1025 Processing Pain, Losing 250+ Pounds & Dissecting Trauma w/Actor Ethan Suplee

“I could create this other identity that would distract people from how fat I am, and talking about that, or poking fun at me.”Ethan Suplee has starred in movies and TV shows like Remember the Titans, My Name is Earl, American History X, and over 40 other titles, and just recently launched a podcast called American Glutton. On today's podcast, Ethan and Lewis have a therapeutic conversation and Ethan really opens up in a big way. He was willing to take a deep dive into his past to dissect some of the most crucial moments in his childhood, acting career, and health journey so that he could share with us the knowledge that he’s gained along the way. Check out Ethan’s podcast: https://www.americanglutton.net/ The Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Ethan Suplee?

  I think if I had a six pack at 22, I never would have done Remember the Titans. I would have been happier in school and you know, who knows what my life would be like now? Because acting was escaping who I was.

• 0:16Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:39Lewis Howes?

  Trisha Cunningham wrote, "The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it." And Oprah Winfrey said, "Turn your wounds into wisdom." My guest today has dealt with psychological and physical wounds for most of his life and shares with me everything he has learned about the pain of being overweight and the wisdom from losing over 250 pounds twice, two different times he did this. Actor Ethan Suplee has starred in movies and TV shows like Remember the Titans. My Name is Earl, American History X, and over 40 other titles. And just recently launched a podcast called American Glutton.

• 1:22Lewis Howes?

  Ethan really opened up in this interview and was willing to take a deep dive into his past to dissect some of the most crucial moments in his childhood, acting career, and health journey, so he could share with us the knowledge that he's gained along the way. Some of the questions I asked him were, "What are the easiest diets to stick to from his process?" Also, "How did Ethan get into acting while dealing with all of his insecurities of being overweight?" "What does Ethan's acting process look like and how does he tap into characters so easily?" "What was worse, the mental or physical pain of being overweight?" And "What advice does he have for parents that want to communicate with their kids about food and living a healthy lifestyle?"

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  Some of the things you're going to learn are the psychological effects of being overweight at a young age. pivotal moment for Ethan when he knew he needed to change his life when Ethan developed an unhealthy relationship with his food and what that was like how his acting career started as a distraction from his weight and so much more also he shares at the end the lessons Ethan learned about Leonardo DiCaprio's work ethic that will blow you away make sure to share this with someone who needs to hear it you have the power to change someone's life and inspire someone today by sending them this link Lewis Howes dot com slash one zero two five or just copy and pasting the link where you're listening to this on any podcast app and make sure to click

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now if you're listening and you're not subscribed and leave us a rating and review by doing that action it'll really help us inspire more people so click the subscribe button and leave a rating or review as you're listening okay after this quick message the one and only Ethan Suppley

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  welcome back everyone in school greatest podcast we've got my man Ethan Suppley in the house brother good to see you man good to see you thanks for having me I went on your show probably a month and a half two months ago and for those who don't know if you ever go on Ethan's show you're sitting in a sweatbox we were I would I watched a video and I'm dripping but you know

• 3:30Ethan Suplee?

  what here's yes hundred percent yeah I probably lost about five pounds I started having to do all the social media pictures before I best smart because I would be like as though I just worked out giant sweat stains I don't know what happens because right now I feel a nice cool breeze

• 3:47Lewis Howes?

  we got the AC on and we're recording so it's not a conflict but somehow in that studio when

• 3:53Ethan Suplee?

  you hit record the AC shuts off yeah and then you and I generate so much heat so much the conversation was so deep that's what it is it's not my size that did it you know it's just our like internal magnetism I know but I looked at the clip like man I was dripping but you have sweat out probably a thousand times more than me in your life because you've you've lost over a thousand pounds in the last decade or two right you've gained and lost listen that Quote, I probably said it, but I am so, I lean towards hyperbole a lot. And so I think that's probably exaggerated. I've never sat down and gone like, well, I gained 200 pounds in this stretch,

• 4:35Ethan Suplee?

  but then I gained back 175 and then I lost and then I gained back. I haven't done that.

• 4:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:41Ethan Suplee?

  From my heaviest to now.

• 4:44Lewis Howes?

  What was your heaviest ever that you could scale?

• 4:46Ethan Suplee?

  Okay. Here's the thing, it gets tricky because I know I gained weight, but the heaviest I've ever objectively seen was there was a shipping scale that people had me get on because I didn't, regular scales didn't work for me. And.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  What's a normal scale go up to, 300, 400?

• 5:06Ethan Suplee?

  Maybe 400 now. I mean, when I was a kid, it was really like, I think 250. Like I was, I blew past the regular doctor's office scale. Now you get a scale in your house that goes above 300, no problem. That, that happened later. As a kid, I got on a scale, a shipping container scale, and it said 536. And then I know I gained weight. I, so I don't know exactly what I was. I would guess over 550, but I say 550 because it's 14 pounds above what I know for sure I was. And today, I'm 250. So it's at least 286 pounds from there to now.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  It takes discipline to gain that much weight and discipline to lose that much weight.

• 5:55Ethan Suplee?

  I agree.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  And you did this all while being in like 30, I think you've been about 30, 40 movies since you were younger.

• 6:02Ethan Suplee?

  A lot, yeah.

• 6:02Lewis Howes?

  A lot of big movies you've been in. Uh, remember The Titans is one we were just talking about. You said it was a massive premiere. You also say you don't watch your own movies back after you act. So you've been in all these movies with huge names and you don't watch the movies yourself.

• 6:16Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Lewis Howes?

  You've gained and lost weight over the last 30 plus years. Um, how, I mean, what is harder to do? Gain the weight or lose the weight? Because it's hard to put on 200 plus pounds of a normal frame that you might have.

• 6:30Ethan Suplee?

  I think that's the way I try to think of it now, that it that it requires effort to gain weight, but really, for the most part, while gaining weight to that extent, it's a it's a very mindless, you almost think of it in terms of like a depression kind of washes over, you're not thinking about the effort that it requires to find the calories, to consume the calories, to be enough to not use the calories. So, so there is effort. When I break it apart analytically, and I try to go like, how much effort and discomfort did I experience while gaining weight and from being overweight versus losing weight

• 7:11Ethan Suplee?

  and being at a less weight, the effort is much greater, but it's done in a mindless way. It's easy to pick up a 32 ounce Coke and drink it all day, as opposed to be disciplined in working out and eating the correct things. Yeah. Lose it. I like what you're saying, though, because I I think that's true. Right. It's just a perspective on how you're looking at it. Right. It required a ton of effort. To gain weight. To gain weight, and then a ton of discomfort also, like. How much pain were you experiencing during that time? Every day, constant pain, knees, back, I've slipped discs just from carrying a lot

• 7:54Ethan Suplee?

  of weight. I had, I still have ankle problems. I have collapsed arches, flat feet, like, there's a lot of weird issues that I would not have had, had I not carried hundreds of pounds of excess weight for years and years and years. You know, and then like psychologically, the idea of like every chair I sat down in, I would have to think about, am I going to break this chair? I gotta really ease into it. I would even sometimes like give it a couple shoves. How solid, how sturdy is this? You know what I mean? Looking at chairs, am I going to literally fit in that chair? And God forbid, somebody else breaks a chair.

• 8:36Ethan Suplee?

  In my presence, because I know everybody's gonna think, did he have something to do with breaking that chair? Was he sitting there? Do you know what I mean? And these are maybe ridiculous things to think, but they're the thoughts that occur. And then going to sleep, sleep apnea was a thing. I never slept well. So towards the end, before I started losing weight, I would just fall asleep, sitting up, because I was never really asleep at night.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 9:05Ethan Suplee?

  All of that required effort to get there, to maintain that, a lot of effort. I think that's the more rational way to consider it.

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. When you are sleeping, sitting up, you know, feet hurting, back hurting, digestion probably not well, you know, whatever, feeling insecure, am I gonna break this chair? When you're having those thoughts, day after day, week after week, year after year, what keeps you in that place of, well, I'm just gonna stay in this place, as opposed to wanting to make a psychological or habit change for something better for your own health? What keeps you there?

• 9:44Ethan Suplee?

  Well, this is why I talked, I said, like, it's a mindless effort, because I'm not having those thoughts. I'm not thinking, this is an irrational thing to have to do, to chest, to test the strength of a chair. All these aches and pains, I could live without them. They've just slowly built up to the point where they just are life. And so, you know, it'd be different if today, I went to sleep and woke up with some severe knee issue. And then I would, everything would be focused on, how do I solve this knee issue? This is not ideal. But that's not how it happens. It's like, your knees start to ache a little bit, and then it's just like, well, I stood longer today.

• 10:29Ethan Suplee?

  And then eventually you get to the point where you're actually tearing and damaging stuff, and you're too heavy to get an outpatient surgery. So you're just living with pain. Yeah, but it's so gradual that you're not thinking in the terms that you would if you woke up tomorrow, experiencing all of that.

• 10:48Lewis Howes?

  It's little by little.

• 10:49Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  It's little discomforts that you start to learn to deal with.

• 10:53Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Lewis Howes?

  When is the, when was the moment for you? Cause I'm sure you were probably thinking for a long time, like, I should probably lose some weight. Right? I should probably start eating healthier. When was the moment that was the make or break moment for you? That you said enough is enough, or never again, or I gotta start this journey the real way? Like, I'm going all in. When was that moment?

• 11:12Ethan Suplee?

