"RE-RELEASE: Don Cheadle"

Watch out, folks— it’s Don Cheadle, a.k.a. “Donchalant.” What is Jazz? Did Don have a good slumber last night? Get ready for some hard-hitters, like a deadly mignonette, the most rarified air, and both Kansas Cities. From our lips to pods’ ears, it’s an all-new SmartLess. This episode was originally released on 4/8/24.

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

• 0:00Sean Hayes?

  This episode of Smartless is sponsored by Google Book. So the other day, I wanted to make invitations for my dog Ricky's birthday party. And I've got three things open on my laptop. An adorable photo of Ricky, a picture of a birthday cake, and the RSVP details. Thing is, as much as I look like one, I'm not a canine birthday party invitation designer. That's where Google Book comes in. It's a whole new kind of laptop with a feature called Magic Pointer. I just click the photos and different elements on my screen, and boom, Magic Pointer designs a customized birthday party invitation for Ricky. Click anything on your screen to create whatever you want. Visit googlebook.com. Available to 18-plus users.

• 0:44Sean Hayes?

  Compatibility and availability vary.

• 0:49Jason Bateman?

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• 1:29Sean Hayes?

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• 2:06Sean Hayes?

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• 2:47Sean Hayes?

  Hi, everybody. How was your day today?

• 2:49Will Arnett?

  Are you asking us or the audience? And you're expecting an answer from the audience?

• 2:52Jason Bateman?

  You know, the audience is not Mike.

• 2:53Sean Hayes?

  You got it. Sorry. Well, no, I was asking. Oh, they're not?

• 2:56Will Arnett?

  Since when do you call me and JB "everybody"?

• 2:59Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. No, I call you guys "the audience."

• 3:02Jason Bateman?

  Because you think that's the only people listening to you? It's just us two?

• 3:05Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Jason Bateman?

  You've got higher responsibilities than that. Let's come with the good stuff.

• 3:08Will Arnett?

  Judging by this opening, we're after you. It's gonna be a great Smartless. Welcome to it.

• 3:29Jason Bateman?

  Sean, what's on your cap there? Is that a college?

• 3:32Sean Hayes?

  It's ISU, Illinois State University, where I have an honorary doctorate and a scholarship fund set up for people who want to go into music or the arts. And, sorry, acting and theater.

• 3:41Will Arnett?

  Are they still accredited? I mean, after you got a diploma. I heard that after they give you a diploma that they were stripped of their power.

• 3:49Jason Bateman?

  Sounds like a real on... Is that an online university?

• 3:52Sean Hayes?

  I still wear my sash to bed.

• 3:54Will Arnett?

  Once they did an assessment of your intellect, they're like, "We gave this guy a fucking diploma."

• 3:59Jason Bateman?

  Did you really go to ISU?

• 4:01Sean Hayes?

  I went to Illinois State University. Yeah, it's one of the greatest colleges ever.

• 4:05Jason Bateman?

  Okay.

• 4:06Will Arnett?

  Well, hang on. Let's quickly Google that.

• 4:09Sean Hayes?

  See how much...

• 4:10Will Arnett?

  Because I don't think you're gonna like the results.

• 4:12Sean Hayes?

  For theater. By the way, you know who went there? Me, Jane Lynch, Craig Robinson, and I were music majors together.

• 4:18Will Arnett?

  We know.

• 4:18Sean Hayes?

  I know.

• 4:19Will Arnett?

  We've had them on the podcast.

• 4:20Sean Hayes?

  I know. We talked about that.

• 4:21Will Arnett?

  We talked about it for like half an hour.

• 4:23Jason Bateman?

  Hey, Arnett, where'd you go to school?

• 4:25Will Arnett?

  I didn't. I dropped out, man.

• 4:27Jason Bateman?

  No, but you did go.

• 4:28Sean Hayes?

  You went to boarding school.

• 4:29Will Arnett?

  You know where I went? I went to fucking Hard Knocks, dude.

• 4:32Jason Bateman?

  Oh, bro.

• 4:32Will Arnett?

  The streets.

• 4:33Sean Hayes?

  The Hard Knocks life with Annie?

• 4:34Will Arnett?

  Of Toronto. The streets of Toronto.

• 4:36Jason Bateman?

  Did you go? You went to?

• 4:38Will Arnett?

  Excuse me.

• 4:39Jason Bateman?

  You, excuse me. You went to additional, additional voluntary school?

• 4:43Will Arnett?

  I did for half, half a year, half a year. I know, I love that you go.

• 4:51Jason Bateman?

  Volun- no, actually I should invert that. Voluntary additional school. And I just didn't understand the concept of that, you know?

• 5:01Will Arnett?

  Well, yeah. I mean.

• 5:03Jason Bateman?

  I now have an option to not go, so taking that option.

• 5:07Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 5:08Sean Hayes?

  You want a good joke?

• 5:09Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, sure. Love one. ISU.

• 5:11Will Arnett?

  Jump in. I didn't realize that you were grabbing the reins here. We were just merely going down a path, but.

• 5:16Sean Hayes?

  Let's talk more about your school.

• 5:18Will Arnett?

  Let's just go fucking, okay.

• 5:19Sean Hayes?

  Let's talk more about your school.

• 5:20Will Arnett?

  I didn't go.

• 5:21Jason Bateman?

  No, it's not.

• 5:22Sean Hayes?

  Here we go. Ready? The best gift I ever received was a broken drum. You can't beat it.

• 5:29Jason Bateman?

  Okay, that's all right. That's okay. He doesn't claim that these to be great jokes.

• 5:33Sean Hayes?

  I got a couple laughs in the background there.

• 5:35Jason Bateman?

  You should, you should say, do you want to hear a dad joke?

• 5:38Will Arnett?

  No, I don't like, I don't, I, I.

• 5:41Jason Bateman?

  People are ready for something good. Dad joke means it's not going to be good.

• 5:44Will Arnett?

  I don't like the term dad joke. I think that's, I think that's lazy to call it a dad joke.

• 5:47Jason Bateman?

  How about bad joke? Just say bad joke. So people aren't expecting to laugh.

• 5:50Will Arnett?

  Or like a pun. That's okay to say.

• 5:52Sean Hayes?

  I got one more. You got one more?

• 5:53Jason Bateman?

  Are there any mom jokes?

• 5:54Sean Hayes?

  Here's a mom joke. What's faster, hot or cold? Hot. You can always catch a cold.

• 6:00Jason Bateman?

  That's good. That's good.

• 6:02Will Arnett?

  It's not bad.

• 6:02Jason Bateman?

  It's pretty good. I guarantee you at least one of our listeners will be using that today after they get out of their car.

• 6:08Sean Hayes?

  Of course.

• 6:09Jason Bateman?

  Or off their subway or done with their jog. You know? It's fun. You're welcome.

• 6:15Will Arnett?

  I love, I love just, no, hang on, Sean. I love Jason Ching to imagine what regular people do. It's so fun. They get on the subway and then they jog.

• 6:28Will Arnett?

  They kiss their kids goodbye, walk outdoor, go to the job. Say hi, boss. Office.

• 6:36Jason Bateman?

  Want to hear a joke?

• 6:37Will Arnett?

  Want to hear a joke at Water Cooler with me? I love Succession 2 and White.

• 6:43Jason Bateman?

  What are you watching?

• 6:44Will Arnett?

  I'm also watching Succession. Are you watching it? I am also worried about saying that I don't like it. You're worried that you're saying, I do like it. I'm just making the joke.

• 6:53Jason Bateman?

  Real, real good opening patter, everybody.

• 6:56Sean Hayes?

  Did everybody sleep well? I slept really well.

• 6:59Jason Bateman?

  Patter's over. Let's get to our high level guest.

• 7:01Sean Hayes?

  I slept really good, though.

• 7:03Will Arnett?

  Did you? For the first, actually, that is worth a derail.

• 7:05Jason Bateman?

  You want to talk to us about your sleep? The guest is not gonna wait for your sleep report.

• 7:09Will Arnett?

  Well, it's very rare that he has good sleep. Before we get into it, it is true, Sean, and I'm happy for you. And there's nobody, we talk about it all the time.

• 7:16Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 7:17Will Arnett?

  Sean, yesterday morning, JB, Sean, I said to him, hey, you got a second? Let me know when you got a second, like seven, I'm up at six. I said, let me know when you got a second.

• 7:25Sean Hayes?

  It was like seven.

• 7:26Will Arnett?

  It was at seven. He calls me. And I go, and I thought that he was back. You know his usual thing. He wakes up in the middle of the night and then he goes back to bed at 6:30 until 10, is whatever. And he was up and he'd been up since 3:30. And he's been on a bad run of not being able to sleep, so.

• 7:42Sean Hayes?

  So I slept all through the night. I got up to pee and I went right back to sleep.

• 7:45Jason Bateman?

  And why do you think that is? Did you load up on a bunch of sugar before you went to bed?

• 7:49Sean Hayes?

  I did a little bit, but because of yesterday, I think that what Will's talking about. I think I ran myself around in circles like a little child, being up at 3:30. And then I just crashed and it made me sleep all night long. It was awesome.

• 8:01Will Arnett?

  You nap.

• 8:02Jason Bateman?

  What a fucking story.

• 8:03Sean Hayes?

  I'll nap like, I'll nap like.

• 8:09Sean Hayes?

  I'll nap like 10 minutes. Anyway, so.

• 8:10Jason Bateman?

  Good that we stopped for that. You were right, Will. Silly me.

• 8:17Jason Bateman?

  So today's guest is so immensely accomplished.

• 8:22Will Arnett?

  We're gonna see Bateman's face. What a fucking story.

