know, as a, as a actor and as somebody who's participating in the show, is the feedback or like the sort of impact different? Do you notice it being different because it's a Netflix thing rather than something that's on Hulu, something that's on broadcast, something that's on, on cable?

• 1:04:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, yes, yes. I think it's all incumbent. I think, you know, without having the data to back it up, I mean, everyone, and you would know this better than I would, but I think if, if you have a television, you have Netflix and, you know, you probably go there first and it's the kind of the most fun interface. And so the people from all different walks of my life that have seen it, not for me, just happened to know me and come across it naturally, is very far reaching. And I had this other experience where, I mean, maybe it's less illustrative, but I did this show called Startup and it was this, uh, from like 2015 to 2018 and it was this cryptocurrency drama and it was on Crackle, which more or less didn't exist.

• 1:05:43Speaker 07

  And then the whole time that show was on, literally one person in Canada, uh, came up to me and said, I saw that show. So, um, in the entire time. And then during the pandemic, Netflix bought it and threw it on for a summer and all of a sudden, you know, a bunch of people were coming up to me and, and had seen it. So I don't know if that really highlights the point or not, but regardless, I think Netflix is a very powerful homepage.

• 1:06:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of come like the Kleenex tissues thing, right? Where it's like, people say they watch a lot of TV, but they mean they watch a lot of Netflix. And I don't think like even as somebody who covers this stuff, I've adjusted even to the point where it's like, no, it's like, if this is coming up on a Friday, people are going to see it in this home carousel when they open up the app and they're just going to give it a shot the way that they might not something like Startup where it was like probably harder to find, but even something that's on another streamer, like they're just not-

• 1:06:41Speaker 07

  Something on Apple, that's going to be harder.

• 1:06:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 07

  There's something, I wonder if- There's a, you know, I was thinking the other day about how, well, we don't have live television anymore. We don't all sit around or, or no, I was thinking about this in, in terms of movies and how movies now, we don't, they're not the same communal experience they were. But this show seems to have been happening online so much that there does seem to have been this instantaneous conversation that it almost felt like, are we having a communal experience with this? I mean, I guess that's, you know, a lot of culture, anything that's big, then people talk about it. And that's what that is, but it did feel like, almost like people were watching it together,

• 1:07:22Speaker 07

  even if they literally weren't, um, just by the, you know, online conversations and the rapidity of it. Because it, it did seem like everyone watched it in a weekend.

• 1:07:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it seems like that was something like the monocultural, like we're all participating in this. That was obviously like a huge thing of Sunday night HBO shows up through succession, especially and certainly Thrones, but even I felt like for several years I would go in on Monday to work and everybody would be talking about girls and it was like, there was just like a kind of, uh, learned behavior of like, Sunday night is some big show that we're all going to go talk about at work the next day. And now it's kind of like more melted into like, you're saying it's social media responses. And it's like, some people are like really early adopters and finish something in a weekend. And some people are like, oh, I, people have been nagging me for three weeks to watch Nobody Wants This.

• 1:08:15Chris Ryan?

  And now I'm finally up on it and I love it and I, I can now go back. I was curious as far as the show and getting ready for it, I read in some other interviews that in this specific role, you had this strange experience of having the strikes come up in between knowing you were going to do the role and shooting the role. And then like you were able to kind of maybe immerse yourself in Noah in a way that, do you feel like you haven't gotten to do that on other jobs necessarily?

• 1:08:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, I had more time. I also felt like I had more of a.

• 1:08:45Speaker 07

  Responsibility in a way, or there's just more to dig into. I've never, you know, there's 3,000 years of history, there's culture, there's ritual. You know, there's a lot to chew on if you want to learn. And I thought, you know, I knew, I don't say next to nothing, but, and I still know very little, but I know much more than I did. Yeah. And I sort of, I did some far ranging research in the sense of I just watched and listened and read a lot. But, you know, it was kind of, some of it was the ritualistic nature of the religion and the literal history of people. A lot of it was Holocaust studies. A lot of it was

• 1:09:26Speaker 07

  modern Jewish identity. And yeah, and I sort of, you know, not selfishly, but I also self indulgently went down roads that appealed to me more than maybe even the character in terms of like, I could have spent more time on the actual rituals, but I, you know, I delved into more, you know, of the history.

