Shonda Rhimes

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on experts, on experts, on experts.

[1] So many experts.

[2] You want experts, we are slashing prices on all experts.

[3] Every expert must go.

[4] I am Shonda Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Rhymes.

[5] Wow.

[6] Monica Rhymes is a good, that's a good name.

[7] Yeah, you could be a rapper.

[8] Monica Rhymes.

[9] Oh, yeah.

[10] What were you thinking?

[11] Just, it's like a strong name.

[12] Not a stripper name or anything, just a strong name.

[13] Strong.

[14] Monica Rimes.

[15] You've probably put it together by now.

[16] Our guest today is Shonda Rhymes, who is an award -winning showrunner, screenwriter, producer, and author.

[17] She's outrageously successful in television.

[18] You'd just, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody.

[19] It's so admirable.

[20] It is.

[21] It's a Goliath, a Herculian feat she's accomplished.

[22] She broke onto the scene with Gray's Anatomy.

[23] And guess what?

[24] she nevertheless, the scene.

[25] It's still going 19 years later.

[26] And of course, scandal.

[27] Bridgeton, the biggest show maybe of all time in the history of television, which is crazy.

[28] Private practice, inventing Anna.

[29] How to get away with murder.

[30] How to get away with murder.

[31] It wasn't even on the list or so many.

[32] Oh, my God.

[33] Yeah.

[34] And of course, she has the new series out today on Netflix.

[35] I can't wait to see this thing break every record as well.

[36] Queen Charlotte, a Bridgeton story.

[37] Queen Charlotte, a Bridgeton story.

[38] and we have Shonda Rhymes here to tell us all about it.

[39] A huge treat for us, so please enjoy Shonda Rimes.

[40] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[41] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[42] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[43] We're very excited to have you.

[44] I would say it's beyond experience.

[45] excited.

[46] I'm a little intimidated.

[47] I know same.

[48] Yeah.

[49] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[50] Why?

[51] Because you're so powerful.

[52] You might destroy us with your powers.

[53] You might zap us.

[54] Well, you're just brilliant and you've done so much and very prolific and it's admirable.

[55] I'd like to explore why we're intimidated because we've talked to Obama and Hillary and Bill Gates, but I will say something about you coming now is like, oh, I really have my shit together.

[56] This woman is really fucking prolific.

[57] I mean, I just, when I first started reading about you, the notion that you at one time in your life were responsible for delivering 70 episodes of TV per year at ABC seems just logistically impossible.

[58] It feels that way now, too.

[59] Now I think about it.

[60] I'm like, I can't even believe I was upright during all that.

[61] Yeah, do you have that condition where it's like you've done things in your past that if someone proposed it to you again in the future, you'd go, oh, well, it can't be done.

[62] Right.

[63] Right?

[64] I'd say no. I can't possibly.

[65] That era at the kind of pinnacle of your network life, you had what, you had scandal going, you had Grace Anatomy, had to get away with murder, and then...

[66] Catch, maybe?

[67] Yeah, the catch was going on, yeah.

[68] With my TV brother, Peter Kraza.

[69] Oh, yeah.

[70] Yeah.

[71] What did your days look like then?

[72] They were really endless.

[73] My kids spent more time in my office with me than they did at home.

[74] Yeah.

[75] They had that room there.

[76] I'd say, like, I'd get up at seven and read all the problems that happened the night before.

[77] And then I have to read people's scripts and rewrite people's scripts and note people's scripts and edit the shows.

[78] I mean, and there were more experienced showrunners on some shows that I was producing.

[79] But then there were the shows I created, which I'm still running.

[80] It was a lot.

[81] Yes.

[82] Riley can't wrap my head around it.

[83] That's why I asked, I'd imagine you're like, no, well, actually it didn't work out.

[84] If you added up the hours, you feel like, I'm a ghost.

[85] It didn't make sense.

[86] Yeah, somehow I was operating 28 hours a day in 24 hours.

[87] This is a much later question I had for you, but I am curious what part of the process.

[88] for you, from getting an idea, I don't know how long you live with it before you decide, yes, this is a keeper.

[89] I don't know if you have a policy for that.

[90] I have to tell somebody the idea and not feel embarrassed.

[91] When it's not real, you sort of tell somebody and then you think, well, that was not smart.

[92] Yeah.

[93] But if you can stick with it, you're good.

[94] Yeah, you learn a lot about it hearing it out loud telling your friends, right?

[95] Yes, yes.

[96] Yeah, who did I read that you tell everything.

[97] I have a sister who, I don't tell everything to.

[98] I show her every cut of the shows, especially new shows.

[99] I can tell by looking at her face if it's not going to work.

[100] Is she older or younger?

[101] I'm the youngest of six, so she's the oldest.

[102] Okay.

[103] She's the oldest.

[104] Yeah.

[105] And what's the age gap?

[106] 12 years.

[107] 12 years.

[108] Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

[109] I get that.

[110] That's like a maternal figure.

[111] Right, like a second mom, basically, yeah.

[112] Yeah, but I would imagine with your level of productivity, that could almost be a full -time job for her.

[113] I'm not kidding.

[114] You have to put her on the payroll.

[115] If you show her everything you make.

[116] I just show her the new things.

[117] like the new series here's the first episode what do you think okay and how dramatically have you pivoted based on her feedback have you gone and reshot shit based on what she's i don't think i've ever gone and re -shot anything but i have gone back and been like we have to re -edit this section because it obviously didn't make sense she did not understand what was happening it's not tracking yeah okay okay so there's the getting the idea you tell it to people out loud i have my own little thing which is like i need to be telling people the idea for longer than three weeks I got to find out if it has legs, because a lot of ideas I'm obsessed with for about nine days, and I realize on day 11, like, I don't really give me a fuck about it.

[118] The fun of it was just even talking about it.

[119] So then presumably you would maybe tell the network I'm about to do this idea.

[120] No, not yet, because I'm in a weird position now, where if I say I have an idea, then literally there's a production date before I've even written two pages.

[121] The pressure.

[122] I'm so glad you say that because that was actually one of my questions for Will Ferrell, which is like knowing myself, I'll get so passionate about something for eight days, and then 14 days later, I realize I didn't care.

[123] But when you're welfare or you, within 14 days, everything can be moving.

[124] And you could find out, I'm not as passionate about that as I thought.

[125] Has that ever happened?

[126] So I try to wait until I've written maybe a third of the script.

[127] Once I know it's a show.

[128] Yeah, yeah.

[129] And even sometimes I'll wait until I've written the whole thing and then just be like, here's my idea and here's what I want to do.

[130] It's so hard because once you say it out loud, people get in the middle of it.

[131] Like, that's just what happens.

[132] Trains start rolling.

[133] I want to be razor clear on this.

[134] I'm going to be talking to you like a peer, which is an embarrassment to me. But I have sold shows and pitch shows.

[135] So I'm going to be speaking with some awareness of what you've gone through, but I don't want for anyone to think I'm acting like we're peers.

[136] I'm in a really weird position in that the first television show I ever wrote was Grey's Anatomy.

[137] My first job, so I wrote this show, and it's 20 years later, it's still going.

[138] when you have that kind of lightning in a bottle they're very much like what do you want to do next what do you want to do next and there's not a lot of no after that really so then you got to police yourself which is its own skill set that you wouldn't imagine is super hard but it's probably super hard it's really hard and I think for me like one of the things that my producing partner Betsy and I always talk about is we're only making shows that we really want to watch yeah like not this is a cool idea when this be no we have to really want to watch it because it could be on for 20 years yeah and it's what a weird mental shift because when you start in this industry it's only no you are getting noes for so long even if you have brilliant ideas everything's a no yeah and for it to switch so suddenly to everything's a yes must be so odd but as many people have been hung by the open door as they have the oppressive notes yes right we've seen some great directors i won't name any names but there's been a couple people that came out they hit a home run and on that home run they clearly had to compromise because that was their first movie at a studio.

[139] They were listening to all kinds of stuff.

[140] They were testing.

[141] They were probably re -editing.

[142] And then they get the full keys.

[143] Their work goes downhill.

[144] Yeah, when you open the candy store, some people really lose their minds.

[145] Yeah.

[146] It's really hard to hold back.

[147] Have you had an embarrassing moment where you look back?

[148] I don't know what would even label that where you're like, oh, I could have probably use some more compromises along the way.

[149] I hit an arrow at Grays, which I loved working on the show.

[150] It's so great.

[151] But we could literally do anything.

[152] Yes.

[153] I think you go to space in an episode.

[154] Yeah, but it's really dangerous to be able to do anything.

[155] So there were times when I would sort of sit and go, like, we'd be in the middle of shooting something.

[156] And I'm like, why are we crashing this plane?

[157] Like all this giant stuff.

[158] Yeah, yeah.

[159] And you're like, how did we get here?