• 8:28Jason Bateman?

  God, who else slept through the whole night? Make sure you call in. Our lines are open. And love to hear about it.

• 8:39Jason Bateman?

  So, our next guest is so accomplished and so universally loved, okay? He's done everything. He's done television, film, theater. He's even got a Grammy, I believe. It's been comedy, it's been drama, it's been popcorn movies, it's been Academy movies. I just don't know what else to say about this fellow, except he's a new friend.

• 9:09Sean Hayes?

  Oh, good.

• 9:10Jason Bateman?

  Okay, we met online, and he is also a Capricorn. And, no, he is a new friend that I'm very excited about. He swings a mean golf club.

• 9:25Will Arnett?

  Oof, I thought you were gonna say both. The way that started was, he swings...

• 9:30Sean Hayes?

  I know, I know, I was like, uh-oh, what?

• 9:32Jason Bateman?

  He'll take you where you want to go on the weekends, okay? Well, that's what I'm saying. But listen, I love him, he's here, very kind of him to say yes, because this is a big shot. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Don Cheadle. Hello, Don. I love Don Cheadle!

• 9:47Speaker 03

  People! What's happening?

• 9:50Jason Bateman?

  Good morning.

• 9:51Will Arnett?

  Don.

• 9:52Sean Hayes?

  Don Cheadle's done everything.

• 9:54Jason Bateman?

  You know what I was trying to remember, Don? What is that great nickname that you were given because you're so smooth? I couldn't remember it. You told me this on the golf course.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  I think Kelly Slater said that was very Don Chalant.

• 10:09Jason Bateman?

  Yeah! Ah, Don Chalant! Is that a new nickname? That's really clever.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  It's, I'm trying to put it out there, you know? I was gonna try to trademark it, but I was unsuccessful.

• 10:23Will Arnett?

  Don Chalant is out there now, just FYI. It's fully out there, and if you happen to run into Don Cheadle on the streets, just immediately, Don Chalant.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:33Will Arnett?

  Let him know.

• 10:34Sean Hayes?

  Mr. Chalant.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  You can single-gun it or double-gun it.

• 10:37Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 10:43Jason Bateman?

  Don.

• 10:44Will Arnett?

  Don Cheadle, hi.

• 10:45Jason Bateman?

  Good morning.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  What's up, gang?

• 10:47Jason Bateman?

  I love Don Cheadle.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  You know, the team was like, you've gotta do these guys' podcast. It's, you're gonna love them. I love all of you individually and collectively. Not as, not as much when I sat through the banter. The early banter.

• 11:02Jason Bateman?

  It's like, remember the, remember the joy that Regis and Kathie Lee used to give you? With that, with that first 10 minutes of coffee powder? Right? That's what we're reaching for, Don, you know?

• 11:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:13Jason Bateman?

  We're on our way.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  It was a strong, it was a strong six minutes.

• 11:17Will Arnett?

  Don, Don, where are we finding you right now? Because, and the reason I ask is because you look like you're either coming from or going to the golf course because you're wearing a zip up. But I want to say, which is surprising because you are such, you're so busy and rightfully so. Because you're always, you fit in that category for me too of people who are always good no matter what the project is. You're so consistently awesome all the time.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Until you see this one. We're just gonna take that down.

• 11:44Will Arnett?

  I don't know.

• 11:47Jason Bateman?

  You know what, you know what, Scotty and I just-

• 11:48Speaker 03

  But I appreciate that.

• 11:49Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, Scotty and I just watched just last week, not even knowing, obviously, that we were gonna be on because you're Jason's guest, we watched Mission to Mars.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  I was in there.

• 11:57Jason Bateman?

  And I was like, there's Don, again, and you're brilliant in it.

• 12:00Will Arnett?

  Always.

• 12:01Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, because you know I'll watch anything sci-fi. I am picking up on surprise in Sean's voice, though, right? When he says, and you're brilliant in it.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  It was like, you were pretty good.

• 12:09Jason Bateman?

  No, we got it. No, I meant to Will's point.

• 12:11Will Arnett?

  I didn't know you were an actor.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  And that you could grow facial hair. I thought it was only Jason who could do that.

• 12:20Jason Bateman?

  This is not really facial hair. This is disgusting.

• 12:24Will Arnett?

  No, it was great.

• 12:24Jason Bateman?

  So, Don.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  I'm in Atlanta, Will, to answer your question, I'm in Atlanta.

• 12:28Will Arnett?

  You're in Atlanta?

• 12:29Jason Bateman?

  And what's, what's happening there in Atlanta? Working on something, no doubt?

• 12:34Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm working on something. It's a project called Fight Night. And I am in this wonderful project with, who you guys had on the show? Kevin Hart, Sam Jackson, Taraji Henson, Terrence Howard.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's um, it should be, it should be, I'm looking forward to it. I just, I've shot one day, so I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to this journey.

• 13:00Jason Bateman?

  You can still be fired. They can still easily reshoot one day at work.

• 13:02Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it's early enough.

• 13:04Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, so watch it.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  I've been replaced before. It wouldn't be the first time. No.

• 13:07Jason Bateman?

  Have you? I've been replaced before.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 13:10Jason Bateman?

  I have.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  I didn't mean to bring up something pink.

• 13:13Will Arnett?

  I love that Don's like, no, I haven't. Sorry, I was just kidding.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Of course not.

• 13:19Jason Bateman?

  Mine was a cruel.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Why do you think I'm on your show?

• 13:23Jason Bateman?

  Mine was the cruelest, though, because I worked my nards off on this pilot. We shot the pilot. It went well, so I thought. And then like, a couple of days before the big announcements happened about whether pilots are gonna get picked up to go to series, I get a call from my agent saying, uh, you are going to, um, good news, bad news. Good news is the show got picked up. And I said, unbelievable. He goes, here, let me finish. The bad news is that they're gonna go a different direction with your character. And I said, okay. Two days later, found out they're actually not picking up the show. So, I mean, it was just like the worst 48 hours, right?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  So, good, bad, good.

• 14:01Will Arnett?

  I agree with Don.

• 14:03Jason Bateman?

  I could have been spared, I could have been spared all of it by just them saying, well, we're not picking up the show. Basically, we're all fired, you know?

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Are you still with this agent?

• 14:12Will Arnett?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 14:13Jason Bateman?

  Exactly. No, no, that's three or four ago.

• 14:15Will Arnett?

  But it's good to know, I like, it is personal a little bit, because they were like, hey, we know the show's not getting picked up, but let's let Bateman know that even if it did, he wasn't coming with.

• 14:29Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  In the event that this is going forward, not you.

• 14:33Will Arnett?

  I've been fired too. I got fired off a pilot that went to series the year before we started Arrested Development.

• 14:39Jason Bateman?

  Oh, God bless.

• 14:40Will Arnett?

  And had I been, had I not been, I would have been stuck on that show. Uh, Don, wait a second. So, you're in Atlanta, you're doing this thing with, uh, with Sam Jackson. Uh, are you, are you potentially playing golf with Sam today?

• 14:54Speaker 03

  You know, Sam has been on IR for a minute. I hope he comes off, because I would love to. You know, we used to play a lot, but, uh,

• 15:01Jason Bateman?

  What's IR?

• 15:02Speaker 03

  He's nursing an injury or two, so fingers crossed.

• 15:04Jason Bateman?

  How's, how's his game?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Sam was like a four.

• 15:08Jason Bateman?

  What?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:10Jason Bateman?

  Damn it.

• 15:11Will Arnett?

  Wow.

• 15:11Jason Bateman?

  There's all these people, the game is just so easy to so many people.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Well, you know, Sam famously, you know, whenever he would get a gig, a part of his contract was they had to get him a membership to whatever local course there was because he's such a freak about it.

• 15:26Jason Bateman?

  Oh, really? No shit?

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, he played everywhere. I was like, you can do that? Sam also was, you know, Mr. If you force me, you're bringing me $900 in cash in an envelope the next day like a drug deal. I was like, this, this dude's my hero.

• 15:38Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  That's always.

• 15:40Will Arnett?

  By the way, Jason, you could, Jason, right now, you see, look down, he's, he's got, he's just gone on his phone, you know, speed dial to CAA right now. He's like, what the fuck?

• 15:50Jason Bateman?

  I'm about 12 country clubs short, damn it.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:56Jason Bateman?

  All right. Now, how do you like, how do you like Atlanta? You know, I've worked there a lot and, and I always, I always thought that it was not going to be a place for me. And every time I worked there, I just love it more and more and more. Do you enjoy yourself there? You've, you've worked there a bunch, yes?

• 16:11Speaker 03

  I've worked here a bunch because a lot of the Marvel stuff was here.

• 16:14Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 16:14Will Arnett?

  Oh, right.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  And I've kind of been around it a little bit more, but this is probably the longest stretch that I'm going to be here. So I'm looking forward to like getting up to the mountains and going to the lakes and just checking it all out.

• 16:27Jason Bateman?

  So, so I did a movie there a long time ago in Atlanta during the summer. Did you guys shoot those, all those Marvel movies in like the summertime? Because you can't breathe, it's so hot.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Hot Atlanta, hot Atlanta.

• 16:37Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:38Jason Bateman?

  And, and how do you, you're in those costumes and running around in that heat? Is that what?

• 16:43Will Arnett?

  And you're in space?

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I think that was the, oh, I, it's a callback. I have a callback. Good one.

• 16:51Jason Bateman?

  No, but I mean, isn't that brutal?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's brutal. I mean, I was, you know, I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, where, you know, 98 degrees and 98% humidity. So I was, I was, I was born for this.

• 17:02Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  You know?