  There was a period in 2002. I, I, I had fallen in love with this girl when I was 16. And we were really, really good friends. She says we were best friends. And she had zero interest in me romantically.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  You were in the friend zone.

• 11:28Ethan Suplee?

  I was in the friend zone. Fine.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  16 years old?

• 11:32Ethan Suplee?

  16 years old.

• 11:33Lewis Howes?

  What was your weight like then?

• 11:35Ethan Suplee?

  I was heavy, but I wasn't quite as heavy as I'd become.

• 11:38Lewis Howes?

  200, 250, 300?

• 11:40Ethan Suplee?

  You know, I wasn't, even then, it's like I wasn't getting on scales often. I certainly wasn't 500 pounds. I actually have a picture of us from when we were 16 and we were hanging out. And I'm a heavy guy, but I'm not morbidly obese. We became romantic in 2002. And, and there was just a moment where I was like, oh, if I'm gonna make this work, if this really has a shot at longevity, I gotta change because she likes to do stuff like take a hike and spend the day at the beach and go to museums. And I can't do that, you know?

• 12:24Ethan Suplee?

  So that was kind of it. It was like, I want, I wanna have this relationship with her, so I must change. It was a bizarre kind of counterintuitive conversation that I had with her too because having it, I was scared, like, if I have this conversation, she'll know how, that I'm overweight, like, that I'm obese.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  As if she didn't know.

• 12:49Ethan Suplee?

  As if she didn't know. It was like this thing, if I show her that this is something I wanna change, not just like this masculine thing of like, I'm showing weakness. It wasn't that. It was, this is the hardest, this is, this thing is so unconfrontable, I never think about it. I, I, I push it away. It's, it's almost become something subconscious. So if I bring it to the forefront and I say, let's address this. That's a very scary and narrow path to walk because failure, I figure life is failure at that point, you know?

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So that was 2002. Did you start going all in? Was it dabbling a little bit and kind of lost weight, went back off the wagon? What was that like for the next 18 years till now?

• 13:38Ethan Suplee?

  I went all in and I'm a sober guy too. So I went all in in a very, in a similar fashion to achieving sobriety, which was admit that I'm powerless and turn my problem over to somebody else and go like, I am incapable of figuring this out right now. I'm gonna do exactly what you say until we get to the point that I can take over. And she was like, great, here's what you're gonna do. I went and found a guy who has a liquid diet. You can do it for up to two months. Why don't you do that? You don't have to do it for two months. You can do it for one month. You can do it for two. Let's see how this goes. And I crushed that.

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Two months liquid diet?

• 14:24Ethan Suplee?

  Eighty pounds.

• 14:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:26Ethan Suplee?

  Two months.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  This is not like drinking cokes all day, liquid diet. This is no sugar liquid diet.

• 14:31Ethan Suplee?

  This is like, I mean, the calories were so low. It was like three weird protein shakes with some green powder and a ton of supplements that were, I think, mostly fiber and some vitamins and as much water as I could drink and that's it.

• 14:47Lewis Howes?

  Eighty pounds, two months.

• 14:49Ethan Suplee?

  Eighty pounds.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  But that's still in the 400 zone.

• 14:52Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, but I will say this. Of all the weight I've gained and lost, I never dipped back into those 80 pounds. Never once. So that, that, I, it was such a prize that I've never gotten close to like back into that zone. And I followed that up with, I don't even know what the diet's called. It might've been like a blood type diet or something. And it was kind of on that where I realized like, well, I'm gonna have to try different diets. And I tried basically every diet that exists.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  What worked the best for you?

• 15:31Ethan Suplee?

  The easiest thing was keto.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Ethan Suplee?

  Because I just didn't have to think about anything.

• 15:37Lewis Howes?

  Eat lots of meat, it just eliminates certain things and eat as kind of as much as you want of other stuff, right?

• 15:42Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, and I thi- and that worked to a degree. As I had less and less weight to lose. I found that I had to like mess around with what I was eating. Cause I, you know, when I first started, it was like, you can eat bacon and Swiss cheese all day long. Like, okay, well, that's easy. And I, I would, and I'd lose weight and I'd be like, this is a magical diet. I'm putting mayonnaise on everything and I'm losing weight. How is this possible? You know, my little salad would have four cups of salad dressing on it. And, you know, no sugar, but like a ton of fat.

• 16:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Ethan Suplee?

  And that did work and I was able to do it and it was super easy for traveling. You just rip the bread off stuff and eat steaks and, you know, it's, it's actually. I think designed to be easy to get around the world and eat this way.

• 16:34Ethan Suplee?

  Once I got really close to, there were, there were two periods. There was a period in 2012 where I was super into cycling and I got really, really much smaller than I am now.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  190 or something or one?

• 16:47Ethan Suplee?

  I was just about 200, but that's tiny for me. And, um, you know, you think about 200, that's still, you're a big dude, but that was really, really small for me. And I just no- noticed that if I was eating only fat, I was suffering on the bicycle. Like I wasn't as efficient on the bicycle. So some sugars, gels.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Carbs, yeah.

• 17:11Ethan Suplee?

  Some carbs entered my diet and like I would fly up hills, you know? Um, which was really cool. Then I had a bad accident. My wife told me that I wasn't ever gonna make a living riding a bike. You know, I thought we were rich and that I could retire and just ride my bike at like 35 years old forever. Uh, that was not the case. Uh, she said I had to go work again. So I went back to acting and the bike kind of fell away. And I started doing like CrossFit and rowing machines. I was, I could crush a full marathon on a rowing machine, no problem.

• 17:50Ethan Suplee?

  And then at some point, I was kind of having trouble finding work and kept hearing like, well, you're not the big guy, the heavy lovable guy anymore. So there was a point where I was like, okay, I'm just gonna eat and lift weights and see what happens. And I ate whatever I wanted for about a year and lifted weights and got pretty near 400 pounds again.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:12Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  You gained 200 pounds within a year.

• 18:17Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Lewis Howes?

  Close.

• 18:17Ethan Suplee?

  Well, no, it was really from like 2003 years. It was three years. Yeah.

• 18:23Lewis Howes?

  2013 to 2016. How long did you pause from acting?

• 18:27Ethan Suplee?

  2010 and pause is not quite the right word. I did a few pilots that didn't get picked up.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:36Ethan Suplee?

  Um, but I was putting no effort into it. It was like if they called me and said, please come do our pilot, I would do it.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  Right. But I wasn't. They're not going on auditions, you're not.

• 18:44Ethan Suplee?

  No, I was really just riding my bike.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  When you've been in, how many movies you've been in and TV shows?

• 18:49Ethan Suplee?

  I've never counted. I actually have no idea.

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  50 plus, you think?

• 18:53Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Lewis Howes?

  At least, right?

• 18:54Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  When you've been in that many movies or shows, do you have to audition anymore?

• 18:58Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  You still have to audition?

• 19:00Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  Really? Even if they've seen all your work, they know what you can do?

• 19:06Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's just a matter of the director wanting to see if you're exactly what he wants for this specific project, or now that I'm physically different, what is that gonna look like, you know? But yeah, yeah, I still have to audition.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  What was the, when you look back, what do you think the thing is that drew you to eating as a, as a bad habit, or an addiction, or a mind-numbing process that was a part of your life for so long? Was there a number of events? Was there moments? Was there something that connected you to that?

• 19:46Ethan Suplee?

  I've tried to do like self psychoanalysis on this and I get to, uh,

• 19:55Ethan Suplee?

  A point where I'm five years old, I go to visit my grandparents in Vermont and their reaction to me. And if I look at a picture of myself as at five years old today, I see just like a normal, healthy kid with maybe some chubby cheeks, right? Their reaction to me was like, oh my God, what are your parents doing to you? You have gone to crap, right? This is out of hand. We need to get this under control. And my favorite food was lasagna, which my grandpa would always make me. Yeah, and he had it cooking. As I arrived, I could smell it. And I'm there visiting them for the first time without my mom or dad in Vermont, like,

• 20:37Ethan Suplee?

  super excited. Their reaction is this, and then they basically were like, we're not, you can't have a second helping of lasagna. So in that day, was the first time that I snuck food and it was clearing the table and eating food off their plates.

• 20:53Lewis Howes?

  At the same time, like clearing it and like?

• 20:55Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, just stuffing in a few bites because I was not allowed to like, I reached for a second helping and got my hand patted like.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  At five?

• 21:02Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, that's off limits. You, you eat what we tell you to do. And then the next day, they weighed me first thing in the morning, which I've never been on a scale before and I'm being weighed. And then it was like, okay, we're going on a, on a, on a one mile walk that is for your benefit. And this did a number of things. It developed the sneaking food habit. It developed the habit of wanting to eat privately. And the idea that people witnessing me eating was not good. And it also created a weird barrier to me just naturally wanting to be outside and active. Because at five, I was very active, running around.

• 21:47Ethan Suplee?

  But when it was enforced, when it was this point of like.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  A punishment almost.

• 21:51Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, this is, we're not consulting how willing you are to do this. We're not saying, is there something you'd like to do outside? We're saying you must go march on this. It was like a mile to their mailbox and a mile back. And like, this is not for fun. This is for, because you have gotten so overweight.

• 22:13Ethan Suplee?

  That really pushed the idea of physical activity into another punishment type thing, where I just didn't want to do it anymore. So it was kind of this wild confluence of new mental structures that I built where it was like, well, I'm gonna sneak food now and I'm gonna not do activities.

• 22:38Lewis Howes?