[160] Right, how did we get here?

[161] And it was sort of that thing of, well, we did it because we could.

[162] Yeah.

[163] And so you have to stop yourself from just doing it because you can't.

[164] There's a lot of work in the social scientists that will back up this weird phenomenon where the creative box is often the best.

[165] that it is harder to write with unlimited options than it is with confined options, ironically.

[166] I'm very comfortable with fences.

[167] I always like tell me what the fences are or I have to make some for myself.

[168] One of the things I loved most about writing network television was broadcast standards and practices.

[169] Yeah.

[170] Like I had this weird fence of stuff that I thought was ridiculous.

[171] But then the game began to be about how to stay within the fence but still push the envelope in a way.

[172] But it helps having those fences.

[173] It almost requires you to raise your creative source.

[174] Yes.

[175] I feel like the way we get to those places, especially when I put a fence around to show myself, it's really about me going, okay, remember that this is what the show is about.

[176] Don't go off over here.

[177] Don't go off.

[178] Like, this is what the show is about.

[179] And it's keeping to that for like 20 years, seven years, however long.

[180] Yeah.

[181] Yeah.

[182] I have a question.

[183] She's lit up.

[184] I can feel her very online.

[185] I know.

[186] Yes.

[187] Espirational, powerful woman.

[188] Exactly.

[189] Of color.

[190] That's right.

[191] That's a big piece.

[192] Intimidation.

[193] When we said we were intimidated, how did that make you feel?

[194] It's super uncomfortable.

[195] It does.

[196] I'm just being honest.

[197] Yes, be honest, please.

[198] I'm the same person I was in Chicago when I was starting out and trying to figure this out.

[199] And now people get nervous around me. And it's very surreal to me. I'm almost like, what happened?

[200] Like, what are you getting nervous about?

[201] Yes.

[202] That's kind of interesting because I think sometimes I like it.

[203] Oh, sure.

[204] I do a little bit.

[205] If somebody says like, oh, by the way, maybe like one half of a person has ever said that, like, Delta.

[206] That's not true.

[207] I've been around.

[208] I think they don't think I'm intimidating.

[209] I think that's why they like...

[210] You're approachable.

[211] Yes, I think they think they can talk to me about anything, which they can.

[212] So if somebody is, I'm like, yeah, that's right.

[213] Like, I've done something that elicits that.

[214] That's interesting.

[215] That only feels comfortable to me in like work situations.

[216] Okay.

[217] Like when I'm in a room of executives or whatever.

[218] Yeah, that's where we most want to have some capital.

[219] Yeah, that's true.

[220] I guess you'd have to make it relative to the opposite, which is like, I don't really give a fuck the person's here.

[221] Or I'm not worried at all.

[222] It is a bizarre barometer of your success that people are intimidated by you.

[223] But yeah, you do want them to actually care that you exist and that you're in the room.

[224] Right.

[225] We're jumping way too far down where I wanted to end up, but we're already hearing it's so natural.

[226] It's a very isolating experience success.

[227] And I'll say some things for you because everyone's afraid to acknowledge that as if no one wants to hear poor me on the success.

[228] But it's incredibly isolating.

[229] It is.

[230] I mean, it's a very, you know, my diamond shoes are too tight problem.

[231] Uh -huh.

[232] But it's very interesting what happens when first you're working so hard.

[233] You sort of lose touch with a bunch of people while you're working that hard to get somewhere.

[234] Then you get there.

[235] For me, I had the weirdest experience of I made this show and realized I didn't know a single other person who ran a show.

[236] I didn't know anybody in the industry.

[237] So it was this very isolating experience of not even be able to say this happened and how crazy is that?

[238] with someone else who does the same thing as you.

[239] That was really weird in the beginning.

[240] The one thing I feel like I did that really helped me was I've had the same like group of best friends since I've had since college.

[241] From USC or from Dartmouth?

[242] No, from Dartmouth.

[243] They are very grounding and they're not that impressed by me at all.

[244] Like my siblings are not that impressed by me at all.

[245] It helps.

[246] Yeah.

[247] I presume you're as siblings feel like, mind you like, well, yeah, I could do it too because clearly all the same genetics.

[248] I mean, it's funny.

[249] They're supportive and they're lovely, but they're not interested.

[250] Good.

[251] That's healthy.

[252] Yes, you don't want fans as family members.

[253] No, that's horrible feeling.

[254] Yes, it's a corrosive element.

[255] It's funny you'd say that because a couple of my good friends are showrunners, and I have observed in them that they love meeting other showrunners.

[256] It's exciting.

[257] Because unlike when directors get together, I think there's a little cloud of competition or evaluating yourself against them, but I think in all of show business, the Navy SEALs are showrunners.

[258] Yeah.

[259] They're the hardest working.

[260] They have more on their plate than anyone.

[261] It's almost inconceivable to someone who's not done it.

[262] So I would imagine, yes, there would be such immediate connection and understanding of the experience you've been living among other showrunners.

[263] I think it's true.

[264] The showruners that I've grown to know, I don't necessarily get to see them very much because they're as busy as I am.

[265] Yeah.

[266] But I'll run into Damon Lindeloff and it's like my long -lost brother or something because you're so relieved to hang out and talk.

[267] Right.

[268] Do you have any other close colleagues?

[269] I talk to JJ.

[270] Okay.

[271] Uh -huh.

[272] But also, the women showrunners have sort of bonded in a great way.

[273] That's awesome.

[274] And so now there's this huge group of female showrunners that I now know in a very different way.

[275] And now we can sort of all go, is this happening to you?

[276] Is this happening to anybody else?

[277] Yes.

[278] Yeah, what do you think the differences are?

[279] I mean, obviously there's 40 million.

[280] But when you talk to the other women, that feel different than when you talk to the male showrunners.

[281] I don't know.

[282] And I don't know how to say this, but that's sounding like a jerk.

[283] So I'm just going to say it.

[284] Yeah, yeah.

[285] I feel like I'm in this weird space of power, right?

[286] Yes, yes.

[287] And for a lot of the female showrunners, a lot of it is, you know, they want to make sure there's a next show.

[288] So a lot of what I feel like is different is they don't have a sense of security in being powerful and knowing that their things are going to go on.

[289] And the guys don't seem to feel that way.

[290] Right, regardless of where they are.

[291] They're just comfortable.

[292] They'll land on their feet somewhere else.

[293] Yeah, yeah.

[294] They'll fail upwards just fine.

[295] It's amazing.

[296] And these women are brilliant.

[297] And you're like, it's going to be okay.

[298] but they don't see it that way.

[299] Okay, so in the same vein of isolation.

[300] And again, same for an actor.

[301] I move away from home.

[302] I'm focused so much on this.

[303] I go to college and groundlings at the same time and I'm doing all this stuff.

[304] And so, yes, I'm losing track.

[305] And then now I have space and time.

[306] At times, their conclusion is that I've changed.

[307] And I have.

[308] I'm proud to have changed, by the way.

[309] But they're underestimating how differently they feel.

[310] Right.

[311] Because they've changed in relation to you and how well you're known now.

[312] and all of that stuff.

[313] And you now probably have some things any human would want.

[314] Like, no one was very envious of me back in Detroit.

[315] And I've been around people that are that next stratosphere of famous.

[316] Brad Pitt, I'll just name drop.

[317] I've been around him enough.

[318] And I've seen the palpable power that he has, the effect he has on other humans.

[319] It's very overwhelming for people to be around him.

[320] And I just think, boy, what's he to do?

[321] He's in a room where he would be insane to not notice most people in the room are thinking about him.

[322] That's got to be exhausting.

[323] Yes.

[324] And you're now caretaking to whatever thing you're going to predict is being triggered by your presence.

[325] And I can see why just slowly it's just easier to be kind of by yourself and create your own little world.

[326] But that's so hard to live in.

[327] You're not supposed to live that way.

[328] One of the things that I did during the pandemic that I have to say, changed my life in the best way, was I moved out of Los Angeles.

[329] What happened is I was a person who was always in the office, and then I was doing all the work from home, and I slowly realized I didn't need to be in the office at all.

[330] My job didn't require that.

[331] And I have enough members of my team who won't be long enough.

[332] I don't need to be on set.

[333] Right.

[334] So I was like, we're moving.

[335] And I'd reached a point in L .A., and I'm not expecting anybody feel sorry for me, but I'd reached a point in L .A. where, like, I was in this house with gates and walls and security and the feeling that every time I went out anywhere, it's Hollywood.

[336] It's L .A. I could give somebody a job.

[337] That was what was really hard.

[338] It wasn't just writers or actors.

[339] You know, everybody had a script and everybody wanted to say something.

[340] And not in a rude way or anything.

[341] Like, they were hopeful.

[342] They're trying to get somewhere.

[343] You're not mad at their hustle, but it's exhausting for you.