• 17:03Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Um, but yeah, it's not, it's not fun. But right now it's very cold, actually.

• 17:08Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it gets cold there. I like it. I like it too. I, I like JB. I spent the last few years about, last year I spent six months, I think, almost in Atlanta. And I really liked it. I really liked the people. Once you find a kind of a good zone where you can find your stuff and whatever, I liked a lot.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  You gotta find a zone.

• 17:26Will Arnett?

  But I was down in like, I was down like, right near sort of little five points, like all in there. Like that's where I was staying. It was awesome. A lot of great like restaurants and.

• 17:35Jason Bateman?

  Okay, okay.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:37Jason Bateman?

  So.

• 17:37Will Arnett?

  Jason, have you had enough?

• 17:38Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, that's.

• 17:39Will Arnett?

  You opened it. You opened it. You opened it. This is like, this is like the fucking court case.

• 17:45Jason Bateman?

  How was your, good sleep last night, Don?

• 17:49Speaker 03

  You know, what's hilarious when Sean was talking about that is I was very jealous because I did not sleep well last night.

• 17:55Jason Bateman?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  I had some.

• 17:57Jason Bateman?

  Worst episode we've ever recorded, right? We're right, we're 17 minutes into the worst. No, it's all my fault. All my fault. I'm talking about fucking Atlanta. We're talking about the weather. We're talking about sleep. It's like, let's get to something hard hitting. Now, somebody told me the other day that Kansas City.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 18:15Jason Bateman?

  Kansas City is actually split right down the middle. The border between Kansas and Missouri.

• 18:22Will Arnett?

  You still don't have it. JB, you still don't have it. You still haven't got it.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  That's a whiff.

• 18:27Jason Bateman?

  No, no, help me, people.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  No, no, no. There's, there's one in Kansas and there's a Kansas City in Missouri. They're in two different, I mean, they're close.

• 18:36Jason Bateman?

  Wait, there's two different places called Kansas City?

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 18:40Jason Bateman?

  No, honestly.

• 18:41Will Arnett?

  I know, dude.

• 18:42Jason Bateman?

  Don's about to leave.

• 18:42Will Arnett?

  Don, this is, this is every day, by the way.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  This is how it goes.

• 18:46Jason Bateman?

  54 years old and this is, this is, I'm just now getting clarity on this. Let's, let's, let's do it publicly. There are two, two places called Kansas City, one's in Missouri, one's in Kansas?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:56Jason Bateman?

  Correct.

• 18:56Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Jason Bateman?

  And which one's got the Chiefs?

• 18:57Speaker 03

  There is a border.

• 18:58Jason Bateman?

  Which one's got the Royals?

• 18:59Will Arnett?

  Missouri.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Missouri.

• 19:01Jason Bateman?

  Missouri's got what?

• 19:03Will Arnett?

  Let me just say this. Don, take a look at JB's face. Now JB walked on through the gummy routine. This is gonna explain a lot. Walk him through the timing and the amount.

• 19:12Jason Bateman?

  Guys, I'm still up. I'm still up from last night's chew. No, now, okay.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  We talked about this a little bit on the golf course.

• 19:18Jason Bateman?

  I don't remember.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  I don't know if you remember. I'm sure you don't remember because it's your gummy program.

• 19:23Jason Bateman?

  No, no, never, never when I'm golfing. Golfing's serious business.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  You said that.

• 19:27Jason Bateman?

  Now, wait a second. What, but what sports team does Kansas City, Kansas?

• 19:31Sean Hayes?

  Oh, my God.

• 19:32Jason Bateman?

  Have? The Royals?

• 19:33Speaker 03

  He's still, he's here.

• 19:34Jason Bateman?

  Is it the Royals?

• 19:35Will Arnett?

  It's crazy.

• 19:36Jason Bateman?

  No, no, honestly. Is it the Royals?

• 19:38Will Arnett?

  No, that's also Missouri.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Siri, do we want to just ask, go to like the interwebs?

• 19:44Jason Bateman?

  Kansas City, Kansas has nothing. Is that correct?

• 19:46Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Jason Bateman?

  No sports teams, no professional sports teams.

• 19:49Will Arnett?

  Yeah, man.

• 19:49Jason Bateman?

  I'll let it rest now.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Let's just look it up.

• 19:51Jason Bateman?

  Okay. I hope we get a bunch of them.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Honestly, honestly.

• 19:54Jason Bateman?

  Look, they're all looking it up, America.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  I've never looked into it this deeply. You might be absolutely right. I just know I've always claimed the Chiefs.

• 20:01Will Arnett?

  No, you're right. You're from there.

• 20:03Jason Bateman?

  Has the Royals?

• 20:04Sean Hayes?

  Are there any sports teams in Kansas City, Kansas?

• 20:06Jason Bateman?

  I'm so sorry, America. And specifically.

• 20:09Sean Hayes?

  Kansas City has had teams in all five of the major professional sports leagues. Three major leagues remain today.

• 20:14Jason Bateman?

  Is that Missouri or is that Kansas?

• 20:16Sean Hayes?

  That's Kansas City, Kansas.

• 20:17Jason Bateman?

  Okay.

• 20:18Will Arnett?

  Wait, who's in Kansas City, Kansas?

• 20:20Jason Bateman?

  I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Boy, this is again.

• 20:23Sean Hayes?

  No, this is Kansas City.

• 20:24Jason Bateman?

  We're gonna pick this up. Hey, Don, how'd you get started in the business?

• 20:27Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, no, I want to know.

• 20:29Will Arnett?

  JB, fuck you. You have, you're.

• 20:32Sean Hayes?

  I want to know that.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I was in a little porn called Don Chalantus.

• 20:39Sean Hayes?

  No, I do want to know because to me, I've seen you in so many things and like Will said, always brilliant. Like, to me, you were born on screen. Like, I don't know anything about you other than the.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  I was born on screen.

• 20:50Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. Other than we, we run into each other a few times and had lovely conversations, but tell me, how did you get, like, you were in theater in, in high school?

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Well, sidebar, we almost, we, you, we played around with doing a movie together at one point.

• 21:04Sean Hayes?

  I know.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  I don't know if you ever got that off.

• 21:06Sean Hayes?

  I did, it didn't do.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Did you get it off?

• 21:08Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, it didn't do well. But thank you for your consideration.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Next, next up.

• 21:11Sean Hayes?

  Yes, yes.

• 21:12Jason Bateman?

  Way to dodge a bullet, Don.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  I was trying to give a compliment and went right in the trash bin.

• 21:19Jason Bateman?

  You ducked one there.

• 21:20Sean Hayes?

  No, but did you, did you, were you interested in high school? Like what age, how early were you, did you get the bug?

• 21:25Speaker 03

  So I kind of got the early acting bug. I think I was in fifth, sixth grade. I was Templeton the Rat in a production of Charlotte's Web that was written about extensively in the Denver, Denver, Colorado periodicals. You can look it up. I'm sure it's still there.

• 21:43Sean Hayes?

  Sure, no.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And I was singled out. I'm not, I was, I'm just saying I was singled out. So.

• 21:51Jason Bateman?

  The standout was the rat.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. And when Cheadle hits the stage, hold on to, yeah. So I did that, but I was also doing music kind of at the same time. That's when I got involved in, in playing my saxophone and instrumental jazz. And so I kind of was on these two tracks of, of really studying music. And I, when I went to high school, I had a great acting coach, a great acting teacher, a great drama class, and I was in a really, a really good jazz band. So I was kind of on these two tracks. And when I graduated from high school, I had applied for both things, to go into music, to go into vocal jazz, to go into instrumental jazz, and also to, to study acting, theater acting.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  And I got some scholarship money from a bunch of different places. And I kind of made.

• 22:44Sean Hayes?

  For acting or, or music or both?

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Both. I got, I had both. But I kind of made not only a weather choice, but I think I made a choice based on what I believed I was going to be able to actually do. Because I grew up with musicians now who are like professional musicians and who are hugely successful and incredible. And I knew what it was going to take to actually be able to do that, go down that road and, you know, shedding and learning theory and doing all of those things that I was like, I'm not, I know I'm not going to do that.

• 23:14Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  And I, I think I'm probably going to spend my time where being, being out of the house, being with other people and in pursuing acting. And I loved it as, I loved. It equally so I I kinda went up that road.

• 23:27Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, there there's definitely science and math to music that you have to want to.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  And I think it kinda, I was intimidated by it a little bit, to be honest. I think I was a little, you know, I'd gotten by. I had really good ear and I'd gotten by on really being able to to hear music rather than understanding how it broke down. And I was kinda wide eyed when it would, when I'd get into the weeds on that. So.

• 23:46Sean Hayes?

  I get that.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  I kinda ran into something that I felt more comfortable with, but it's funny that the music has kinda come back around. And that's become a bigger part of my career now too.

• 23:54Will Arnett?

  But Don, did you ever, and Sean, forgive me for taking your question, but did you ever think about, um, you know, kinda like when that, when that guy dropped the, uh, the chocolate in the, in the tub of peanut butter and they came up with the Reese's? Did you ever think of taking the music and dumping that into the theater and going into musical theater, Sean? Five, six, seven.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Seven, eight.

• 24:14Will Arnett?

  Did that ever, did you ever get into that stuff?

• 24:17Sean Hayes?

  Oh, he sure did. Let's, let's talk about the Tonys. Go ahead.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Oh, uh, well, I've never gotten one, um, but I did produce the Tony's. Award winning, uh, uh, show called Strange Loop.

• 24:29Sean Hayes?

  Yes. Oh, my God. That's right. With, with Barbara, Barbara Whitman.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:35Sean Hayes?

  Right? And, and, and she produced the play I just did. That's right.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:40Sean Hayes?

