James McAvoy

James McAvoy (California Schemin’, Atonement, X-Men) is an award-winning actor and director. James joins the Armchair Expert to discuss running wild in Glasgow’s council estates, considering the priesthood to see the world, and landing his first film role after offering to make tea. James and Dax talk about the Wanted role Dax almost got, feeling out of his league opposite Keira Knightley, and making a film about Scottish rappers who fooled the industry by pretending to be American. James explains how childhood hardship sharpened his empathy, why kids need room to be bored, and why helping people doesn’t always mean fixing their problems. Start your 2 month free trial today: https://youtube.com/premium . Terms Apply. Cancel Anytime. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Hi, James McAvoy.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  I'm being official because his name's James, you know, James McAvoy is our guest today. And James feels official instead of Jim.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I love the name James. I used to say that if I had a daughter, I would name her James.

• 0:18Dax Shepard?

  That would be a lovely name for, yeah.

• 0:22Dax Shepard?

  James Padman.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Do you think it sounds be bad?

• 0:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, I love James on its own, but then maybe she's a one name person. I just don't know how well it pairs with Padman.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  James Padman. I mean.

• 0:34Dax Shepard?

  You call her JP?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  I call her James Lilly Padman and then JLP.

• 0:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Oh, JPL is what I was.

• 0:41Dax Shepard?

  Jet laboratory propulsion. Okay. Anyways, James McAvoy is an award winning actor and a director. His credits include Split, Speak No Evil, Atonement, Four X-Men, of course, Last King of Scotland, for my money. God, did I love him in that. And he has made his directorial debut. It's in theaters now. It's called California Scheming. And it's based on the most impossibly true story of two Scottish kids pretending they're American to break into rap in 2003. This is a lovely interview. Please enjoy James McAvoy. We get support from Quince.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.

• 1:28Dax Shepard?

  I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers. Give me the boots. Give me a reason to wear something other than a T-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince. Because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up and everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories, they skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.

• 2:08Dax Shepard?

  The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time. And he looks iconic.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 2:19Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.

• 2:37Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is presented by YouTube Premium. YouTube was already great, but premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love premium. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. Now let's get into today's episode.

• 3:34Dax Shepard?

  Now, really quick, I'm bummed I've healed so much. Much different today, right?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  What? Oh, he had, okay.

• 3:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So yesterday we had a guest and it was insane. They never asked what was wrong with my face. Because have you ever been to the dermatologist and they have the machine, they can zap things off you?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:49Dax Shepard?

  I bought one.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 3:51Dax Shepard?

  And I've been going nuts getting rid of every.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  It's dangerous, man. That's dangerous, dude. This sounds bad.

• 3:57Dax Shepard?

  So yesterday it looked like I had been hit with buckshot in the head.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Is it like freckles or moles?

• 4:02Dax Shepard?

  Skin tags, hyperplasia, anything raised I don't like. Anything, you know, when you're just feeling your skin, you're like, what the fuck is this? And especially, I'm four years older than you, but at 51, it's like sprouting up everywhere. I'm like, what is happening to me?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I've got weird stuff all over at 47.

• 4:16Dax Shepard?

  All the time.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, we are a ship flowing through the ocean of life. You've got to scrape your hull sometimes. I've got something in my eye, which I'm like, oh, am I going to need to get that worked out? So maybe I'll use your machine before I go.

• 4:29Dax Shepard?

  I walk out blind. I forget 2000, you would be the first guest that I offered some kind of surgical services to.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's getting out of control. It's like he walks in and then it's just scabs.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Oh, mate.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Scabs.

• 4:42Dax Shepard?

  Quickly. So yesterday I was a mess and today already I'm kind of back to normal.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  I had that thing when I was a kid. Have we started recording yet?

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I was a teenager and you know that way when you don't really think about your appearance too much. I wasn't really up on my appearance. And then I think my aunt said to me like, oh, you've got tons of blackheads on your nose. And I was like, have I, what? What's that? Yeah. And they were like raised, they really needed to have something done about them. So I thought, oh, I guess I better do something about that. So I went to town on them. Next day I looked like I'd been fucking attacked by a rottweiler or something like that. Then that was the talk of the town and the school was like, James McAvoy, he busts his plucks. He busts his zits. You're like, why is this news?

• 5:23Dax Shepard?

  Was it scabbed or you just looked like Rudolph the red nosed reindeer?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  It was pretty scabbed.

• 5:26Dax Shepard?

  It was scabby. Yeah. Okay. I don't know whether to tell you this story now or when we get to it. I don't know. I've told a story on here about you about 35 times. Which is why I'm so excited to finally meet you.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Oh my God, is it gonna be bad?

• 5:39Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna start with it.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  A good story.

• 5:41Dax Shepard?

  I guess it would have been 2006 or seven. I get a meeting with this guy, Timor.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:47Dax Shepard?

  This Russian director who's going to direct this movie Wanted.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Dax Shepard?

  And we have this incredible meeting. I'm at that point thinking, you know, there's no way I'm getting this movie. It's going to be a huge action movie. But I'd like to meet this guy. That meeting goes really, really well. But there's another actor that's already attached to it. So I'm like, ah, it's a bummer, whatever. Then randomly we get called, that actor fell out for scheduling is what I was told. He wants to meet again, meet again. Then the studio calls, they want my quote. We're beginning that whole process. I'm like, oh, they called and asked for my quote.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  This is Clay Wesley.

• 6:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 6:19Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, I can't believe this is happening, right? And then at the 11th hour, they're like, oh no, the actor is now available again. I go, who is this actor? And they go, James McAvoy. And I go, who the fuck is James McAvoy? You're saying that like, whatever. I'm so annoyed. Weeks later, I go to ArcLight here and I see The Last King of Scotland.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Was that around about that time? Oh, wow.

• 6:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you were probably getting that role right as that movie was about to come out. And so I'm watching this movie and I'm having the experience that I've only had a couple of times. I'm having the experience I had watching Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  What film?

• 6:56Dax Shepard?

  Where I go, who is this fucking actor I'm watching?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 7:00Dax Shepard?

  He's so odd. No, you.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  When he was watching Last King of Scotland.

• 7:04Dax Shepard?

  I'm watching Last King of Scotland and I'm like, oh my God, this guy's a revelation. Who is this guy? And the whole time I'm watching, I'm like, I gotta wait to the credits. I'm gonna like write his name down and watch everything that he's ever been in. And then it gets to the credits and I go, oh my God, that's James McAvoy. I wouldn't have hired 10 of me to play this guy. It was the most satisfying experience with finding out you didn't get something because of someone else.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:31Dax Shepard?

  Because I was so blown away.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 7:33Dax Shepard?

  By that performance in Last King of Scotland. And then I've just been a huge fan ever since.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Thanks. Thanks so much, man. It's really kind of you say so. I don't know what you say to that. That's mental.

• 7:43Dax Shepard?

  Hard to do.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  That is mental. Should I tell you the truth about what was actually going on?

• 7:48Dax Shepard?

  Yes, because I read other shit today that I was like, oh, that's not even what happened. I don't think.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  I think Timor wanted me to play the role and he thought it was me. And then the studio were like, this kid's not big enough. Was it like a $75 million movie?

• 8:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, with Angelina Jolie.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  With Angelina Jolie. We need somebody more established and probably more experienced as well and who's American for a start.

• 8:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And so I think I camera tested about three times for the role. I was never not available.

• 8:17Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  They were just going back and forth on whether they would let Timor have this guy that you liked. And Timor was clearly into you as well, because I don't think he'd have met you more than once if he wasn't. He's a lovely dude.

• 8:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I loved, he told this crazy story. Maybe you'd remember it was something about being at university and his books getting stolen. Do you remember this crazy tale?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  No, I've got the worst memory for things that have been told to me or happened in my life.

• 8:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  It's really boring on podcasts.

• 8:41Dax Shepard?

  Is it frustrating or are you at peace with it?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I'm kind of at peace with it. And it also means you kind of live in the moment a little bit.

• 8:47Dax Shepard?

  Harder to carry grudges? Are you able to hang on to those?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I don't think I carried too many grudges.

• 8:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. My wife has your gift in a sense that she's not burdened by the past because she just simply doesn't remember it.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  It's a nice thing. I mean, it is weird sometimes where I'm like monumental things in my life. And people are talking to me about them from their point of view. And it's not just like, oh, people remember things differently. I'm like, I don't remember half of this. I remember one time my sister said to me, not that this is a monumental thing, but my sister said to me like, you've worked with so many of the best leading ladies in Hollywood and all that kind of stuff. Who would you love to work with? And I was like, you know, I think Margot Robbie's like an incredible performer. She's proper movie star quality. But also she's a proper actor as well. She's the two things. And she's brave and bold and makes strong choices and she's entertaining even when it's sad. And she just can do many things at once. So I said to her and she was like, but we've met her. And I was like, what?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  And apparently we were at the Empire Awards in London one night years ago. And we won some award. I can't remember what it was for, a film called Filth that I did a long time ago, maybe. And me and Joy were there together, my sister, and we went downstairs to the party and apparently we were like tearing up the dance floor and stealing each other's shoes and chucking them behind the DJ booth and all that. Because apparently Margot Robbie was like, oh, those two are having fun. And we partied with her.

• 10:05Dax Shepard?

  And she joined you like all night. Okay, that could be a drinking incident though.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  I was drinking back then, yeah.

• 10:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So the memory might've been a little hazy because of that. I think I've partied with some people I certainly don't remember.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I think you'd remember if you partied with Margot Robbie though.

• 10:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  She's very iconic.

• 10:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a big deal. Have you thought about getting it looked at?

• 10:25Dax Shepard?

  Have you seen a neurologist?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I spent so much in my early, sort of up till about 29, 30, worrying about my mental health. Not worrying about it, but keeping a real good eye on it. I'm sort of, this is going quite serious. In the last sort of like 15 years or so, I'm like, I'm fine. I don't need to worry about it.

• 10:42Dax Shepard?

  I want to get into that. I had a little bit of a preoccupation in my twenties. I felt like I was vulnerable to lose my mind.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I was worried about that loads.

• 10:50Dax Shepard?

  What do you suppose that is?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Without going into like finer points and details, because there's other people's stories as well. Lots of substance abuse and mental illness in my early years. And I just worried that it was like in me.

• 11:06Dax Shepard?

  Also, mom was a psychiatric nurse.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:08Dax Shepard?

  So were you hearing tales? This is in Glasgow, let's just set the stage. April nineteen seventy nine, a little baby comes along. He's so cute, his name's James.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  What's his middle name?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Don't have one.

• 11:20Dax Shepard?

  Don't need one.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't have one.

• 11:21Dax Shepard?

  He's a junior, he gets three things.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Do I need to be named junior? Or am I just like by default, I'm a junior?

• 11:27Dax Shepard?

  I think if your dad has the exact same name as you.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Everybody in my family was named James, I think there was about ten Jameses. Yeah, no, I was definitely exposed to a lot of that, but also just in the extended family and my community as well. There was a lot of altered state going on.

• 11:40Dax Shepard?

  Would mom come home and share stories? This is what first thought I had when I saw your mom did. Was she coming home with some wild stories?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Little bit, yeah.

• 11:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and what was the vibe in Glasgow in the eighties? Shit was popping off, yeah, mentally speaking.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, back then it was drug kind of capital. I mean, I don't want to talk down about my hometown, I love my hometown. But we've got a massive drug problem and it was massive back then and it's become massive again. I think we're the drug death capital of Europe at the moment.

• 12:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  So there was just a lot of that kicking about and I think mental illness and drugs and alcohol, just alcohol as a drug, they kind of go hand in hand. They're not always hand in hand, not everybody who drinks has to get mentally treated. But they can, I think, often go hand in hand and one kind of empowers the other a little bit. I don't know what the underlying issues and underlying causes of that are, but it's a real thing.

• 12:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so I'm from Detroit, so that's a very similar vibe, especially in the eighties.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Is Detroit back in its feet now?

• 12:36Dax Shepard?

  It is shockingly, yes. Mind-blowingly, yeah, because I left there in ninety-three and it was as post-apocalyptic as you can imagine, a city. And now, yeah, there's farmers markets and stuff, it's wild, it's impressive.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  You can get kombucha.

• 12:48Dax Shepard?

  You can get a nice, probably a freshly brewed kombucha.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 12:52Dax Shepard?

  The crack epidemic was just sweeping through the entire city. My uncle in recovery, my dad in recovery, you know, the whole scene. Similarly, a child of divorce. So yeah, maybe that's the seeds, as I saw adults around me that were hanging by a thread and so maybe it seemed plausible.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there was a self-awareness that came to me very young. Actually, is it self-awareness? I think it was an awareness of the extreme things that people around me were going through from a very young age. This sort of took me out of the place I think most children are in for quite a long time, which is I'm the center of the universe. And the world is really just happening to me. Everybody else, you're just all players in the movie that I'm the leader in, aren't you? And then, you know, the process of growing up is a process of sort of looking less inward and looking outward, responsibility to others. But I think that happened to me quite young and while I didn't have responsibilities to fill to other people, I think that I was sensitized early to what others are going through,

• 13:53Speaker 02

  which was quite a massive reason why I ended up being an actor or a performer and interpreting what it is that other people are going through in their lives, you know, and making that into a story. As an adult, one of the things that I do is I try and fix issues, I try and fix problems, which you might think is a wonderful thing. But I'm kind of coming to the realization that sometimes you've got to let people go through what they're going through. You can't fix everything and by fixing it, you're creating more problems. But part of that fixing as well is you become quite malleable and you can slightly lose yourself within that.

• 14:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes, now, I think we share this. So I spent all my summers and all my free time at my grandparents' because single mother working around the clock. And when I went there, I think I got the thing that my children have, right? Which is I was the center of the universe when I was at my grandparents' house. They made me whatever I wanted to eat, I got to have snacks, they were available, they had time for me and I loved it. It was an Eden. Was your experience living with grandma and grandpa the same?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, my granny and granda were incredible and really just smart, like incredible. I was about to say smashing people. I never use the term smashing, they were smashing.

• 15:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and what does it mean?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Fantastic people, they were smashing, they were amazing. My granny still is amazing.

• 15:12Dax Shepard?

  She's still alive, your granny?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow, that's incredible.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Along with the drug death capital of Europe, we were also the teenage pregnancy capital, so she was quite a young. They were incredible, but they were also sort of realistic, pragmatic. They had five of their own kids, all my aunties and uncles and my mom, obviously. And it's interesting, their point of view on my experience and Joy's experience with my granny and granda, because they're always like, they were never like that for us, you know what I mean? They're always like, you got a totally different side, which I think happens a lot.

• 15:44Dax Shepard?

  Meaning you got a better version of them than their kids did?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  We got them a bit older, a bit more settled, a bit more established financially, maybe, a bit more chilled. Also not having to balance five kids and two jobs, you know?

• 15:54Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  So it was an easier time in their life.

• 15:56Dax Shepard?

  Same, I think my father even resented me a bit that his dad was so gentle and kind to me.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:04Dax Shepard?

  I think that can happen.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  We're developing a script at the moment and that is the key thing about the movie, apart from all the other bits, is the relationship between grandfather, father and son and the gap in the middle. The father and the gap between the grandfather and the son, but those two are kind of like circumnavigating the father and having this incredible bond, you know? They were amazing, but I was talking about it the other day, can't remember who it was to, but it was a dad at the school or something like that and talking about how kids played differently before. And I was like, no, that's true, but if you're going to look at it through the lens of the past, the difference in the past was as well, like my granny and granda loved me and I felt so loved and protected and safe and cherished. They never played with me, I was never played with.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  But I think the space that that afforded me allowed me to understand how I could play on my own or with friends. Or I'm bored wasn't a thing that would have been accepted. That's on you, mate, do you know what I mean? So you don't get bored, you invent things, you think as well. I remember I used to go to bed excited to think.