  How insecure were you about your weight when you got older and started recognizing it or seeing maybe someone make fun of you or realizing like, oh, I can't go on a hike with my girlfriend or my friends and do these certain activities? Did you feel insecure about it ever or was it more of just this is who you are?

• 22:55Ethan Suplee?

  I definitely felt insecure about it. I also got into a lot of fights as a kid and was like, you know, there were a few times in elementary school where like some preschooler would say like, wow, look how fat he is. And that obviously wasn't gonna fight a little preschooler and you come to learn like, well, avoid little kids at all costs because they just say, they see something and they just talk about it. And I didn't, that made me terribly uncomfortable. But if like another 10-year-old said something like that to me, we would just have a fight. And then people would know like, oh, he's like not a nice guy. In that circumstance, we're not gonna say that to him, you know?

• 23:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So how did you get into acting and being such a successful actor while also having this kind of insecurity or knew that you stood out in a different way than most of the other actors in Hollywood?

• 23:53Ethan Suplee?

  There was like, in school, there were, I didn't really like school either. I didn't, I grew to really dislike anything done from a point of authoritarianism. It just was not for me. So if it's like you're going on a diet or you have to do sports or you have to study, I was not into it. Which is really bizarre because now I love nothing more than a diet I find for myself and studying something I'm interested in and finding a sport to be interested. Like I can become obsessive about these things and do them 110% if it's my own determination. But from a point of authority, it just didn't fly.

• 24:36Ethan Suplee?

  And I noticed a couple of things. I was never like a class clown, but we had an actor in my school. And so much more attention was paid to the fact that he was an actor than any of his physical attributes, any of his other accomplishments in school. It was like this, this distraction, this like, here's who this person is, but like, here's this weird identity that actually has nothing to do with him, that we're all gonna focus on that. And, and there was something kinda magical about that, like, I can't like kill people with jokes, that's just not what I do, but what if I had that too?

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  You're not super sexy and attractive with a six pack?

• 25:18Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, but I could create this other identity that would distract people from how fat I am and, and talking about that, or poking fun at me, or even wanting to talk to me about it. Cause like, I'll just show them this. What if I do this? So there was, and it got you out of school. Cause this dude would leave school for weeks at a time and go hang out on sets and like, guess what's on a set? Craft services on a set.

• 25:45Lewis Howes?

  Free food all day.

• 25:46Ethan Suplee?

  And you got a trailer, like you can fill your pockets with food and go back to your trailer and eat it. Like it's this wonderful place. It was like-

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  Unlimited food supply.

• 25:54Ethan Suplee?

  Oh my god. And then there was also like, always gonna be like some grip who had a prescription to Percocet that you could like, give a wink to, you know, like your, and by the way, it always started legitimately. Like my feet hurt, my ankles and my knees hurt, like these are real things.

• 26:14Lewis Howes?

  You're on set 18 hours a day, you're doing this on one of them.

• 26:17Ethan Suplee?

  None of it is just irrational. It's all irrational, but it's also very easily rationalized, if that makes sense.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  So how old were you when you realized this kid was an actor getting this attention?

• 26:31Ethan Suplee?

  15, 14.

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  Where were you living?

• 26:34Ethan Suplee?

  With my parents in Burbank?

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh, here in California.

• 26:37Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  So there was a teen actor.

• 26:40Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  You were in LA.

• 26:41Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Lewis Howes?

  And so was the next step like, I'm going to acting class, I'm going for auditions, give me a manager. What was the next?

• 26:48Ethan Suplee?

  The next step was like, I'm just not going to school. And I'm a gigantic 14 year old and my parents are not going to get me in the car and get me to school. Like they're just, it's just not going to happen. And they're also not going to be able to talk me into it because I'm a jerk.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  You're mean, you're like, no.

• 27:09Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  Shut up, mom and dad.

• 27:11Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, like, I don't care. And then it was kind of thinking about my life and, and going like, well, he has a job. That's not hard. You like remember lines and, and you go and say them and, and you create this kind of alter ego that distracts people and, and puts the focus on something completely arbitrary.

• 27:34Ethan Suplee?

  And I think I was 17 and I just, you know, had pictures taken, maybe at 16, sent them out to people, got an agent, first day of auditions, I got a job.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 27:47Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  First audition?

• 27:49Ethan Suplee?

  The first thing I auditioned for was Melrose Place. I then went from that audition to Boy Meets World. And on, and the audition for Melrose Place, they said, we want you to do it. Then they found out I wasn't in the union and they said, we don't have it in the budget to buy your, his way into the union, but Boy Meets World did. And so that was my first job.

• 28:13Lewis Howes?

  So the first day of auditions, the second audition, you do, do you remember your lines? You remember what this was even about?

• 28:19Ethan Suplee?

  Yes, I.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  It's like a 30 second thing, it's just five minutes, is?

• 28:23Ethan Suplee?

  It's a, I remember the lines very clearly, actually, strangely enough. I shove.

• 28:30Ethan Suplee?

  Ben Savage into a locker and I say, hey, you were almost in my way. And he says something, I don't remember what he says, I only remember what I say. And I say, what, are you saying I'm gay? And, and he says, no, no, no, and then I'm like, good. And that was the audition. It was like, maybe a little bit more than that, but I remember that so much because there was so much discussion on the set of like, there's no way this gay joke stays in. There's no way.

• 28:55Lewis Howes?

  Back then, it was like a big.

• 28:57Ethan Suplee?

  Well, I mean, I don't know if it stays in today. It wound up staying in, like, the writers liked it and then the studio and network signed off on it and it stayed in. But I remember the director, by the way, the director, what a glorious guy, this guy David Trainer, who wound up directing every episode of That 70's Show and then every episode of The Ranch, which I went and did a bunch of episodes for, and got to work with him again, like, 25 year book hours, you know, from 94 to whenever we did the last episode, a couple of years ago, yeah.

• 29:32Lewis Howes?

  What was that like, seeing a director 25 years apart?

• 29:34Ethan Suplee?

  So cool.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  Did he remember you from that audition?

• 29:37Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah. I mean, maybe not the audition, but he remembered me from work and we laughed about Boy Meets World and, you know, talked about our careers through the years and, and got to work together again, like a total sweetheart of a guy.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like it was easier getting booked as an actor back in the 90's? With the process that it was then than it would be for someone now?

• 30:02Ethan Suplee?

  I don't know, probably not. I'm sure it's just as hard. I think it's.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  It seems like it was easy for you. I just showed up.

• 30:08Ethan Suplee?

  It was very.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  They wanted me in the first one, but they couldn't afford me. The second one, they wanted me and they paid for me.

• 30:13Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, it wa- it was not the war of attrition that many people experienced. That was not my experience.

• 30:21Lewis Howes?

  And then was there ever a time where it was hard to get booked? Or were you like, every year you were getting something, whether it was a commercial or a guest spot or a movie, every year you were getting something pretty much?

• 30:30Ethan Suplee?

  I worked consistently.

• 30:34Ethan Suplee?

  Until after My Name Is Earl. And then, in fairness, I wasn't trying to work. And I still was getting offered pilots, and I did a bunch of pilots that didn't get picked up.

• 30:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:46Ethan Suplee?

  And then, after that, I, like, a few years of that, I went like, oh, I need to work. You know, we're not, we're not like wealthy people. I have to work. And then there was, I noticed a little bit of a grind. But leading up to that, like, the beginning of my career, you know, there were certainly things I wanted to do that I didn't get to do, but for the most part, I was constantly working.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  What do you think it is that makes you such a great actor and such a great bookable actor for 25 years?

• 31:18Ethan Suplee?

  I have no idea. I think I just have a good line of bullshit. You're gonna have to beep that, but like, I can con people into hiring me.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  But there has to be something, your way of conning people. What is that? Is it a way of being? Is it, are you just so convincing in the role? Do you, again, you talked about, I get to put myself in an alter ego. Do you truly step into an alter ego and just don't care what anyone thinks if you look silly? You're just like, I am the character? Or are you just confident? What's the thing that makes you stand out?

• 31:52Ethan Suplee?

  There is something about what you're saying that has some truth, and I'll try to elaborate on my ideas of it. There is, it can happen where, I'm a pretty shy person, and I'm not an extrovert by any means, and I don't like being around a lot of people. But if I'm in it, and if I'm being a character that doesn't have those kind of, whatever you wanna call them, mental afflictions, which I don't even think of them really, it's just my personality. But if I'm playing somebody who has a different personality while

• 32:32Ethan Suplee?

  acting, so it's not like I exist this way 24 hours a day like Daniel Day-Lewis, like I've heard he does. It's not that.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  But if you're in the environment of a set experience.

• 32:42Ethan Suplee?

  If, but it's even less, if the, if the guy says action, I can feel, that insecurity goes away. I can feel some version of what I think that person is feeling.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  If that makes sense.

• 32:58Ethan Suplee?

  I have no idea. I really have no idea.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  Did you have a lot of training?

• 33:02Ethan Suplee?

  No.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Did you go to acting class or workshops? Or did you just say, I think this is what the character is gonna do. I'm gonna act like it and?

• 33:10Ethan Suplee?

  I went to acting classes when I was 16 and they were great. They didn't really teach me anything you're talking about.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  So, I mean, it just came naturally then?

• 33:22Ethan Suplee?

  I think so.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  Did you watch a lot of movies and TV? And did you kind of mimic these things of actors that you've watched?

• 33:28Ethan Suplee?