  Congrats on that.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you. Crazy. Great show.

• 24:44Will Arnett?

  But did you yourself, were you yourself at, like in high school or afterwards in college?

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Yes. 100%. I mean, I, I, when I graduated high school, the choice I made was to go to, I came to California and I studied at California Institute of the Arts. And we, you know, did everything there. Musicals and dramas and classical piece. We did, we did everything. It was really a great, um, experience for me and a, a place to be able to try everything and make a lot of mistakes. And, you know, not get fired for it as a result.

• 25:18Sean Hayes?

  Get ready, because I, I love horrible theater stories, things that go wrong. So just get one ready.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. That, they're the best. You can't wait.

• 25:24Sean Hayes?

  Before we get to one of those, can you guys extend your tolerance for my, uh, lack of intelligence again?

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Is Kansas City, are you gonna go to the Chiefs and the Royals again?

• 25:33Will Arnett?

  It's worn pretty fit at this point. It's tripped very, very.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't bring that back.

• 25:37Sean Hayes?

  So if I'm on the border between, no.

• 25:42Sean Hayes?

  And we will be right back.

• 25:45Sean Hayes?

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• 26:30Sean Hayes?

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• 27:00Sean Hayes?

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• 27:44Sean Hayes?

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• 28:12Jason Bateman?

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• 28:52Sean Hayes?

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• 29:36Sean Hayes?

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• 29:57Sean Hayes?

  And now, back to the show.

• 30:00Jason Bateman?

  So jazz, talk to me about jazz. Now, I'm a big music fan and specifically classical music. And so I feel like if I love classical music, I could really love jazz because it's a little easier to love. It's a little bit more toe-tappy. But... I gotta understand it a little bit more. And I'm hearing that jazz, its real appeal is knowing that, for the most part, it's improvised. Is that correct? Or is there, is it more traditionally written out in their sheet music?

• 30:33Speaker 03

  That is a component of it. And I think the umbrella of jazz under that are many, many subdivisions and categories. It's a huge sort of a blanket term, especially by now. You know, if you think of somebody like Robert Glasper, who I won a Grammy with for producing the album. Anyway.

• 30:54Will Arnett?

  Sorry, your cough sounds terrible. Your cough sounds.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  My second Grammy, sorry.

• 30:59Will Arnett?

  You've got a really terrible cough.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks, Will. Let me get a little water for it.

• 31:04Jason Bateman?

  Wait, are you close to an EGOT?

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Two Grammys.

• 31:08Sean Hayes?

  Oh, now you're clear. Your throat's clear now.

• 31:10Will Arnett?

  I'm gonna get that looked at.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Okay, that's good now.

• 31:13Jason Bateman?

  You have, do you have, do you have a nomination, EGOT? I think you do. Yes?

• 31:18Speaker 03

  I have a nomination, EGOT, yes. But no, I don't have, I don't have them all.

• 31:21Jason Bateman?

  Pretty fucking good.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  But, but like Rob Glasper, you look at his music and he's, you know, he spans the globe of what his musical knowledge is and his experience. And he does popular stuff, black radio, which is sort of, I think you would think of more as like R and B influenced. And then he does straight ahead, you know, jazz and standards, and he does everything in between. So I think if you were to ask a musician like that what jazz is, or even if you were gonna go back and ask, you know, Miles Davis what jazz was, he hated that word. He was like, that's a word to box somebody in, you know, it's about good music. It's about social music. So I think there are different, like when I get in the car and, you know, the driver taking you somewhere is like, let's put on some jazz. And he puts on smooth jazz, it's like I wanna shoot him.

• 32:07Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  I hate.

• 32:08Sean Hayes?

  Right. Yeah, I'm the same.

• 32:10Will Arnett?

  Don, you have to, Don, you have to forgive Jason, because they don't do explanations of jazz on the Hollywood Reporter homepage. So he wouldn't read it. But, but let me just, let me just say this, we did this bit in our show, Flank. Nothing, huh? Okay. So where we had, where we did, this guy's getting ready to have this girl over for a date and then his buddy suggests he has jazz, put jazz on. And they look at each other and they're like, and they're unsure, and he goes, "I'm not sure where I fall on jazz." And our joke was always that like, "I can't figure out if it's cool to say I do like it or if it's cool to say I don't like it and I'm still trying to decide where I land on that."

• 32:50Jason Bateman?

  Me too, like, I just feel like, you know, when says you should go to New Orleans for the jazz festival or when you should listen to lots of-

• 32:58Speaker 03

  And that's a very specific kind of jazz.

• 32:59Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I'm more like, I'm open to it if there's a melody that I can hum back, like a song. I'm not open to the-

• 33:07Will Arnett?

  Fair enough.

• 33:08Sean Hayes?

  You know, the jazz that's just people just playing and on and off.

• 33:12Will Arnett?

  Sort of fusion-y, improvised fusion is that, would that even be a thing?

• 33:15Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, because I can't latch on to anything.

• 33:16Will Arnett?

  You can't whack off to anything?

• 33:18Sean Hayes?

  What? What did he say?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  I, I love it all because if you're really, you know, if you're-

• 33:23Will Arnett?

  Jazz you can whack to. Sorry.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Jazz.

• 33:27Sean Hayes?

  No latch on to?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Grab your thing and have some fun.

• 33:31Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. New chair.

• 33:33Will Arnett?

  JB, you heard it too, right?

• 33:34Jason Bateman?

  I think I might have. But, so, so Don, so you, so you're, so you're, you're learning the saxophone at an early age, that gets you into music, that's, eventually you find an appreciation for Miles Davis and then that project comes about, that was, was that a documentary that you produced or?

• 33:54Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, a movie.

• 33:56Jason Bateman?

  A film, and you played him, yes?

• 33:59Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:59Jason Bateman?

  We're not good journalists.

• 34:00Sean Hayes?

  Brilliantly, and, and I remember you telling me when I ran into you, you were working on that, you were so great.

• 34:05Jason Bateman?

  Some nominations or even some wins for that, I believe?

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Well, that was the Grammy that we got for the soundtrack, which is really cool, that one we put together with Rob Lasper, he and I put that together. So that was really cool. But yeah, I think it's a big category, you know, talk about jokes on shows, we had one on Black Monday where I'm talking to, uh, thank you very much, I'm talking to Regina Dawn, her name, the character's Dawn, about it and she goes, "Yeah, I can never get into jazz, it just always sounded like a bunch of instruments thrown down a flight of stairs."

• 34:35Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Now, in my, in my, in my incredible research, uh, did you really work on The Fresh Prince?

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Funny enough, I did. I was on one of the first episodes of Fresh Prince, and I have a funny pilot firing story too.

• 34:52Jason Bateman?

  I love it.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  About a pilot that didn't go. So I did the, I think it was the second or third episode of The Fresh Prince, where Will was still super green. He's like mouthing everyone's words, you know, along with his. So he'd say his line and he's staring at you and you'd say your line and he'd...

• 35:09Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, he's mouthing it.

• 35:10Will Arnett?

  That's such a thing. We've all worked with people who do that. It's such an actor thing, right?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:14Will Arnett?

  Where you're like, "Am I mouthing my dialogue to me as I'm saying it?"

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. So he was so studious, you know, he knew everybody's lines and then he would like mouth everybody's lines. But so, we did that one and by the third or fourth show, the creators, Susan and Andy Borowitz, who were the head writers on the show, they said, "We want to do a show around you."

• 35:37Jason Bateman?

  Uh oh.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Not necessarily based on the character that you're playing on this, but we just want to do a show around you. And I was like, "Okay, that's cool." So they wrote this show.

• 35:47Jason Bateman?

  How old were you?

• 35:50Speaker 03

  When I did Fresh Prince?

• 35:51Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, early twenties.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Is that really germane to the story?

• 35:54Jason Bateman?

  I think it is. Like when you get offered your own show, it's like, "What?"

• 35:57Speaker 03

  I was six, okay? I was fucking six.

• 35:59Will Arnett?

  No, he's just jealous. He's just jealous because he's like, "When are you getting offers for your own show?" And he's like, "I worked my whole life. Michael Landon did create a show for me." Sorry, JB, I know that kid.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Michael Landon. So this, so this is the third day, they come down, they're like, "We want to do the show." I said, "Okay, great." So they wrote this pilot. We shot the pilot. It's called "In the House." I wrote the theme song to the thing.

• 36:23Jason Bateman?

  No way, cool.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  It was just, everything was great.

• 36:26Jason Bateman?

  Heavy saxophone?

• 36:27Speaker 03

  It had, super, super heavy saxophone. It was on the schedule and I, you know, I'm pretty like, I don't believe it until I see it. And I just kind of wasn't believing that it was real. And also, it just was a huge, it was the biggest thing that had happened in my career at that point. I was like, "I don't, something's telling me this isn't real."

• 36:47Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  But it was on the schedule, it was going. So like the day before, I got this faithful call. I gave my brother my car. I was like, "Hey, it's on, take the car. I'm about to have this huge windfall."

• 36:59Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  It's I'm ready and the next day I got a call and they said it's off the schedule. Um, it was how old I was was Brandon Tartikoff was still running NBC at that time.

• 37:10Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, okay, we're late eighties.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  I don't know if people are listening, I don't know.

• 37:12Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, Brandon, yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  But he, when he stepped down and Warren Littlefield came in, he killed all the shows that were under Brandon. That was one of them. That was one of the captains.

• 37:20Will Arnett?

  You know, Sean, Sean, you told me a story and correct me if I'm wrong about where you shot the pilot. Um, because they had minionette sauce instead of cocktail sauce for your oysters. Is that true? And you guys were about to leave Van Nuys and you were so mad. You shot, because you're like, I hate minionette sauce. I like cocktail sauce. And you shot the pilot off the mother.