[344] It was a little exhausting.

[345] And I felt really overseen in a way that I knew that if I left L .A. wouldn't be the case.

[346] Well, and herein lies all of these wonderful things about fantasy.

[347] Like, you grew up in Chicago, I grew up in Detroit.

[348] This place we're at right now.

[349] I don't know what it was like for you, but it was unimaginable.

[350] It was a fairy tale.

[351] It felt like this dreamland for me. Coming here to go to film school, and every encounter was exciting.

[352] Yeah.

[353] And so for me, I had fantasies of what status felt like.

[354] I had fantasies of what being recognized felt like.

[355] I mostly had fantasies about money.

[356] My family coveted money so much.

[357] My mom worked so fucking hard as a single mom.

[358] It's still a great.

[359] obsession of mine in a sickness I have.

[360] But it is an interesting experience in life to go out and land in a lot of your fantasies.

[361] It is.

[362] And discover that you're still the same person no matter what.

[363] You look in the mirror and you're like, there she is.

[364] Same chick I was in Chicago.

[365] You think it's going to be this amazing thing.

[366] But then you really don't take any time to predict.

[367] Feeling self -conscious if you're at a restaurant, being aware that other people are aware of you and just what that does to you biochemically as an animal.

[368] If you're anywhere as an animal and you notice all the other animals are staring at you, you're fucked in nature.

[369] It's nerve -wracking and strange.

[370] There's also guilt.

[371] Probably.

[372] There's probably some guilt if you're out in the world and everyone's like, like maybe you could and you can't or you don't want to and that comes with a sense of guilt.

[373] Definitely.

[374] But it is that thing of, I wrote about this in my book where I said like what happens when all your dreams come true?

[375] Absolutely nothing.

[376] Nothing happens.

[377] You don't change.

[378] Relationship's just as hard to maintain.

[379] Parenting's the same.

[380] Your body, your health, all your stuff.

[381] You got the same homework to do at all times.

[382] Tell me what the experience now is, do you feel yourself having exited the bubble?

[383] And are you able to now observe the bubble in a way you weren't for the last 20 plus years?

[384] I definitely am.

[385] What was great about moving was is that we moved and for, I think, maybe a year and a half.

[386] Who's we, you and your children?

[387] Me and my kids.

[388] And I'll say this because I think it's really important for working women and my nanny.

[389] Like, I'm a single mom.

[390] I don't go any place that she says we can't go.

[391] Yeah.

[392] So I asked her if we could move and she said yes.

[393] Oh, wonderful.

[394] Yeah.

[395] So she's down to party.

[396] Would that self -ful?

[397] Yeah, she's awesome.

[398] But truly, like, the idea that people don't need help drives me crazy.

[399] Right.

[400] People pretend they don't have any help.

[401] Yeah.

[402] So we move.

[403] We're in this lovely town.

[404] Nobody really knows that we're there for about a year and a half, which is kind of great.

[405] I mean, literally, I went to the dermatologist.

[406] The person who runs the office says to me, it was the very first time I'd gone.

[407] They said, be crazy having exactly the same name as like a famous TV person.

[408] No. And I just smiled because I was like, I was sure they were joking and then I realized they weren't.

[409] I was so pleased.

[410] Wow.

[411] Yes, yes.

[412] Yeah, you really are, there's only been a few people that transcend.

[413] Directors aren't household names.

[414] Quentin Tarantino is.

[415] Yeah.

[416] There's been a few, you know, Spielberg is.

[417] Maybe no one.

[418] I don't know.

[419] But I'm a writer.

[420] Like you're not supposed to know my name or my face.

[421] It's very weird to me. Yes, but you and for so many obvious reasons, both the success, which is pretty unparalleled, but also the story is wonderful.

[422] It's very encouraging.

[423] It's obviously very appealing for people to know.

[424] So you really have become an entity.

[425] Yes, an icon outside of.

[426] You hated that.

[427] But no other showrunner is.

[428] I don't think, you know, maybe people know Chuck Lorry, some.

[429] But if you saw Chuck on the street, that's when I find strange.

[430] Yeah.

[431] Maybe Ryan Murphy, like a third of what you have.

[432] But every woman in America knows Chandra Rimes.

[433] That's pretty wild for a writer.

[434] It's very wild.

[435] And in other countries, it's very interesting.

[436] Yes.

[437] And you were, I learned, at least, chronically shy as a child.

[438] Oh, painfully shy.

[439] To go from being, you know, you're an introvert writing in your little cave to an introvert who every single person seems to know was a really startling experience.

[440] It was like having my skin peeled off.

[441] It really was painful in the beginning.

[442] And I couldn't understand it.

[443] I sort of kept being like, they're going to move on to somebody else.

[444] It was so weird.

[445] I kept saying, I'm a flavor of the month.

[446] I'm a flavor of the month.

[447] And it never went away.

[448] That was a very long month.

[449] Yeah.

[450] It took a long time to get over being that shy.

[451] I bet.

[452] And a lot of work, yeah.

[453] So track it for me because did it lesson in college?

[454] Let's say out of 10.

[455] 10, you have a gorephobia.

[456] You can't leave the house.

[457] You're really stricken with shyness on a level that might be pathological.

[458] That's a 10.

[459] What were you as a child, do you think?

[460] I think that I spent a lot of time with my imagination and with my family.

[461] And if I knew you, I was fine.

[462] But I'm the person who, even back then, would go to a party and hang out close to the door, doing a lot of observing.

[463] And it's fine when you're a college kid or, you know, doing all that stuff and you're figuring it out.

[464] But when you become well known and you stand quietly by the door, people no longer think you're shy, they think you're an asshole.

[465] Right.

[466] You're dissecting your personality.

[467] Yeah.

[468] Well, because you're not approachable.

[469] You're hoping nobody approaches you.

[470] Yeah, not because you don't want to talk to people.

[471] Like because you think you're hot shit.

[472] Right.

[473] Not because you think you're so great.

[474] It's too hard.

[475] Yes.

[476] You're filled with anxiety while you're chit -chatting with a stranger.

[477] So it went a long time.

[478] I mean, when I pitched Grays, I can't even believe they bought the show.

[479] I was shaking so hard.

[480] I was reading directly from a piece of paper like this.

[481] If you interrupted me, I had to go back to the beginning.

[482] Oh, my gosh.

[483] It was bad.

[484] And the fact that they bought it felt sort of insane.

[485] Well, it must have been a really good idea.

[486] I mean, it's proven to be a good move for them.

[487] Well, that's why you've got to get a charming, gregarious.

[488] actor attached to your project.

[489] So you walk in there with them and you make them tell all the shit.

[490] And you let them be the person.

[491] So that also used to be the thing that I would think would happen.

[492] And then once my name got known, even that kind of thing stopped working because I would be like, look at my actors.

[493] They're so wonderful.

[494] They're like, no, no, we wanted to hear from you.

[495] Yes.

[496] Yeah, wow.

[497] I wrote this book called Year of Yes.

[498] And I got over it because my sister one day said to me, you never say yes to anything.

[499] Like I would tell her all the invitations I was getting, all the amazing, you know, I'm invited here.

[500] I've been asked to do this.

[501] And she would go, but you're not going to do any of that.

[502] And I'd go, well, no, what are you talking about?

[503] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[504] And she was just like, you never say yes to anything.

[505] It's ridiculous.

[506] And you did a TED talk about it.

[507] Yeah.

[508] So hit people with bullet points of this experiment.

[509] So I spent a year saying yes to everything that scared me. God, I wish I would have bumped into you in that year.

[510] Have you ever bought a Ferrari for a stranger?

[511] I don't know that would have scared me as much as you go, nope.

[512] No, thank you.

[513] But it was this amazing experience.

[514] So the first thing that happened to me was, I was asked to give a commencement speech at Dartmouth.

[515] All these people, and I said yes, and then promptly, like, put it aside.

[516] Then I said yes, finally, to poor Jimmy Kimmel, who had been trying to get me to do something forever.

[517] So I did Jimmy Kimmel and was, like, so nervous, but he's so great.

[518] He's the best.

[519] He'd make him so comfortable.

[520] So we did that.

[521] It just kept going.

[522] I met the Obamas, which is a thing that I would have been too nervous to do.

[523] Wow.

[524] Wow, wow, wow.

[525] While they were in the White House?

[526] Yeah.

[527] And you had been invited previously and said, I'm busy?

[528] I came up with some reasons.

[529] Uh -huh, sure, sure.

[530] Because I was just, it seemed very stressful to me. Yeah.

[531] I haven't this new baby.

[532] Yep.

[533] Babies are the best.

[534] Babies are a great excuse.

[535] Everything.

[536] It's hard now that they're not babies anymore.

[537] I know.

[538] But what's under it?

[539] Well, I mean, nervousness is a thing, but is it that you feel like you won't be enough?