• 1:09:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, like that stuff is deeply fascinating. Do you feel like, in addition to the research you did and the kind of study, but also the shooting in LA part, which I think is probably increasingly rare for TV shows, but becomes like a huge character on Nobody Wants This. And I think also is part of like the thrill of watching it is you're like, oh yeah, there's no way they would have been able to park there, but that's great. They're right outside Silver Lake Lounge. What was that like to shoot in the city that the show was set in and to have that be this kind of vibrant background?

• 1:10:19Speaker 07

  Pretty joyous and also a little surreal. Joyous because as you said, it's a rarity. And so to get to go home every night, to not have to haul my kids to a different country, which is a thrill in its own right, but still, this was, this was much easier and to work with these like great people that I got to, it was in, you know, my hometown. It was very fun. And at the same time surreal, particularly those moments around Silver Lake in Vermont, just because I spent so much of my twenties on that street to again, think like, wow, in another 15 years, 20 years, I'll, I'll be filming here. And I don't know, it was just, it was just, it's not that it came full circle or anything, but like I said, I spent

• 1:10:58Speaker 07

  a lot of my youth there. And so to be back there making something was a treat. And also, we didn't build any stages for this. Maybe we will in the second season. I'm not sure, but it was all on location, which Even though it can be more of a hassle because of cramped space or parking or what have you, I always prefer it just because I think the production value always benefits by having a real lived in spaces and that sort of tactile nature of a real wall.

• 1:11:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, especially for these characters who speak so much with like what they're wearing and where they're living and like what kind of stuff is in their houses anyway. Like I think having it feel feel lived in is a significant thing, right?

• 1:11:43Speaker 07

  And yes, and this is a this is a real Angelino crew too. I mean, Aaron and Sarah were raised here. Kristen came to LA around when I did, you know, and 20 plus years ago and still lives here. So it's all of our city.

• 1:11:58Chris Ryan?

  You know, you've worked on shows across the last 20 years or so with these different production schedules and different distributions systems. A lot of the times with comedies, I feel like there's like this getting to know itself period with a comedy where it's like discovering the tone, discovering like how daffy do we want to be? How serious do we want to be like, do we, how do we want to mix the characters here? But this is a situation where you guys are obviously shooting this thing before it comes out. And there's not, you can't really tweak as it goes along. Like there's always that sort of famous Parks and Rec thing of where they adjust kind of the tone of the show even between episode to episode.

• 1:12:39Chris Ryan?

  As an experience, do you feel like you could see the writers and you could see everybody kind of finding the show as you were going in the first season? And and do you think that there will be an appreciable tonal difference in the second season now that Jenny's working on the show and everything?

• 1:12:53Speaker 07

  I wouldn't expect a tonal difference, you know, Aaron's still going to be the main voice. And also I think there'll be more freedom and success. You know, I think a lot of the first season had to do with. Making sure all the choices were safe enough in a way. Yeah. And I think, I think there'll be, you know, the more trust has been built to let you in on a little, you know, I don't know what I'm, I think I'll just say whatever I want, I want to say. But like, I don't know if this is a new Netflix thing that they're doing across the board. Or I was sort of told it was, but maybe it was just for us. I don't know. But we were gonna shoot the whole thing and we were, you know, but we were gonna film two episodes. We were gonna go dark for like a week and a half. Maybe it was 10 days, something like, yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 07

  So they could just assess and everyone could assess and see if any tweaks needed to be made or whatever. And thought that first two weeks went good. Came in a few days later to like the writers room and stuff and we're shown a rough cut already because Netflix already wanted to see it, a rough cut of the first episode. And I saw it with some of the other cast and we were all like, holy shit, this is great. Like, I mean, it really surpassed our expectations. Like, this is a home run. This is amazing. This is like so much better. I thought it was gonna, this is, this is wonderful. And then, surprisingly, like a week later, there was a lot of, we did a table read for the third and fourth episode. And there was a lot of worry that they weren't,

• 1:14:20Speaker 07

  I don't want to say up to the same quality, but you know, maybe one was too depressing or maybe they weren't, there was, there was panic, there was a panic. And a lot of reshuffling and then all of a sudden it felt like, for the rest of it, we're kind of building it as we're flying and now we're not so sure. It was much, it was weird. It was a weird thing to go from, I don't know, to I saw it. We all think this is great. To wait, wait, is it not great? What's going on? And then recalibrating for the rest of it and kind of just like staying one step in front of it. Because, because some scripts got trashed, it meant that. The new ones and everything else was being written like the second before we called action, you know, more or less, you know, and so it was much more of a scramble and

• 1:15:05Speaker 07

  we knew much less of what we had, we were much less sure of ourselves. And so it kinda came together sort of magically in the end, but we were, I don't know, I mean, we weren't, we didn't know.