• 17:07Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? We don't do that anymore because we go to bed and we do that before we go to bed. And I guess a lot of teenagers are doing that now too, the pure excitement of going like, right, what am I going to think of it? And fantasize about and sort of like build in my brain at a young age. But anyway, the playing with thing, I love that I play with my kids and I love that I'm attentive and that I'm present and all these things. But I do wonder sometimes if this wonderful time that feels so fragile and on the precipice at the moment, but we still have a hold of it at the moment where people with a certain amount of money in the bank have time to play with their kids. And we should take advantage of it, of course we should, but are we also taking something away from the kid by not allowing them space? To just wonder?

• 17:49Dax Shepard?

  I think if you feel like it is your job to entertain them constantly, yeah, I think you're going to have a problem. But if when they want to kick off some fake world and you join them, no, then just they're the author of this experience.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  It is different though, because I would never have asked my parents to play with me. That wasn't even an option.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:11Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  To be like, hey, will you play house with? Like, no, either you're doing it in your own head or you have a friend over. But like now I do think parents are behaving more as friends.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's so many parents I see and I'm not criticizing parents because it's too easy a pastime to fall into, I think, is to criticize other parents. But I do see so many parents so concerned with being liked by their children. And I don't know if that's necessarily should be your super objective.

• 18:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  My parents could care less.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Your job is to help them to grow into people who are potentially capable of happiness and functionality. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to like you every minute.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Often they shouldn't like you.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  If they're relying on the gratification of your pleasure, they're going to be needy people in relationships going forward. I don't know, I'm getting very specific about something, it's pseud psychology, who knows?

• 19:04Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I just had to learn this term today because it sounded fancy. What would you say a council estate is? If you found out someone grew up on a council estate in Scotland, what do you think that means?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  A council estate, okay, so I'm going to say like a government property. Someone who worked as an ambassador or something has their own property?

• 19:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and are we picturing like some acreage maybe and some fencing?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Or is it a lawyer's house?

• 19:30Dax Shepard?

  It's what they call the projects.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 19:33Dax Shepard?

  So keep reading, you were from the council estates and then you were helping an actor kind of prepare for the first thing you were in.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it was Andy Serkis.

• 19:41Dax Shepard?

  And they wanted to know about your accent. He said, are you from a proper council estate? When I read that, I was like, wait, he grew up kind of fucking fancy.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  It does sound fancy.

• 19:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, that's a different thing.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  The other name that we would have is a council scheme.

• 19:55Dax Shepard?

  Scheme.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Which is why film that I directed is called California Scheming, which I never really explained in the movie.

• 20:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so that was a kind of colloquial term for it is.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you live in a scheme, you're a schemey, that kind of thing.

• 20:10Dax Shepard?

  And was there shame about being lower income there?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Not from us. Some people might, but there was also a bit of like local pride and it's strange, isn't it? Like Drumchapel, that's the scheme that I come from. I had a great time growing up there and my days were full of adventure and potential and peril and chases and drama and tons of kids running wild. And it felt exciting. My opportunities were limited and my horizons were very close, but it still felt like I was in the wild west sometimes. And yet I look back at like, there's something that keeps coming up on Instagram at the moment, which is this documentary made about Drumchapel at the time in the eighties. And is what it was like. And I'm just kind of shocked to look at it and see how bad it was then, because it felt so vibrant.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  And so when I see movies about people who come from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, and a lot of these films are brilliant, by the way, and it's fine to make films about people like this, but they're often sort of wallowing in the deprivation or the suffering. It becomes almost titillating in the pornography of poverty. And some of that is really valid, totally brilliant. You need it, but you don't really get too many rom coms set in a project. You don't get too many bloody movies about two kids from project. Actually, you used to a little bit. That's kind of what I wanted to do with this, even though it's a true story and there's some real big emotional consequences in the movie.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  The reason that it appealed to me so much is because it was about people who came from a place like I did, but it was entertaining and it was aspirational and it was like propellant. Like you went to a nice neighborhood and people were protecting the property, do you know what I mean? And ours, we lived in a row of 20 homes and up the back, there was all these flats and apartments and just hundreds of gardens in the middle with middens, what we call middens, like where you put the trash out and all that stuff. And basically all but I'd say 10% of the neighbors were just like, you can go into our gardens, do what you want. So we had like this wild area that when you're like eight or nine feels so vast that you can adventure through. And the kids that were in that close, like an apartment building, we call it a close, the kids that were in that close, like they were our enemies, do you know what I mean?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  But the kids in that close, they would help us sometimes, you know what I mean? It was proper. You get locked in stone throwing battles for four hours at a time, trapped in a den that you couldn't leave. There was this amazing bit between the two schemes in Drumchapel, scheme one and scheme two, and I'm from scheme one. In between scheme one and two is this vast sort of valley with a burn, a stream that goes right through the middle of it. We call it a burn. And it was a huge hill that went down like that to the burn and then it would go back up to the other side in scheme two. And I remember I was in scheme two, which even within my neighborhood, you're like, that's not my territory. I can't be in scheme two, do you know what I mean? And we get chased at a scheme two. And I just remember I felt like I was in the Jukes of Hazzard because I had to make it to the county line. If I could make it to the burn, I could make it to the burn and I leapt over the burn, I'd be safe. Do you know what I mean?

• 22:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, how exciting.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Which of course the bigger boys who were chasing me just jumped over the burn and beat the shit out of me. Anyway, I'm like, oh, you don't respect borders. Okay.

• 23:06Dax Shepard?

  That was another one. My curiosity is about your childhood. What was your kind of trajectory with masculinity? Was that complicated without dad present?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I had my granddad and I had my uncle Johnny. My uncle Johnny and my Trisha were like another set of grandparents I had as well. They were incredible too. So they were two particularly, I would say, kind, funny, gentle, not self-serious, never presenting masculinely, but.

• 23:33Dax Shepard?

  Were masculine figures and they gave you the atta boys.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, totally. There was a kind of tempered thing with my granny and granddad. They sort of tempered the sort of atta boy, you can do anything you want to do vibe with. You've got the right to try and do whatever you want to do, but it doesn't mean you can do it. You'll need to make it happen and sometimes you won't. You'll just need to pivot. Cause I think that sometimes the message to our children is so much, maybe it isn't so much these days. I think it is though, you know, you can do anything. And the pressure that comes with that is that it's implied that they should be capable of achieving anything.

• 24:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I thought that was a uniquely American thing. I know that's huge here.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Definitely back home as well. And look, I'm not dissing it. It's better than being down on your kid and telling them they're never going to amount to anything. Absolutely. But there's a pressure that comes with that as well. It's just in how we phrase it really. And maybe there's a way to phrase it that propels, but doesn't add weight. I don't know if it's because of the way my grandparents sort of framed it or who I was as well, but I felt like I'd be all right.

• 24:33Dax Shepard?

  You did.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  And I didn't necessarily expect to make it as an actor. I was very aware that the statistic of 95% of actors are out of work at any one time. Really? You don't see that many movies coming out of Scotland. How many Scottish movie stars are there? There was nobody there for me to like see it to be it. I was like, well, I'll do this. I did a movie when I was 16, out of the blue, out of nowhere.

• 24:52Dax Shepard?

  That's worth telling. So there's this famous Scottish actor.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Famous Scottish actor, director, producer, philanthropist, all around good guy, David Hayman, not to be confused with the producer of the Harry Potter movies. He came to my school. He famously played Lady Macbeth in the seventies and an all male production at the Citizens Theatre. He lived next door to my English teacher. We were studying Macbeth in class, just for English, not for performance. And he came in to talk to us. He took a bit of flak from the kids in the class, giving them shit for being a poofy actor or whatever they were calling him. But I was like, I've seen this guy in movies. He's been in a movie with Arnold.

• 25:26Dax Shepard?

  He was in Sid and Nancy for Christ's sake.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  He was legit. And I was like, oh, wow. So I went up to him at the end and I said, look, when you're making a movie, again, can I come and make tea or make coffee for you for like a week?

• 25:36Dax Shepard?

  Be a runner.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Cause you all had to do like work placement, whatever you could do in the corner shop or the bank or go and plaster walls with your uncle. And he said, yeah, yeah, sure. So six months later, he was making this movie called The Near Room. He called the school, he said, is that wee guy still there? Send him in. I went in and he gave me the script. He said, right, this part, this part, this part, these scenes here, read that, try and learn that and then come back. And I was like, what? Am I acting? What the fuck? So I read it with him and he went, can you do it again? I think you need to get quite upset. Can you make yourself cry? I was like, I don't know. Luckily I am quite emotionally incontinent. We walked out of the room and his arms around me in a nice way, consensual.

• 26:15Dax Shepard?

  Appropriate way.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was fully appropriate. And he went, right, this is the guy that's going to play Kevin. And then the next thing that happened, Andy Serkis walked in with dreads.

• 26:23Dax Shepard?

  He's the one asking you about the accent.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  He was playing a Glaswegian pimp and David, the director goes like, he's the real thing. Sit down with him and he'll sort you out. So my first seconds as an actor were sitting down with the great Andy Serkis, who I loved from a kids TV show that he was doing called Streetwise, which is about crime fighting, mountain bike couriers in London.

• 26:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Wait, so did you want to be an actor?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Never thought about it.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:47Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  I never thought about it.

• 26:49Dax Shepard?

  The lore goes though, that you then fell in love with your co-star and then you were like, okay, I want to stick with acting.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  I didn't fall in love with her. There was an actor in the movie who played my sister. She was really nice to me. Got on and I fancied her. And so she said, you should come to Paisley Youth Theatre. So I got on the train every Thursday night or something like that and went all the way out to Paisley because I fancied this lovely young woman.

• 27:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, here we would say you were in love with her, but there we're not saying that. That's like.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  That's a big distinction. Fancying and being in love.

• 27:16Dax Shepard?

  When you're 15, I was falling in love with like people lying at the amusement park. In love.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Oh no, I definitely, I would like imprint. It would be.

• 27:23Dax Shepard?

  I would have gotten married like a thousand times at 15 if I would have been allowed to.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Do you know the Boy Scouts?

• 27:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Do you have the thing before at the Cubs?

• 27:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Cub Scouts.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  So we had Cub Scouts back home and I was in the Cubs. I lasted a week in the Scouts and then I gave up, but I was in the Cubs. We went away on camp for the week and the girl guides were also there and they were staying on one side of the shally. We were staying on the other side of this big scout hall out in the mountains of Scotland. And there was this young girl, she must've been about 13, she was called Linda. Linda, if you remember this, you made a big impression.

• 27:52Dax Shepard?

  This is a man who doesn't remember anything, Linda.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  And she was doing her good deed for the day because I was complaining. I was like, I didn't bring enough socks and my socks are full of mud and they're soaking and like, oh God.

• 28:03Dax Shepard?

  Not very resourceful as a Boy Scout.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, right? And she said, give them to me. I'll clean them for you tonight and that'll be my good deed for the day. And I swear to you, for about a year after that, I thought about Linda.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Dax Shepard?

  In making her your wife.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  And making her my wife. I thought about subjugating Linda, but a year after that.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, these first crushes.

• 28:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they're incredible. Okay. I've got kind of like a loose theory. The two things that you've done in your early life that boggle me. One is you were considering priesthood for a minute.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:38Dax Shepard?

  Like that seemed appealing. It would take you places potentially.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Essentially, I was like, I always wanted to travel. I had a sense of the world outside and I wanted to meet it. So missionary work, I thought would be, I could wait to do that.

• 28:49Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. Good travel plan.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Then you met Linda and you're like, I don't think I can do that.

• 28:54Dax Shepard?

  The celibacy part really sticky. Then the second thing that I can't imagine is you had enlisted for the Royal Navy.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  No, I was accepted, what'd you call it? Conditionally, what was it?

• 29:04Dax Shepard?

  Probationary?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  No, the police was like assured if I, if I wanted it.

• 29:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So I'm wondering, those two things also are turnkey stability.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  You mean you're locked into a life?

• 29:15Dax Shepard?

  It's one stop shopping. You join the priesthood, everything is mapped out for you. It has the appeal of built in structural stability.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  And I think as well, the other thing that they both have, which maybe helped pull me in was notwithstanding the countless negatives and atrocities that have happened in both those institutions.

• 29:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  There's a romance to them as well. There's a romance to the idea of the travel, but also the endeavor, the profound feeling of being part of a team and purpose, which I think appealed to me. That was something I was looking for and it wasn't until I kind of half-heartedly said to myself, I do like acting. I have done it a few times, like on TV or film, and I've done this youth theatre thing for like a year. Maybe I should just try it for acting school as well, because really that is what I should have been doing. But I only tried it for one acting school because I couldn't afford to relocate to London where most of the acting schools are.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  There's one major one in Scotland and that was in my hometown of Glasgow, thankfully. So I tried out for it and luckily I got in because if I hadn't, I might've been on a boat somewhere.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 30:31Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking the weather forecast before you walk out the door? You looked outside, saw a blue sky, felt great about your outfit choice. No jacket, no umbrella. Fast forward two hours, you're sprinting through a parking lot in a downpour, holding a notebook over your head like that's going to help. Yeah, checking first is a brilliant idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We get support from our presenting sponsor, YouTube Premium. Now, you already know I'm a big YouTube person.

• 31:14Dax Shepard?

  It's incredible on its own, but Premium makes the whole experience feel enhanced. Like you don't realize how much better it can get until you try it. The biggest game changer for me, background play. I love long, two hour deep dives. You name it, motorcycles, travel, cars.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Cooking shows for me.

• 31:33Dax Shepard?

  Cooking, listen, with Premium, you don't have to keep the screen open. So I can lock my phone, slide it into my pocket and listen to a podcast while I'm folding laundry or working out. It's also completely ad free, meaning when a narrator is building up to the climax of an insane story, there's zero interruption. And for travel, offline download saves the day. I love this one. Relying on airplane wifi can be a gamble, so I just download my favorite videos before takeoff. And with smart downloads, Premium will automatically download new videos from channels you actually follow without having to lift a finger. I'm covered if I forget to download a video I want to watch, or even if there's no service. And the home run for me is that YouTube Premium remembers exactly where I left off

• 32:15Dax Shepard?

  and lets me continue watching on another device from right where I stopped. So I can start a video on my TV while brushing my teeth and pick it right back up on my phone on my morning walk. So yeah, YouTube was already great, but Premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. We get support from Superhuman. I'm someone who wants to do big, meaningful work, but the small stuff eats up my day before I even get to it. The endless emails, docs, scheduling, follow ups that pile up. By the time all that's cleared, there's no energy left for the ambitious stuff. Most AI tools promise to fix that, but they require opening a new tab, re-explaining

• 33:00Dax Shepard?

  everything from scratch every single time. A week later, it's just another thing collecting dust in the browser. Superhuman, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already embedded inside the tools people are using. Email, docs, browser. It's not waiting to be found, it's already there, working alongside, clearing what's in the way, so the focus stays on what's actually worth doing. A thought partner that's already up to speed, no catching it up. It knows the style, the workflows, and it backs people up without getting in the way. At your service, not after your job. That's the difference. Give it a try for yourself. Start streamlining your workflows with Superhuman. Try today at superhuman.com. We get support from Instagram teen accounts.

• 33:46Dax Shepard?

  So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Which is a fair question.

• 33:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 34:27Dax Shepard?

  Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age appropriate experiences for teens.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.

• 34:46Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 35:00Dax Shepard?

  Do you remember having any fear at that moment of the future? Like that these things like I'm saying that are turnkey? Did you have anxiety about having to start real life and having to figure that out? Do you remember being plagued with that or no?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I don't know if I am sort of remembering things differently or not, but I had a sort of security in sense that whatever happened, I'd be okay, which I have less these days, which is nuts. And I just knew that whatever happened, I'd have it right before my head and I'd be able to feed myself, I'd make it happen. And I think that's part of the childhood as well. Not everybody who goes through some mad stuff in their childhood comes out like this, but I think it did help me. I don't know if this is all true, it's pseudo physiological stuff, maybe. So if you want to argue with it, please do. But I've heard the science behind having a freezing cold shower in the morning. The reason why it's so good for you is it puts you into a fight or flight first thing in the morning. Your body also understands and your brain also understands, I could deal with that

• 35:59Speaker 02

  and I'm still breathing and I'm still alive. So when you miss the bus or you miss the meeting, it doesn't become this fucking thing.