[540] Almost the, like, inciting incident was that I had been appointed to the board of the Kennedy Center.

[541] And they were having their Kennedy Center honors.

[542] And I was in D .C. for it.

[543] And I was in four.

[544] Nobody asked, I was informed, that I was going to sit with the president and Mrs. Obama in their box.

[545] And I remember just dying inside like a thousand deaths.

[546] Like I don't have any conversation.

[547] Why would anybody be interested in talking to me?

[548] So when you would model it out in your head, you're just going to be a very disappointing dud.

[549] Is that the fear?

[550] Yes.

[551] I'm like, I'm not going to live up to anybody's expectation of anything.

[552] You know, because the characters are all very exciting and do amazing exciting things.

[553] But I sit home in my pajamas and write those things.

[554] It's not like I'm that person.

[555] And I'm not trudging any new ground here, but I guess it's probably safe to say that the appeal of writing for you was to be able to live through characters that didn't have those things.

[556] Yeah, it was great.

[557] It was so much fun, and it worked until people started to really pay attention to me. Yeah.

[558] So how did it go when you got in that box?

[559] We're really quick.

[560] Have you ever taken propanol or any of these things that can help you from having panicky?

[561] People kept telling me to take those things.

[562] I took Xanax for a little bit.

[563] Sure, sure.

[564] It's not very tenable.

[565] Yeah, not very tenable.

[566] Well, it is.

[567] If you want a certain outcome Probably not for someone who's operating on the level No, no, no, it's not a good match.

[568] It didn't really work.

[569] They are sparkling conversationalists, so it kind of didn't matter if I was or not.

[570] They are also in like a crazy stratosphere of fame where they're obviously aware of their effect on every single person around.

[571] They have that Brad Pitt then where it's like people are fucked up just being around them.

[572] And so they're very adept at making you feel comfortable.

[573] I think President Obama was filling in the ends of my sentences for me because I was just, I It turned out to be great.

[574] And the more I did stuff that scared me, the more it made the fear go away.

[575] It did.

[576] So it was like immersion therapy.

[577] You had to have said yes to something you regretted in that year.

[578] I don't think so.

[579] I really sort of went with it.

[580] Yeah.

[581] I had a similar thing.

[582] You did.

[583] I did.

[584] I had spent two and a half years of my life writing and directing chips.

[585] It came out.

[586] It did not perform.

[587] It was really one of these.

[588] Back to the drawing board.

[589] I've had an identity as writer -director for four years.

[590] That might not be my future.

[591] What happens?

[592] Then about three months of just depression, questioning who am I?

[593] And I was in a dental office getting work done, and I was on the gas, bizarrely, out the window of my dentist, I can see my agency.

[594] Oh, wow.

[595] Yeah.

[596] And I'm not one who calls my agents.

[597] I don't stop by there.

[598] It's on my thing.

[599] Things are good when you don't hear from them and they don't hear from you.

[600] Yeah, I don't.

[601] Yeah.

[602] I'm staring at the agency and I'm high on gas.

[603] And I'm like, you're going to fucking say yes every time they called it.

[604] this year.

[605] And I did it.

[606] I did it for about eight months.

[607] And I ended up starting two different TV shows at the same time, which I didn't even think was possible.

[608] We started this.

[609] I backed off.

[610] It's untenable saying yes to everything.

[611] But it was a fun experiment.

[612] It almost connects you with the universe in a way I have a hard time doing, which is just like, I have to believe this will take care of me. Yes.

[613] I'm going to let it happen and let it work.

[614] Because that's the other thing.

[615] I'm a control freak.

[616] So it's really hard to do things that you have no control over.

[617] I was like, I can't speak in front of all those people.

[618] I'll pass out.

[619] It was fine.

[620] Okay, now what brought me to writing was control.

[621] Childhood was very chaotic.

[622] Boy, did I love that whatever I decided happened in writing.

[623] And you get lost in it.

[624] It's a reprieve.

[625] So, would I be right to assume you enjoyed that as well?

[626] I don't know if it came from trying to control my environment.

[627] I come from kind of an embarrassingly normal family.

[628] I always just say I'm really bummed because I have nothing to write about.

[629] They're boring.

[630] Dad has an MBA.

[631] mom was a Ph .D. Administrative educator.

[632] Dad was a CIO, professional education first folks.

[633] Academic, play a lot of chess, those kind of people.

[634] Yeah, yeah.

[635] So for me, it was more about trying to live in a fantasy land where dramatic stuff did happen because nothing happened.

[636] You had to create your Hemingway.

[637] Yeah.

[638] Instead of joining World War I, you were like, I'll just invent it.

[639] So we spent a lot of time just imagining and dreaming up all the scenarios my life would be, I was always like, why don't we live in Paris?

[640] life would be so much more dramatic in Paris.

[641] My parents like, because we're not friends.

[642] We're not living there.

[643] It was a lot of that.

[644] Okay, so control interests me greatly, and you just said you're a control freak.

[645] Are you Virgo?

[646] No, I'm a Capricorn.

[647] Oh, wow.

[648] So bad.

[649] In light of that quest for control, what part of the process from getting the idea to writing it, to setting it up, to hiring the crew, casting, production, editing, testing if that exists for you and then release, which segment in there is the most challenging for you?

[650] Oh, interesting.

[651] Because I had a guess.

[652] It's always the writing.

[653] Because I'm such a control freak and I'm very much a perfectionist, getting me to decide something is done is very hard.

[654] I'm a little panicked.

[655] I'm panicked until we have a table read, which is interesting.

[656] At the table read, I can let it go.

[657] You recognize it's now in other people's hands at that point?

[658] Yeah, I mean, I have this real theory.

[659] You know, people are like, you're a show creator.

[660] No one person creates a show.

[661] We know this.

[662] It's all the people.

[663] But what's important to me is I'm like, the characters are like unblown up balloons when I've written them.

[664] And then the actors fill them with air.

[665] Oh, I like this.

[666] And the crew brings everything else to life.

[667] Like they build all the world around it.

[668] So for me, I love it when we've cast and people are now saying the words.

[669] I can let go because it's not me in my head anymore.

[670] It's not shared.

[671] Yeah.

[672] I saw you saying in an interview that one of the great lessons you've learned over the last 20 plus years doing this is to respect the process of the actor and recognize that between what they're doing and what you do, that will end up creating a full -fledged character.

[673] Yeah, I'm not building characters all by myself.

[674] I think that's crazy.

[675] Okay, so then my guess would be wrong because what I find scary, the few times I've gotten to do it, is you create exactly what you want on paper.

[676] That's very doable.

[677] You can execute that.

[678] human beings are not that and casting is so stressful in my opinion because just you have created this thing and then in some bizarre way you're praying someone comes in and abuse that or somehow innately has that thing and you're just reliant on what's out there and you're just kind of praying it materializes I find that very scary the casting process is one of my favorite things it is and because I've written something I don't know how it's going to be on it's feet.

[679] And for me, there's never a character description in a script that I write.

[680] Oh, there's not.

[681] Right.

[682] I don't go in with an idea of exactly what I'm looking for.

[683] Okay.

[684] I go in and, like, we'll have all kinds of different people read for things.

[685] Literally, I'm trying to find somebody to inhabit the character, right.

[686] I won't know until they walk in the room and say the stuff.

[687] That's really what it is.

[688] And you're excited by that proposition.

[689] I love it.

[690] You're optimistic, it sounds like.

[691] I love it.

[692] Because I'm pessimistic, you know?

[693] No, I'm optimistic.

[694] One of the best things that I've ever done, and maybe people find it horrible, but I enjoy it, is at the beginning of every show, I'll stand up and say, we're the writers.

[695] So you will say every word exactly as it's written, all the commas, everything.

[696] I don't want to hear that you need to change a word.

[697] You are the actors.

[698] I'm never going to tell you how to do a scene or what I'm looking for.

[699] I'm excited to see what you do with it.

[700] That's one of the reasons I love network TV.

[701] You'd make something, you'd see what they do, you'd get in the editing room, and that would inspire me about the characters.

[702] And I'd go back to the writer's room and go, you know, this character's this, or this character's this.

[703] You're learning real time.

[704] Yeah.

[705] Yes.

[706] I loved that.

[707] That's what's so cool about TV.

[708] I think that's what movies suffer from is the writer has a fantasy, then the director has a fantasy, and then there's all these other parts, and they perform differently than expected.

[709] And some people are popping in some bizarre way, and some people have chemistry that no one could have predicted.

[710] And on a show, you can mind that, yeah.

[711] For me, the hardest part of the process, because I always say, like, I write it, we put it into this machine called production.

[712] It comes out the other side.

[713] I try really hard to stay away from set.

[714] And then it goes to post.

[715] The editors start.