  I watched a lot of TV and movies. I definitely did mimic stuff for sure. I did some of that, but I don't think I was very good at it necessarily. Like one of these guys who like can, there's a guy named Jim Meskman who can like do these voices. And you believe it's like Robert De Niro or Morgan Freeman or, or somebody like an iconic voice that you hear and you go, that's him. And then it's not, it's this guy. I could never do something like that. But I, but I was into mimicry and I was, I've always been interested in people and mannerisms. I find different mannerisms to be so interesting and, and you know, I do, I do have an affinity

• 34:09Ethan Suplee?

  for different people and just think that there's something to be said about the way different people behave. And then I like the idea of all of my BS. See how I did that? All of my BS, I could just get rid of it for a moment by being this other person. And it was this kind of freeing, wonderful thing. And the minute they say, cut, all my garbage comes back.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  You walk back your trailer and it's like, oh.

• 34:39Ethan Suplee?

  It's still somewhere, yeah. No, and then I'm going to craft service and I'm filling my pockets and I'm going to eat it in private. That was still true.

• 34:47Lewis Howes?

  You would never eat in public with like friends. It's like, hey, come eat with us for lunch.

• 34:50Ethan Suplee?

  I would, but I'd be very considerate of what I'm eating. Yeah, I would never eat the way I wanted to eat. And then, you know, I would go eat on my way home. Get some fast food or whatever and And and just load up, yeah. I I always thought, you know, he's, you know, who's really thin, junkies are really thin. And it didn't work for me, drugs, I just kept gaining weight. So you tried the drugs and it didn't work? I tried the drugs, it didn't work. Really? Yeah. I tried to, I wasn't trying the drugs in order to lose weight, I was, I was in legitimate physical pain and I was trying to numb that out and then it just turned out I really liked

• 35:30Ethan Suplee?

  drugs and alcohol, you know, and, and I would use those in, in, in a very similar way, in a sneaky way and to extreme excess. What was more painful, the emotional or mental pain, discomfort or the physical pain? I think when I had to like pick it apart, for sure the physical pain was worse, but it was something that I wasn't connecting with. It just existed, it grew so gradually, um, that it, it, it wasn't something I was even aware of until I got rid of all of it and I went, oh my God, like what was I dealing with back then, it was tremendous pain. The mental stuff, like I, I don't know how to weigh that, you know what I mean?

• 36:15Ethan Suplee?

  I, I still have, there's still mental pain, there's still mental garbage to work through every single day. Really? Yeah. What's the biggest thing that you're trying to work through still?

• 36:27Ethan Suplee?

  Motivation, like, you know. To stay in shape, to stay like eating healthy consistently? Existence requires some effort to get motivated, all of it. Eating healthy, um, you know, I, I can get into a, a routine and the routine is fine for me, like I, like a hamster on a wheel, I will just sit and do that all day long. Well, it turns out my wife wants to be taken out and that's not part of my routine, so like, that's effort. Turns out, my kids don't like the food that I'm eating right now, that requires effort, you know what I mean? And so.

• 37:10Ethan Suplee?

  There's all of these things. And by the way, just getting out of bed every day and like having to think about guilt and how I feel about guilt and guilt, I think ultimately is a good thing, but it can also be debilitating. It can be so much that it knocks you off your path and makes you go, screw it. I'm not doing any of this because why bother? I'm already feeling the guilt, so I'm done. What are you most guilty about? I don't, I don't feel guilt today. I have no guilt today, but I'm saying the idea of like if I've, if I've got a guy who's programming my training right now because I'm, because you know, as I get to a point of body fat percentage that I've never been

• 37:53Ethan Suplee?

  at before, even when I was 200 pounds and riding my bicycle eight hours a day. You were what skinny fat then? I wasn't even skinny fat, like 12% body fat in a DEXA scan is not fat at all. You're way below the average, but I'm trying to get to eight, nine percent and each one of those is really, really hard. And so I got a guy programming workouts and, and food and everything's being programmed right now. Now I got to, I think 13% on my own and then it was just like, if I go harder, I'm losing muscle mass. If I go easier, I'm not losing anything. Like I needed a little help, right? And so now it's gotten down to like, you get one and a half grams of salt

• 38:38Ethan Suplee?

  per day and for me, but, but I'll go like, well, I'll measure the salt in a teaspoon, right? That's a teaspoon and a half of salt. No big deal. But then it's like, no dude, are you also adding soy sauce? That's got sodium. Are you also drinking diet soda? That's got sodium. Like one and a half grams means total, right? And so I'll get guilt about that. Now, there was a point in my life where I would have so much guilt from something like that. Like if I realized at the end of the day, like, wow, I doubled my salt intake for today, that I would just go, well, I'll just order a pizza. That's me. I would have one piece, one bite and I was like, ah, just eat the whole box.

• 39:18Lewis Howes?

  Of chocolate pizza, ice cream.

• 39:19Ethan Suplee?

  Whatever. I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna find Krispy Kreme when it's piping hot. Yeah, eat the whole box and get one to go, yeah.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  I could go for a box right now.

• 39:27Ethan Suplee?

  I can eat a box of donuts, no problem right now, I'm not going to. But like that, so like I'm trying to balance guilt and go like I want, I want the guilt to let me know like, okay, you screwed up, tomorrow you're gonna do better. That is where guilt works for me.

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think guys like me and you, when we cross the barrier of guilt, I shouldn't have done that. That little thing, I shouldn't have had that thing because I told myself I wasn't gonna eat that piece of chocolate.

• 39:57Ethan Suplee?

  Right.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  Now I ate it. Let me just go all in and have like the day's ruins. Let me eat the whole box of chocolates, the whole pizza, the whole bucket of ice cream, the gallon. Why, why do you think guys like us do that? What is that?

• 40:11Ethan Suplee?

  So I think.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to somebody who can just, ah, just have one bite and I feel bad and let me stop.

• 40:16Ethan Suplee?

  Right. Which is, which is where I'm trying, I'm trying to analytically talk myself into being that. And it's, and it's a lot of effort, this is effort dude, all effort. Um, I think I am constantly trying to talk myself into failure. And then subsequently having to talk myself out. And I think the mind or whatever portion, there's a guy named Gurdjieff who talks about how there's a thousand of us in each of us. And each one has a mission, like one guy's mission is the box of donuts. Whether you listen to that voice or not, there's part of you that's going like, how is that not valid?

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Eat it, eat it.

• 40:54Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, that's a valid part of you, but like, I'm trying to follow this one voice right now. And I think there's just a constant like, let's derail him, let's derail him. And it's, it's be, it's winning that every time. And, and the, the part of me that's like the addict, that's constantly looking for angles like, maybe if he goes a little harder in the gym today, he'll hurt himself.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  And then he'll be in a.

• 41:20Ethan Suplee?

  And then he'll need a surgery and then we'll get some drugs.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 41:24Ethan Suplee?

  Like, I think that's part of it and you gotta go, nope, not gonna. To go too hard, not gonna hurt myself, you know? Like, I'm looking at those future possibilities and so guilt can be the same thing. Guilt can be like, well, you screwed up, screw up all the way. It doesn't matter, you've already screwed up, you know? Okay, but I didn't screw up all the way.

• 41:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:47Ethan Suplee?

  So I'm gonna take a win for that. That's a big W for the team, you know? All and all the good eyes inside me are rejoicing, they're going, yeah. And all the bad eyes are like, damn, he beat us again.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  What do you think about in the morning before your day when you wake up? Because I think people in general think about their food.

• 42:06Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  And think about sugar and think about eating healthy, eating bad. I think it's part of a lot of our makeup.

• 42:12Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Lewis Howes?

  Especially in today with just body dysmorphia, with social media, with influencers, with filters. I think people are obsessing about it. What do you have to think about to make sure you set yourself up for a healthy day?

• 42:27Ethan Suplee?

  It's never day of. It's always days ahead of time. So if I have three days of food left, that's when I start thinking, okay, what's the next round of food gonna look like?

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean, three days of food left?

• 42:41Ethan Suplee?

  Like if I, if we get to Friday.

• 42:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Ethan Suplee?

  And I run out of food on Sunday. I'm starting to think about, okay, I gotta figure out what I'm buying at the store.

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  You mean the food in your, in your fridge?

• 42:53Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 42:53Ethan Suplee?

  Like, am I, what produce did I see last week? Is it bananas right now? Is it blueberries? Like, what's in season? Um, what vegetables do I feel like eating right now? Am I gonna go for some lean beef? Or am I gonna make it a fish shopping run? It's a couple of days in advance and I might not go to the store, but I'll go to the store with at least 48 hours of food still in my house. I'll never go to the store hungry. I'll do my shopping and the food for tomorrow is always prepared a day before. Or food for whatever day it is. I don't know if I said that.

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  It's prepared the day before you eat.

• 43:32Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  So it's ready to go. So you don't have to think last minute like, I'm hungry, let me just snack on something.

• 43:36Ethan Suplee?

  That's a, that's a death.

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  So you plan your week for your nutrition to set yourself up to win.

• 43:42Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  And that helps you mentally, it helps you prepare for the day and just not have to stress about. The challenges that come as much.

• 43:50Ethan Suplee?

  Right, I still get stressed sometimes, like last year I was in Louisiana a lot for work and so I would, I would get, I would be bringing a day's worth of food with me on the plane. So I knew I'm safe for the day.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  The day, until you get there.

• 44:05Ethan Suplee?