• 36:08Dax Shepard?

  You're not defeated easily.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think I kind of like in terms of my whole life, that happened to me early in my life. I'd say the last 10 years or last few years, it's sort of tested me a little bit more again. I'm further away from that. I'm almost a different person, I guess, do you know what I mean?

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

  You've gotten soft.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  I think I have.

• 36:24Dax Shepard?

  In the lap of luxury, you're starting to wonder if you're still scrappy.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Do you know what? I think I just trusted that I would be the kind of keeping an eye on myself that I did until I was almost 30. I'm speaking very sort of respectfully about mental illness, but I'm literally doing this.

• 36:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. The cartoon version of crazy for the listener now, where you spin your finger around your temple.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  This sort of self-awareness and this sort of self-care, I guess, that I would sort of practice up until I was like 30, I then became sort of like, you know what, I can relax. I think I maybe relaxed a bit too much and I need to kind of keep an eye on it.

• 36:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, okay, that's one explanation. What about, it's actually weirdly less scary to have nothing and be trying to get something than it is to have something and it occurs to you, I might lose it.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:08Dax Shepard?

  So it's like, yeah, what was at stake for you?

• 37:11Speaker 02

  When?

• 37:12Dax Shepard?

  At the beginning, virtually nothing. You're not going to make a decision whereby you walk away from something fantastic. It's all out there to gather.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  You can only go up.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember having a conversation with an actor who described their early career coming out of acting school, feeling like, well, I guess what happens is you come out of acting school and then you spend a year or two doing smaller things and then you become Brad Pitt.

• 37:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  And I never had that. My idea was if I can pay the bills as an actor, that's my ambition and that will be massive success. That will almost be like at the top end of what I allow myself to expect. And so setting, I guess, achievable goals, but also having a fair understanding of just how hard it is. And I get, maybe that's because I wasn't looking inward, I was looking outward. I could see how hard it was for everybody, didn't expect it to just happen for myself. Also, just the brass tacks of it is, like I say, there wasn't 20 Scottish movie stars getting produced every single year. So you're kind of going like, how is this going to happen for me?

• 38:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So after you get out of school, you graduate in 2000, you have this pretty long period post-graduation where you're just doing a lot of television and you're doing plays and Joe Wright sees you at a play and he virtually over the years offers you kind of a couple of different movie roles. You want nothing to do with it.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  The reason I didn't want anything to do with it, it was Joe asked me to be in a BBC costume drama, Charles II. And it was a fairly small part that I was up for doing. And then I got offered like a lead role, one of the main characters in the original version of, you know that show William H Macy does, Shameless? So the original version of that was set in Manchester and I was in the original cast of that.

• 38:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, you know dumb I am? That's oh four, oh five. I didn't realize you were in the original one.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:55Dax Shepard?

  When I did my research, I thought you were on the Showtime version.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  No, no, it was nuts. Like watching the first episode of the American one, I watched the first 20 minutes of it, watching actors and that do stuff that we improvised on the day and you're like, this is wild.

• 39:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Is it the Jeremy Allen White character?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  I don't know, I couldn't be held to account.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  We'll find out later.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  I said, look, I've got to go and do this. My agent was like, you've got to go and do this show, you're going to get paid more. It's a really good writer, it's great, could be a really good thing and it's a bigger part, you'd be daft not to do it. And I remember Joe was really annoyed with me, he was really angry with me. And then he got me back when he was going to do a movie version of Birdsong, which later became a really good TV version. And he brought me in and we worked on that. And then for some reason, somebody was going to do Atonement, they pulled out and working title said to Joe, get off Birdsong, we want you to do Atonement. And so he brought me in for that and I camera tested a bunch of times with Kira and I knew who I was up against, but I think it was me, Killian, Jake Gyllenhaal apparently and Jude Law.

• 39:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fuck, all the handsomest guys in the world, yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  I think Last King had come out, Wanted hadn't happened, Narnia had happened.

• 40:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, oh five is Narnia, oh six is Scotland and then oh seven is Atonement.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I shot it in 2006. I loved playing that part. I loved the process of working with Joe in that. He was like one of the best actors, directors I've ever worked with. And I totally stole from him when I directed my first movie. Not actually with how I talked to the actors, but how I talked to the crew.

• 40:25Dax Shepard?

  Why, how does he talk to the crew?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  He did this thing that maybe other directors will be angry at me for saying this because they say, oh, do do that. I don't know, but he's the only director I feel like I've ever seen do this, which is you do the rehearsal and usually the DP is there and the first AD is there and the actors and the director. And then you go talk about shots a little bit and then the crew come in for the crew show. That's the end of that. And then the AD will start telling people like, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do that. And then we all filter away, the movie starts to kind of come together. We would do the crew show and at the end of the crew show, Joe would go, right, so that was the scene and this is what it is to me and this is what I feel about it. This is what I want maybe the audience to feel about it. This is what James' character is going through here, part of the arc, the pivotal point for his arc is at this point. And then for Kira's character, this is happening. And what we're really going to do, and he's playing music through all this as well.

• 41:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  And he goes like, okay, let's go. And everybody steps away feeling like a movie maker.

• 41:15Dax Shepard?

  Right, they're all on the same page, they know the tone.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Did I get a script? What are we making? Is this Downton Abbey or what?

• 41:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  It welcomes everybody in and makes them invest, I think.

• 41:25Dax Shepard?

  It gives them ownership over it.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you might talk to my crew and they'll be like, oh yeah, didn't notice you did that. But it felt like you are making it. It is a miracle. And he said this, Joe, and I've said it for years since filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration. The more you can accept that and rely on that, the more you welcome in the great technical professionals and artists that are at your disposal.

• 41:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Who've made way more movies in their department than you have as a director. It's really hard, I think, for a director sometimes to do that because they're sitting there having done maybe two shorts and a music video and suddenly they've got like five million budget and they're like, okay.

• 42:00Dax Shepard?

  I need to have the answers to all these questions.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Or they just kick the can down the road a lot of time because I feel like they're scared to say, I don't have the answer. Whereas for me, I was like, I've been booed on stage. I've watched people leave. My movies have been slaughtered. My ego can take you thinking I'm not a good director, but I need to find the answer here. So if I didn't have the answer, I'd be like, help me.

• 42:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, quickly, how did you go from Shameless to getting Narnia? That's kind of a big, was there some fortuitous meeting or something?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  I was kind of on the up in British TV and I got Shameless and Shameless had done really well with its first season. It kind of became like a big thing quite quickly. And so maybe that helped get me on the radar a wee bit. But I mean, I'd been kicking about for a few years by this point, four or five years. I hear, and I don't know if this is wrong, I heard they had an older actor who was like in his thirties at the time, who was really well known comedian. They did a chemistry test or something with one of the wee girls that was potentially going to play Lucy and they all went, this is creepy.

• 43:01Dax Shepard?

  It felt creepy.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  This is creepy as shit. So they needed to find a sort of fairly experienced actor who looked like a child. And I looked like a child until I was about 29 or 30.

• 43:13Dax Shepard?

  And you have a little sister.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, only two years younger, but yeah, yeah.

• 43:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you have experience.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they wanted the lack of threat because, you know, Mr. Tumnus essentially kidnaps Lucy.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  I know.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  And drugs her.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Well, not drugs her, puts her to sleep with music, drugs her with music.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  And then hands her over to the wife, which is pretty intense when you think about it.

• 43:34Dax Shepard?

  You're really making me rethink Narnia.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Well, do you know, another story to embarrass you. So I saw it in the movie theater with my best friend, Callie, and we walked out and she goes, Mr. Tumnus is so hot.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  What? This is so mental.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  He was and is obsessed. And I'll be honest, I was like, the half animal?

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Half goat guy.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was like that.

• 43:56Dax Shepard?

  Goat boy?

• 43:57Speaker 01

  What? So it was a joke for a long time that she was in love with Mr. Tumnus.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  There's definitely been some Tumnus kink over the years.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:05Dax Shepard?

  It definitely makes me like Callie more.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  He's kinky, I guess.

• 44:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  You know, the weird thing, C.S. Lewis, when he wrote that, he writes a scene where the wee girl comes through the wardrobe, she meets a gentleman, they get on famously, they go back home, they have a brilliant conversation, and then he puts her to sleep and he hands her over and kidnaps her, right? For that role, he chose the Fawn or the Sater, which in Greek mythology, anyway, is the not just follower, but disciples really of Dionysus, the Bacchae, the Bacchus.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Who engaged in major raves and orgies. Like they were, they were a promiscuous sexual entity.

• 44:41Dax Shepard?

  The pan figure.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Wow. I guess she could sense it.

• 44:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she was looking for something a little.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  She really.

• 44:50Dax Shepard?

  God bless Callie.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  She was into Mr. Tumnus.

• 44:53Dax Shepard?

  That movie was an enormous success. I mean, it made 500 million dollars. Were you experiencing after that movie, like, oh, I'm in a major hit, people are seeing me on the street? Were you having that moment after that movie?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  I don't know actually if I was because I'd looked so different. I'm not sure that it really did that. Shameless was the biggest thing. Back home anyway, it was Shameless.

• 45:13Dax Shepard?

  And it's on TV every, you're in everyone's living room.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that was such a sort of, we must tune into Shameless because it was just, what's going to happen this week? It's mental. I think Shameless was a big one. And then it was probably Wanted for a long time, then X-Men, of course.

• 45:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, there's one interesting thing about Last King of Scotland, my favorite movie. I love that movie so much. I stole one of the songs for the second movie I directed. I just put it straight in there.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  What song?

• 45:36Dax Shepard?

  That incredible like Afro Cuban song that's playing. I can't off the top of my head think, remember the name.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  It's a great soundtrack on that.

• 45:41Dax Shepard?

  It's the most incredible soundtrack. But I learned today that Forest Whitaker suggested you to Kevin McDonald?

• 45:48Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I thought I was on board before Forest.

• 45:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  I was on board from like, I was 22 or something. And again, I got lucky because we had a Scottish director, Kevin McDonald, and we had a movie that kind of needed a star in it for Fox Searchlight to back it and make it work. And we were pretty low budget, but still, I think they were out to Sam Jackson, who I've later worked with in Love, but he wasn't available in the end. So Forest came in. But before that, I was offered the job. I take the job. I'm going to do the job. But it was like a year of like, are we going to get green light? Are we going to find the right guy for Edie? And in that time, kind of what happened on Wanted happened on this as well, where they were like, this is a low budget independent feature. And they were like, we need a star in that role. Nobody knows who this kid James McAvoy is. The director, who was Scottish, I think, was like, well, we need somebody who's Scottish because the role is Scottish. The film's called

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Last King of Scotland. It's important. And I don't want somebody doing an accent that's bad. And they made him see lots of people who were stars already. And he just fought for me and I was so lucky. And he asked me to camera test a year after I'd got the part. And I was like, ah, fuck.

• 46:52Dax Shepard?

  Feel like you could only lose it. Yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Totally. And I think I gave a really bad audition and somehow he still fought for me to get the part. So thank you, Kevin McDonald.

• 47:00Dax Shepard?

  You're so outrageously good in it.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 47:02Dax Shepard?

  Is it a movie you're proud of?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely.

• 47:04Dax Shepard?

  It's such a fucking incredible movie. The texture of the movie, the colors of the movie.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Anthony Dodd Mantle and Kevin, their work together in that was just stunning. And I've worked with Anthony again, the DP, when I did a Danny Boyle film. He's just so, so good.

• 47:20Dax Shepard?

  He felt very Danny Boyle. The movie felt pretty Danny Boyle in a good way.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Anthony's work is so dynamic, always on the edge, always trying to like push the forefront of a new technology or something, which I don't think necessarily he was doing in Last King, but it felt really dynamic. And it's a beautiful film to look at as well.

• 47:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm really proud of it.

• 47:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's so spectacular. And you were so young when you got to do that.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Kid, man.

• 47:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I look at myself in that and I'm like, I look 16. This is so weird.

• 47:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay. Then Atonement comes along and we talked about that. And you were nominated for Golden Globe for that, you and Kira, nominated for a BAFTA. Now, this is not to be mean, but I noticed this happened twice where Atonement is based on a novel and the author came out and said that she did not agree with the casting of you, right?

• 48:06Speaker 02

  No, that happened on a.

• 48:07Dax Shepard?

  Well, it also happened.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Zadie Smith on white teeth.

• 48:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, then there's a.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you don't want to be on this.

• 48:13Dax Shepard?

  Third, because the one that I wrote now, was it his dark materials? No.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:17Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Never said that.

• 48:19Dax Shepard?

  That's not it.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  But I kind of stayed away from Philip because I was scared to meet him.

• 48:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  And I also on Atonement chose to stay out of the way of Immaculate because I was just like, I'm nothing like the character you wrote physically and I don't want you to tell me that to my face.

• 48:33Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  It's crazy. I remember on that set, I was playing the lover of Cecilia or Celia, Cecilia or Cecilia, played by Keira Knightley, incredible actor, one of the most beautiful women in the world.

• 48:46Dax Shepard?

  Outstanding.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  And I was like, and I'm like, I scraped in through like endless camera tests, past people who already had big movie careers. I was like, I'm kind of lucky to be here. And like the character's written is this like, I think the word Adonis is how he's described. He's like six foot five, working class, going to private school, kind of like Adonis belt and all that. And I'm like five foot nothing and like skinny and paley shit. And, you know, still been able to do my job and feeling entitled enough to be there.

• 49:15Dax Shepard?

  It was a wild success.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  They say action and I forget all that. But then I also remember Akira's boyfriend at the time was on set a lot. And we were filming this beautiful, beautiful country house outside Ludlow in Shropshire. And it was the middle of like a heatwave in summer. I just remember like one of these moments, I was thinking to myself like, I hope people believe that she'd actually fall in love with me or whatever. And like, oh God, that we'd actually be a couple. And I just looked up and I saw her boyfriend at the time, who was no top on, six foot odd, jacked, long flowing hair, just coming over the hill like Heathcliff, do you know what I mean? And I'm just like, ah, fuck. If I ever needed a shriveler, that was it.

• 49:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay. Now you start X-Men. That franchise starts in 2011. You play Professor X. I guess I was wondering, when you go into that movie and it's Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence and that gang, how does that?

• 50:09Dax Shepard?

  Relationship of all, are you ever intimidated? How does it evolve? You end up doing four together? Is it like, do you keep returning to summer camp? What's the vibe of doing four of those movies?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first ones were nuts, actually. The first one, I was like the most senior member of the cast, really, in terms of movie experience and age. And then getting to be on the other side of the decision-making process a little bit, because like I was part of the camera tests with all these different actors like Moira and Magneto even. And I remember we saw a few great actors from Magneto who were incredible. And they've gone on to have amazing careers. But when Michael came in, it was just like, as a movie star, but again, a real actor as well. And we thought like, we could definitely build something and have good chemistry together. I think the first one's great. It's a lot of fun and it's a bit of a reboot in terms of tone from any of the other X-Men movies.

• 50:58Dax Shepard?

  I didn't realize Matthew Vondered that until today.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he really put his own stamp on it. I loved it for that. The movie kind of like survives on the chemistry of the buddies, do you know what I mean? Of the buddy movie.

• 51:06Dax Shepard?

  Well, not to be cruel to previous comic book movies, but this one was actor first. I don't think I'd ever seen a cast assembled that was so actor-driven. Favreau did that with having Downey play Iron Man. I think that was very like actor first. But other than that, this one is just, oh, this is so cool. These are the superheroes.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  That was Matthew totally, totally going for that. Character arc was like so important to the plot progression. But everybody that came in after that was just like one after the other. Incredible actor, incredible actor, incredible energy as well. I'll never forget the first time I met Jen and she like flew in. She's already picking up awards and up for an Oscar for like Winter's Bone or something like that. Was she up for an Oscar for that? Anyway, but winning everything.

• 51:46Dax Shepard?