• 37:43Sean Hayes?

  But I spared the co-pilot.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  As a lesson, so he could live to tell the story to other pilots about to get the sauces right.

• 37:50Jason Bateman?

  Now, all right, so now, Don, could you imagine if that show had taken off? Became a big success, you would have been a big sitcom star. I wonder where your career would have gone and what would have happened.

• 38:03Will Arnett?

  I was thinking the same thing.

• 38:03Jason Bateman?

  Like, but like, even so, going back before that, was there another significant fork in the road? Either where you grew up, like a fateful move to a certain city? Or what your parents were doing or saying or siblings? Where you could have easily seen, oh, if I'd just simply gone right instead of left, I would be a veterinarian today. Or I would be an architect today. Or was there, was there a fork that?

• 38:29Sean Hayes?

  That's such a good question.

• 38:30Jason Bateman?

  Thank you.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, it's crazy that, that my fallback was music. Like, if this acting thing doesn't work out, I'll be a jazz musician. That'll get me there. It's like, so, I mean, that's where I was trending. That's what I wanted to do. And, and quite honestly, it's, there's still no greater pleasure that I have, you know, in any sort of performance capacity than being with musicians and creating music.

• 38:56Will Arnett?

  Really, really.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  That's, to me, the highest. It is, it really is. I think because of, as you were talking about improvisation, that, that you're creating things spontaneously. I don't know what it's doing biochemically to you, but I'm sure if you have electrodes on and, you know, they were testing you, you're getting dopamine hits that are just through the roof. Because it's just so alive.

• 39:19Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Jason Bateman?

  And it necessitates this connection with these fellow, pardon the term, artists that you're kind of

• 39:24Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 39:25Jason Bateman?

  communicating without speaking and there's a

• 39:27Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 39:28Jason Bateman?

  handoff and a yes and thing. You get that also in acting, but

• 39:31Will Arnett?

  Yeah, you do. And there's also that thing you do when you perform live, when you also get that, when you get that feedback from an audience, uh, when you're on stage and you get that thing and it starts to inform you a little bit.

• 39:42Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Will Arnett?

  They become part of your creative process because you get juice from that, I think.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You do. And it transcends language and it transcends, you know, the English, Spanish. We can all speak this language.

• 39:56Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  There's a, there's a big unifying thing that it does. It's just like beyond.

• 40:02Sean Hayes?

  I had the same thing, Don. You know, I was, I always had music to fall back on should the, you know, the acting thing, and I still have the music to fall back on if the acting thing doesn't work out. But I, I always thought my fallback was gonna be, oh, I'll just be a pop star.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Well, you can slit your ass off. So you had a shot.

• 40:19Sean Hayes?

  Well, no, but

• 40:20Will Arnett?

  Let's play it. Can we just play it? Can you just play him a little bit of it right now? We do this every once in a while, Don. Sean?

• 40:26Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, no.

• 40:27Jason Bateman?

  Now, Don, do you

• 40:28Will Arnett?

  Bennett's gonna find it for us. He's gonna play before Don leaves. Bennett or Robert are gonna play.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Drop that needle, Bennett.

• 40:33Jason Bateman?

  Hey, Don, do you have a place where you go, like Woody Allen famously took his clarinet out, I don't know, once a week or whatever, and that, that's not a, that's

• 40:42Will Arnett?

  Not a euphemism.

• 40:43Jason Bateman?

  Not a euphemism.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Right in there, Will.

• 40:45Jason Bateman?

  But, uh,

• 40:46Speaker 03

  You're the best. You're my new favorite guy on the podcast.

• 40:50Jason Bateman?

  Do you have a place where you go whip out your sax and go play it?

• 40:54Will Arnett?

  Fucking hang on, man.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  I just said Will got that one. You don't have to jump on top of Will's thing. Hey, you hear what I did? Jump on top of Will's thing? I'm tripping around, funny. Your turn, Sean. Get in there. Ooh, that was a good one, too.

• 41:08Sean Hayes?

  I'll take it all.

• 41:09Jason Bateman?

  Like, but like, do you have

• 41:11Speaker 03

  I'll take it all.

• 41:12Jason Bateman?

  There it is. Um, do you have a band that you play with or, or a jazz club that you go to every once in a while?

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No, and I've been like bounce bouncing around on dip. So I played the sax and then I didn't do that. You know, when I went to Cal Arts, it was it was kind of like a conservatory. The amount of time that you had to spend on all that. There was no time really to do anything but theater and voice and movement and dance and all that stuff. Um, so I just kind of dropped it. And then I was in New York doing a play and I walked by a pawn shop and I saw this beautiful tenor sax. And I was like, I'm gonna pick it back up again. I'm gonna see if I have any facility because, you know, you lose your embouchure. You use lose that musculature to be able to play it. It's hard to get it back. So I started playing it again. It sounded terrible. I was like, no, just hang out, just like stay with it.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  So I started doing that and then I um took a gig, actually. Um, the Rat Pack movie and playing Sammy Davis Jr. Who played drums and played trumpet and, you know, gun twirled and could play piano. Yeah. And so I kind of went back to school again, having private, you know, having lessons from all of these teachers to learn how to do all these different things. Wow. And that's when I started trying to pick up the trumpet, which became something that was gonna. I didn't know I was gonna need later when I did the Miles Davis thing. So I've been playing bass more than anything lately and piano more than anything lately. That's great. I haven't gone back to the sax.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  I did, I did bring, I bought a really beautiful brand new sax and let this dude play. And he just recorded an album with it. And it's like, so I, it's, it's always in the periphery somewhere, but I haven't, you know. I think the most amazing experience I had in musical experience in the last couple of years was Rob Glasper was at his. He was recording something. He said, hey, come by, come, come listen. And I said, yeah, keep a track open because I'm gonna bring the bass and I'm just gonna like, you know, kill you guys with some shit. So just keep the track open. And I was completely joking. And so I came over and I listened to him for a while and he goes, okay, here, here's the bass. Let's go. I said, no, no, no, I was, I was joking. I don't, I don't wanna play. It's like, oh, no, you're gonna play. And it became sort of like. You know, trial by fire.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  And I don't play like that. But when you play with great musicians, you know that they lift you up.

• 43:35Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  And they.

• 43:36Sean Hayes?

  It's just like acting.

• 43:37Will Arnett?

  God, I wish I could find that.

• 43:39Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Will Arnett?

  People who lift me up. It's fucking unbelievable. I'm just dragging these two.

• 43:44Sean Hayes?

  Don, you seem to be like, like so great at surrounding your life with the things that means, you know, have great value to you, music, acting, family. You always seem to be in a great mood too, like.

• 43:56Will Arnett?

  Golf.

• 43:57Sean Hayes?

  Golf, yeah. Um, how do you do that? How do you, for people who don't know how to do that, where, where they're like, I'm, I'm in this rut. Like, to us, we've all found the thing that we love to do, or things we love to do.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:10Sean Hayes?

  Um, how did you learn how to gravitate towards the good versus the bad? You know, the things that are good for you, the things that fill your soul.

• 44:18Jason Bateman?

  This is a question. This, this is a question. This is an interviewer, Will. This is somebody who knows how to shape a question, okay? Sorry, go ahead, Don.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  I love the commentary.

• 44:28Will Arnett?

  I'm just here for the potshots from the sideline, man. You know that.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  Will's killing, and you're killing the potshots from the sideline, by the way.

• 44:34Will Arnett?

  I appreciate it, man.

• 44:35Jason Bateman?

  Don't encourage him.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  I honestly have to attribute it, a lot of it, I have to attribute a lot of it to, um, my upbringing. I was very fortunate to have, and, and people get to it however they get to it. You know, I was very fortunate to have really solid parents, you know, really sort of, you know, corny, traditional, picket fence, three, you know, the 3.5 kids and a dog and the whole thing. I really was able to grow up like that with parents that never dissuaded me from going after what I wanted to go after.

• 45:07Sean Hayes?

  That's great.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  I think it was, you know, really fortunate that my mom was sort of a frustrated, you know, performer, a frustrated singer. So when I wanted to be an actor, she was like, yes. So after that.

• 45:19Sean Hayes?

  Did you have an older, did you have an older sibling that knocked the crap out of you when you got too, too, too big?

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, she's a, she's a girl, so I like took advantage of the different mus- you know, I had, I was stronger than her. And then we moved into weapons and that's when it's like, oh, then she's leveled the playing field. So we gotta chill out and that's when we stopped fighting.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  But just really close knit family and it's something I think I just wanted to replicate in my life. And I'm really lucky that, you know, I have friends from when I was in elementary school still and-

• 45:50Jason Bateman?

  Oh, that's great.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  From college and the people that I'm close to are still, are still in my life. And I think we all know people who have gotten to a certain place and have looked around and they don't know anybody that's- no one that around them has been around them for five years and you go, that person's probably gonna have some problems. So you need people who will laugh at you and say, you're not important, chill out.

• 46:11Will Arnett?

  I don't keep those people around because, because people can't breathe the air up here the way I can.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're one of the, you're one of those people we were talking about, Will.

• 46:19Will Arnett?

  The air is so thin up here, it's so, it's so rarefied that I can bear- I'm, I'm, I'm handing out masks to these two. Cause I'm like, guys, we're going on a ride, we're going somewhere.

• 46:30Sean Hayes?

  Or we're going down.

• 46:32Will Arnett?

  No, it's so important, I love that it is, it is a measure of somebody, by the way, how many old friends they have from back in the day and I think, I'm with you on that, I think it's really great, I've got a lot of my old buddies too.