[716] for me the hardest place is when I get a director's cut because generally then you're sort of managing your feelings about the show you made and the show that they made and all your disappointments and that didn't work the way I thought it was going to be or why do they do this?

[717] There's a lot of that.

[718] There's a popular saying which I find to be very true which is any movie or show you've watched has been made three times.

[719] It was made in a script form then it was made during production and people made decisions there and then really it's and then there's a third rewrite in the editing room.

[720] Absolutely.

[721] And it can become something completely different that either you didn't write and wasn't shot, there's some magic in that third.

[722] Yeah, that's my other favorite part, though.

[723] I really enjoy working with editors and being in the editing room for that rewrite process because you are taking what you've discovered, happened, and you're either enhancing or changing or running with something, and it's so much more fun.

[724] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[725] What's up, guys?

[726] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[727] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[728] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[729] And I don't mean just friends.

[730] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[731] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[732] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[733] We've all been there.

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[742] Okay, so I'm going to admit something really embarrassing, but is the truth.

[743] So when you say every comma will be said, I panic as an actor, big time.

[744] And I think, oh, I can give you exactly the thing you want with commas.

[745] Or if it goes through my filter a little bit, it's going to sound just a lot more real.

[746] So that's like my fear.

[747] What's interesting to me is when I say that, though, and then I follow it up with, I'm never going to tell you how to act in a scene or what to do.

[748] Because there's nothing worse to me than like an actor giving their performance.

[749] And then some writer being like, but you're meant to be more stoic, you know, like that kind of thing.

[750] I'm like, you know what you're going to do.

[751] It's really worked out for me. I haven't had that pain yet of the push and pull between an actor being like, I don't want to say these lines.

[752] That hasn't really been a thing.

[753] It hasn't.

[754] You haven't had a Dax Shepherd on sex.

[755] And I guess you won't.

[756] You totally taken yourself out.

[757] But I get it.

[758] I could have only had this conversation honestly at this moment in my life.

[759] I would risk not ever being on something of yours.

[760] But I think it's hard.

[761] I mean, it's hard for the actors.

[762] It's hard for the writers.

[763] and I think my control freakness would be, I would be standing on set to make sure they said everything.

[764] Is that why it's best for you to not be on set?

[765] Anytime I'm standing on set, I'm literally the only person in that room not working.

[766] Oh.

[767] Everybody else has a job to do, and I'm just standing there watching.

[768] Yeah.

[769] And I learned really early on that coming to set was a really risky process.

[770] I would come to set and I'd go, oh, that wall color is so interesting.

[771] And it was like, do you need the wall repainted?

[772] And there'd be like a team of people around me, like, how do we fix this?

[773] I can go to set, but I have to sit completely still and just say, everyone's doing a great job.

[774] Right.

[775] You can't just casually shoot the shit because people start running in different directions.

[776] Jesus.

[777] You have to be very aware of that kind of power and how abusive that can be for people.

[778] Right.

[779] You know, like, I'm not going to abuse people's emotions, times, feeling jobs by coming to set and making a comment.

[780] You just brought up a great thing I want to ask you about, which is, have you had a hard time?

[781] It's more embarrassing for me because I am a tall white male.

[782] I should have always thought this.

[783] but I have never felt like a boss in my life.

[784] I feel like a dirt road hillbilly who there was a clerical era and they let me do this.

[785] And it has been hard for me and I haven't done it correctly where it's taking me way too long to acknowledge I am the boss of these people.

[786] And to see myself as someone who is the boss because that's not my own personal self -image but I've had to go like, no, no, actually there are 100 people and you have to now kind of act in a way that is responsible.

[787] You're not an actor and said who can fuck around now.

[788] That was a hard transition for me. Is it hard for you to acknowledge, shit, I'm the fucking boss.

[789] If I say this stuff, they're all going to freak out.

[790] It's not natural necessarily.

[791] No. I got it immediately.

[792] And I don't know why I got it so immediately, but I got it.

[793] People were running and money was being spent because I was saying things or typing things.

[794] It felt like I was responsible for all those people's jobs, first and foremost.

[795] If I wasn't doing it well, this was going to go away and then their jobs would go away.

[796] And then also just understanding the look on their face when I'd show up on set and how nervous and scared and I would try to be like this is amazing it didn't matter it did something and so I try really hard to just let that be I guess there's another thing too which is at least a common trajectory is what makes you a great writer is you feel like an outcast who is able to observe all these people in a way that they can't even observe because they're on the inside of it that's like almost the gift of a writer and it's why I think a lot of writers leave L .A. You're so in the bubble you've lost sight of what honestly the real country is thinking about it's like you're feeding on one another you can't tell stories about you're eating your own tail yeah it's bad so leaving was great because it really did give me this i'm back in the world feeling yes this was great but the whole outsider looking in i think it's a very precarious transition to oh weird i'm the institution i'm actually the ultimate insider yet i still my identity is outsider but i have to make peace with these two things or I'm going to somehow get in trouble.

[797] Does that make any sense?

[798] Yes, I do know what you mean.

[799] You are suddenly the insider.

[800] It was so crazy to me to realize like, oh, I'm old guard.

[801] Like, I'm the old guard.

[802] Yes.

[803] So weird.

[804] Yes.

[805] I don't know.

[806] I wasn't ever aspiring to be that.

[807] No. I enjoyed being like the young upstart messing with the industry, right?

[808] And that was fun when that was happening.

[809] And then suddenly everything I was doing was just a way of life, which was fantastic, but like the way TV was.

[810] And then suddenly I'd be in these rooms and people would be like, I took a college class called Shonda Rhymes.

[811] And I was like, what?

[812] What college was that at?

[813] USC.

[814] No, I mean, of course, if I were you, though, I'd be like, oh, my God.

[815] What college are they teaching them?

[816] Right, exactly.

[817] They finally got me to come and speak at the class, and it was the most surreal experience of my life.

[818] Because I'm not that interesting.

[819] I'm really not inherently that interesting at all.

[820] There was something, and the teacher was like, and where was Shonda Rimes' his first job?

[821] And as a whole, the class was like, McKinan, Erickson and San Francisco.

[822] No, there's like a test.

[823] It was so creepy.

[824] And what's Shonda's favorite birthday meal?

[825] That is really weird.

[826] Wait till you become a major.

[827] Oh, my God.

[828] That's not horrible.

[829] Would you major in?

[830] But the thing is when you say you go onto set and the wall color and stuff, what is also tricky about that is if you're the boss, everyone's also looking to form an opinion, right?

[831] Is she a good boss?

[832] Is she a bad boss?

[833] Is she a mean boss?

[834] Is she a nice boss?

[835] And so if you're in there and you're like, oh, that wall color is interesting and then someone hears it and they're like, she is so picky.

[836] She comes in and she notices the wall color and has everyone repaint it.

[837] That's how quickly it becomes a story about you as a whole and you being a dictator.

[838] It's nuts.

[839] It's very nuts.

[840] I'm very comfortable with the idea that other people's opinions of me are none of my business.

[841] Good.

[842] I love that.

[843] I've really taken that out.

[844] There was no way not to.

[845] I think that kind of thing eats you alive.

[846] Hearing what everybody else thinks about you, it's never good.

[847] And the story they form about you has nothing to do with even how you were really behaved or how you were there.

[848] And I think women in general worry too much about being liked and wanting people to think they're like a nice boss.

[849] Yes.

[850] I just wanted people to think I was a good leader.

[851] Like that was my thing.

[852] I just want to be a good leader.

[853] I'm not going to be nice.

[854] I'm not going to be mean.

[855] Fair maybe is all we're going to aspire to?

[856] I'm a leader.

[857] Like versus being a boss who's like on you or trying to be a people pleaser.

[858] Yeah.

[859] We said that the other day we were talking and I was like, I'm the me. mean producer on this project.

[860] I welcome.

[861] Go crazy.

[862] I like it.

[863] When you say it like that, it doesn't really seem to mean.

[864] I know.

[865] It seems aspirational as well, isn't it?

[866] I need a new voice.

[867] It's all packaging.

[868] Life is packaging.

[869] I guess so.

[870] You're like, oh, she's mean, I'll take that.

[871] I read in an interview that you said, and I really like this, you specifically avoid any feedback, although you are very grateful for the fandom, their opinions have no business in your head because your primary loyalty is to the story you're telling not to the people consuming it.

[872] And I think that's a very defendable and profound place to be coming from.

[873] I think it saves me so much.

[874] If you start writing to the fans, here's what I learned from a show that's gone on forever.

[875] You'll write something and then they'll say, we hate you, we hate the show, we're never watching again.

[876] And then you'll write some next week, the episode will come out, and they'll be like, we still hate you and we hate the show and we're just never watching again after this week.

[877] And it goes on because they don't have to love everything that's happening to the characters.

[878] They just have to be involved or invested.