  She hadn't done Silver Linings yet or?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  No, no, that was a good few years later. She was 18. She got off the plane, came in, cautioned fit and rehearsed all day and then took a plane out that night. You know, I mean, I didn't see her again for two weeks. But the energy and the kind of quality of charisma of that person, it was like standing in front of a high-powered fan. You're so, she's amazing. One of the fastest wits I've been around in the movie business is Jen Lawrence. Her and Stephen Fry just.

• 52:17Dax Shepard?

  Special. Okay, Split, I want to talk about just because you got jacked.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  You know, I didn't get that jacked for Split. I didn't have time.

• 52:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay, Glass, the sequel.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Split, I got the gig like two weeks before we shot it because it was meant to be, I get in trouble naming the actor who's, I've done it too many times and apparently I should stop doing it. But anyway, there was another actor playing the part and he, for whatever reason, decided not to do it fairly last minute. I got the job two or three weeks beforehand, so I really didn't have a chance to get too big. And I was toned, you know, that's what was fine. And we made the most out of it with lighting and stuff. But Glass, I'd actually been in hospital.

• 52:49Dax Shepard?

  For what?

• 52:49Speaker 02

  I had a.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Split personality.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  I had a split personality. I had a lung puncture because they saw shadow on my lung. So they wanted to biopsy it to see if it was cancer, which it wasn't, which was great. But that was botched and I nearly died.

• 53:02Dax Shepard?

  Because you got an infection?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was at home two days later and my lungs just collapsed in bed one night and I was on my own as well. So it was crazy.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Crazy. So I spent like two or three weeks in hospital. They tried everything to clean it out. Nothing was working. So they were like, we're going to need to cut you open big style, go in with like dish soap, basically, and just like clean you out.

• 53:19Dax Shepard?

  Clean you up.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Scoop it all out.

• 53:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  So I had to then go from that to one of the X-Men movies. And I knew I had the time of that X-Men movie, which is like four or five months to get ready for Glass. And Glass, unlike Split, I was the beast, like most of the movie. And I was just outside in broad daylight as well. You don't have too much cool studio lighting to give you like.

• 53:39Dax Shepard?

  The contours, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  And so I was like, I'm really going to need to do the real thing. I'm going to need to go for it.

• 53:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  I remember saying at night, like, you're going to need to get me a trainer. It's like, oh yeah, we'll get you down to the local gym in one of the trainers or whatever. I was like, no.

• 53:52Dax Shepard?

  I want the Marvel trainers.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  I've worked with those guys before and they're great, you know what I mean? But I'm going to need somebody that can make you look like a Greek fucking figure from mythology. Do you know what I mean? The people who know how to do it. And they're expensive, but the guy that worked with me was amazing. And he came to Montreal where I was making the movie for X-Men.

• 54:07Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't Duffy by chance?

• 54:09Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. It was Magnus, Magnus Legback.

• 54:11Dax Shepard?

  Perfect name for that.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  He looks like a Viking. He didn't move in with me, but he was just with me a lot and kind of regulated what I ate and trained me just right. And basically for the first four weeks, he rehabilitated me. I could walk, but I couldn't run, couldn't cycle, couldn't jog. And I was like on set every day as well, doing crazy hours as Charles. And so he did a lot of rehabilitation and functional movement and then put the pounds on me really fast.

• 54:38Dax Shepard?

  And do you not get addicted to it? Like, I'm so addicted to it.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  I was addicted to it for about three years and I was like, honestly, the biggest I've ever been. I was in the film Speak No Evil. There was a shot in it where people are like, you're CGI there, you're CGI. I'm like, I wasn't.

• 54:52Dax Shepard?

  Was it a decision to like, all right, I'm gonna not?

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a movie in Germany back in 2024 and it was like, this is not good for this character. I stopped doing that. I started running, I started walking and just eating a hell of a lot less and got skinny again for the first time in years. My neck kind of disappeared, my traps disappeared. My traps get too big too quick.

• 55:14Dax Shepard?

  Poor you.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Oh, darling, it's such a shame. My muscles are just, they just develop, they just grow so easily.

• 55:19Dax Shepard?

  They're out of control.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  And then kind of liked the hours that I got back in my day. And then I started directing and you give your whole life to that for like two years. This is two years since I wrapped the movie. I started properly working on the movie about three years ago and I'm still here. Three years later, I'm still here trying to sell my movie. It's different as a director. You never let it go.

• 55:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I know.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  You think about it all the time, you're sweating blood about it all the time, you're anxious about it all the time, you're loving it all the time. Hopefully you are loving it all the time. I did, I was lucky enough to be able to love it. But I think that's why it's important to do something if you're capable and, you know, not everybody's in this position as a director. But if you're lucky enough to be able to choose your work and create your work, you really need to be trying to create the stuff that you feel genuinely passionate about because you are going to sweat blood for it. And if you're doing that for something that you're not really invested in, oh my God, it'd be so destroying.

• 56:09Dax Shepard?

  So how do you decide to take on California scheme? And do you read the script? Because you're so employed as an actor. We could have gone for another two hours on all the things you're doing. And then also you're doing fucking plays on the West End. Why at that moment do you decide, yeah, okay, I'm going to make the time for it now? What's happening in life?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  First of all, it's the professional thing of, I've not reached the end. I've not completed acting, but I am at a place where I'm really quite comfortable. You know, if I've got the right kind of role that I'm suitable for.

• 56:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Then I'm pretty comfortable. And so it was about kind of putting myself in a place where I'm not comfortable again, I guess, and challenging myself.

• 56:45Dax Shepard?

  Were you getting a little bit bored? I heard you say it in other interviews that this probably does correlate to a midlife crisis to some degree.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Directing?

• 56:53Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  I was either a Porsche or directing.

• 56:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  I don't think directing is part of the midlife crisis. That's something that I felt I needed to do for years and years and years. And since I was in my twenties really, but having a nice career as an actor got in the way of it, I guess. What was it about this one at this time? I don't know. I put the word out there that I wanted to direct and look, how many first time directors get to do that? Hey, I'm just going to tell my agent, I fancy directing the film and then I'll start to get scripts. I'm really very genuinely aware of what a privileged position that is to be in. But everything that was coming to me was the kind of stuff that, like, for example, I've played like five or six Scottish people in my entire career. Because there's just not that many movies made about Scottish people. And when I say I want to be a director, it's a privilege. I get furnished with scripts. Every one of them are Scottish. A lot of them are like the poverty kind of exploitation a little bit.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  I think the writers would argue that it's not exploitation, it's an examination and a sort of revelation. But I wanted to do something that was entertaining. So when this came along, it kind of ticked those boxes because it was about that end of the socioeconomic ladder. It was also about my home country and it was also about something that I've experienced. The boys in this film, to make it in the business and show business, they had to sacrifice their authenticity, their integrity and their identity. In a very specific set of circumstances where they're almost told they need to do that. And that doesn't necessarily get told to everybody, but that is a path as an artist you are going to walk. The path that they walk in that film is one that I still feel like I've walked a version of for 30 years, which is, how much of myself am I sacrificing to get what I want? And what do you want? Do you want a bigger part, a better part, more money, awards?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Like, what is it? And at what point? Because everybody has sacrificed something. The postman sacrifices his time with his family every time he walks out the house to go and be a postman. So we all sacrifice something for our jobs, but when is it too much?

• 58:37Dax Shepard?

  When are you sacrificing your identity?

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Your identity, your health, your whatever. But when is it too much? Because the business is, I think, based on sacrifice. The whole idea of the show must go on, you wear it as a badge of honor and you adhere to that principle, the show must go on. But you're like, fuck, if the show must go on, it's really easy to exploit people. It's really easy to hurt people. And also your bosses are usually only your bosses for a few months or a season or whatever. You're somebody else's problem on the next one. So just get what you need to get out of them, no matter what it does to them. Which is why it's a dangerous place for kids, I think. And so the idea of the show must go on being based on this idea that I've always got in my head, which is like, the first play was an animal or a person being sacrificed. And they were trying to make the rain come or whatever.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  And there was smoke and there was production values and all that kind of stuff. And everybody was just there to try and make the rain come for the crop. But at the same time, everybody was like, that was really fucking cool. Can we do that again next Saturday night? Do you know what I mean?

• 59:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  So I think a relationship with what's on stage and what's on screen and any kind of performance or part of the contract is the, the audience expects you to sacrifice something.

• 59:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  They expect you to leave something of yourself on the table or on the screen, you know?

• 59:47Dax Shepard?

  Because they're going to openly admire and adore you. And we know intrinsically that you should have to pay something in return.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Well, you shouldn't.

• 59:56Dax Shepard?

  I know, but I think that is the, that is the intrinsic bargain on the table. We are social primates, we are status animals. For us to willingly give up status, which is what you do as an audience member.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  You got to give me something.

• 1:00:09Dax Shepard?

  I want to see you bleed a little bit. You got to earn it.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  That's the artistic dynamic between you and the audience.

• 1:00:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  But that permeates, I think, through the business side and the kind of institution of the business as well, where it's like, it's all about sacrifice. So everybody just sort of willingly sacrifices. And that's why a lot of people get hurt, I think.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Okay, so let's just start with the fact that this is based on a true story, which is kind of mind blowing. And I wonder, did you have any awareness of Billy and Gavin in 2003?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Do you know what? My sister was in a Scottish hip hop group at the time called Streetside. And she, I seem to remember her mentioning something about these mad guys, syllable and brains. But no, I really didn't know anything until the script came across my desk. And then I had a look at the documentary. There's a really good documentary called The Great Hip Hop Hoax. And I was like, this is wild. And it gives me the opportunity to entertain, but also talk about something that is part of the collective kind of Scottish experience as well.

• 1:01:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So, okay, so there's these two boys in Scotland, Billy and Gavin, and they're of low economic status. They're getting bullied when we meet them. They're not the studs of their school, right? They're getting chased everywhere they go and they're super into rapping. And then they hear about this record label that's open auditions, trying to find the next Eminem, basically.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  The flyer at the time, I think, was the next D12, the next Eminem.

• 1:01:25Dax Shepard?

  Right, so these two kids go down to London, which is its own huge journey. The thing that I loved about it that you immediately capture is like, I just remember being that age. And whatever I did, I thought I was in a fucking famous novel. Like just the enthusiasm I had to go to downtown Detroit or to go do this thing.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  I used to listen to music on my way to work. I'd felt like I was in a movie. It was amazing. And I don't know if, I just don't have that anymore because I'm old.

• 1:01:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Or if I don't have that anymore because we're never just alone with our thoughts as much as we are because of like social media or whatever. Is that it?

• 1:01:59Dax Shepard?

  I think it's just the fantasy. There's so much unknown ahead of you. And so because it's unknown, you're free to just pick the most spectacular version of what the unknown might be. But then over your 47 years, a lot's known. A lot's been experienced. If I could implant into 17 year old James, your life currently on paper, what you would have thought that was going to feel like versus what it has felt like.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I'd never have believed it.

• 1:02:26Dax Shepard?

  The gap between those, right, would be so enormous.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Huge.

• 1:02:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Huge. And I think I'd look at some of the decisions I've made or some of the sort of ways that I live my life. And I'd be like, no, don't do that, man.

• 1:02:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  I think I would judge myself a little harshly.

• 1:02:38Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  I don't know about you as a performer and as an actor, but one of the reasons why I think performance or in education for young children is really valuable, especially for kids who come from neighborhoods without many opportunities, is that it, for me, standing on stage or standing in front of the camera, getting bad reviews, failing, and then still realizing I'm still alive and I get to go again and I get to try again and I learn or I don't. It makes me understand that the next time I need to go into a room and speak to people, whether you become an actor or not, putting your kids on stage, not for work, just for fun.

• 1:03:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  It can really help them understand that when the spotlight is on them in everyday walk of life, they'll be okay.

• 1:03:21Dax Shepard?

  They'll survive.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  That doesn't become a fight or flight response. It becomes like, no, I just need to tell them what my plan is for the next week of this business. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:03:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Death is not on the other side of this.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  No, if I can't speak properly, it doesn't mean I'm dying. It doesn't mean I'm going to get fired and all these things. And I think that when you get a certain level of higher education and people say entitlement, I think the biggest thing that they come away with is not more intelligence necessarily, but a feeling of entitlement. Entitlement is not a bad thing. Everybody should feel entitled to be there, to be present, to have value, to have their place in the room. The only thing that's wrong is that there's only a certain pocket of people in society who get to feel entitled.

• 1:03:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. So these two kids, they make their way to London.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Dax Shepard?

  And they rap for these scouts and they're so fucking Scottish.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Dax Shepard?

  And I guess what would be funny to us over here is like, we don't know all the rungs of the status ladder as far as these accents go. But what is clear is that it's pretty looked down upon, you know?

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's definitely a regional bias. It's not just to do with Scotland, actually. It's like to do with even the north of England and certain regional parts.

• 1:04:24Dax Shepard?

  We have it obviously with the south, right? Like the north makes fun of the south and the implication is that they talk dumb. I'm learning that's a similar.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  It's definitely a part of our culture. It's not every single person, but it's been enough that I can 100% back it up that it happens. You know what I mean? Is it the worst kind of bias? Is it the worst kind of prejudice? No, there are many kinds, but this is the one that I've experienced in my life. And it's also a movie that I resonated with because of it.

• 1:04:48Dax Shepard?

  But it also gives you a fun chip on your shoulder, I think.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  A chip, a chip, a chip. I don't know if I've had the chip in my shoulder. I used to a little bit when I was in my early twenties, I was looking for the fight because it made you feel like you were solid and you were on solid ground. You knew where you were. Just find the injustice and fight it. Whereas I'm a bit more forgiven and kind of take it on with conversation more now. But I think that one of the reasons why the story is fairly universal, and even though it is very specifically Scottish, is because that happens everywhere. There's whole swathes of North America who get left out when it comes to the people that are allowed to be seen on screen all over the world, all over Britain, there's parts of it, where now you don't get to be an artist in that way. You don't get to be on screen in this way. There's whole swathes of our society that aren't served culturally or represented culturally as we know. It's a reductive thing for me to say, we know this.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  But this example of it was something that I noticed. And sometimes people go, there's so many Scottish actors and I'm like, name me 10.

• 1:05:41Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Go, like, name me 10 Scottish movies. And name me 10 in the last 10 years. You kind of go boo hoo. It's nobody's responsibility to serve the cultural needs of Scotland, other than Scotland. We need to do better. It's not Hollywood's responsibility to make movies about Scottish people. But that's why I wanted to make this. I wanted to make a film that was about the Scottish experience, but which is also sort of celebratory of Scottish culture and also entertaining.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:06:14Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Dell. Ready to upgrade your PC? The Dell Top Tech Event is here. And you can skip the research because independent tech experts already did it. Dell has laptops, desktops and monitors that have been tested, reviewed and named a winner by the publishers you trust. So instead of spending hours researching, you get a shortlist that's already proven. Take the Dell XPS 13 laptop, built for those who want better. Whether you're studying, working or just getting things done, its thin and light design makes it easy to take anywhere.

• 1:06:52Dax Shepard?

  It has a touchscreen you'll love using, a battery built to last through your busiest days and impressive performance powered by Intel Core processors. That's the thing about the Dell Top Tech Event. The experts already found the winners. All that's left is finding yours. While shopping, you'll also find perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support and financing with flexible payment options. Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:07:27Dax Shepard?

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• 1:07:53Speaker 04

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• 1:08:32Speaker 04

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• 1:08:50Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

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• 1:09:04Dax Shepard?

  That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

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• 1:09:22Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

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• 1:09:24Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp for optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.

• 1:09:35Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:55Speaker 01

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• 1:10:02Dax Shepard?

  Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. Helixsleep.com/armchair. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts. The stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it, start to finish.

• 1:10:46Dax Shepard?

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• 1:10:58Speaker 01

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• 1:10:59Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 1:11:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so these kids, they do this audition and of course they're promptly told like, we can't even fucking understand you.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  They literally get called the rapping proclaimers and that's a line that the two guys say that they heard right then. And by the way, the proclaimers rapping, I'm here for that.

• 1:11:26Dax Shepard?

  What are the proclaimers?