• 46:45Jason Bateman?

  Now, now, Don, I got a question here. You've been a part of so many incredible projects. I wanna know if, I wanna know if any of them felt or smelt like turds right in the middle of it and you were shocked at the end of it that it turned out so well. Projects like Crash, Ocean's Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen, Traffic, Out of Sight, Boogie Nights. I mean, yeah, any of the Marvel stuff, did any of them just like go, oh, Jesus, what did I do here?

• 47:20Speaker 03

  I think I've had the opposite where I'm like, this thing's gonna crush and then it comes out and I'm like,

• 47:27Speaker 03

  not so much.

• 47:28Will Arnett?

  Not so much, right.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  I mean, we don't know, right? You just go in with, you know, your best, you know, you've made the best decision you could and you go in and throw everything into it and then sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But I've never, you know, I've always had, I've always believed that the thing I've said yes to has value and it's gonna be good and the experiences and then it turns into being what it's gonna be. I've been really fortunate to have really, really great experiences. I've had very few experiences where it's a toxic set and people are horrible, you know, I've just been very, very, I've been, the things I've gravitated toward have gotten made and I've just been very, very fortunate. I've had a very blessed career.

• 48:12Jason Bateman?

  You've clearly got a, got a nice connection going with Steven Soderbergh, yeah?

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:16Will Arnett?

  I heard the set of Chernobyl was toxic.

• 48:18Jason Bateman?

  Nice, Will.

• 48:20Will Arnett?

  Hey.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  That's a great show.

• 48:22Jason Bateman?

  But you, you and, you and Soderbergh have a great, a great rhythm going, yeah? You see, you see working with him again in the future? Probably, yes, of course, right?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we, we have stuff, we're trying to develop things as we speak. There's a couple of things.

• 48:36Will Arnett?

  I love, Out of Sight is such a great fucking movie, man. I-

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Isn't it good? So underrated and overlooked.

• 48:43Will Arnett?

  It's such a good movie. God damn it. Despite Clooney's looks, it's so good.

• 48:50Jason Bateman?

  It's tough to get around. But Soderbergh's just, he's, Soderbergh's such a beast, sort of a good guy, too, but I mean, like, writing and directing and camera operating and editing and I just, I would imagine that's gotta be an easy voice to follow considering he's kind of-

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Are you trying to dovetail into you? Cause that's what you're doing now?

• 49:09Jason Bateman?

  No, no, that's what I'd like to do.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  But can I take a minute to honestly, actually?

• 49:13Will Arnett?

  Oh, he spiked it. Spike it. He served it up. You might as well spike it.

• 49:17Jason Bateman?

  Guys, take a, take a second.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  I do wanna spike it. I'm a, I'm a big, I'm a big Jason Bateman fan. I'm just gonna say I'm a big Jason Bateman fan and I'm really, I love everything that I'm seeing you do and I saw you in a roundtable talking about, you know, understanding as an actor what you were going to be doing as an editor and knowing when you get into the editing room, what you're gonna be able to use. And not use and how you can craft your, your performance based on that. And I was like, well, that's so fucking smart and such a cheat.

• 49:48Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it's really, it's really fun. It's really fun because he lives his personal life like an editor too. So he's always thinking about the results.

• 49:55Jason Bateman?

  Cut you off.

• 49:55Will Arnett?

  Fuck off.

• 49:56Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, trimming you. Um, well, now what, well, what Don's doing here is he's dovetailing into his accomplishments as a director as well. That he has.

• 50:05Will Arnett?

  I wanted to get into that.

• 50:06Jason Bateman?

  He has gone, he's gone ahead and he's taken all the incredible set experience he's had. And lent that to the directing experience, right? And made everybody's life a lot easier, I would imagine.

• 50:17Will Arnett?

  They'll never do it again?

• 50:18Jason Bateman?

  Do you, oh, come on.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  I'll never do it again.

• 50:20Will Arnett?

  Why not?

• 50:20Jason Bateman?

  Bullshit. You must love it.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  I don't anticipate ever doing it again.

• 50:23Jason Bateman?

  Well, uh, come on, you've done it a handful of times at least and.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  That was enough.

• 50:28Jason Bateman?

  It's really.

• 50:29Will Arnett?

  Why?

• 50:30Jason Bateman?

  Is it, is it the workload or the pressure or the time commitment or what?

• 50:34Speaker 03

  It's, it's the pressure. Honestly, it's the pressure. It's, I think, you know, um, my agent one time said, you know, good actors are just like, can be. And sometimes need to just be hard sons of bitches. They just have to be able to, not necessarily in how they deal with people. But you have to have a, the ability to have stuff kind of roll off and be thick skinned and not have it be, you know, penetrate and keep moving. And I think I have more, I'm more like sort of bandied about by the things that happened and the things I wasn't able to get. And I just, and it, and it's something that I'm learned about myself going through that experience.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  So I'm like, oh, I'm a lot more porous in that regard than I thought I was.

• 51:21Jason Bateman?

  As an actor, you can ignore a lot of drama or problems or complications of the production. And you just kind of sit in your trailer and then someone else will figure it out. As a director, you can't hide from anything.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  None of it.

• 51:31Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. We'll be right back.

• 51:36Sean Hayes?

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• 52:20Sean Hayes?

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• 52:38Sean Hayes?

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• 53:18Sean Hayes?

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• 54:03Sean Hayes?

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• 54:19Sean Hayes?

  And back to the show.

• 54:22Will Arnett?

  Don, you bring up a really good point, though. It is true, you know, actors, as we know, historically, you take a lot of heat. People go like, oh, fucking actors. Or you hear people write, like, even people you grew up with, like, what's your life like now? You're an actor. You see that people have this sort of thing. And I always say, and they're like, oh, yeah, but you're just an actor. And I'm thinking like, yeah, I am friends with, I am an actor. I'm friends with tons of actors, some of the most creative, amazing people. And on top of that, to what you were saying, there also, it is a tough road, as you know, from when you're younger to start to do the things that you want to do. And you have to, you do put up with a ton of disappointment. You get kicked in the nards on a daily basis. You know, my own experience, I lived in New York for 10 years and was trying to get fucking work and just got kicked in the nards.

• 55:07Will Arnett?

  And then as I'd go down to wincing in pain from getting kicked in the nuts, I'd get kicked in the face. You know, like Jason's, like you saying, like, the show's, here's the, you're fired, and then the next day, the show's fucking gone. And you're like, fuck, I didn't need those two kicks.

• 55:23Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 55:23Will Arnett?

  And by the way, and it's not once a year. It's like two, three times a week, four years.

• 55:29Sean Hayes?

  And that's if things are going well for you, because those two or three, those two or three rejections each week mean you got two or three auditions that week, which is really good.

• 55:37Will Arnett?

  Yeah. And I'm not saying to feel sorry for, but it is, right, Don? It's a tough, you do have to have a little bit of, you know, you show your mettle a little bit.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Well, for for for me, I really could, I'd sound like an idiot, Aaron, you know, complaining about anything about my acting career because, again, I was super, super fortunate. I've never done anything but this to support myself. I, you know, got my first job when I was still in college, in my, you know, my junior, I got a gig. Oh, I did get fired from a job. That was actually the first job. I I got an AT&T commercial where a kid was supposed to be on the phone and sort of trying to dodge the questions that his mom was asking because he was not doing so well. She goes, how are your grades? And he's like, uh, my grades? I can't hear you, this connection is bad. She's like, no, I can hear you great.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  And it was AT&T, you know, you can't fake the funk, you know, it was like one of those things. So I was running on my, I was going out of the door to do this audition and the phone rang in the hallway and I just kind of knew it was for me. And I picked it up, it was my agent, she goes, uh, Don, bad news, they're not, they're not gonna use you in the spot. I was like, what, why? She goes, they don't want to portray a black kid as failing out of college. I was like, so they're gonna give a white kid my job?

• 56:59Sean Hayes?

  Wow, yeah, the irony of that.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:02Sean Hayes?

  That is crazy.

• 57:03Speaker 03

  That's what's gonna happen. So that, I actually did get fired from a job I got, that was the first one. But yeah, but for me, the acting thing has been, I've been, like I said, I've been very blessed, very fortunate, but the directing part of it, yeah, it's, um, it's really just, it's, it's been these particular experiences I've had, not when I've directed my show. That's a little bit more of a comfort zone, a little bit more support I've had and a little bit more resources and people to to rely on. But, you know, I made, we made Miles Ahead for eight point five million dollars in a town that had, you know, only done one other movie before that, where we would show up and there was like no redundancy in the departments, you know? We'd have two cameras and only one cameraman. I'd be like, where's Phil?

• 57:48Speaker 03

  It's like, oh, he took a commercial in Dayton, you know?

• 57:50Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Coming in one day and I was like, where's the, we had her in the Scene, she's like, yeah, she didn't want to come today. I'm like, but we shot, she's in the scene.

• 57:59Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, she doesn't want to come. So I'm like, put this woman in the dress, turn her back to the camera. Like every day it was something like that.

• 58:06Will Arnett?

  Always solving problems.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Just, but the heat, problems that didn't make sense. Like the fire alarm going off and then the fire, then the, the, the actual fireman coming and coming in while we're shooting the scene. And so, okay, I'll guess we'll shoot this MOS and just mime all these things. We'll do it in post, I get, you know, just every day it was something like that.

• 58:24Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  My wife came out to see me and she said, you can't do this anymore. You know, I lost weight, it was just, it was just bad. So I have a lot of scar tissue. So maybe if I get, you know, some sort of procedure where I can scrape that off, I'll try it again.