[879] And it's never going to be what they want because if we gave everybody what they want, there'd be no show.

[880] It's a lot of people holding cans.

[881] And there's nothing wrong with that.

[882] But yeah, that idea of staying just stuck in what the story is has saved me so much because it keeps my focus where it's supposed to be.

[883] Yes.

[884] And then you're also a human being on planet Earth.

[885] So are there compliment?

[886] you still crave.

[887] Here's another thing that's bizarrely isolating about success.

[888] I've witnessed this in other friends of mine that have really gotten there and been nominated a bunch of times.

[889] We're social primates.

[890] We are obsessed with social dynamics.

[891] We're obsessed with status.

[892] We always will be.

[893] It's very healthy to look up to people.

[894] But I think what happens as you climb that ladder of status, there's less and less people, quote, above you, whose approval you're craving.

[895] and I think people can get to the top of the approval ladder and it's a very weird experience.

[896] I think that's a terrifying experience.

[897] It must be.

[898] Right.

[899] Like you spent an evening with Michelle and Barack Obama.

[900] And let's say I assume that went well and they like you.

[901] You get home that night and you're a little bit like, well, who's left?

[902] Right?

[903] There's a little bit of that.

[904] Yeah.

[905] Whose opinion could we possibly receive now that would top this one that just happened?

[906] Yeah.

[907] So it's yet another bizarre isolating.

[908] non -mammillian primate, social, something's weird about it.

[909] Another way you have to police yourself, I think, in success, is that thing.

[910] You have to reserve some people that maybe you don't want to meet or you still can hold on to or that you allow to live in this little miniature bucket of fantasy that still exists.

[911] You want to kind of keep them there and protect yourself from ever getting that.

[912] I mean, I'm hearing you, and I'm thinking about the fact that I don't and have never read articles about myself.

[913] I wrote a beautiful one about you.

[914] But no, because if you believe the good things they say about you, you are obligated to believe all the crap, right?

[915] Yes.

[916] It's too much.

[917] You could read a whole article that's glowing, and then it'll be like one sentence.

[918] This part was boring, and that's the only thing you remember.

[919] But I think it's okay and healthy to, let's just say that you have a ton of respect for Damon, and to have Damon say to you, oh, my God, by the way, I saw the thing.

[920] I think that's really important and really special.

[921] When I hear from people whose work I respect, you know, they have something nice to say, that's amazing.

[922] Is there someone in your job that you look at and go, I don't know how they do that?

[923] Is there someone out there that challenges you in a great way?

[924] I don't know.

[925] I mean, I don't know that that's true, mainly because I don't watch as much television as everybody else does, which is so unfair.

[926] Well, it's amoral.

[927] I mean, I really love TVs, but not getting to watch as much and trying to catch up is so hard.

[928] There's so much work out there that I really like, and then people will write something and I'll go, I could never have thought of that.

[929] I love those moments.

[930] Did you watch White Lotus?

[931] I watched White Lotus.

[932] There you go.

[933] And were you watching White Lotus a little bit and going like, oh, fuck, there's some magic here.

[934] That's pretty amazing.

[935] Yeah, I was like, I would never have thought of that.

[936] I would never put these things together this way.

[937] It's surprising.

[938] It's funny.

[939] All these things.

[940] I was like, my imagination couldn't do that.

[941] And I love that.

[942] Yes.

[943] That's a great feeling, isn't it?

[944] Yeah.

[945] But it doesn't seem like you're burdened by comparison.

[946] No. And I think that, honestly, is growing up in a family of six kids.

[947] I was just going to guess that.

[948] I was like, you know, even watching my own -tailed children and thinking how fucked my oldest would have been, we not had a second one because we were just so obsessed with her she would have been very misled to think she was the princess the second coming of whoever yeah but but by the time you're six I'm surprised the back of your head's not flat as a fucking two -by four right you probably never got picked up you probably just looked up in the air I was always saying like there was a whole rule at the table like my mom would be like stop did someone feed the baby and that would be me right right you have three sisters and two brothers I have three sisters and two brothers I have one sister who is 18 months older than me, which is the same distance my two little kids are.

[949] Oh, really?

[950] Yeah, she's 18 months older than me. And what was great about that was we had our own world going.

[951] Like, we literally spoke our own language almost.

[952] And everybody else was much older.

[953] They were 9, 10, 11, 12 years older.

[954] So we had our own little world going, which was kind of great.

[955] How do your parents explain that gap?

[956] Romantic holiday that rekindled everything?

[957] I don't know how they're explaining that.

[958] I don't know how they're explaining that.

[959] I have not asked my parents about their sex life.

[960] We get them on the show.

[961] Yeah, we'll call them up.

[962] I'll have a lot of answers for you at the end of that.

[963] That allows for you to live in your shyness to have siblings.

[964] If you're an only child, you probably would have had to do something different.

[965] Oh, yeah.

[966] I wouldn't have survived that way.

[967] I probably would have been raised a lot more outgoing.

[968] As the youngest child, I didn't really ever have to say anything.

[969] I never had to lead the conversation.

[970] I spent a lot of time watching.

[971] Right.

[972] And I had older siblings, so like that peeking through the door to see, like, what they were doing, all sneaking out.

[973] All that stuff was so great to me. Oh, yeah.

[974] Yeah, there was a show happening in your house and you were observing it.

[975] With a lot of fun characters, many to follow.

[976] Yes, and have you remained really close to the one that's 18 months older than you?

[977] Yeah, she runs the other half of my company.

[978] Oh, she does!

[979] Oh, my goodness.

[980] And it's fantastic.

[981] She's the only person on the earth who can say, Sean's not going to like that and be absolutely right.

[982] Wow.

[983] Yeah, so she runs the whole other half of the company in so many ways, and it's been great.

[984] Okay, first of all, I did not know you wrote Crossroads.

[985] I talk about Crossroads.

[986] Oh, yeah.

[987] An inordinate amount on this show.

[988] You don't.

[989] I do.

[990] We brought it up.

[991] Because there's one scene in particular, I find really amusing.

[992] It's while she's trying to learn the song.

[993] She's like discovering the song on the piano.

[994] I'm not a, ding, ding, I'm not a day.

[995] I'm not a girl.

[996] Not yet.

[997] It's like it goes from like two words to we got the whole song.

[998] It gets fully downloaded.

[999] Favorite moments of anything.

[1000] But we talk about that a lot.

[1001] But you started by writing that, or that was at least one of your first projects.

[1002] And then Princess Diaries, too.

[1003] I'm going to blow through some stuff that people are caught out.

[1004] Princess is in that.

[1005] Well, look, as I was reading her list, there's people that we know all throughout the Shonda Land world.

[1006] And then you have a newborn child.

[1007] You're at home and you yourself discover TV, which I think sounds ridiculous and comical, but I like it.

[1008] You discover like Buffy and 24.

[1009] I love Buffy.

[1010] Like I'm literally 31 and nobody else was having kids.

[1011] So I have this baby.

[1012] This 9 -11, I'm going to become a mom baby, and it was great.

[1013] But suddenly you were stuck at home And I would have this baby She was very stressed out So she was strapped to my chest all the time And I would lay on the sofa And watch television So I watched 24 hours of 24 Like in one sitting Wow That was the first show I ever binged What a ride Jack Power takes it on right?

[1014] It's a crazy ride, yeah Plot Plot Plot Plot Plot Plot Wait, you skimbeds But what is a 9 -11 baby?

[1015] Oh, I'm going to guess 9 -11 happened And she started asking herself Some very real questions Exactly Exactly.

[1016] What do I want out of life?

[1017] Right.

[1018] If the world's going to end tomorrow, what haven't I done?

[1019] Got it.

[1020] And then suddenly you know all the pressing things.

[1021] Wow.

[1022] Yeah.

[1023] I had a similar thing.

[1024] So I had moved here and it took me nine years to get a paid acting job.

[1025] So I'd been broke forever.

[1026] And then I did three movies as a lead studio movies.

[1027] I sold two screen plays and I was on a TV show.

[1028] And I was still living in a one -bedroom apartment in Santa Monica.

[1029] I was like, I can't ever leave here.

[1030] It's $600 a month.

[1031] Who knows this right will be over.

[1032] I'm driving down the road in the car and I'm listening to NPR and they're talking about an asteroid that is not going to hit us but it's going to cross us pretty close and they're tracking it and they know it's going to cross us in about 14 months and I had this moment where I was like what if this news report was saying no no asteroid is going to hit us in 14 months I'm going to die in that fucking one bit of apartment because I'm so afraid to spend money yes and that led to me literally buying a house that's over there 17 years ago but I needed to think I was going to die to give myself permission to spend some money so I can really relate to that so you have the baby you start watching a lot of TV, and then it opens up your mind to writing TV.

[1033] Well, it was so clear that that's where all the character development is.