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  The proclaimers and I would walk 500 miles.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  I'm down for the rapping proclaimers, honestly, but for these two guys who were so in love with American culture and hip hop and comic books, that was the worst thing you could have said. Not even being rejected, but like to be likened to these arguably quite straight, square, folksy rockers from Scotland and told that nobody wants you doing this.

• 1:11:52Dax Shepard?

  So then they decide they're going to present themselves as rappers from California. And this is a real story.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, they invent these, they basically engage in method acting for two and a half years of their life. And the real story was two and a half years.

• 1:12:05Dax Shepard?

  It was two and a half.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Our movie feels like two and a half months.

• 1:12:08Dax Shepard?

  There's a Milli Vanilli parallel a little bit.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  These guys could actually perform, they could rap, they could write as well.

• 1:12:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they were quite good.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  But there was a lie at the heart of it.

• 1:12:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So they start pretending they're from LA, but then they don't know anything about LA. At one point they say, where in LA? And they go like Beverly Hills and they're like, oh, that was a miss.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  We're from the projects. Which projects? You know, the ones in Beverly Hills. There's a Beverly go like, where are you from? One of them goes Sandy and the other one goes Angeles and they're like, yeah, Sandy, Angeles.

• 1:12:34Dax Shepard?

  They don't know shit. So they gotta fucking get their story straight. And then low and behold, they go and perform somewhere as these American rappers who are apparently on tour in Europe. And there's a scout in the audience from the same record label of which you play the CEO or the president of that. And they get now round two audition with the same company now there as Americans and they get signed.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  The same music, the same songs, same music, just like with a few athletic tweaks and different accents.

• 1:13:05Dax Shepard?

  And they get a record contract.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:13:07Dax Shepard?

  And then they start performing. And then now this pressure of like, when are they gonna finally announce?

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, the jig is up.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  So the idea was that they were gonna go down there, hopefully get the deal. And then the game was as soon as we release something, we're gonna come out and expose the industry for this regional bias that we've suffered. Because here we are with the exact same tracks and you all love it. And here we are on MTV and they did go on MTV a lot. And then of course, when they get that moment in the movie, they get that moment where they release the track and they're on MTV and here's the moment, they're gonna come clean, they're gonna embarrass the music industry, or at least this label that they've been working with. And of course, they can't not enjoy the fame.

• 1:13:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, back to the thing that we just said about you too, is like, they were fearless when they had nothing to lose. And then the second they had something, they were overrun with fear of losing it.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  It's weird though. I don't think I've ever been afraid of losing my career. Ah, yes, I have. I don't know. What is it that made me mental in the last few years?

• 1:14:08Dax Shepard?

  You would concede you'd have to adjust your lifestyle now.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:12Dax Shepard?

  That's a legitimate fear. It's like, I live this way, I enjoy living this way and I'd have to change that.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  I guess so, I guess so. But I don't really feel fear. It's weird. I don't get motivated by fear. So it's an interesting question for me, but I think one that I'll bore everybody by sitting here pondering with that.

• 1:14:29Dax Shepard?

  We had it.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Why did I go off the rails just recently?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird to think about, you can rest on a big moral high ground when you don't have anything. You know, like, I mean, this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, I think, but I do think it's true. And when I listen to people on podcasts and stuff and they're always taking down like, people who have money or people who are famous. And I'm like, it's really easy for you to say because you don't have it. And when you have it, of course you wanna keep it. Of course you like it. Of course it changes you. I don't know. It's a tricky.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Judgmentalism, I find it so hard to accept. I'm not patting myself on the back saying I never judge people. We judge people every day. We do it subconsciously.

• 1:15:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, you have to to not get mugged. You make an assessment of the person you're chatting with, are they going for my wallet or not? Do I trust this person to get in their car?

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. There's nothing wrong with a certain level of it.

• 1:15:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have to to survive.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  But going out of your way to express your opinions on how other people are living their lives that have got no bearing on your day, how they parent, how they park, it does not affect me. Let them be. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:15:36Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  It's hard enough being yourself without having opinions about other people's shit.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's a weird one.

• 1:15:41Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of different uses for it. Some of them are just vile. Some of them are to shore up your own motivation, which is like, ah, that's why I work really hard on the thing so that I'm not like that.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Do you spend time like in the playground with like other parents, people you've never met before, but your kids are playing together. So the other parents kind of telling you their parental choices with conviction, like, no, no, it's the only way. You must, you must, you must. And you're like, I know when you go home, you're doing the exact same thing as me, which is, this isn't working. Is this right? I don't know. Should we be trying something else? But you're in the park, proselytizing to me, editorializing to me, preaching to me like you have completed parenting.

• 1:16:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  But that's to make you feel better.

• 1:16:20Dax Shepard?

  That's the great illusion of parenting is you do figure it out and then one week later they're different.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, they move the goalposts.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And you're like, oh no, I need a new strategy this week. And then they become teenagers and you're like, oh my God, now I need an entirely like, I'm re-meeting them almost as totally different people now.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Cause there's quite a lot of years between my eldest and my youngest.

• 1:16:40Dax Shepard?

  You're 16 and four.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I'm doing it all again. And it's kind of hilarious being back in the park and all the dynamics with other parents. There's this thing that guys do quite a lot where you'll be watching your kid playing with some other kid and we've never met before, but our kids are suddenly like tight. And you're like standing beside this guy you've never met before. And he'll go like, oh, your kid's really like, he can really run or like, oh, he can really hold the monkey bars brilliantly. That's, that's great. And like, what age is, what age is your kid? Cause he's trying to like gauge it.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Is my kid failing? Should my kid be doing better? And you're like, oh, it's a weird thing we do with this kind of comparison. I always wanna say like, oh, he's three, actually.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  It comes from a sweetness. Cause I do think you don't know, when you have a baby, you don't know what they're supposed to be doing. So you are, so you are kind of looking to see like, are they on track?

• 1:17:29Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Do I need a specialist? You're always waiting to find out if you need a specialist or not. Like, oh, she's been making this weird noise really loudly for a month and a half. Is it time for a specialist? And then it just goes away and you're like, oh, thank God we didn't need a specialist.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  It's a wild thing you do being a parent.

• 1:17:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, the other fun thing that it exposes, once you turn on the light switch to being popular, the intoxication of that and the availability of drink and drugs and attractive people and late nights, the rapidity at which that took over these two.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:18:04Dax Shepard?

  How one navigates that in a healthy manner is beyond me. Anyone who can do that, I'm impressed.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Especially when you're young as well and you're still forming and all that. Look, I navigated it a little bit with, for a lot of my twenties, I was kind of keeping an eye on myself. And I think I went too far, but I was like, work ethic, work really hard, be super professional. That was my life. It was kind of devout actor. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:18:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Were you not going out and partying at all?

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Little bit, but nothing, nothing regular.

• 1:18:32Dax Shepard?

  You were married really young too.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  I was married pretty young and nobody at home was going, oh, we are working class and I always remember you're working class. But it's in you, you come from it. And I left it really young. But so in my head, it was like, the whole idea of stay true to where you come from, don't forget where you came from, all that, which is a good thing in some ways. I think I went too far away a little bit. All my hatred of judgmentalism, I was way more judgy when I was in my early twenties and all that.

• 1:18:56Dax Shepard?

  Of your peers and how they were.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Decisions they were making and all that. And so that stopped me from really taking advantage of all the opportunities I could have had. That could have also messed me right up.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Dax Shepard?

  Do you think some of it too is driven by the fact that you didn't feel like you belonged there? So you had to really prove with this crazy work ethic and this crazy dedication?

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:19:15Dax Shepard?

  As this piece of shit from Scotland, this terrible place with this ugly accent?

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  Not just that, not just even the regional bias, even just physically as well. Like I say, against you're playing a romantic lead against Keira Knightley and like an amazingly beautiful costume drama that you just know is one of the best things you've ever worked on and will ever work on in your life. And you're like, I'm like five foot seven, malnourished, pasty, transparent skin looking.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  They wouldn't have cast you if people saw you like that though.

• 1:19:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just using yourself.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  But like in terms of your self-perception, and by the way, all these things that I've just said are true as well. They're not really arguable about me at the time. And so you go like, I'm not the usual thing that would get here. So I realize how lucky I am. I better not fuck it up.

• 1:19:54Dax Shepard?

  I gotta work extra hard.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  On Atonement, I remember Joe wanted to live with some of the key crew and all of the actors in Shropshire, near Ludlow where we were filming. They all stayed in this big manor house, kind of like the manor house that was used as a location. And I remember thinking to myself, I can't do that. Cause I was scared of it.

• 1:20:12Dax Shepard?

  Them seeing the real you?

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Maybe. Or drinking too much, going off, if it's parties every night or whatever. I don't know. That's what happened there. But if it was like that, I, would I be able to kind of like resist that? And would I then be able to do my job and all that? So I, I remember it being a bit of a thing. And it became quite clear that it was like, no, he definitely wanted his all to stay together. So I kind of framed it as an actor. And I was just like, look, Robbie is, he's the only one of the whole group who's working class. He is separate. He speaks like them, but he isn't like them. And I think I should be separate.

• 1:20:42Dax Shepard?

  You convinced them?

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I lived in like the gardener's cottage of the property that the film was shot on. It was amazing. It was really beautiful. I was there for like three months. It was gorgeous.

• 1:20:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so to finish up California Scheming, it obviously comes to a head. This lie is gonna come out and then their life just kinda collapses.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Dax Shepard?

  And the title sequence, we see footage of these real guys. And it's so rad to see it because it's a very unbelievable story and it kinda cements it for me.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  At the beginning, when it comes up at the beginning, it says, based on a true story. And then we flip the word story to lie.

• 1:21:18Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Does that make you think that you're watching a true story? Or does that make you think it's possibly fictional?

• 1:21:23Dax Shepard?

  No, it didn't do that, not the latter.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Cause I think sometimes we did have a version of it without that at all at the beginning. So people just thought they were watching a rags to riches to rag story. And then at the end, they dropped the information that, holy shit, this actually happened.

• 1:21:36Dax Shepard?

  It's way more rewarding, in my opinion, to know it actually happened.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 1:21:39Dax Shepard?

  But I also love nonfiction over fiction, but whatever. The notion these two guys are gonna pull off being American, they're not even that good at it.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  You know what, if you ever watched the documentary, which is a really good documentary, The Great Hip Hop Hoax. The guys' accents are not really good. They're slipping left, right and center.

• 1:21:53Dax Shepard?

  You'd have to be in England for you to believe that these guys were American.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  They were on MTV and no one's catching.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  They were on MTV multiple times. It was TRL was the show back then.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I loved TRL.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Copyright, we couldn't, we could say it was MTV, but we couldn't say it was TRL. Back then, I would be able to tell you if somebody was doing a bad American accent. Like in 2003, I'd be able to go, you're doing an accent. But here's the thing, there was execs from the record label, cause the record label was a massive international record label. They had the American offices armed and all that kind of stuff. The execs from the American office coming over to Britain going, what are you guys doing here? You need to get on a plane, we're gonna take you over, we're gonna go wild in America, that's where you need to be. And the guys, the whole time, are just going like, we got British passports. They still hadn't signed a contract because how could they sign a contract? They've got no ID that is anything other than Scottish. They couldn't get ID, it would be judged to be fake if they made it. So they had to just keep dodging and swerving. That was all in the script at one point, but we condensed it down.

• 1:22:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Were they involved in the movie?

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Gavin and Billy were involved in the movie.

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  That's why I was asking about the title sequence. So did you spend time with these guys?

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Gavin at first, more so, cause Billy was weirdly affiliated with a different film. It was gonna be about their journey, but from his point of view more. And then that film never happened, unfortunately, and Billy came on air as late. But Gavin was really involved with the music. What we realized when we got the rights, the music from Gavin, who held all the rights. Back then, only 20 odd years ago, you know, you were releasing hip hop tracks, you were sampling, sampling, sampling, building the backing track and then you were putting it out there. And you kinda went like, that's a bit of Sting, that's a bit of so and so, that's a bit of Aretha Franklin, whatever. And nobody cared. Now, people care. Now people are like that. So we got the rights to all the music and then realized we couldn't use any of the music.

• 1:23:35Dax Shepard?

  Cause it had millions of dollars worth of samples in it.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Exactly, so we had to rebuild everything from the ground up to sound exactly the same, but have no samples in.

• 1:23:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Which was nuts, so he was really involved in that, along with our amazing music supervisor and music editor. And then Billy, when he came on board, we found ourselves needing some, there was like some freestyle rap moments in it. They're meant to be like freestyle rap moments. And our writers, Archie and Elaine, who are brilliant, they ain't rappers. So they were like doing their version of something, to be fair to them, like they even held their hands up and were like, you're gonna need to get somebody from the culture to do this. So we got in touch with Billy and he was like, what do you want it to feel like? What do you wanna be talking about? Where's the character at this point? And I just gave him a whole list of what I thought it could be and he gave me like 20 things back in like 20 minutes.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  And it was amazing. And so his off the cuff kinda threw out in about half an hour, freestyles, open and close the movie.

• 1:24:25Dax Shepard?

  That's awesome. I'm assuming they both must look back on that and go like, what an incredible, wonderful chapter. I'm so glad that was part of our life.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  I think so, I think so. I mean, I think it was a really complex time for.

• 1:24:39Dax Shepard?

  During the fallout.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  For Gavin.

• 1:24:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  And you know, as much as I was really keen to exploit the opportunities that this journey presented me as a filmmaker, which was to make a really propulsive, momentum-driven, entertaining mainstream movie that's funny and all that. There's a guy in it who almost pays the ultimate price because of the effect it has on his mental health. You're trying to like weigh that up and also not be exploitative of the guy's experience. Honor it and explore it, but not exploit it in a titillating fashion.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  And not make fun of it.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tricky. And also even for Billy, although things never got quite as mortal for him, he felt more certain in who he was going into it. So he was more certain when it was time to leave. But we're also showing him, and who's now still married to Mary and has three kids, we're showing him making some pretty dodgy decisions at the time as well. And his kids have got to watch that and all that. So I was very aware of all that. I was really grateful to Gavin and Billy for coming with us and trusting me to handle those moments sensitively and not just expose them sort of titillatingly.

• 1:25:37Dax Shepard?

  In a cartoonish way, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, my last question for you is, you were premiering this movie at the Toronto Film Festival.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:25:46Dax Shepard?

  And you got belted by a Canadian?

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  He told me he was from Mexico.

• 1:25:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  What do you mean belted, hit with a?

• 1:25:52Dax Shepard?

  He got punched at a bar.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was sitting like this, I was sitting at the bar, bar's here and I'm sitting, producer on this side, producer on this side. We've done like six days selling the hell out of our film. I'm exhausted and it's the end, we're just gonna have a little roundup, well done guys, we did it. And somebody just cold cocks me in the back of the head like.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:26:10Dax Shepard?

  How that, that much of a sucker punch in the back of the head?

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  And I looked at the producer Danny and John as well, I was like, and I was looking at them kinda laughing, I was really sore, but I was like, what the fuck, guy? And then I looked over there and I saw the guy storming out, he'd been getting thrown out. Cause he was really drunk and doing something weird around the corner. We'd never laid eyes on each other.

• 1:26:27Dax Shepard?

  He just randomly picked you up.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  Randomly smacked a dude. And so I immediately kinda went from zero to 90 and went after him.

• 1:26:35Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  And then the two producers, they came after me and they put their hands on me. The minute they put their hands on me, I was like, I need to get on a plane, I need to get back to my wife and kids. If I end up like with the police or something, this is, and I immediately went from 90 to like zero.

• 1:26:49Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  But by this point, the guy turned around and he just sees me getting held back.

• 1:26:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  So that then makes him coming at me again.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  God, what a disaster.

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  And so I'm getting held back, even though I'm not looking for a fight anymore. I've never gone like that hot to cold in my life that quick. And he's like coming at me and he's getting held back. And then he starts to do this thing that I don't know if you've ever experienced when you're in a fight. It used to happen all the time when I was a kid. When you're squaring up to somebody or somebody's like coming at you just before they throw a punch, whatever, they're telling you where they're from.