• 58:37Sean Hayes?

  For the emotional scars. Um, I have a question just about your acting style and, and approach. Because when I first saw Ocean's Eleven, uh, and which you were brilliant in, I, I'm not making this up. Like halfway through the movie, because of your accent, I was like, oh, wait, is that, is that Don Cheadle? Like you didn't do anything to your appearance, you just changed your kind of way. I don't know how to describe it. And it's amazing what an act, just an accent can do. How did you find the, the trust to do that? Why that character like that? And how do you do that, like in any, uh, uh, character, your approach?

• 59:16Speaker 03

  It, it was written like that and I was going to change it. Um, and my manager at that point said, there aren't black British people. I was like, oh, I mean, yeah. She's like, so why don't you just do it as how, how it's written? And I was like, yeah, fuck.

• 59:31Sean Hayes?

  Oh, so it was written as.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  I'll try it. And so while I'm in my trailer with, you know, a vocal coach, a speech coach going over like diff thongs and shvas and stuff, they're out playing basketball. I'm like sitting in my trailer, watching them play poker and have fun. And I'm like, you know, no, this works. No, uh, no, ah, no, uh.

• 59:49Will Arnett?

  Sean, stand up, Sean, stand up real quick. He's, Sean's wearing a dip thong. Let's, stand up real quick.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Oh, that's nice. That's a nice diphthong.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  But I was famously murdered. You know, people hate, people are split right in the middle on that. The people that hate that hate it. When I was in London, I almost had to get security because

• 1:00:11Sean Hayes?

  Hate what?

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  People wanted to kill me.

• 1:00:13Sean Hayes?

  Your accent?

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Based on how bad they thought that accent was.

• 1:00:15Sean Hayes?

  Oh, the accent and why?

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  They hated it and me. People literally drove, they would see me and come across four lanes of traffic to pull up next to me to scream at me about how bad the accent was.

• 1:00:29Sean Hayes?

  No. Oh, my God. I totally bought it. I totally bought it.

• 1:00:32Jason Bateman?

  Is it safe to say you'll never do another British accent again?

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Ding ding ding ding ding.

• 1:00:36Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, doing an accent, I believe, that would be

• 1:00:39Will Arnett?

  It takes a lot of guts.

• 1:00:40Jason Bateman?

  Very, very tough for me because you're acting twice, right? You gotta do performance and you gotta do the accent.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  And some somehow just fit.

• 1:00:46Will Arnett?

  Would you make them pay twice, Jay? I know Jay very well. Would you make them pay twice?

• 1:00:49Jason Bateman?

  I would like to. I would like to.

• 1:00:51Sean Hayes?

  What are you gonna say, Dan?

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  No, I'm just gonna say, and some of them, you know, fit better than others that I've attempted to take on, you know? But they're all, like you said, it's all tricky. Like, you're kind of acting through a mask and you're trying to make that mask be as real and as facile as you can. It's tricky.

• 1:01:11Jason Bateman?

  Right, right, right. Now, of all of these incredibly high-profile films, which one do you think gave you the most useful bounce? Was it Devil in the Blue Dress?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would, I would, I would guess Devil in the Blue Dress was probably, I was on Picket Fences Yeah. For a couple of years before that.

• 1:01:34Sean Hayes?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  You know, I was 12 on the call sheet and you guys know what that is. I'm sitting in the trailer all day and they're like, "We're coming to you next. We're coming to you next." And they're like, "Oh, no, we're not gonna use you today." And you'd been in the trailer for 12 hours. So I started writing, that's when I started writing and just as survival.

• 1:01:50Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  Just to not go crazy.

• 1:01:52Jason Bateman?

  But then along comes this film with Denzel Washington and it was, did you, did you leave that project with, with any pearls of wisdom from Mr. Washington?

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  I mean, it was an incredible experience. It was directed by Carl Franklin, who I did his AFI thesis project, you know, his his graduation project. So I had known him from before. So that was really old home and felt great. And Denzel and I, from the audition on, which is online, actually. Our audition is online.

• 1:02:25Jason Bateman?

  Oh, no way.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so is that pilot that I mentioned, by the way. People find shit and upload everything. But we just had a great time. And of course, I was just in awe of him. And, you know, worked as hard as I've ever worked on anything to make sure I was in the pocket, you know, when I was with him. I didn't come out, I was super methody. I was not great character. I was mouse all the time. You know, I just stayed in it. And I, yeah, I had a great experience. I loved that movie and I loved that experience.

• 1:03:01Jason Bateman?

  Would you, if you had, if you had, say you had a scene with a, because, you know, you're Denzel now to, to, to, to, to a young actor. If you were to do a film with it, what, what, what would you say to a young actor today that you wish you'd known back when you were just starting out? You know, anything?

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Stay out of my fucking light.

• 1:03:19Jason Bateman?

  Right. Would you upstage me or shadow me?

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Don't you dare attempt to overshadow me.

• 1:03:26Jason Bateman?

  But we do, we do have a tendency to overcomplicate things, right? And, and things get more simplistic as we get older. You know, I wondered, aside from just that generality, well, is there anything specific? I'm trying to think myself, what I would tell somebody, you know?

• 1:03:41Will Arnett?

  Probably, probably step away from my BMW. Would that be something?

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  Which, which, which of your BMWs, Mr.?

• 1:03:49Will Arnett?

  That's a great, very good.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  I just think that, you know, like, we, I think people underestimate, you know, to what Will was saying earlier, is it, what, what we really do. I think people think it's super, super easy and then they try it and they're like, oh, you're actually trying to be very naturalistic inside a completely unnatural environment where somebody's standing in your eye line chewing gum and, you know, somebody's making noise off, somebody's, you know, walkie talkies going off and you've got to act like this is the first time you've ever done or said any of these things.

• 1:04:27Sean Hayes?

  It's so weird.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  And I think that you only do that well if you're really prepared and you've really done your homework and you're not here just because you think it's going to be cool to cut line at a restaurant, you know, it's like.

• 1:04:40Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  This is, this is a, this is really, I'm not, we're not rocket scientists and we're not, you know, jumping out of airplanes or whatever, the hardest shit there is to do or ditch digging, but there is a craft.

• 1:04:51Will Arnett?

  But we can play them.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  That's what we play the shit out of and we learn about them. That's another thing. Good actors are students, so we're always in the lab, right? We're always trying to, if I play a doctor, I'm going to read up on doctors, I'm going to follow doctors, I'm going to go to hospitals, I'm going to try to sit next to them. If I'm playing a cop, I'm going to do a ride along, I'm gonna, so I feel like that part of it often gets overlooked, that we're always in school, you know, we're always trying to learn new things.

• 1:05:18Sean Hayes?

  So true.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  I think that's a great boon for us as artists, that we're always expanding ourselves.

• 1:05:25Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Jason Bateman?

  Now, Sean doesn't want you to get away without, you know, searching your memory for a, a, a really, a tough theater story, you know, like forgetting your lines or trying to give, you know.

• 1:05:37Will Arnett?

  A sandbag fell from above and, oh, what? And I landed in the first row in the woman's lap and she said, you think you're drunk, wait till O'Toole comes out, or something like that, right Sean? Is that what you were?

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  Oh, you were at that performance?

• 1:05:51Will Arnett?

  Of course.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  You were there.

• 1:05:52Jason Bateman?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  But I said, wait till my tool comes out.

• 1:05:56Jason Bateman?

  Ah!

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Yes! Double guns, double guns.

• 1:06:01Will Arnett?

  Yes!

• 1:06:04Sean Hayes?

  Don Shalit.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Don Shalit strikes again.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  Is that you, Sean?

• 1:06:09Sean Hayes?

  Oh, this is me singing, yeah. It's horrible.

• 1:06:11Will Arnett?

  Here we go.

• 1:06:17Sean Hayes?

  It's so bad. Okay.

• 1:06:20Will Arnett?

  Hang on.

• 1:06:20Sean Hayes?

  That's enough.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  Is that tabla? Is that some tabla?

• 1:06:26Sean Hayes?

  Okay, that's good.

• 1:06:27Will Arnett?

  Hey, you know what? It's like Jimmy Somerville from Bronski Beat was put in the back of a van and driven to Beirut and forced to make a fucking Middle Eastern dance record.

• 1:06:37Sean Hayes?

  Jimmy Somerville in Beirut. That was the name of the album.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Oh, Sean.

• 1:06:42Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, did you ever see? By the way, did you ever see Ricky Gervais's music videos or anything?

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Those were amazing.

• 1:06:47Sean Hayes?

  Really?

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:06:48Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, that's what? That's a similar path. But, yeah, do you have any, like, tragic, horrible theater gone wrong?

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  My tragic, the most tragic thing, other than a real injury that I suffered during a play, same play, by the way. We were doing Cymbeline at The Public. That Joan Akalitis directed, who, you know, is experimental director from Mabu Mines. If people want to go back and look at all that stuff, she's great. But we had an actor, Stefan Schnabel, who played the doctor in this play. And, you know, it's a, you know, kind of a stereotypical Shakespeare fifth act wrap-up where one character knows everything that happened in the play, like, you're his niece. And she actually has the potion.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  And this king knew him, is it something? Like, they unwrap the whole thing, and we're all on stage going, oh, that's how I did that. So he had this last, you know, speech that he had to give. Stefan was, I think, 98 at the time.

• 1:07:54Sean Hayes?

  Uh-oh. Wow.

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  So it comes time for him to wrap this up, and he goes up.

• 1:08:03Sean Hayes?

  That forgets his lines.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, forgets his line, goes up, forgets his lines, for those who want the theater vernacular. And he starts... Stammering and making up words and, and, and basically just sort of like.