[1034] You know, when you write a movie, that's saying, the director fires the writer.

[1035] And on television, the writer fires the director.

[1036] Right.

[1037] So on TV, it's your vision.

[1038] In the movies, it's their vision.

[1039] And you have to do it in this very truncated amount of time.

[1040] But on television, the character development could go on and on and on.

[1041] And I could really enjoy it and know it was going to happen the way I wanted it to.

[1042] Yes.

[1043] It was fascinating to me. You're going to take a life journey with a project like that.

[1044] as opposed to a season journey.

[1045] Exactly.

[1046] And are you a creature of comfort?

[1047] Did that appeal to you some consistency?

[1048] I don't think I understood what I was signing up for.

[1049] I don't think I realized the insane amount of work it was going to be.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] And how big it was going to get.

[1052] Like, if I had known that all that attention was going to come with it, I'm not sure I would have done it, truly.

[1053] Sure, I believe that.

[1054] Bill Murray has the best quote ever.

[1055] He's like, if you're thinking about becoming rich and famous, I recommend just the rich part.

[1056] I like that.

[1057] Okay, so you create graze.

[1058] That's an enormous hit.

[1059] And then you, of course, quickly thereafter, create private practice, then you do scandal for seven years.

[1060] I just want to ask one question about that.

[1061] Had you seen Last King of Scotland?

[1062] Nope.

[1063] Where did you fall in love with Carrie?

[1064] I had seen Save the Last Dance.

[1065] I honestly didn't connect those two people to the woman who came into the room.

[1066] I had no idea who Carrie Washington was.

[1067] Okay.

[1068] I loved her, and she was great, but I had no idea who she was.

[1069] Have you ever written a role for someone with an actor in mind as you sit down to write?

[1070] I wrote a role for Scott Foley and then ended up not counting.

[1071] casting Scott Foley.

[1072] Oh, wow.

[1073] Wow.

[1074] Scott Fully from...

[1075] From Felicity.

[1076] Yes.

[1077] Okay, okay.

[1078] Which was one of the shows you loved?

[1079] Yeah.

[1080] Yes, when you fell in love with TV.

[1081] Okay, so private practice, scandal, how to get away with murder, as we talked about 70 episodes of TV.

[1082] 2017, you leave network TV and you go to Netflix.

[1083] Yes.

[1084] I have two curiosities, and a couple of these are going to embarrass you, but here we go.

[1085] I think people read headlines and they were like, whoa, that's...

[1086] crazy and it was great all through the 90s show creators could approach a billion dollars larry david signfeld chuck lorry with two and a half men and big bang there was a model by which your show would run on network for seven years and then it would go into syndication and those chunks of syndication would be in the billions quite often tons of money yeah tom warner owning the red so in some way when i read that i thought interesting a lot of guaranteed money that's great But aren't you now saying goodbye to the potential of syndication enormous by the Red Sox paychecks?

[1087] Well, by the time I was interested in looking around, and I hate saying this, but I felt like television was dying.

[1088] In that model.

[1089] In that model.

[1090] The money wasn't the same for anybody, I don't think.

[1091] The back end wasn't there.

[1092] And I made a deal at a place that had never made that kind of deal before.

[1093] So I got to make the deal that made sense for me. Yeah.

[1094] Right, instead of precedent.

[1095] Yeah.

[1096] But you, in your mind, you had calculated at that moment, it would be better for me to get it up front at Netflix and not worry about that.

[1097] Getting residuals is not the same as having a stake.

[1098] Now, what were your fears when you went there?

[1099] I was really ready to go.

[1100] Okay.

[1101] And I was very excited because, you know, at the time, it really felt like a startup.

[1102] They didn't have any in -house showrunners or whatever.

[1103] I felt like I was making my own job.

[1104] But I also was very aware of, like, the first thing we release had better not be a piece of crime.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] Did you feel pressure that you had not felt in a while?

[1107] Oh, yeah.

[1108] I felt that pressure.

[1109] That's good for you, though, isn't it?

[1110] Oh, I think it was perfect.

[1111] I'd worked in one place my whole career.

[1112] So to leave was to step into a world in which I didn't know any of the rules.

[1113] They run so differently.

[1114] And so there was a lot of me figuring out that.

[1115] And I had very comfortable power at ABC.

[1116] Like everything was always done this way and nobody ever questioned it.

[1117] Coming into Netflix, it was kind of great to reexamine the systems and go, does it really need to be this way?

[1118] You entered a different creative box, as we talked about.

[1119] You left one, and this one had probably more leniency in some ways, and then it probably had some different challenges that didn't exist over there.

[1120] This is a whole new thing.

[1121] Yeah, to go from making 24 episodes of something a year to 8 was startling.

[1122] I was like, the luxury of that is just insane.

[1123] Freedom.

[1124] Well, the time luxury's there, but did you feel at all?

[1125] Shit, I liked having that much real estate.

[1126] Because the thing that appealed to you initially is, like, I can explore these characters indefinitely, and there's a ton of real estate to do so.

[1127] Did you feel at all the tightening of like, whoa, I got to be a little more efficient in this model?

[1128] No. It was all gravy.

[1129] Nothing was all gravy.

[1130] It was just, I could make 24 episodes of something, and I knew exactly what that was.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] This was a whole new challenge of coming in, and now you have this totally different model with very little fences.

[1133] And then how do you make that work?

[1134] That was what was interesting to me. Well, great, because that was one of my questions was, I've not.

[1135] notice the stuff you've done on Netflix appears to be vaguely PG.

[1136] I don't know if anybody would think that Bridgeton season one was PG.

[1137] People think it's very sexy.

[1138] That was very, there was a lot, a lot of sex in that.

[1139] Was there nudity?

[1140] Yes.

[1141] There was a lot of new.

[1142] There was a lot of, people love it for its sexiness.

[1143] Okay, never mind.

[1144] Then I completely take that back.

[1145] I was just watching Queen Charlotte.

[1146] It's very peachy.

[1147] And then it just made me think this goes back to what we were saying about the creative box.

[1148] Like listening to the Stern on, when he was on terrestrial radio, he had all the confines of the FCC.

[1149] And then when they went to Sirius, I think they were like, oh, yay, we can do everything now.

[1150] And then it's self -corrected.

[1151] They went too blue.

[1152] They had too much freedom.

[1153] It didn't really work.

[1154] And they rained it in.

[1155] So I think they went from PG -13 to NC -17 down to like a soft R now.

[1156] was like their little evolution.

[1157] I get that.

[1158] So I was just curious, when you went to Netflix, that's, again, a new thing on the table for you.

[1159] It was, and I hadn't ever been a person who was like, I can't wait to get some nudity going.

[1160] Like, I just wasn't that person.

[1161] Right.

[1162] It just didn't even occur to me. And so when they went off and shot all the Bridgeton scenes and they came back, I remember being the person who was like, are we going to put this on TV?

[1163] Like, are we sure?

[1164] I was such a prude.

[1165] You were blushing.

[1166] I didn't realize what a prude I was.

[1167] I was like, are we comfortable with this?

[1168] Yes.

[1169] Oh, my God.

[1170] This reminds me, my favorite sex scene of all time.

[1171] Careful.

[1172] No. All time?

[1173] I'm dying to hear what this is.

[1174] We've talked about it on here and it didn't come up yesterday even though I guess we talked about sex scenes in every episode of this.

[1175] We try.

[1176] McDreamy and Meredith when they have sex on the table in the...

[1177] Prom.

[1178] Yes.

[1179] That's season two, yeah.

[1180] That's the one for you.

[1181] It is so hot.

[1182] And there's no nudity.

[1183] So that was my thing.

[1184] When I say I like the fences of broadcast standards and practices, I was like, how can we make hot scenes that feel sexy that should embarrass you a little bit.

[1185] Like, I can't believe they're doing this without actually showing anything.

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] And that was really fun.

[1188] Well, it sounds like you completely hit the mark because Monica's seen all the sex scenes.

[1189] For that to be your number one.

[1190] That is a very big compliment.

[1191] It is so sexy.

[1192] Have you watched Beef?

[1193] No, that's what's on next on my iPad to watch Sex Mom on the plane.

[1194] It's phenomenal.

[1195] And there is my second favorite sex scene I've ever seen coming your way.

[1196] Also, no nudity.

[1197] We get some male torso, upper, maybe mom's pubis of him.

[1198] You don't see any, like, boobs, genitals.

[1199] Here's the deal.

[1200] You don't see any of her.

[1201] You don't see any of her.

[1202] That's what's interesting.

[1203] Because that's what makes sex scenes different now.

[1204] Before it was all about how much of her can we show.

[1205] Right.

[1206] And the Bridgeton ones were all about showing it from the female gaze.

[1207] And it was all about him.

[1208] That's what was interesting to me. Very interesting.