• 1:27:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:27:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  I'm from Mexico, he goes, and I was like, what the fuck? And I almost went, I'm from Drumjapple.

• 1:27:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  But I was like, why do we feel the need to give?

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so weird.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  To give our zip code and postal?

• 1:27:30Dax Shepard?

  Because you're trying to establish your bona fide. You're trying to intimidate the person into backing down, cause that would be preferred.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, Game of Thrones, they're like, for fucking Westeros. It's like many, what's that, for Northumbria. You're like, we're still doing it, for Drumjapple.

• 1:27:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  It's so.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  It is, it's like an honorary thing.

• 1:27:48Dax Shepard?

  If a guy says, I'm from Beverly Hills versus I'm from Baltimore, these are relevant details.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Yes, nobody goes like, I'm from Chipping Norton.

• 1:27:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. All things equal, I would prefer to fight the guy from Beverly Hills than the from Baltimore.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Look, it was a whole lot of something and nothing. I've said as well, if I saw that guy, I'm 100% sure he'd be an alright guy, 90% sure.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  The reverse engineering I would have done was like, people knew you were there. The dude knew there was a hot shot there. He didn't like that someone was getting a lot of attention. Do you think it was fully random? Or do you think it might've had something to do with the fact that you're in movies?

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  I think it was fully random. From the way that the bar staff were talking to me, they didn't even think he could see properly at that point.

• 1:28:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's just swinging.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  The bar staff said he thought he was in the bathroom and he was urinating in the bar, round the corner. But he was so far around the other side of the bar that we hadn't even laid eyes on each other.

• 1:28:40Dax Shepard?

  Some people will say that they have a punchable face, but you could say you have a punchable back of your head. Like you probably never even occurred to you that you have like maybe an inviting back of your head.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  I've had some pretty offensive haircuts.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  Desperately in need of a haircut right now.

• 1:28:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I cut hair.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's true.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  You cut hair, fantastic. Do you ever have this thing as an actor where they're like, could you just keep growing your hair? Could you just keep growing your hair? And then the movie keeps going like that and you're like, this is not a haircut. This is not, this is just growing out here, this is bad.

• 1:29:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  So yeah, I need a haircut.

• 1:29:06Dax Shepard?

  There's no shape to this.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  There is not, I've got to premiere a film and I don't have a haircut.

• 1:29:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, James, it's been a delight to meet you. I thoroughly enjoyed your movie.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:29:15Dax Shepard?

  What an incredible first time out directing, it's called California Scheming and it's out right now.

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  Thank you, Dex, thank you so much, to pay you.

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I feel like this is so full circle for me.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:29:26Dax Shepard?

  To have hated you, then admired you and worshipped you and now to sit and talk with you is the life.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  That is wild, that story, man.

• 1:29:33Dax Shepard?

  I hated this guy, James McAvoy, like who is James McAvoy?

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  I'm so glad that you got to see Last King of Scotland without knowing that that was the guy.

• 1:29:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Cause that might have skewed your opinion of my, my performance.

• 1:29:46Dax Shepard?

  I hope I'm more objective than that, but no, it probably would have, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, be well, everyone see California Scheming.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  It's October 9th, go see it.

• 1:29:54Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:30:05Dax Shepard?

  Why do you think we need two words, excuse yourself or recuse yourself?

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Dax Shepard?

  Don't they mean the same thing if you're, if you have some conflict of legal issues? You have to recruit, well, you would do the same as if you excuse yourself.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think recuse must have been an old word.

• 1:30:24Dax Shepard?

  An old timey legal.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  The original word.

• 1:30:25Dax Shepard?

  Latin.

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's more official duty you recuse yourself from.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  And then excuse is the more layman's term.

• 1:30:34Dax Shepard?

  You know, I keep trying to add words to my vocabulary. I don't know if you, are you, do you actively try to still? I do.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  I should, I should. I know that you do.

• 1:30:46Dax Shepard?

  Cause it's clunky.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Will you just say words that I know you've never said?

• 1:30:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, the other day I used decamped, I think successfully, and I was so delighted because I've like heard that term and I've read it a few times. And I just heard it coming out of my mouth. Like, we need to decamp to this location.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:31:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you were present.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  When?

• 1:31:06Dax Shepard?

  That means it must have come out very organically. You don't even remember. Or maybe you don't even think of the word decamp.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  I don't. I don't think of that word.

• 1:31:13Dax Shepard?

  It's a weird word and.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Where were we decamping?

• 1:31:17Dax Shepard?

  Well, it was like someone was telling a story and I said, so you had to decamp to blank.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:31:22Dax Shepard?

  You weren't listening maybe at that moment is also likely.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Okay, um, so decamp is new. What else is new?

• 1:31:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, we were taught by an armcherry in an interview, edenic. I love that word and I've, I've found that it's applicable pretty often to say edenic.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I like that one.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  You do use new words. I think you used a new word today, I heard.

• 1:31:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  I don't remember what it was.

• 1:31:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  But I was like, hmm, that's new. No, it wasn't clunky, but I was like, that's new and that's gonna be, I'm gonna start hearing this come out of his mouth a bit. This is, you know, this is the cost of, of being around each other so much, the cost and the benefit. Like you really, if I start saying a new word.

• 1:32:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  You will know because you're used to the way I speak.

• 1:32:10Dax Shepard?

  If you see me once a year, you might assume I use the word all the time.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, or even sparingly, but not like, oh, that's the first time he's trying it out.

• 1:32:17Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Um, you know, because you love, now you love, love.

• 1:32:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, here's one. Let's see if I know about it.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Well, um, we were taught it here, prima facie. We were taught it by Stephen Dubner. And we discussed it in the episode. He said it and I was like, oh, wow. Oh, I like that. I'm gonna start using that. And when you say I'm gonna start using that, you mean it.

• 1:32:43Dax Shepard?

  I mean it.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do love prima facie.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good word.

• 1:32:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I was defending myself about prima facie in my head, laying in bed.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:32:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm like, some of these words, they're identical to other words that are more colloquial or more well-known. So then you come across as trying to be snobby or seem elite, but I was like, no, so often these words, they're just a little bit different. And then I was even thinking, so prima facie is on the surface.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 1:33:13Dax Shepard?

  Minimally, it's more efficient. It's just two words as opposed to three.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  This is twisting yourself into a pretzel when you just like it.

• 1:33:20Dax Shepard?

  I lay in bed and I, and I hear criticisms from my hometown.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what you're hearing.

• 1:33:25Dax Shepard?

  That's right. And I defend myself against these criticisms from my hometown a lot of the day.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Dax Shepard?

  It's a big preoccupation of mine.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  It's funny because maybe in this very specific case, for some reason we're reversed. I don't know why, but I, because I don't care if people think I'm snobby.

• 1:33:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  But I do, when I notice people using 10 cent, what is it?

• 1:33:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, 20 cent words.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  20 cent words, quarter, 25 cent words or whatever. I'm always like, it doesn't make me think anything bad, but it does pull me out for a second.

• 1:34:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  And, and so I don't really do that and I don't think I use 25 cent words.

• 1:34:14Dax Shepard?

  I think I was heavily rewarded in my teenage years for having a big vocabulary.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  But me too.

• 1:34:22Dax Shepard?

  Because I liked older girls and I would be on the phone all the time with older girls, just talking for hours. And they would say that they liked that about me.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like people who have strong vocabularies and I think I used, I think I'm going in the opposite direction.

• 1:34:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're dumbing down, yeah. It's healthy, I think.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  I am dumbing down.

• 1:34:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're getting real simple.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  That's not good. That's not good.

• 1:34:47Dax Shepard?

  I also think, again, I think it's genetic. Well, how would we know? Because I'm, I'm, my mother was horny for words. Still is. She's the only one left in my life. I'll say something and she'll go, oh, I love that word. What does that mean? Like she still gets peaked when she hears a new word. And I certainly haven't. And Lincoln has it tremendously. She is collecting words as fast as she can. So I'm inclined to think there's some genetic component. Like it's just, it's very curious that the three of us are.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  But what's the, why have I changed?

• 1:35:19Dax Shepard?

  Why are you sliding away from that?

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  I used to, maybe it's just I really, really, I, maybe I used to do that because I wanted to sound smart. And now I really don't care about that.

• 1:35:33Dax Shepard?

  That's likely. If I gave it a percentage, I would say I was only really 25% motivated out of sounding smart. I love, I love, like I just love words and I love having to say them in my mind a bunch of times before I, I feel confident enough to say them out loud. I don't know why. I just, I think there's a genuine love. I don't do any flashcards.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Did I get you some for your birthday?

• 1:35:59Dax Shepard?

  Stack of flashcards.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  I, I was, the last time I was home, I saw these old SAT flashcards. They made me laugh. It brought me back to a time.

• 1:36:09Dax Shepard?

  You had saved them.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I saved everything.

• 1:36:12Dax Shepard?

  You saved every damn thing, why not?

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  You should see my parents' basement. It is horrifying.

• 1:36:16Dax Shepard?

  Well, I've been on many a Zoom call with you in that basement and I've seen this, the stack, the shelves of your belongings.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Those, no, those are my mom's pots and pans, her extra pots and pans, her second location.

• 1:36:28Dax Shepard?

  That she will never, ever pull out and use.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  No, she uses, she goes, she uses them all the time. She doesn't have space in the kitchen for them.

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  So she does that. But there's another room that has all the old stuff and I don't know what happened. Some tornado went through there and it's a full disaster. I think it was my brother.

• 1:36:49Dax Shepard?

  Or into all the collections looking for something?

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  But you'll find really fun treats in there.

• 1:36:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Old beanie baby. Well, yeah, remember I found Valentino? Yeah, it's fun to go look through your youth.

• 1:37:02Dax Shepard?

  I am so excited. This is the most excited I've been in a while. I'm like counting down the minutes.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  So you're.

• 1:37:08Dax Shepard?

  Because I'm meeting Tyrell and Weekly.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37:11Dax Shepard?

  In just days in Las Vegas. I am so excited. Like it's my first time going to Las Vegas.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  That's fun.

• 1:37:20Dax Shepard?

  What do you think about me wearing shorts to a Metallica concert? I'm like struggling with this for some reason.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  What kind?

• 1:37:26Dax Shepard?

  It's too hot.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:28Dax Shepard?

  And there'll be a lot of walking.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  I think it's fine.

• 1:37:31Dax Shepard?

  To wear shorts to a concert?

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  It's at the Sphere, right?

• 1:37:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:37:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't know why I am questioning it.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not like, is there like a step and repeat or something?

• 1:37:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, we are going to Steakhouse beforehand. They might not want me in shorts.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  That might be, but in Vegas, do you think they have rules?

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  I also think anything goes in Vegas.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  That's what they say. Well, they say everything stays in Vegas. I don't know about everything goes. But can you, um, what kind of shorts are it? jean shorts?

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  The ones I wear every day. You see me and I have three different pair of marine layer dressy pants that I've cut off.

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  Shorts are totally, shorts are totally fine for Metallica.

• 1:38:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, all right. And what about the Steakhouse beforehand?

• 1:38:14Speaker 05

  That might be more questionable.

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, maybe I'll buy a pair of disposable pants, wear them.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Why don't you look on the website? It'll say if there's a dress code.

• 1:38:22Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, you could probably call them too, give them a shout.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  I think it's easier to just look on the website, but.

• 1:38:27Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. Where are they gonna bury that info? I feel like it might be six, seven clicks away.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  It would definitely be on the website.

• 1:38:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but they do have to expect people are like, it's a hundred, they're coming off of, I guess, a golf course. People go to steak houses after a golf course?

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I think in Vegas, I think it's fine.

• 1:38:45Dax Shepard?

  Shirtless?

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:38:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that's, that's absolutely not.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Draw the line there.

• 1:38:50Dax Shepard?

  Maybe at the concert though.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  I wonder what the age range will be at the concert.

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I do too. I'm presuming a bunch of old guys like Aaron and Aaron and I, but you never know. Like now the Smiths, their huge fan base is young Latinas.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  The Smiths?

• 1:39:07Dax Shepard?

  Yes, in California, there's this huge subculture of Latinas and Latinos that are super into the Smiths.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:39:14Dax Shepard?

  But what I'm aware of is how different now, like when I was a kid, Metallica came to Pine Knob in Detroit with the cult. Aaron went. We had a friend whose older sister took those two and I was like so jealous that I didn't get to go. But also I was so scared to go to that concert, as was Aaron. And we were just talking about the other day, he went. And yeah, there was like 20 or 30 fights he saw and it's a bunch of aggressive dudes with long hair and drunk. And so it's just funny now, like I'm going to see Metallica at the Sphere and I think, oh, it's gonna be a quite lovely evening with a bunch of normal people. Because we've all aged out of that craziness. It's wild how differently I feel about this concert and previous ones.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Are you gonna buy a t-shirt? Do they sell them?

• 1:40:02Dax Shepard?

  There's nothing in life I want, other than the safety of my children, that's worth me standing in an hour long line. In fact, you know, I did when I went to Sabrina Carpenter, I stood in a half hour line, but for.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:16Dax Shepard?

  Uh, Delta.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  I know, but it's like, it is for them because one day that will be a vintage shirt.

• 1:40:22Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  And it might be even for their grand, their kids, like that's a good shirt to have.

• 1:40:28Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I'll also be with Aaron and Aaron. They're gonna have a vote in whether or not we stay in the line. But I also might just say like, hey, see you at the seats.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  See you at the seats. I'm gonna go get some vintage shirts.

• 1:40:39Dax Shepard?

  See you at the seats. That's my new saying. That's my new motto. See you at the seats.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Okay. I'm just wondering if you get in line if I want you to get me one too.

• 1:40:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so this was ultimately maybe about.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Thinking about the vintage shirt.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  I can't imagine I cannot get the shirt that's for sale there on the internet. That feels impossible.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  No, sometimes they have ones you can only get there and you can ask, which ones can I only get here?

• 1:41:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. They have some very famous shirts, Metallica.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  See?

• 1:41:10Dax Shepard?

  Do you know Metal up your ass?

• 1:41:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, there's, there's a song Metal Up Your Ass, very early on.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:18Dax Shepard?

  And the iconography on the shirt was a toilet bowl with a sword coming out of it.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's pretty extreme.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  That is.

• 1:41:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, metal up your ass.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Um, I mean.

• 1:41:29Dax Shepard?

  Better than snakes up your ass, right?

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a ding ding ding to Armchair Anonymous foreign objects prompt.

• 1:41:36Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  People have metal up there.

• 1:41:38Dax Shepard?

  They do.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  And it gets stuck.

• 1:41:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Um, this is remind.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:41:44Dax Shepard?

  There it is.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:41:46Dax Shepard?

  That's the tee.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Did you get that tee?

• 1:41:48Dax Shepard?

  Worth thirty dollars.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Thirty?

• 1:41:50Dax Shepard?

  I don't know, I'm, I'm just throwing.

• 1:41:51Speaker 05

  Get it for sixteen dollars on eBay right now.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:41:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Aaron had that shirt. As you can imagine, the vice principal of our school did not appreciate.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:42:01Dax Shepard?

  Anyone wearing that shirt to school.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Wait, you said sixteen?

• 1:42:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:42:06Speaker 05

  I mean, it looks like a remake, though, so.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a fake.

• 1:42:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it doesn't even look.

• 1:42:10Speaker 05

  There's an ad, one on Etsy for three hundred that looks authentic.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Okay, that's what I'm talking about.

• 1:42:14Dax Shepard?

  That might be in a ridge?

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be in a ridge.

• 1:42:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay, nice and thin, cheese floppy.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I hope it's thin. I love tees. I love thin tees, I love vintage tees.

• 1:42:25Dax Shepard?

  You love liber tees.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:42:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What do you think about, I healed up shockingly fast. No, yesterday I was in an absolute mess.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Oh, this is gonna be confusing shit, okay.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  Cause the episode comes out on Monday?

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  This episode comes out on Monday, but Wednesday's episode, we did yesterday. I'll just tell people. Yeah, Wednesday's fact check, we did yesterday.