  Well, even safe after I get there, because I've got food for when I'm there. But my very first stop, I get my rental car and I'm going to the grocery store. That's the very first thing I'm doing. And I'm not doing it hungry, and I'm not doing it when I'm out of food. I'm doing it so that I'd never hit that point.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you go to the grocery store hungry?

• 44:29Ethan Suplee?

  I just make bad decisions. I, I will find inevitably that there's something in my cart that I hadn't planned on getting, and somehow it's there, or I've bought it and I'm unpacking it and I'm like, I wasn't gonna buy this, why did I buy this? Why am I eating this?

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  Now, before I have to check out.

• 44:48Ethan Suplee?

  What's happening?

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  Why is it gone?

• 44:50Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like this is too much of an obsession? Should all people think this way? Or is this only for people you think that really need to take care of their health?

• 45:02Ethan Suplee?

  Look, I hear about, um, there's a big movement right now intuitive eating, which I think is how you should eat. That sounds like the most rational way to eat. That would not work for me.

• 45:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:15Ethan Suplee?

  That is not something that I am at a place now that I would be successful with. But not everybody is an alcoholic, not everybody's a recovering drug addict, not everybody was 500 pounds, not everybody, I don't think everybody's dealing with the same mental garbage. We're all unique, we're all different in that way. I'm sure there's a lot of, you could clump groups together and go like, these people are similar in this way. Okay, fine, but even if you break it down, you're gonna find lots of differences.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:46Ethan Suplee?

  And so, I, I would never think anybody has to do what I do, but I would suggest like, If you're finding yourself at the grocery store and you keep having stuff in your cart that you weren't gonna buy and you're then eating it, try, just give it a shot. Going full. Eat and then go to the grocery store and see if you can stick to your plan, that's all.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Ethan Suplee?

  But like, if you're not having that trouble, then you don't even need to think about it.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  You've got a couple of kids, right?

• 46:15Ethan Suplee?

  Four.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Four kids. What's the age range?

• 46:19Ethan Suplee?

  Geez, the oldest is twenty-four, the youngest is tw- thirteen.

• 46:24Lewis Howes?

  What advice do you have to parents of kids in this day and age on how they should be? Their way of being, their energy, their communication style to their kids around food, nutrition, working out, based on what you saw didn't work from your personal experience? Maybe there are other factors involved than just your grandparents saying this to you and kind of doing that stuff. I'm sure there's other factors, but what advice would you have to parents to raising healthy kids on nutrition and fitness?

• 46:56Ethan Suplee?

  I mean, I will first say I failed at all of the things that I would give advice on. Not that I'm a failure, my kids are awesome. Two are in college, the other two are very successful in their schools. Like, they're really, really great kids, they're well-adjusted, but any advice that I would give, I've also failed at and not done in the way that I wish I had. But I, I, the most important thing is I read a study by a guy that came out of Harlem, which just talked about the number of words that are said to children at a very young age and how influential that can be on their life.

• 47:38Ethan Suplee?

  And I didn't, that's like the one thing I didn't fail at. I talked to my kids a lot. I read to them and I talked to them and I would sit down and have a conversation with them about anything they wanted. And obviously, they're all girls, so there were times where stuff came up and I said, "That you should really talk to mom about, because I'm not, I don't really know about that." So that happened, but mostly was just talking to them and not being afraid to use words that they didn't understand and for sure making sure they knew what I was talking about if they didn't understand what I was talking about.

• 48:16Ethan Suplee?

  And then there were lots of times that they just said like, shut up dad, you're just showing off big words and and then and and that would be the end of the conversation, but um. You know.

• 48:29Ethan Suplee?

  I grew up in a household where food was very restricted. There was never alcohol in the house and drugs were super taboo. And I wound up having bad habits with each of those things. So. Pretty early on, my wife and I and and of course, all three of those are my biggest fear for my kids. Like if my kids get into any of those, I don't know how I react. I don't know how I just break in half and turn into like a giant puddle of grief that that gives up on life and the guilt will that. I could posit that that would be the insurmountable guilt that I go, forget it. I'm done, I'm ruined, right?

• 49:14Ethan Suplee?

  So in order to avoid that, we made these kind of things not taboo. Or attempted to make them as as not taboo as possible. Nobody's going to get in trouble.

• 49:25Lewis Howes?

  Really, that's good.

• 49:26Ethan Suplee?

  Our house is is like a safe area. You know.

• 49:31Lewis Howes?

  How do you do that where it's not taboo, but it's like, okay, if my daughter is eating three buckets of ice cream every day, hey, like, let's have a conversation.

• 49:39Ethan Suplee?

  Listen, and that's where I'd say I'd failed mostly with the food because much in a way I grew up where I think in an attempt to affect my eating, my mom was shopping at health food stores before they were trendy, when it was like hippies, Sikhs and people who were very obviously dying of cancer at Arowan. And there was dust on everything and the Kardashians were not going there.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't cool.

• 50:07Ethan Suplee?

  It was like a dump, right? When I was a little kid. That's where my mom shopped because she wanted to get healthy food to feed to me. And my reaction was, well, I'm just going to eat as much unhealthy food as possible. So I've also failed in that sense of like. Kids, we're not eating chicken thighs because they're high in fat. We're just gonna eat chicken breasts and they're, none of them like this. And it's like, tough luck, that's what I bought, you know? Um, so I didn't do that well. Uh, but what I've, we've seemed to manage a little bit better. And now we have kids in college, one's a senior. And, um, and it, and I hope this has been successful.

• 50:48Ethan Suplee?

  I mean, it has, from all observable factors, that, you know, drugs and alcohol were something that we just wanted to have conversations about. You know, that, nobody was gonna get yelled at, nobody was gonna get in trouble. Just be honest with us and, and then it never, that kinda thing never became a problem.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 51:10Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, that, that was a big success.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  That's good, yeah.

• 51:13Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  Uh, we were talking about this before, about how you, it's 20, it's 20 year anniversary of Remember the Titans? 25?

• 51:20Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, 20.

• 51:21Lewis Howes?

  20 year anniversary this year.

• 51:22Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Lewis Howes?

  This month.

• 51:23Ethan Suplee?

  Like, right now.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  Now.

• 51:24Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  Which was a big, uh, football movie for me. I was a junior when I was playing, maybe I was a senior. Maybe I was going in my senior year, so I was a senior, uh, in 2000. And it was a big, big hit for every football player in America. So it was a big part of my, like, senior year, going to college, I remember watching that movie a lot. What are your thoughts on 20 years later for what you said was the biggest premiere of a movie you've ever been to? At the Rose Bowl, 20,000 people, uh, fighter jets coming over, you know, every celebrity and their friend there. What are your thoughts 20 years later from that movie for you?

• 52:02Ethan Suplee?

  It's, I have really selfish, vain thoughts.

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 52:07Ethan Suplee?

  And, and like, I go like, how appropriate is that movie today? Number one, super relevant. That's cool.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Ethan Suplee?

  That's not, that's not, that's not the vain thought.

• 52:20Lewis Howes?

  With the racism conversation, social justice.

• 52:22Ethan Suplee?

  All of it, and it's like, designed to be appropriate for little kids.

• 52:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:27Ethan Suplee?

  You know what I mean? It's a Disney movie.

• 52:29Lewis Howes?

  PG-13 or PG, yeah.

• 52:30Ethan Suplee?

  I don't know if it's PG or PG-13, but it's a Disney movie. It's not Touchstone, which normally a movie about football would be over in Touch. This is Disney.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Ethan Suplee?

  Right? So like, what a great message at any entry level. You know, you're showing kindergarteners this movie and it's appropriate. Great. I played a real person. The guy I played was never as big as I was. Right. Never. Yeah. And I feel so much guilt about that, even today. Really? He was like, what, 280 maybe or something? Right, he was a normal whatever part. By the way, I don't know anything about football. So whatever position I played, I don't. Yeah, lineman, probably. That sounds right. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:18Ethan Suplee?

  And I have some guilt about that. Being way bigger than the real person was. And then at the premiere, there were certain things that happened that kind of just solidified how awful this was. We'd never met these guys. I'd never met him. The real life people. Yeah. And, you know, while it's like based on a true story, there's a lot in there that's invented and fictionalized. And, you know, it's not exactly what happened, I don't think. I don't know what the real story is, but there was no desire for us to get to know these guys.

• 54:01Ethan Suplee?

  I played a real guy in a movie called Deepwater Horizon. And that was, you're looking at pictures, you're having some correspondence with their family. We're gonna honor this person, right? So it was very different. This was like, no, no, this is just concentrate on the movie, right? Fine, that's what we did. But I meet him and I'm, and he's just like a normal big guy who looks like he played football. I do not, at that point, look at all like I played football. And I feel, whether he did this or not, I feel this feeling of I'm disappointing him. This is who's playing me. Hmm. He kinda looked at you with a little. I don't know. Who knows? I don't know if he did.

• 54:46Ethan Suplee?

  If he did, he was more than, he had more than reason to do that. If he didn't and it was all invention in my head, then that's what happened. I don't know what's true, but I felt, yeah, wow. I'm, I'm twice your size. I'm portraying you. Hmm. And then there was a thing where all the guys whose real life guys showed up, get together with the actor who played them and we sit on the back of little golf cars. And there's a parade. We do a parade around the, the Rose Bowl. Wow. There's like a track. Stadium, yeah, yeah.

• 55:22Ethan Suplee?