• 1:15:18Chris Ryan?

  So you guys were basically like in the dark room, not sure if the picture's gonna develop or some, you know, yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I think that so much sweat and so much anxiety goes into these things. And then you, especially for a show like this, it almost needs to come off fretless, you know, it's like, oh yeah, like, don't, like, this was a breeze and everything just like was fully formed and actualized the first time we called action. But like, comedy takes a lot of work, right?

• 1:15:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, it does. I mean, all that said, I did have a great time making this. I mean, it's a great group for starters. We were after, right after the strike in Los Angeles. So boy, was everyone top down, happy to have a job, happy to be in LA, you know, it was a good, it was a really good vibe. And so it was fun. And also, in a way, a lot of those game day decisions that needed to be made or rethinking something on the fly was its own thrill, you know, that I don't know, in some ways, I hope that's not the second season. I don't think it will be. I think we'll sort of have our stuff written much more ahead of time and that should be smoother. And at the same time, if that

• 1:16:29Speaker 07

  is the case, there is a part of me that will miss the fog of war, you know, of yeah, taking like, big 180s in any given moment.

• 1:16:40Chris Ryan?

  As this interview is kind of happening towards the end of the year, I wanted to ask you a little bit, if you don't mind, about some of the stuff you might've been watching this year. I don't know, lots of times with actors or people who work in TV, they might be like, man, when I get off work, I do not then fire up TV. But I was curious whether or not you had any favorites from the year that we could chat about.

• 1:17:00Speaker 07

  I would love to, um, you know, somebody else asked me this and I, everything I've watched recently was movies. I decided to like, okay, now the Oscar stuff's coming out. I want to like,

• 1:17:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 07

  go down that list, but I know this is a,

• 1:17:11Chris Ryan?

  We can do that too.

• 1:17:13Speaker 07

  We can do that too, but would you, I don't even remember. Will you throw some shows out and I'll tell you if I've seen them?

• 1:17:18Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  I haven't seen most.

• 1:17:20Chris Ryan?

  I, a lot of the big FX shows. So there was Shogun and The Bear.

• 1:17:25Speaker 07

  Love, love The Bear. Haven't, I haven't, I haven't really seen Shogun.

• 1:17:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:17:29Speaker 07

  But I, and yet it appeals to me, which is a shame because I'd like to.

• 1:17:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Well, this could also be like a to do list.

• 1:17:35Speaker 07

  To do list, absolutely. So that's on my list.

• 1:17:38Chris Ryan?

  Ripley on Netflix.

• 1:17:40Speaker 07

  Haven't seen it. Auditioned for it.

• 1:17:42Chris Ryan?

  No, you didn't.

• 1:17:43Speaker 07

  For it. Yeah. Like during the pandemic, I put a tape in for the, um, the Philip Seymour Hoffman character from the movie. But that was the last I've seen of it. But I know it's out and, uh, and it's good, but I haven't seen it.

• 1:17:55Chris Ryan?

  Can you watch stuff that you were up for?

• 1:17:57Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:17:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You, it's, you're not, you're never like, oh, man.

• 1:18:01Speaker 07

  Yeah. I, I can, and mostly I agree with the decision, you know?

• 1:18:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:18:04Speaker 07

  Sometimes I don't, but most of the time I'm like, yeah, that makes more sense.

• 1:18:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Then there was like another big one from this year probably would be, uh, Industry on HBO is very popular.

• 1:18:15Speaker 07

  I just, uh, Tim, my co-star, Simons was talking about it last night and, um,

• 1:18:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 07

  I haven't seen it, but talking about how great that is. I've seen the season of Hacks, which I really like.

• 1:18:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, tell me what movies you've been watching.

• 1:18:26Speaker 07

  I watched, I saw A Real Pain yesterday, which I loved.

• 1:18:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:18:31Speaker 07

  I really liked, I sort of wasn't expecting to, but I kind of loved The Apprentice.

• 1:18:36Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I haven't seen that yet. So that's the Trump movie with Sebastian Stan, right?

• 1:18:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I kind of loved it. And, um, I go back in time and I feel like, granted, I saw it in like 10 pieces as I do a lot of movies because it's like my 20 minutes before I fall asleep, but I really feel Napoleon is underrated.

• 1:18:57Chris Ryan?