• 1:42:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so this will be a reverse.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  This is a reverse back.

• 1:42:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  So, on Wednesday, you'll see Dax's face is all scarred up.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tremendously so.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  To be fair, you are right, that in with, within twenty-four hours.

• 1:43:07Dax Shepard?

  I was almost excited for today's episode. I was assuming I would have as many scabs all over my forehead and cheeks and nose. To see if our guest today would say anything, cause I really wanted to be able to use my whole metal grinder thing.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, which they don't know about yet.

• 1:43:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they don't know about yet. Alright, anyways, but then I woke up this morning into my dismay, not a new word. I saw that I had very little scabbage left.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, in twenty-four hours, you really shed a lot of those scabs.

• 1:43:35Dax Shepard?

  I think that's a testament to how good I am at the Hyphricator two thousand.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  I don't think that's it, but I.

• 1:43:41Dax Shepard?

  I asked, it's rare that I request a Christmas present. Come, come Christmas, I'm like, I don't know, just forget about me.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:50Dax Shepard?

  But I did request that Kristen make me a Hyphricator two thousand tee shirt. I want Hyphricator two thousand written. And then I want an image of the device.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Okay, kinda like that Metallica shirt.

• 1:44:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes, metal, kinda like metal up your ass. So, yeah, that's, that request has been made.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Okay, that sounds nice.

• 1:44:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because I got new air conditioners that are finally the right size for my house. You're still dealing with that itchy ear. Have you tried putting any hydro, hydro, hydrocortone in your ear?

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:44:20Dax Shepard?

  Why not?

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Do you think that's good?

• 1:44:21Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  You think it might be bad for my hearing?

• 1:44:24Dax Shepard?

  No, that's what I'm putting, you're not gonna put it on your eardrum.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  How, I need to go deep.

• 1:44:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, let's start like midway or maybe.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  I feel crazy with this ear thing.

• 1:44:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you need to definitely put some hydrocortone in there.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:44:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  It's making me feel.

• 1:44:41Dax Shepard?

  Like I even have the perfect thing.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Swab?

• 1:44:45Dax Shepard?

  No, I have an ointment that was given to me specifically for this.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Okay, maybe, yeah, I'll try.

• 1:44:50Dax Shepard?

  Give that a shot.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Cause I, I feel.

• 1:44:53Dax Shepard?

  For bug infestation. Called Raid, have you ever heard of it? Radio.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  I'm ready to just spray some Raid right in there.

• 1:45:00Dax Shepard?

  You give it straight on a Q-tip and then.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, people haven't heard yet.

• 1:45:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, bug.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  People haven't, no, we've heard that, but people haven't heard yet that what I learned is that itchy ear canals, also horrible phrase, itchy ear canals. Also sounds like a band. Um.

• 1:45:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Itchy ear canals are a sign of perimenopause. And so, I hate that reality mixed with, this is like, I wake up in the night and I have to itch.

• 1:45:29Dax Shepard?

  That's rough. We gotta put some hydrocortone in there.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Okay. And I just have never heard of it.

• 1:45:33Dax Shepard?

  Give it a couple zaps, just for good measure. Get the Hyphricator in there. Zap, zap, zap. Once you have scabs in there, that'll distract you from the itching.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:45:43Dax Shepard?

  A lot of people want me to tell you that the guy you're upset with betraying his friend.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Who I think is hot.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Rob R.

• 1:45:50Dax Shepard?

  Rob R, that he bought her a Birkin bag.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  I do know this.

• 1:45:55Dax Shepard?

  People really wanted me to let you know. And that's just a testament to his hotness. Like, people are defending him, cause he's hot.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Oh, they're saying like, it's actually fine?

• 1:46:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like, remember when we had on, this was a fun thing to observe, when we had on Scott Eastwood?

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:09Dax Shepard?

  And he told a story about working with Shia LaBeouf.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:13Dax Shepard?

  That he didn't.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  LaBeef.

• 1:46:14Dax Shepard?

  LaBeef, that he didn't like. The amount of people that were outraged, someone had anything negative to say about Shia. Um, was, was noticeable.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, when we had Scott Eastwood on, people were upset.

• 1:46:28Dax Shepard?

  Cause the clip had to do with this dust up he had with Shia on the tank movie.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:34Dax Shepard?

  And people were coming out in droves to defend Shia and mad at Scott. As if he was reporting like, his opinion, he was just reporting these facts of what happened.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  A story he was involved in.

• 1:46:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, right. And so, when I saw this like, really passionate thing, I was like, oh man, the power of having a crush on someone is so strong.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:55Dax Shepard?

  You know, cause I adore Shia as an actor. I think he is unbelievably talented.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is.

• 1:47:01Dax Shepard?

  I also deeply admire his level of honesty I've seen him have in public. Also, he's beating up guys and saying he's a homophobe. And has hit his girlfriend. So, it's like, very interesting to see these women come out in such droves to defend him.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  I think he's an incredible actor. I think if you're hitting women, to, to like that, that is a problem. Or not like that, obviously, but in some ways. You are, you're endorsing a person that does that.

• 1:47:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  I'm drawing the line there.

• 1:47:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it was a real unabashed, so, so this, this thing with Rob mirrored that. It was so important people knew, no, he is a good guy. And that's just the power of being cute. Same with Shia.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  That was my whole point of that whole story, is like, wow, what a handsome, white man can get away with.

• 1:47:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Everyone in this entire house just thinks he's perfect and good and nice.

• 1:48:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  And I'm sure he's nice, by the way.

• 1:48:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  But like, that he could never be a traitor because he's hot.

• 1:48:09Dax Shepard?

  Cause he's enjoyable to look at.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is upsetting. I did know that he got Maura a Birkin bag.

• 1:48:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  And, or said he was going to.

• 1:48:18Dax Shepard?

  Help alleviate your anger towards him?

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm glad he did that.

• 1:48:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 1:48:24Dax Shepard?

  How much did he win on this show?

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  I think he win like two hundred and fifty thousand.

• 1:48:30Dax Shepard?

  And then how much does a Birkin bag cost?

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Range. I hope she, I hope he got her a nice, I hope he got her a thirty thousand dollar one.

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  So, they can be thirty grand?

• 1:48:39Speaker 05

  Sixteen thousand dollars apparently was the bag.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  The one he got her?

• 1:48:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, like anyone, two hundred and twenty thousand, eight hundred dollars.

• 1:48:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so of that, he got one ten. Maybe he bought her a sixteen thousand bag. He, he gave her basically fifteen percent of his winnings.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  No, that doesn't matter. To me, it's not about that. That's, see, that's the thing. They're trying to be like, no, but he got her a Birkin bag, so it's fine. It's not fine to pinky promise her and, and humiliate her. I mean, that's really, it, it, it is humiliating. It's humiliating.

• 1:49:16Dax Shepard?

  That's where you're projecting a little bit, maybe?

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  She said, she said, like, I, I, it was really hard to watch. I really kinda couldn't watch it.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  Projecting's not the right word. You were easily able to imagine yourself being made a fool.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I could empathize, of course. I was like, and that doesn't get fixed by a Birkin.

• 1:49:34Dax Shepard?

  So, like, that doesn't even bother me, cause I can't even imagine being made a fool by him, you know?

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Well, he could, yeah, of course he could do that. You might believe him.

• 1:49:44Dax Shepard?

  Well, his superpowers wouldn't be powerful on me.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  They were. They were powerful on every person. That's my whole point.

• 1:49:50Dax Shepard?

  I don't trust anyone good looking.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Well, you would've trusted Rob R. I don't know how he did that, but every person trusted him.

• 1:49:58Dax Shepard?

  It is funny, though, to have people mad at you for entering a game, which we already know what the goal of the game is, and then he did well and won. And to be mad at a winner is, is counter.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  I don't think he should've pinky promised. Oh.

• 1:50:11Dax Shepard?

  Now you like him?

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  No. Okay, first of all, I, I mean, look, I like Rob R, cause he's hot. And he is seemingly nice, and I like that he got her the Birkin. But look at, look, she's wearing a tee shirt that says, I'm dumb, question mark. But, cause I guess it's like, I'm dumb, but I'm not, because I got this Birkin out of it.

• 1:50:31Dax Shepard?

  I'm dumb? Like, you think I'm dumb? I'm holding the Birkin back.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:34Dax Shepard?

  I don't know what her intention is with that shirt.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  I think that's what it is. But really, then it's like, this is upsetting. See, she lives with this, like, now she lives with this contention that she's dumb.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

  But you don't think she's dumb, do you? You just think she trusted a handsome man. So, maybe everyone thinks that.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  See, okay, this is, this is deep, right? Everyone trusted Rob R because, I don't know, I wasn't there. Part of it, I do believe, is his handsomeness.

• 1:51:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Mixed with his kindness. I think he was kind to everyone. And I think he, and he said this, and I. This is not his fault, this is everyone else's fault, that he said, people just think I'm a dumb guy from Alabama.

• 1:51:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  And then another guy was like, I don't think that. I think you're really not, whatever. That was a sweet exchange. Um, but I do think some people might think that. They might think like, well, he wouldn't really be able to get one over on us. Yes, so that's on everybody else.

• 1:51:34Dax Shepard?

  They deserve that.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  That, they do deserve that if they believe that. Um, but Maura and Rob R had a special connection.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  And very flirty.

• 1:51:47Dax Shepard?

  Were they fucking, do you think?

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  So, they say no.

• 1:51:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  They say no, and I, and I can't.

• 1:51:53Dax Shepard?

  You gotta take.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I gotta take it at face value, but.

• 1:51:55Dax Shepard?

  But you felt like maybe they were fucking?

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  I feel like they had an intimacy.

• 1:52:00Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Whether or not it was fucking, they definitely did have an intimacy. She felt like she had this special.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  I guess I am putting words on her mouth a little bit.

• 1:52:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  But not really. She says on the show, like, Rob and I, you know, they're, they're best friends who might fuck.

• 1:52:20Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  And kiss and cuddle.

• 1:52:22Dax Shepard?

  Hold each other, yeah.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  And snuggle.

• 1:52:23Dax Shepard?

  And stare into each other's eyes.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, you can tell she felt like, no, I know him. And she would say like, ah, there's no way I would know.

• 1:52:34Dax Shepard?

  I was sleeping with him last night. I know him.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  And that's, no, that's bad.

• 1:52:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, what I'm saying is she's also got to acknowledge she's in a game.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  She probably thinks the fucking part is not connected, that he's not, that if he.

• 1:52:48Dax Shepard?

  Well, I don't think he, I think he would love to fuck her whether he's in a game or not.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he needs to be, that's not nice. If you are a traitor.

• 1:52:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  That's not nice.

• 1:53:00Dax Shepard?

  What's not nice is intentionally fucking her to gain her trust to win a game. Not good. But you're trying to win a game, that's one thing. Another thing is, you're attracted to this woman in the house and you guys start hooking up.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't, you have to be.

• 1:53:15Dax Shepard?

  You have to not do that.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Kind enough to be aware of what that means for the other person, that, that intimacy, whether, it's not compartmentalized. Maybe it is for these him, hot men.

• 1:53:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Maybe they can compartmentalize, like, oh, this part is.

• 1:53:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, he's just like, I'm trying to win the game, she's trying to win the game. We're all trying to win the game. And we're sleeping together.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  No. No.

• 1:53:45Dax Shepard?

  You don't think that's.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Not nice.

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  That's not nice.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  It's not nice.

• 1:53:49Dax Shepard?

  So would it be nicer if she was like, please sleep with me? He's like, no.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  She, no.

• 1:53:54Dax Shepard?

  What's she say? You think that's nice? If a girl says, please sleep with me, he's like, no, no, thank you. I'm not interested.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Stop. That's not what he would say.

• 1:54:05Dax Shepard?

  What would he say?

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  He would say, I don't think it's ethical for me to do that in this game.

• 1:54:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, cuz, oh, so you're the wolf?

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 1:54:14Dax Shepard?

  So the only reason it wouldn't be ethical is if you weren't, you, you'd be exposing the fact that he's the wolf.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  No, we're here for two weeks. I don't know, you don't know me, I don't know you. I, this isn't, it wouldn't be fair to you.

• 1:54:26Dax Shepard?

  It could only be unethical if you were the traitor.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  No, it could just be.

• 1:54:30Dax Shepard?

  Cause if you're just both, what are the other people called? Losers? Traitor and what?

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  No, traitors and.

• 1:54:36Speaker 05

  Faithfuls.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:54:37Dax Shepard?

  Faithfuls. Two faithfuls should be free to fuck, right?

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so if he says no, he's kind of blowing up his spot.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  But he doesn't have to. He could just be like, I have a girlfriend. Just lie.

• 1:54:50Dax Shepard?

  God, okay.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  He's lying throughout this entire game. Of course it's preferred if you're the girl and you've just had sex. Okay, again, I don't know if they've had sex.

• 1:54:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they probably haven't. But really quick, what if you found out that she's glad they had sex? Would that change things for you? That she doesn't feel betrayed by that aspect of it?

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  Then sure.

• 1:55:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, then all groovy, right?

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  But that's also part of why the, the bottom fell out so hard for her, where she was like, lit, like, could not.

• 1:55:19Dax Shepard?

  She's sleeping with the enemy.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  She doesn't know if she can trust herself anymore.

• 1:55:24Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  This is a very upsetting thing for her, Maura.

• 1:55:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  She's now on Dancing with the Stars.

• 1:55:31Dax Shepard?

  Hold on, I don't, I say this without ever having seen one frame of the show, so I.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:36Dax Shepard?

  This is a theoretical question. I don't know her at all.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Neither.

• 1:55:40Dax Shepard?

  But if she's learned she can't trust herself, that's a good thing to learn. Like, I need to be a little more savvy.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:55:48Dax Shepard?

  No?

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Because someone manipulated her? She can't trust herself? That's not fair. He manipulated her. He manipulated everyone. He manipulated everyone, which is fine, right? That's the game. That's the game.

• 1:56:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  But with her specifically, because of this intimacy that was built, that is a step too far, I believe.

• 1:56:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, but you don't need a day on the calendar to give yourself permission to talk to someone. I've been in therapy for a long time and the stuff rattling around in my head always just quiets down the second I say it out loud. And it doesn't have to be some big life crisis. Maybe it's a work thing that's taking up too much space or hard relationship moment, or just a feeling that something's off. That's enough. That's worth talking about.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  You know, I love therapy more than anything. Gets me through. Often I'll want to cancel because I'm like, I don't really have anything to talk about. And then I'll go and I have some major revelation.

• 1:57:08Dax Shepard?

  You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds once it's out into the world. You gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do.

• 1:57:24Dax Shepard?

  If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Do yourself a favor and just try it. Future you will be grateful. Visit betterhelp.com/dax to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash DAX.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this is a common, I'm gonna leave it. I'm gonna leave it.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  I want you to imagine it as Delta.

• 1:58:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, as a father of two daughters, I would say, just like you have to evaluate whether the person you're about to get in a car with, an Uber is crazy or not, you have to evaluate people. That's part of life. You have to be realistic about people. And if not, if you're wanting the world to change and the world to be, everyone's got perfect intentions, I'm here to say that's not gonna happen. So your, your only choice in life is to be discerning. You have to be discerning. I had to be discerning about the people I dated and women have to be discerning about who they date. That's also true. I don't think you can say that you're powerless over the ways of manipulation. I think that's like,

• 1:58:45Dax Shepard?

  then what are you also gonna give your credit card number to somebody that's trustworthy? Like, there's all these areas and realms where we all realize we have to be discerning. And I think in love, you have to be discerning too.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can expect that people who you grow to care about or have intimacy with or tell you they care about you, that you should, you can believe them. You shouldn't, you should not have your guard up for your entire life. That's bad.

• 1:59:15Dax Shepard?

  I think you have to have a re, a reasonable sized fence, not to the sky, but it has to be realistic. You know, I had a friend who met a guy who was on a TV show, who was gorgeous and rich and young. And within a week of dating, he was saying he wanted to have a baby with her. And I said, that, hey, I'm waving my hand over here. That's crazy and not normal. That's not how it works. Um, you may have found the one person, that's how it's gonna work, but like, I'm here to say that's crazy. No guy in that situation is trying to have a baby with somebody he's known for two weeks.