• 1:08:17Sean Hayes?

  Trouble.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  You know, standing in place and teetering and no one, you can't give somebody in Shakespeare. You know, it's not, we're not doing something naturalistic. You can't come up with some, you could try to come up with some iambic pentameter and like slip a line there to help him along the way. But it went on so long that first the audience sort of laughed and then realized, oh, it's not a bit and stopped laughing. And then the other half the audience laughed and then half the audience shushed that part of the audience that laughed.

• 1:08:47Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  And then the actors on stage kind of were starting to laugh, you know, those two that would start to laugh and everyone's like, shut the fuck up. And everybody stops laughing and he's still kind of.

• 1:08:57Sean Hayes?

  Trying to pull it off. He doesn't think anyone's noticed.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Trying to pull it off. This went on for probably um two minutes. You know how long two minutes is?

• 1:09:07Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  You got, I mean, you, you guys have died for two minutes for sure collectively on this show.

• 1:09:12Sean Hayes?

  Oh, yeah. It feels like a long time.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a long time.

• 1:09:15Sean Hayes?

  She says it's not.

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  Joan Cusack, who was the, the lead in it, who played Cymbeline, just finally just started saying his lines. She just couldn't take it anymore.

• 1:09:23Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  And he kind of revved up and got through it and then got off stage and he said, I want to kill myself.

• 1:09:29Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  I have to quit.

• 1:09:31Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  I'll never want to act again.

• 1:09:32Will Arnett?

  You're 98, there's no point.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're gonna be dead soon, I guess is what, is what Joan said to try to like, you know, bolster his, his ego.

• 1:09:41Sean Hayes?

  Good lord, yeah. That's the scariest thing.

• 1:09:42Will Arnett?

  Wow, fuck.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  It was, it was really sad.

• 1:09:45Will Arnett?

  Going up, going up in your dialogue like that on stage.

• 1:09:48Sean Hayes?

  Scariest thing in the world.

• 1:09:49Will Arnett?

  Right? There's just nothing.

• 1:09:50Sean Hayes?

  You don't need that crap at 98.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  There's nowhere to hide.

• 1:09:52Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. Yeah, there's nowhere to hide. Right. But now, Don, you're like one of the sweetest people ever. What pisses you off? Because I can't, the few times I've met you, even today, you're always just very in the middle, very cool, calm, collected. Is there, is there some?

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Gummy program.

• 1:10:09Sean Hayes?

  What's that?

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  I said I'm on that gummy program.

• 1:10:12Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Jason Bateman?

  I bet, I bet he's not happy when he blades a bunker shot, right? You hit that ball right in the belly coming out of the sand trap. It's just, it, you're never happy.

• 1:10:21Sean Hayes?

  That pisses you off?

• 1:10:22Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  Immediately, but then I kind of let it go, you know? I think like stupidity without any desire to not be stupid pisses me off. I don't mind if you're stupid. People can be stupid, but when there's, are like incurious and don't want to actually look under the stupidity and see where that stupidity is coming from. That, that kind of pisses me. And, you know, as we can see, it's incredibly dangerous and, you know.

• 1:10:49Jason Bateman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  We're, we're in a sweet spot of stupidity right now for a lot of people and.

• 1:10:54Will Arnett?

  Would that, would that, and that, would that extend across all sort of areas? That sort of stupidity, like whether it's history or language or just geography, even basic geography of states and cities within the country that we live?

• 1:11:07Jason Bateman?

  Uh oh.

• 1:11:08Will Arnett?

  And.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  Like if people didn't know where a, how, where a city was or where a team was.

• 1:11:12Will Arnett?

  It's been explained to them like five times.

• 1:11:14Jason Bateman?

  This feels like a shot. This is definitely, hey.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no, no. I think Will's just trying to use in a, in a.

• 1:11:19Will Arnett?

  It's a general, it's very general. I'm just trying to get a general sense of it, Don.

• 1:11:23Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, because Sean, remember earlier in the, in the show, and I had a problem with Kansas City.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Well, ignorance isn't stupidity. You know, ignorance is, anyone can be ignorant, you know?

• 1:11:30Will Arnett?

  That's true. Anybody can be ignorant. Thank you, Jason. So, Don, Don, honestly, you've been a dream. You're just an, you're such a cool guy. We've never hung out. We, we threatened once. I was on a, um, I was, Joey Russo wanted me to get in, into a football fantasy league. And I said, no. And Joe said, well, just stay in the chat and talk shit, even though you don't want to play. And I did for about six months. I think.

• 1:11:56Sean Hayes?

  Really?

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, you were in there. You were in there. It was great.

• 1:11:59Will Arnett?

  Don and Pratt and Rujo and, yeah. It was fun.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  It was a lot like this, just like pot shots from the side.

• 1:12:06Will Arnett?

  It was a lot of pot shots.

• 1:12:08Jason Bateman?

  Well, you know, Will, Will, you and Don should go out and play some golf while I'm on my golf hiatus. And, um, and then I'll, I'll rejoin you guys in the end of fall.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  What happened? Why are you on?

• 1:12:17Will Arnett?

  He's on a hiatus because he's working. He shot an even par seventy.

• 1:12:22Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, but who cares, really?

• 1:12:28Jason Bateman?

  It's not a big deal. But listen, thank you for joining us today, Don.

• 1:12:33Will Arnett?

  Don, will you make me this pledge when you come back that you and I will play? Can we do that? Can we say that'll happen?

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  One hundred percent.

• 1:12:39Will Arnett?

  Okay, great.

• 1:12:40Jason Bateman?

  He's the absolute greatest.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Sean, do you play? This should be the foursome.

• 1:12:44Sean Hayes?

  I could, I always say I could drive the cart.

• 1:12:46Jason Bateman?

  He loves to drive the cart.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  It's a day.

• 1:12:48Will Arnett?

  There's so much fun. We get him a soda. We get him like a float, like a root beer float and he drives the cart.

• 1:12:52Sean Hayes?

  Next time, next time you're.

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  A soda.

• 1:12:55Will Arnett?

  Sometimes it's early temple, but it's a lot of sugar. It's a lot.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  He's very groggy and by the seventeenth hole, he's kind of irritable, a little.

• 1:13:06Jason Bateman?

  Guys, it's good. Just pick it up. We gotta go.

• 1:13:10Sean Hayes?

  That's totally me.

• 1:13:12Jason Bateman?

  Love you, Don. Thank you for saying yes.

• 1:13:14Sean Hayes?

  Love you, pal.

• 1:13:15Jason Bateman?

  Enjoy the rest of your day down there in Atlanta and say hi to our friend, Mr. Hart, please.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  I will. Thanks, guys. Great seeing you today.

• 1:13:23Will Arnett?

  Great to see you, dude.

• 1:13:24Jason Bateman?

  Thank you, Don. Bye, buddy.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  Yep, yep.

• 1:13:28Jason Bateman?

  I love Don Shalhoub. It's so good.

• 1:13:30Will Arnett?

  JB, what a great, what a great, great guest. God, he's so good. Love that dude.

• 1:13:35Jason Bateman?

  Don't your shoulders just drop when you're talking to him?

• 1:13:37Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:38Will Arnett?

  Yeah, he's cool. He's such a, another one of those, mega talent. He falls into that category. Mega talent.

• 1:13:45Jason Bateman?

  And universally loved.

• 1:13:46Sean Hayes?

  And we, yeah, we say this all the time. It seems like the people who work all the time also have wonderful personalities.

• 1:13:54Will Arnett?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:13:55Sean Hayes?

  Like kind and generous.

• 1:13:57Will Arnett?

  Well, JB, you know, you're a director. It's a big part of your career now and your life. And when you're deciding between, you have a lot of options to do stuff with a lot of different people. And part of the calculus, I imagine, is who do I want to spend the next four months with?

• 1:14:11Jason Bateman?

  It's huge. And it's before I even start to get excited about the idea of them coming on. And that's cast or crew. I'll do, I'll do, I'll do Zooms with people that I may not even see on the set. And I just need to know that they're not going to, you know, wreck it with their not being nice people. It's important. But he is a, he's amazing. And I could have, I could have just gone on forever and ever. We didn't get to much of anything, which is what we do on this show. Sorry, listener.

• 1:14:45Will Arnett?

  You know, we get a lot of complaints about that. I think that some, from some people who say like, oh, you guys didn't, you just, and what they forget is like, we're just so excited to see Don. Yeah. Right? So a guy like Don, so we just start talking.

• 1:14:56Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, we're not journalists. We're just three dummies that wanna just talk a little bit and can't believe anyone's listening.

• 1:15:02Will Arnett?

  Yeah, and if you're like, oh, why didn't you, why didn't you get to what Don's favorite dog type is, we're like, sorry, we were just excited, we just wanted to talk shit with him.

• 1:15:10Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Will Arnett?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:15:11Jason Bateman?

  Right. That's on the Smartless extras, if you wanna know his favorite dog type.

• 1:15:15Sean Hayes?

  Exactly. Or, or talk about like vacation spots, like, I don't know, like, has he ever been to Thailand? Or Mumbai?

• 1:15:23Jason Bateman?

  Mumbai!

• 1:15:24Sean Hayes?

  Mumbai! You glaze right over it, Mumbai!

• 1:15:42Will Arnett?

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

• 1:16:00Sean Hayes?

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

• 1:16:40Speaker 04

  What do I gift my mom and nieces?

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  What sound that hits just right?

• 1:16:56Speaker 04

  And my coffee-obsessed bestie?

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  Delongi Brews Coffee, right for morning's extra price.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew?

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  We knew, now you do too. Shop gifts no love at Walmart.