  This is crazy. I've never even talked about this. We're last, or we're not even last, but we get in the car. You and him. Yeah. The real guy. Yeah, on the back, facing backwards, right? And I sit down and I don't know how this happens, but the tire under me goes flat. Oh, it does not there? Instantly goes flat. No, it does not. And there's dudes with walkie talkies and headsets screaming, "You gotta go, you gotta go." So other cars are now driving around us to go in this parade. So it's not a long gap of no one going? Right. And we get out and they're scrambling like, "Get another car."

• 56:05Ethan Suplee?

  I've, I don't know what happened to the tire. I don't know if it was like, had a hole in it and I was just the straw that broke its back. I don't know what happened, but for me, I crushed that tire. My weight flattened that tire. And so we then are standing there waiting and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is just one of the most horrific moments of his life, I assume, and it feels really bad to me." And then they get a car and we get in the car and it doesn't crush the tire this time, but the car cannot move in the way that the other cars are moving. The other cars are, we're already like gonna try and play catch up.

• 56:50Ethan Suplee?

  Oh my God. And we're just going like half the speed of the rest of them. So they lap us. No, they don't.

• 56:58Ethan Suplee?

  And. I probably should not be laughing. No. The way you're telling me is making me. Yeah, it was, and then we get off on the field and we wave and then he turned and walked away and I never saw him again. And I could not have felt worse, dude. I felt like. Oh my gosh, I felt horrible. What a horrible, horrible experience. I think they went out and did like a full lap and. We just like tried to catch on to the back and they very quickly pulled away.

• 57:29Lewis Howes?

  He went like 20 yards and stopped or something?

• 57:31Ethan Suplee?

  Well, we made it almost a full way around.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  As people are lapping you.

• 57:35Ethan Suplee?

  They're already out of their cars and standing together and we're like going so slow. Just like painfully slow, all by ourselves, not in this parade at all. It would be amazing for somebody to find the video of this because somebody must have taken video of this.

• 57:52Lewis Howes?

  So, what were you feeling as you got back on the golf cart?

• 57:57Ethan Suplee?

  Utterly humiliated.

• 57:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. Did you say like, did you say like, no, I'll walk, I'll like?

• 58:04Ethan Suplee?

  No way, I wasn't walking. He might have actually.

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  So you both got off after the golf cart collapses?

• 58:11Ethan Suplee?

  Collapses, we get a new golf cart, get on it.

• 58:14Lewis Howes?

  Which probably felt like an eternity, but it was probably like 60 seconds later.

• 58:16Ethan Suplee?

  Something like that. And then we got on it and very clearly we're just inching along, inching along in our golf cart.

• 58:24Lewis Howes?

  How are you gonna explain this?

• 58:26Ethan Suplee?

  It was awful. And I've felt tremendous guilt about that.

• 58:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 58:32Ethan Suplee?

  I still feel a bit of guilt about that.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  Did you say anything to him afterwards or was it like you guys stopped, waved and he went his way? 20 years later, you haven't spoken to him?

• 58:41Ethan Suplee?

  No. I think he actually passed away a few years ago and that's a shame too. But I mean, I, you know, I don't know what I could have done, but I feel bad for the guy.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  So was that one of your most humiliating moments in your acting career?

• 59:00Ethan Suplee?

  For sure.

• 59:01Lewis Howes?

  What was one of the proudest moments in your acting career?

• 59:04Ethan Suplee?

  I did a TV show called Chance, which was on Hulu and oddly enough Stephen King became obsessed with it and started tweeting about me and I felt pretty proud about that.

• 59:18Lewis Howes?

  So was it the fact that he was tweeting about you or was it the fact of your performance you felt?

• 59:22Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, I felt proud of it. I was playing a very intelligent, tough guy. I've never done that before. And so I was feeling myself.

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  Intelligent and tough?

• 59:33Ethan Suplee?

  Both.

• 59:34Lewis Howes?

  Because American X3X, was it more of a tough?

• 59:36Ethan Suplee?

  He was a guy, come on. I was a bit of a clown in that movie. Yeah. Maybe that guy was tough, but he wasn't intelligent.

• 59:44Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So intelligent and tough.

• 59:45Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah. And like capable and all this stuff and like, you know.

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  In shape and...

• 59:52Ethan Suplee?

  I was still pretty heavy at that point. This was right in the middle of like, I'm gonna eat whatever I want and lift weight. So I had a lot more muscle.

• 1:00:00Lewis Howes?

  You were big, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:01Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, but I also had a lot more fat. And I was just, I've just always been proud of that. Like, I thought it was really, really a cool show.

• 1:00:10Lewis Howes?

  Did you ever get frustrated feeling like typecasted at any point? Or did you ever feel like, oh, I really wanted this role, but I'll never be able to get it?

• 1:00:21Ethan Suplee?

  I didn't ever get frustrated being typecast because I was working and, and the, you know, as long as I was working, everything was fine. And then there was a role, there was a book called The Confederacy of Dunces, which I really wanted to play a character in that. And it would have been appropriate too, because he was an overweight guy.

• 1:00:45Ethan Suplee?

  And there were a number of instances where like, I remember at one point, like, John Cusack was gonna wear a fat suit and do it. And then Will Ferrell was gonna wear a fat suit and do it. And there was one version of a script which they were interested in me doing. I think Chris Forley was gonna do it right before he passed away.

• 1:01:06Ethan Suplee?

  And then there was a moment where there was some momentum in me playing that role, and then it fell apart. It always fell apart.

• 1:01:15Ethan Suplee?

  I still think that would be such a cool movie. I would not be right for it at all today.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:19Ethan Suplee?

  And plus, he's much younger than I am now. This was like, you know, my early twenties.

• 1:01:24Lewis Howes?

  Which moment on set that you were either involved in, in the scene, or watching, or whatever, on the set, experiencing it? Where you're like, that was the greatest acting moment I've ever witnessed. Do you remember, was there a specific actor, whether famous or not famous? Or just a scene? Or maybe it wasn't even something that made the film, but a moment you're like, wow. It moved you.

• 1:01:49Ethan Suplee?

  Here, you know, listen, I've been in some really, really good movies with really, really talented actors. I've worked with Edward Norton a couple of times, with Denzel Washington a few times, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. I've worked with him on multiple movies and seen him do some like really incredible acting. And all of these guys are super capable. Oddly enough, I watched a scene at the end of a movie that is, by all accounts, a silly little like violent comedy that I was in.

• 1:02:29Ethan Suplee?

  And the gal who was the lead in this movie was doing acting work that was mind blowing. I thought, her name's Betty Gilpin, she's on a TV show called Glow.

• 1:02:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh, the female wrestling one?

• 1:02:45Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, and we did a movie called The Hunt. And she was really good in all the scenes I was in with her, but I watched a scene towards the end of the movie where I was just truly blown away by her in the way that you're talking about. And that's what comes to mind right now. It might also be like the most recent movie I had come out, so watch it on pay-per-view. But it's also an honest answer.

• 1:03:09Lewis Howes?

  In The Hunt?

• 1:03:10Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  Is this about like hunting people?

• 1:03:14Ethan Suplee?

  Yes. It's like a kind of like ridiculous movie.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  The first scene in like in the woods and it's like five people die right away?

• 1:03:20Ethan Suplee?

  Yes.

• 1:03:20Lewis Howes?

  I watched this movie.

• 1:03:21Ethan Suplee?

  Yes, so that gal does some stuff, she's the main girl.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  Oh, at the end, the fight scene?

• 1:03:27Ethan Suplee?

  And not just the fight scene, but leading up to the fight scene where she's in the bunker. And she has a conversation with the dude. And she's doing stuff that you're like, what the hell are you doing? It's so awesome.

• 1:03:42Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So you were there on set watching this?

• 1:03:45Ethan Suplee?

  No.

• 1:03:45Lewis Howes?

  Or you saw a take afterwards?

• 1:03:47Ethan Suplee?

  I saw a take. I don't, I didn't watch the whole movie, but I saw, um, I saw that scene and I, and I was like, dude, this girl is doing some far out S H I T.

• 1:03:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:04:00Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  What do you think it was about her way of being that made it so special and memorable for you?

• 1:04:06Ethan Suplee?

  You know, here, here's the thing, the, the other, the other time I was impressed, bringing it back to Remember the Titans, was Ryan Gosling on Remember the Titans.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Really? That was kind of his breakout role too, right? For him?

• 1:04:16Ethan Suplee?

  He had done a bunch of stuff. He was on like the Mickey Mouse Club with all with like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.

• 1:04:22Lewis Howes?

  You know that.

• 1:04:22Ethan Suplee?

  And yeah, he was like a full child actor. And then he did like Young Hercules or something like that for years in New Zealand.

• 1:04:31Lewis Howes?

  He was skinny in Remember the Titans.

• 1:04:32Ethan Suplee?

  He was a, he was the youngest, he was the only one who was a teenager.

• 1:04:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:04:37Ethan Suplee?

  I think, yeah. And we're sitting down with the director Boaz and Ryan, we were talking about the scenes and talking about the, the general vibe and Ryan says, just so you know, here's this thing about my character. And Boaz like, what are you talking about? That's going to be so distracting. I know you can't do that. And Ryan says, no, no, if it's distracting, you tell me and I won't do it, but like, I really feel strongly about this. And, and then he proceeds to be one of the most interesting characters with not a lot of dialogue in that movie. He is doing stuff that is not distracting at all, but makes you look at him and be interested.

• 1:05:20Ethan Suplee?

  And I think that's what Betty is doing in The Hunt. There's a thing like, look, we're all trying to be. Real and natural, unless you're doing like a slapstick comedy and then you're doing some big cartoonish character, right? That's a thing.