  Oh, see, I wonder whether your style of watching it actually benefited Napoleon.

• 1:19:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

• 1:19:04Chris Ryan?

  I think that movie, did you watch like the four hour like director's cut? Or did you watch the theater?

• 1:19:09Speaker 07

  No, no, I watched, I watched the, yeah, I watched the one that was on Apple, you know, the regular.

• 1:19:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay, because Ridley Scott instantaneously is like, I have a director's cut. Don't worry, it's five hours long.

• 1:19:17Speaker 07

  Oh, gosh, I just found it purposely, I believe, very comedic. I just found it very funny as well as spectacle and all these great things. But I mean, I didn't feel like the trailer was indicative of the movie. You know, the trailer, it's like, it's gonna be sexy and he's a charismatic leader and he's such a twerp. You know, and um, who got millions of people killed, you know, he did, he was a great military genius, but he also couldn't satisfy his wife and then cause millions of, I don't know. It was just like this.

• 1:19:45Chris Ryan?

  He had a lot of pros and cons.

• 1:19:46Speaker 07

  Farcical tragedy.

• 1:19:48Chris Ryan?

  I think that when I first sat down to watch that in the theater, I was like, here we go. Let's get Spartacus going and like, it just was a little bit.

• 1:19:54Speaker 07

  It's so not Spartacus. I mean, but um, I don't know, that's what I, that's what I, you know, another movie that was one of my favorites last year that I didn't, I mean, a lot of people liked it, but May, December, I like flipped for.

• 1:20:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 07

  I really like camp, if I can call, and I know that some, not that I even know exactly what camp is, but I just like drama that's also hilarious. I recently discovered, I hadn't ever seen Mommy Dearest. And that's like a new favorite. I love it.

• 1:20:24Chris Ryan?

  That, I wouldn't have picked that for you as camp. Like, I wouldn't have picked camp as like your go to.

• 1:20:29Speaker 07

  You know, well, I also like, it's different, but I also like pulp, I guess. Like, I'm a big fan of Cronenberg, I like History of Violence, I like S. Craig Zoller, like his stuff.

• 1:20:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 07

  Um, you know, so I like, I mean, there's a moment where like, I don't know, Vince Vaughn's breaking stuff in one of his movies in the brawl in Cell Block 99 and he throws a phone and they put a sound effects and the phone's like as it flies, you know, and it's so stupid, but I love it. Anyway, I just, yeah, I like that stuff a lot.

• 1:20:58Chris Ryan?

  No, yeah, Dragged Across Concrete, it's incredible. I really love watching those movies. Um, it's, when you get to the end of a year like this, do you feel a lot of pressure to get all of the like, the awards movies, the kind of like prestige TV stuff under your belt? So you can say you were like a good audience member for the year or do you?

• 1:21:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I feel more. Movies, it's not that I even like movies more, they just feel more time-wise. It's a commitment I can commit to, you know, a show, it's like, I really want to watch Shogun, but that's a month, that's a month of all I watch, you know? Um, with two young kids, it's like, I got to see a movie by myself yesterday because I'm in New York, and um, that's easy, that's lovely, but um, at home, it's hard to find the time, and so I feel like I can go down the list of movies and be very educated for the awards since they'll all be talked about for the next six months. And uh, yeah, TV is just a harder hill to climb, even though I love it, you know? And Succession was certainly one of my favorite shows of the last decade.

• 1:22:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:22:03Speaker 07

  So I'm doing, going down the movie list right now.

• 1:22:06Chris Ryan?

  Do you find that um, you like get lots of good recommendations from people like Tim when you're working with other people that they're watching stuff, or like, is it, or do you guys usually talk about other stuff besides work?

• 1:22:17Speaker 07

  We for sure talk about work, and you know, I mean, half of it's what we hate, you know? Um, and uh, and, and half of, and, and there's a real diverse range of opinions, you know, it's, that's the fun of it. You know, Kristen and I have different, very different likes and dislikes, and we'll recommend stuff to each other, and sometimes it hits, and sometimes not at all. I don't, I don't want to say the things that I didn't go for, but

• 1:22:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:22:43Speaker 07

  Sometimes not liking something is as fun as liking it, in my opinion.

• 1:22:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it, it has its own charm, for sure. Well, thank you so much for your time, man. I don't want to take up too much of it, really love the show, and I can't wait for it to come back, and can't wait to see, see what you do next.

• 1:22:58Speaker 07

  Wow, that's, that's very flattering, thank you. Thanks for having me.