• 1:59:58Dax Shepard?

  And that person did not want to hear that at all.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:00:03Dax Shepard?

  And then that person was later revealed to be like an addict and all this. There was a lot of other stuff going on.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:00:10Dax Shepard?

  Uh, but my point is, no, it was on her to be realistic about that.

• 2:00:13Speaker 01

  No, no. It's on him to not lie to her.

• 2:00:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, I don't even think he was lying. He was an addict thinking this, this life raft had just appeared. And he was gonna pull that to save him from this opiate addiction. So I think he might have been dead sincere at that moment that he thought this is the solution, uh, this is my way out of this and my way forward in life. But.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Well, I know who you're talking about. And also, this person was very vulnerable to hearing that. This, this person who.

• 2:00:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes, but I'm saying, but here's, here's, here's my overall thought is like, is the lesson to be learned from that, that she shouldn't be more realistic about things going forward? And that she should just hope that no other, she doesn't meet another person who's trying to pull themselves out of something like, ultimately, it's, it's on her to choose her partners.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  It is, but you also have to take what people are saying in.

• 2:01:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and evaluate it.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  You can't just be like, in a vacuum in a relationship. And part of it is what's going on between the two people.

• 2:01:26Dax Shepard?

  You have to be able to assess if someone is, has love addict-y behavior. That's not, you have to. Unless you want to be in an endless cycle of falling in love with people who are just love addicts.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  I know, but, but you're not giving any responsibility to the love addict who's causing wreckage.

• 2:01:43Dax Shepard?

  No, I am.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Okay, I just want to hear that part.

• 2:01:46Dax Shepard?

  Yes, any guy who's telling a woman that he loves her and he doesn't love her so that he can have sex is a piece of shit.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, thank you, yes.

• 2:01:54Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not raising those boys. I have two daughters and it would be my goal and my desire that they are realistic about assessing behavior. Like, well, this is very unconventional, that a dude wants to get married in a week. That a dude's telling me he loves me in two weeks. You might be swept up in the emotions, but you do have to go like, well, this is abnormal. Someone saying, I love you in two weeks. That's a very short amount of time to determine whether you love. So like.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  But also some people do that and they get married and they're in love for the rest of their lives. Like.

• 2:02:23Dax Shepard?

  I think it's a very low percentage, yes, that happens.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  Yes, but it happens. So to be like. I don't know. I don't know. It's it's.

• 2:02:33Dax Shepard?

  What I'm saying is one sounds very victim-y and that you're just going to endlessly be a victim. If you're not willing to say, no, I gotta get realistic about the real behavior of people. And I can see this dude's never been with someone for more than a year. Let's take immediately, let's take that into account. You're 30 years old, you're meeting a guy who's telling you he loves you in two weeks. He's never been with someone for more than a year. That is relevant information that you are either choosing to ignore or not savvy enough. But once it happens, once, I think anyone who wants to protect themselves should go like, oh, I gotta be on the lookout for this pattern. I'm meeting a four-year-old dude who's never had a relationship for more than two years, and he's telling me he loves me in 10 days. Pretty big red flags.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  Sure, you can be aware of abnormalities and like you can have, you can have awareness, but I don't think when someone lies to you, it's not your fault. It's not your fault when someone lies to you. It's just not.

• 2:03:33Dax Shepard?

  It's not your fault. It's your responsibility. It's just like addiction. It's like, it's not my fault. I'm an addict. It is my responsibility. So it's like, it's not your fault that guys are out there trying to lie to you.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  It's your responsibility, I guess, moving forward.

• 2:03:44Dax Shepard?

  If you don't want to be hurt all the time.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  To be aware, but it is not. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Rob R.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Okay, some facts for another hot person, James McAvoy.

• 2:04:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  James McAvoy, as I said in the episode, he's Callie's first, not maybe not first, but but biggest, deepest celebrity crush, Mr. Tumnus is the fawn. Specifically, Mr. Tumnus is the fawn.

• 2:04:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And will you ask her right now if in her fantasies about him at that time, she would be hooking up with an animal?

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  I don't think she's comfortable with me asking that. And I think the answer is no.

• 2:04:24Dax Shepard?

  Can I ask her?

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  She's probably even less.

• 2:04:27Dax Shepard?

  From Dax. Like, did you want in your fantasy him to be half animal, half person or all James McAvoy?

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  I think she wanted all James McAvoy.

• 2:04:35Dax Shepard?

  Will we ask her?

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  She's gonna be mad. She's pretty private.

• 2:04:39Dax Shepard?

  I'm ask, say, I'm asking.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  She's at work.

• 2:04:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  At Netflix.

• 2:04:52Dax Shepard?

  In the middle of an important meeting, she's running out.

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  She knew it was coming. I'll get back to you on this.

• 2:04:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  But I have a strong, I'm sure I asked back then because I was very, the story, Hera and I were at the movie theater. We left, she was just kerfuffled, you know, she was kerplumped. What's it? Um, verklempt?

• 2:05:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, verklempt.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  She's a lot of those things, you know? And she, she was obsessed with Mr. Tumnus.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  And make me quickly go through my memory and and try to see if there was any moment I wanted to have sex with a half-human creature.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  I've never had that.

• 2:05:29Dax Shepard?

  I did desperately. I would have loved to have had sex with the Navi.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  Oh, you did want to?

• 2:05:35Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:37Dax Shepard?

  I can't connect my tail with theirs.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Right. They were, they were on two feet though, right?

• 2:05:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, they were bipedal.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 2:05:46Dax Shepard?

  But they were big blue creatures, but.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  That feels, they feel more human.

• 2:05:51Dax Shepard?

  I would have loved to have been with her.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  Wanted that because like Zoe Saldana is so beautiful.

• 2:05:57Dax Shepard?

  But it's not her. It's just her voice. But the haunches of the creature were just extraordinary. And then the face was pretty. It was definitely not human, but it was beautiful.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  But it kinda had a human-like face.

• 2:06:08Dax Shepard?

  So athletic.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  What was, what was it? Avatar?

• 2:06:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, there's her, right? So that's not a human for sure. You're making no mistake, those ears popping out at the way up at the top.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  The lips are human.

• 2:06:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the lips are good to go. The eyes are incredible.

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  The nose is kind of human.

• 2:06:26Dax Shepard?

  It looks like a lion's.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but someone's nose could look like that.

• 2:06:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they might get it fixed, but yeah.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  No, I think this is a beautiful human.

• 2:06:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's not humans, it's a Navi.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  I know, but I'm just saying, I think this is way more human.

• 2:06:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would love to make love to her, okay?

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we get it.

• 2:06:45Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a full body shot, Rob?

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's also a human body.

• 2:06:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, they're way big, though. Remember when the humans are actually with them? They're so much bigger.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  This is not the same as Mr. Tumnus. I'm sorry, but can you pull up Mr. Tumnus?

• 2:07:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:03Dax Shepard?

  Such a silly name too.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  I know, that the whole thing. I was so, so, I was so confused. I, which I grew, I grew to, um, respect, you know? I grew to respect her love for Mr. Tumnus, but at first I was judgmental.

• 2:07:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. First stop is sometimes judgment.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:23Dax Shepard?

  And then intrigue.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  And then at what? Yeah, at some point I saw him in something else.

• 2:07:26Dax Shepard?

  You get curious. That's what they say. That's the, that's the antidote to judgment is curiosity.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:31Dax Shepard?

  Once you start going like, oh, well, tell me why? What is it? Is it his haunches?

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  Well, it's like, I do think it's giving furry or, you know, like you, you're into animal sex and I don't.

• 2:07:44Dax Shepard?

  Condone that.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Oh, he actually is on two feet too.

• 2:07:47Dax Shepard?

  He's pan. Yeah, he's fine. He's goat, he's goat-like.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  In my head, he had four legs. Ew, God, okay.

• 2:07:56Dax Shepard?

  She wanted, good for her. He's got crazy ears too and a crazy nose.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  He's wearing prosthetics. This is what, this is not how I remember Mr. Tumnus. Wow. Are you sure that's Mr. Tumnus?

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  Oh my, oh, oh, yeah. It was more this. It was more this, which still though, but you can see more of his body. This is making sense. You can see his human skin and human torso.

• 2:08:25Dax Shepard?

  Now that I've seen an image of Mr. Tumnus, I don't need to ask her the question. I already know the answer. Cause he is all lower half. I mean, he's leading with.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  No, like I think she liked this. I do. I think she liked that part.

• 2:08:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so it's clear to you and it's clear to me.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  I know her.

• 2:08:44Dax Shepard?

  You do. I know you do.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Okay, I know what she likes. She likes human bodies.

• 2:08:50Dax Shepard?

  You're only basing that on her past lovers. She hasn't had as an option, half a goat.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  No, because you know what I'm actually?

• 2:09:00Dax Shepard?

  She wanted to feel the goat fear for on her legs. As he was like pumping away like only a goat could do.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  This is why she doesn't want me to talk about her on the show. But I can actually now, if I'm taking just the torso.

• 2:09:15Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm. You're in?

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I like it.

• 2:09:18Dax Shepard?

  What about the legs?

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  I don't like the legs. Okay, you lose me at the legs.

• 2:09:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay. You gotta wonder if that creature has a human penis or a goat penis.

• 2:09:28Speaker 01

  You gotta wonder.

• 2:09:29Dax Shepard?

  I think it's a very obvious question.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Goat, because if the bottom half is goat.

• 2:09:34Dax Shepard?

  Everything from the waist down is goat.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  Only two legs. They should have made him on four legs.

• 2:09:41Dax Shepard?

  I think Pan was on two. I think he was bipedal.

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  Who's Pan?

• 2:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Pan is the Greek god of like, well, music, he played the flute, so, but merriment and temptation. He's very sexual, uh, a siren towards the debauchery. Yeah, so he's, that's how he's doing. Oh, no, I see. He's got four in back too. He's got two prominent ones up front. He's crossed his legs. But in back, I'm seeing two little tiny legs that snuck in there, leaning against the wall.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  I don't think those are, are those legs?

• 2:10:12Dax Shepard?

  Look at the hooves. They match perfectly.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Scarf on his.

• 2:10:16Dax Shepard?

  It does. They're so tiny and disproportionate. That they might dangle behind him when he's bipedal.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Wait, I thought.

• 2:10:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, there he is. He doesn't have four. He's just got the two.

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  I thought Pan was god of the woods.

• 2:10:28Dax Shepard?

  He was in the woods.

• 2:10:30Speaker 01

  Okay, I think because there's a book I was really into called God of the Woods.

• 2:10:34Dax Shepard?

  But I think he would play his flute and people would get really horny. It was like a hypnotic flute. That was his power. He'd start tooting on that thing and people would be like, let's do stuff with goats.

• 2:10:43Speaker 05

  He was the god of shepherds and flocks, eh, wild nature, especially of mountain and forest wild.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  So I think also, yeah, god of the woods.

• 2:10:53Dax Shepard?

  I think he's like appealing to man's naturalistic, animalistic side.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Well, and the word panic comes from that.

• 2:11:01Dax Shepard?

  It does.

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  I learned that in my book.

• 2:11:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Great goats of the 18th century.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  He's standing upright, though.

• 2:11:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's bipedal.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Okay, wow. In Harry Potter, the centaurs are on four. So I think that's what's in my head. Yeah, conflating. Okay, um.

• 2:11:20Dax Shepard?

  Give Rob a shout out for doing these facts real time.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  Did the facts real time. We just finished this interview.

• 2:11:26Dax Shepard?

  He just left seconds ago.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Rob took on the facts today. Empire Awards for Filth when he met Margot Robbie. Says in 2014, James won Best Actor for Filth, defeating Leonardo DiCaprio for Wolf of Wall Street and Tom Hanks, Captain Philip.

• 2:11:42Speaker 05

  He wasn't sure what movie he was there for.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  It was Filth.

• 2:11:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:11:46Dax Shepard?

  Can you imagine having won so many awards you can't remember?

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Do you automatically get the suffix junior added to your name if your parent has the same name? No. Junior suffix is not added automatically to a name. It must be requested and recorded explicitly on the birth certificate.

• 2:12:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  That kinda makes sense.

• 2:12:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, my, I don't think my, my brother doesn't have that. My brother is a junior. And people did call Dave Senior and Dave Junior.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  Right, but it wasn't.

• 2:12:11Dax Shepard?

  I don't think it's anywhere in writing. Do you think that's going out of fad? Like, men love to name their firstborns their own name. I would have never allowed, if we had a boy, for him to be named Dax.

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:25Dax Shepard?

  But I would have been open to a girl named Dax.

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  Hmm, interesting. Yeah, I mean, women never pass on their, there's no girl junior.

• 2:12:34Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna lose your last name anyways.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  Even more reason to have the first name get passed.

• 2:12:38Dax Shepard?

  That's why we gave the girl's Bella's a middle name. They can't ever lose it.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  Right, but it's like, you, I'm saying, no one's like Kristen. You're not having a kid Kristen.

• 2:12:47Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  Which is weird.

• 2:12:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's no girl juniors that I know about.

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

• 2:12:54Dax Shepard?

  Make one. Monica Lily Padman. It feels egomaniacal, doesn't it?

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  It does.

• 2:12:59Dax Shepard?

  That's what I'm saying, like, the culture's changed.

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  It does, but no one thinks that, I don't think people think that about boys. I don't think like, oh, it's egomaniacal to name you after your dad.

• 2:13:09Dax Shepard?

  I think today it would be, like in LA, I think it'd be a bad look for a dad if he had a junior. A little bit, but in the past, not, you won't even think anything of it. It's almost standard.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. Um, did James play the Jeremy Allen White character in Shameless? No. James played Steve McBride in the original UK Shameless. Fiona's boyfriend, his American counterpart is Jimmy Lishman, played by Justin Chatwin.

• 2:13:34Dax Shepard?

  Love Justin. He was in Chips. He's a phenomenal guy.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, Justin.

• 2:13:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's gorgeous.

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:41Dax Shepard?

  Super into motorcycles. In fact, I think he has a book out right now about motorcycles. Everyone should buy it. I saw on Instagram.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 2:13:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I adore him.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Probably do great on Traitors.

• 2:13:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, he's gorgeous and he's an incredible actor.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he played a junkie, junkie, the junkie son of Vincent D'Onofrio in Chips. And he was, oh, he was better than the movie.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  Was he in a scene with me? Did he pull me out of that car?

• 2:14:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I don't know that it was him. It was a stunt double, I think.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  He couldn't make it that day.

• 2:14:09Dax Shepard?

  Well, he's a busy guy. He's doing me a very large favor by doing the small role he did.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Song in the Last King of Scotland and hit and run, Fever by Jingo.

• 2:14:19Dax Shepard?

  That's right. I did know the name of that, Fever.

• 2:14:21Speaker 01

  Um, had Jennifer Lawrence already won an Oscar before X-Men, she was nominated for Winter's Bone, but did not win that. Oh, that year Natalie Portman won for Black Swan.

• 2:14:32Dax Shepard?

  Rightly so.

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  Great, great movie.

• 2:14:34Dax Shepard?

  What a performance. And Mila was so incredible in that movie.

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  She was. Also nominated, I believe.

• 2:14:41Dax Shepard?

  I hope.

• 2:14:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, she got Best Supporting Actress.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 2:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Nice.

• 2:14:46Speaker 05

  Nomination.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  You know, they call it a nom and a nod.

• 2:14:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, pick your pick.

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  It's kinda like recuse, excuse.

• 2:14:52Dax Shepard?

  Pick your poison.

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 2:14:55Dax Shepard?

  That's everything.

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, I just, again, I said it in the interview, but what a fun full circle for me.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too, Mr. Tumnus.

• 2:15:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we each have, we all come in with some history with his 30-year career.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great actor.

• 2:15:08Dax Shepard?

  He sure is.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Check out his stuff.

• 2:15:11Dax Shepard?

  Give him a look. All right, love you.