• 1:05:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Ethan Suplee?

  But for the most part, the movies that I've done are not that.

• 1:05:42Lewis Howes?

  So you're trying to be authentic and real.

• 1:05:44Ethan Suplee?

  You're trying to be authentic and real. You're trying to clobber together and mold a mental idea of what this character is, what their interests are, and you're adding as much to that as possible to give it depth. And I think if you, if you look at the really great actors, they're picking and choosing mannerisms and things that are real, but are also like really interesting and unique. Versus like a guy who shows up and says his lines, right? And by the way, sometimes like you look at like Robert Duvall in The Godfather, and sometimes that stillness is really interesting, right? But he's choosing to do that.

• 1:06:28Ethan Suplee?

  That's a choice that he's making. He's not just lazily showing up and saying his lines. I think I've done that a lot. I have just shown up and said my lines. And when I, when I can find interesting things and actually put a bunch of effort into the character and create this alter ego for myself, I think it becomes more special. And Ryan Gosling did that in Remember the Titans. And Betty Gilpin did that in The Hunt.

• 1:06:58Lewis Howes?

  What did Ryan do? What were his mannerisms that really stuck out or?

• 1:07:02Ethan Suplee?

  You just have to watch it because none of it is how he behaved in real life. And he has a presence that is nothing like him at all in real life. It's a, it's a character choice. And he's got to communicate that to the audience without saying a lot, where the focus of the scene is not typically him, and he does it perfectly.

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  Where it's not distracting.

• 1:07:28Ethan Suplee?

  Not at all. I mean, you could have a guy who's just hamming it up, trying to get on camera. That's not what he's doing.

• 1:07:32Lewis Howes?

  Being silly and goofy or something. For some reason, I don't think I've seen this movie in probably a decade, but for some reason, I remember him like kind of doing a nod with his head type of thing. I don't know if that was what he did, but he did some like a chuckle thing with his head, like a kind of a silly but not too, I don't know if that was it or not.

• 1:07:51Ethan Suplee?

  That's part of it, yeah.

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  But he had like his manner is everything.

• 1:07:53Ethan Suplee?

  Every scene that he's in, he is existing as this character.

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:07:59Ethan Suplee?

  And it's not.

• 1:08:00Lewis Howes?

  It's thoughtful, it's intentional.

• 1:08:02Ethan Suplee?

  It's much more than just a dude at high school. It's much more than that. And I say that remembering really liking him and being friendly with him at the time and observant of him and seeing what he did and being impressed by it. And knowing that he put more into it than just a dude at high school and there. I don't know that I showed up and put any more into it than just, I'm a guy at high school. I really don't. And that's just being completely frank. I was probably just a guy at high school and Ryan wasn't. And that's why he's who he is.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow. You also said that you don't watch any of your own films. And you've probably been 40, 50 plus films, whatever. You only watch yours, you don't watch your scenes unless you are maybe on set and the director says, come take a look at this and I need you to.

• 1:08:52Ethan Suplee?

  I don't even really like to do that. It screws me up. Here's the thing, like if there's a technical reason that I have to look at it because, because I'm not understanding what he wants to see and he's telling me like, no, you need to get further or deeper or whatever. Cause it, you know, I, I, that's happened and I'll look at that and he'll play it back and I'll say, see you land here, I want you to land here. But there's also tape on the ground. So like.

• 1:09:18Lewis Howes?

  Right, you know where you're supposed to go.

• 1:09:19Ethan Suplee?

  If I'm missing it by that much, somebody's just gonna move the tape or you know what I mean?

• 1:09:24Lewis Howes?

  So why, did you watch your first clip back on Boy Meets World? Did you like?

• 1:09:28Ethan Suplee?

  I probably did and, and I've just very quickly realized that like, I'm never gonna be truly satisfied with what I do. I'm never gonna think like that was a home run. And once it's done.

• 1:09:44Ethan Suplee?

  It's done. I have no power to affect changing it.

• 1:09:48Lewis Howes?

  You know, as an athlete, we would play a football game and then we'd watch the game film.

• 1:09:52Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Lewis Howes?

  The next day to see what can we do better? How, you know, what were our mistakes, things like that. Did you ever see yourself as wanting to study your film? And try to say, how could I improve it?

• 1:10:05Ethan Suplee?

  That's fair. And I'll tell you what, I, I, I did that one time, but here's the thing, here's the difference, like. Movie to movie, I'm doing something completely different. But we did the pilot for My Name Is Earl. And then there's like a weird gap where like, who knows what's happening.

• 1:10:23Lewis Howes?

  Six months to a year, just like.

• 1:10:25Ethan Suplee?

  Some dude in Kansas City who owns the world is watching it and going like, I like this, put this on, you know, something like that really happens. And we're meanwhile, we're like, what are we gonna do for work? Let's find another thing. I go off and do a movie and right? And then it's like, no, no, we're doing this show now. We gotta do however many more. I think first season we did like 25 episodes. And I remember going back to the set and going to the creator, Craig Garcia, I go, I have no idea what to do. Like, I don't remember, like, what, what do I do?

• 1:11:01Lewis Howes?

  Six months ago when you shot the pilot.

• 1:11:03Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, like, and that was, that was like, that was a legit character and it just like evaporated from my mind.

• 1:11:11Ethan Suplee?

  And he was like, okay, let me show you this scene. And he just played me one scene and he said, all you have to do is open your mouth and look up. And he showed me one clip of me like, doing that, opening my mouth and looking up. And I had it and I was like, good, I'm good. I'm good to go. And that was it. And so, yes, in the same way that I think an athlete can watch a football to go like, oh, if I'm getting out here faster, but you're also talking about like some kind of choreography. Where you are doing something with other people that you want to repeat exactly. And you can look and go like, I'm missing it here. With acting, it's not quite that. I could see doing it for a, a play.

• 1:11:56Ethan Suplee?

  Or theater, I could totally see that.

• 1:11:59Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like? You never wanted to, what if you had a six pack when you were 22 and remember the Titans? Would you think psychologically you'd be like, yeah, I wanna watch myself with a six pack?

• 1:12:08Ethan Suplee?

  That's possible.

• 1:12:09Lewis Howes?

  Like destroying a dude or catching a football?

• 1:12:12Ethan Suplee?

  I mean, look.

• 1:12:12Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to being the overweight guy all the time and not wanting to look at that?

• 1:12:16Ethan Suplee?

  I think if I had a six pack at 22, I never would have done Remember the Titans. I would have been happier in school and you know, who knows what my life would be like now?

• 1:12:29Ethan Suplee?

  If I had had a six pack at 22 and still wound up being an actor? I think I'm an actor because like I wasn't super confident enough to do anything else. Because acting was escaping who I was. And if I had a six pack, what do I need to escape from? I mean, that's all anybody needs is a six pack.

• 1:12:53Lewis Howes?

  Is that what you think?

• 1:12:54Ethan Suplee?

  No. But it helps.

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  You felt, so you felt like the whole time acting was an escape for you?

• 1:13:02Ethan Suplee?

  A little bit, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:04Lewis Howes?

  You still feel like it's an escape now?

• 1:13:06Ethan Suplee?

  Not as much. I don't find that I need to escape very much now. I'm also like an old man, I have kids in college, like you know what I mean? Like what the hell am I escaping from now? Like my life is awesome. I have all these kids and a wonderful wife and like I really am pretty content. And there's not much I wanna escape from now.

• 1:13:32Lewis Howes?

  What advice would you give to young people trying to become, to become an actor or get into the acting world? What, what feedback, advice, suggestion?

• 1:13:40Ethan Suplee?

  I think that there's a lot of an idea that there's, that it's like very glamorous and and a lot of like Hollywood parties in there, some of that certainly. There is no glamour on a set at all. And now I say that not being Jennifer Lopez and knowing like what she, maybe, maybe she gets some glamour and like is allowed to shut stuff down if she's having a bad hair day because that's such a big part of her presence, right? I don't know, I haven't worked with her or somebody of her stature in that way. I've never seen glamour on a set unless that's what we're filming.

• 1:14:21Ethan Suplee?

  And then it's all BS. It's all make believe. It's not real glamour. It's like a facade, right? So that's not part of it at all. It's like construction dudes with cameras and heavy equipment.

• 1:14:33Lewis Howes?

  And everyone's in your face and there's no privacy. Yeah.

• 1:14:35Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah, and you've got makeup on and a costume that doesn't quite fit exactly the way real clothes would. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot going on that you're constantly aware that this is BS. This is not real life. This is fake.

• 1:14:53Ethan Suplee?

  And then for me, you can see when people are lazy. I know that I was lazy a lot in my career, and I know it's very obvious that I was lazy. And you can see when somebody's done a lot of creating this character to present to you. And even if it is still, still could be creation, right?

• 1:15:19Ethan Suplee?

  Batman is very still. You can go through the Batmans and see how some of them are doing that in a deeper way than others, right? You can go like, that guy is hitting a homerun. That guy is not, right? That's fair.

• 1:15:35Ethan Suplee?

  I think that it requires that a little bit, but showing up, like, all you need to know technically is be on time because there's going to be a ton of people waiting on you. And know your lines because if you don't, you've really not done any homework. And like, it's embarrassing. Don't do that. And like, then you got a bunch of people who are like, we all learned our lines. Now we're all waiting on you. You might as well have just been late. Learn your lines, right? That's the technical aspect, but then like the creative aspect is like, get into that. You know what I mean? Like, go deep. Do stuff. Find mannerisms that are obscure, that you, you know, observe people. Nobody is exactly the same. Everybody has, exists in a different way.

• 1:16:19Ethan Suplee?

  And, and take some of that stuff and use it. Throw it into a character. See what happens. You know, that to me is like where acting becomes magical.

• 1:16:28Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. A few final questions for you. And before I ask them, you've got a podcast called American Glutton, which I was on, which was fun.

• 1:16:36Ethan Suplee?

  Yes.

• 1:16:36Lewis Howes?

  Which talks a lot about. Thoughts on food, culture in America. You have a lot of different, interesting people on.

• 1:16:43Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Lewis Howes?

  Actors to scientists, researchers, nutrition people, talking about this concept. And where can they listen to that?

• 1:16:53Ethan Suplee?

  I mean, I have an app for Apple Podcasts, but I think it's on anywhere you can get a podcast. You can listen to it. It's called American Glutton. Yeah.

• 1:17:04Lewis Howes?

  And you're on social as well?

• 1:17:05Ethan Suplee?

  Yes. Ethan Suplee on Twitter and Instagram.

• 1:17:09Lewis Howes?

  Very cool.

• 1:17:09Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Lewis Howes?

  American Glutton. Make sure you check that out. If you want to hear me and Ethan sweating.

• 1:17:14Ethan Suplee?

  Yes.

• 1:17:14Lewis Howes?

  So listen to our interview.

• 1:17:15Ethan Suplee?

  You can hear it dripping off of us. I will say like, this is magically cool, this room. I am so comfortable in here.

• 1:17:23Lewis Howes?

  You walked in the room sweating when you got in here. I saw you sweating and now you look like.

• 1:17:27Ethan Suplee?

  This is like.

• 1:17:27Lewis Howes?

  This is what you gotta do in your room. You gotta turn it on, you see, crank it up.

• 1:17:32Lewis Howes?

  Couple final questions. You worked with some of the biggest stars in the world. Was there ever a time where you were nervous to work with one of these big stars on one of these sets? And what was the biggest lesson you took from one of them? That really stands out. Whether it was Leo or Denzel or whoever, but what was. Were you ever nervous being like, wow, I'm about to do a scene with this person? And then what was the big lesson you learned from one of them?

• 1:17:57Ethan Suplee?

  So I'll answer those two different people. Denzel Washington. The first time I worked with him, I was nervous. And then he didn't let anybody off the hook. He's playing the coach, right? And, and he's playing a real no nonsense guy in Remember the Titans. He is not coming in being friendly to the kids, right? He's like hard ass. And he came on set and he was that. And, and then I did other movies with him. And even towards the end, he's not doing that because that's who he is. He's doing that because that's the character, right? And so he is, I'm gonna come on. I'm gonna maintain this and you are going to behave appropriately without saying any of that.

• 1:18:42Ethan Suplee?

  And I was nervous.

• 1:18:44Lewis Howes?

  He never broke character and said, hey, I'm just.

• 1:18:46Ethan Suplee?

  Never once.

• 1:18:47Lewis Howes?

  Play along. He just acted as if.

• 1:18:49Ethan Suplee?

  He walked on set and he was the coach.

• 1:18:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:18:53Ethan Suplee?

  And. So I was nervous. That that made, I mean, it was like you pucker a little bit, you stand up straighter and you're like, this is the dude. I don't want to upset this dude. I don't want to get yelled at.

• 1:19:07Ethan Suplee?

  So that was the the time I can recall being nervous.

• 1:19:13Ethan Suplee?

  I'll say from from Leo DiCaprio, who I'm friendly with, and so I got a little bit more insight into how he behaves on a set. For myself, as I said, I've been lazy a number of times. You can very easily see it. I know in the first season of My Name is Earl, by the time we got to the second season, I wasn't learning my lines the night before. I was kind of like showing up on set and learning them quickly. And that to me was a sign of like, oh, you know, a little success and like, now I'm not going to put as much effort into it, which I turned around by the later seasons and and got my act together a little bit. Leo

• 1:19:58Ethan Suplee?

  always knows all of his lines. And when they knock for him, no matter what he is doing, when they knock and they say we're ready, he is up and walking to set. Like, they could be dressing him. They will continue to dress him as they walk to set. Yes, I swear to God. He is one of the most considerate and hardworking dudes I've ever seen, and it is really impressive because once you get to his level of stardom, it's very easy for them to knock and then somebody else, an assistant or whoever, to go like, yeah, we need a few minutes. That's like not a big deal, right?

• 1:20:38Lewis Howes?

  Happens all the time.

• 1:20:39Ethan Suplee?

  Happens all the time.

• 1:20:40Lewis Howes?

  Give me two minutes.

• 1:20:41Ethan Suplee?

  And when you when you got as much dialogue to learn as him, it's also wouldn't be insane if he showed up and had to sit and learn it a little bit with the other actors. You know what I mean? That's quite frequently the case, too. Neither of those are true for him. He is knows his lines cold long before he arrives at set. Will spend all night working on them if he has to, or nights leading up to a big day of dialogue. And nobody will ever wait for him. He will never allow them to be ready and him to not be there. So that's like, that's for me.

• 1:21:22Ethan Suplee?

  Witnessing that, the times that I have, I've always been really kind of blown away by that and thought like, yeah, that's how, that's how I would like to comport myself if I was ever in his shoes. And I failed at that on a much smaller scale. And had to like, pull myself together on my own and go like, I don't like this. I don't like, I don't like the idea of them telling, them saying like, they're ready and me going like, okay, well, now I'm gonna get up and go to the bathroom and then I'll come. No, I've had however long in my trailer, that should be done so that when they're ready, I'm walking to work, you know?

• 1:22:03Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty inspiring.

• 1:22:04Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Lewis Howes?

  Uh, this is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths.

• 1:22:08Ethan Suplee?

  Okay.

• 1:22:09Lewis Howes?

  So imagine it's your last day on this planet.

• 1:22:11Ethan Suplee?

  Yes.

• 1:22:12Lewis Howes?

  Many years from now.

• 1:22:13Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Lewis Howes?

  You accomplish everything you want. Um, but for whatever reason, you've got to take all your content with you to the next place.

• 1:22:20Ethan Suplee?

  Okay.

• 1:22:21Lewis Howes?

  Take all that stuff with you. All your movies, gotta go with you.

• 1:22:24Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Lewis Howes?

  Content, podcast, everything you do. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from your life. Three lessons you would share with the rest of us. This is all we would have to kind of remember you by. Are these three?

• 1:22:35Ethan Suplee?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:22:36Lewis Howes?

  These three truths?

• 1:22:37Ethan Suplee?

  Right.

• 1:22:38Lewis Howes?

  Uh, or three lessons that you would share to leave behind? What would you say are your three truths?

• 1:22:43Ethan Suplee?

  I believe that the greatest position we can take with regard to any other person is interest. Um, that's a lesson I've learned. Uh, I think that ultimately the stuff that we accumulate that defines us is meaningless. And I think that, um, the World Wrestling Federation has far more legitimacy than politics. Those are my three truths.

• 1:23:13Lewis Howes?

  That's the third one? I like you. We'll have to do another one on, on why later.

• 1:23:18Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Lewis Howes?

  Um, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Ethan, before I ask the final question for your, your consistent journey of discovering yourself, of going down the path of, you know, doing the hard stuff. It's not easy to lose the weight you lost and keep saying, I've got to stay consistent with this because it can be easy for you to go back off track. And to make yourself almost accountable to the world now by doing a podcast, by talking about it consistently, by being open about it. I think it's really inspiring to, to, to help other people in the world who might be struggling in the same way. So I acknowledge you for constantly opening up and staying consistent to your vision, man.

• 1:23:56Ethan Suplee?

  Thank you.

• 1:23:56Lewis Howes?

  We need you around and healthy. So I'm grateful for all that you're doing. Uh, this is the final question.

• 1:24:02Ethan Suplee?

  Okay.

• 1:24:02Lewis Howes?

  What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:24:05Ethan Suplee?

  I think that greatness is, um, overcoming obstacles, whatever they may be. I think that if, and, and even just the pursuit of overcoming the obstacles is, is greatness. So, uh, you know, it doesn't have to be that you won the race or even finished the race, but that you're in it, I think is greatness.

• 1:24:25Lewis Howes?

  My man. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

• 1:24:27Ethan Suplee?

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:24:28Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it, man.

• 1:24:28Ethan Suplee?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so, so much for listening to this episode, my friend. I'm so grateful you came here and decided to spend some time with me and Ethan today. If you enjoyed this, make sure to share it. LewisHowes.com/1025 or just copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this. And please click that subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now. Leave us a rating and review. If this helped you in any way, then you can help me in return by clicking subscribe and leaving a rating and review as that'll truly help us spread the message of greatness to more people. And if you want inspirational messages sent to your phone every single week from me, behind the scenes content, then text the word PODCAST right now to 614-350-3960. Again,

• 1:25:13Lewis Howes?

  text the word PODCAST, 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with this quote from psychotherapist and author David Rico, who said, "Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us."

• 1:25:31Lewis Howes?

  Wherever you're feeling that type of pain or discomfort, wherever that is in your life right now, realize there's an opening there. That opening is allowing you to dive in and start really paying attention to where the problem is and figuring out how you can solve that. So you can have a healthier, happier, stronger life. You deserve love. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be healthy. This is what you were born to do. And if no one has reminded you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.