[1209] And I have this rule on my shows that if you come to me and say, I have to do all my sex scenes in a snowsuit, then we will figure out how to do all your sex scenes while you're wearing a snowsuit.

[1210] Like, I'm not going to make anybody do anything that they don't want to do.

[1211] I now want to act again.

[1212] Do you want to do a sex scene in a snowsuit?

[1213] To make a snowsuit sex scene, by the way, it's so Chicago that you would say.

[1214] I say snowmobile suit all the time.

[1215] People are like, what are you talking about?

[1216] But we know what a full snowsuit is, like a onesy, right?

[1217] Yeah, it's that one zine and the hood and the whole thing.

[1218] The mittens.

[1219] The closest thing.

[1220] a real chastity belt you could have you can't get out of it the number of times a kid pees in the snowsuit is insane yeah did you do vaseline on your face as a child yes yeah yeah yeah keeps you from over snow the cold literally the cold yeah yeah yeah if you drive around detroit all the little kids have just have shiny faces like mom just coated them in vassaline when it gets really really cold yeah okay so queen charlotte is a bridgeton story but the original Bridgerton was enormous on a scale.

[1221] I'd like to compare it to some things.

[1222] 82 million is what I read in the first four weeks.

[1223] That's really beyond comprehension.

[1224] You're looking at Super Bowl numbers, more than Super Bowl, but I think even a better comparison would be we all know who big Game of Thrones is, and at Game of Thrones' peak, Game of Thrones is, it had 19 .3 million viewers.

[1225] So you're looking at 4x game of Thrones.

[1226] You had already had great success in your life, but did even that freak you out?

[1227] So here's the crazy thing.

[1228] One of the reasons why I wanted to move from a network to a streamer was I wasn't interested in ratings.

[1229] I was like, I'm so tired of numbers, and it just seemed like I could do something where the numbers didn't matter, which, of course, that's a lie for anybody.

[1230] You get somewhere always the numbers matter for people.

[1231] But we got there, and then the show aired, and I don't even think I understood how many people, 82 million people was.

[1232] like when they first started talking about it, $18 million, not people, households.

[1233] Oh, households.

[1234] So we're looking at $1 .60, $200 million.

[1235] But it was this crazy experience of putting out something that's global immediately.

[1236] That was surreal.

[1237] Yeah, that's greater than the population of Germany, France, Spain, Italy.

[1238] It was shocking.

[1239] Isn't there some ironic truth in there?

[1240] There's some bizarre universal truth in the fact that you literally went there to escape the bondage of numbers and you get your biggest number of all.

[1241] all time.

[1242] Yeah, totally crazy.

[1243] The whole thing was crazy.

[1244] Because when you watched it, you loved it, you had your heart in it.

[1245] You were actually show ray on that show.

[1246] Did you?

[1247] No, I was, I produced it in the sense that I found the books.

[1248] I found the writer.

[1249] I put it all together.

[1250] And I edited all of the episodes during the pandemic.

[1251] Uh -huh.

[1252] So I was at home with all those episodes.

[1253] It's like what got me through the pandemic for like nine months.

[1254] And it felt very personal.

[1255] But I can't imagine you watched it and thought, well, if I had to quantify it, this is four times better than Gray's Anatomy.

[1256] I bet this will succeed at 4X the level.

[1257] Like it probably felt in keeping with the other things you'd made.

[1258] Right.

[1259] It never even occurred to me that that was a thing.

[1260] Yeah.

[1261] I just was like, I love this.

[1262] I'm enjoying it.

[1263] It's going well.

[1264] I'm hopeful for it.

[1265] That's really sort of how my mind was working.

[1266] Yeah.

[1267] And the cast of characters that have come out to say that they watched it all in one day is very flattering.

[1268] Like the Clintons watched it in one day.

[1269] Oh yeah.

[1270] No. That's incredible.

[1271] I got an email from Hillary on that one.

[1272] Yeah.

[1273] That's incredible.

[1274] There's a couple other in there that were really.

[1275] really blew my mind that they acknowledged.

[1276] It was fascinating.

[1277] Oh, I love the idea that they're watching together.

[1278] I love that.

[1279] Okay, I have two things.

[1280] And then it's straight Queen Charlotte.

[1281] We promise.

[1282] Greedy pig is here.

[1283] What is your writing process?

[1284] Are you ritualistic?

[1285] Do you have a setting?

[1286] Do you have a routine?

[1287] Do you have a schedule?

[1288] No, I'm terrible.

[1289] I mean, I'm very disciplined when I am on a project.

[1290] Like, I try to write every day at the same time.

[1291] That almost never works.

[1292] But over the years, I have sort of trained my brain that if I have on my headphones and there's certain kinds of music playing, I can write anywhere.

[1293] I can write in an airport.

[1294] I can write at the playground.

[1295] I can literally write anywhere.

[1296] We just talked about this with Gretchen Rubin, different types of brains, basically, and how you are the most productive with silence, with music, with ambiant noise.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] So you like music.

[1299] It's been music.

[1300] So it's almost like the psychology of the headphones, too.

[1301] If I don't have those headphones, it's not the same.

[1302] Oh.

[1303] Well, it's a cue.

[1304] Oh, these go on when I am creative.

[1305] My brain needs to open and do the work.

[1306] Have you ever added up how many scripts you've written?

[1307] No, I've never done that.

[1308] Does that ever cross your mind?

[1309] Like, I would love that sense of accomplishment of like, I've written 22 ,000 pages.

[1310] That would blow my mind.

[1311] But I think it would be kind of cool to know.

[1312] It's something I never occurred to me. Okay.

[1313] Well, you must have an intern somewhere in your life.

[1314] Maybe they could sit down and see what you're ready.

[1315] We do have a fact check, and I feel like you just assigned the attack.

[1316] That was going to take you hours.

[1317] I know.

[1318] It's going to go through every single writing credit.

[1319] That would interest me. I bet you've written some staggering amount of pages at this point.

[1320] Maybe, yeah.

[1321] Yeah, it's been a lot.

[1322] Well, next time we talk, maybe we'll get an update on that.

[1323] I am curious, what was your relationship with money growing up?

[1324] Is it something that the family coveted?

[1325] Were you driven by it?

[1326] Has it lived up to your fantasy?

[1327] Is it cumbersome?

[1328] I always say, like, my family, I assume, was solidly middle class.

[1329] But if we didn't have money, I didn't know it.

[1330] And if we did have money, I didn't know it.

[1331] Like, it wasn't a factor.

[1332] Wasn't a big issue in your house.

[1333] It wasn't a factor.

[1334] That's good.

[1335] Yeah, I think it was really healthy for us.

[1336] I'm telling you, my family was bizarrely bland in a delightful way.

[1337] I'm sorry.

[1338] It's great, but yeah.

[1339] But it was a thing for me. I think I'd been so comfortable in that idea of not really thinking about it, worrying about it.

[1340] When I got out of college, it was a little bit stunning to discover that I was broke and the world was very expensive.

[1341] Even in college, I had jobs in college To really suddenly understand that even the things I love to do They don't pay that much money You know, like it wasn't going to work that way That hustle was really hard And the hustle when I got to L .A. was really hard Because my parents, they were wonderful and very supportive But they were not down with the idea that their daughter was like going to drop everything and be like a filmmaker or something Yeah, they weren't going to fund this No So I had my little 1981 Pontiac Phoenix And I got for $600 and broke all the time And I hustled.

[1342] It was a lot of working And I loved it but it was also terrifying You know that feeling of everything to make something that's all going to go away?

[1343] Always live with it.

[1344] I never lost that feeling until 10 years into Grey's Anatomy that I was going to be fired and it was all going to disappear.

[1345] People are like, when did you know you made it?

[1346] Monday.

[1347] No, but this is true.

[1348] It's so stupid and amazing.

[1349] I was being inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame and Oprah Winfrey was doing the induction.

[1350] Oh, my God.

[1351] And I remember sitting there thinking literally like having this like overwhelming feeling of like, oh my God, I think I'm successful.

[1352] Like really feeling that because I had never felt like that before.

[1353] Yes.

[1354] Okay, great.

[1355] You're shocked.

[1356] I love that.

[1357] It was overwhelming.

[1358] I'm from Chicago, so, like, I was raised church of Oprah, basically.

[1359] So, like, the idea that there was Oprah, something really broke inside me. I went, oh, my God, I have made it.

[1360] It's okay.

[1361] You finally internalized it.

[1362] Yeah.

[1363] You can know things intellectually, but not emotionally.

[1364] Exactly.

[1365] It definitely wasn't there.

[1366] And I'm not even sure I was holding on to it intellectually.

[1367] Like, I was so got to make sure that this keeps going.

[1368] Scarcity mentality.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] And was the feeling happiness?

[1371] Was it relief?

[1372] I think it was overwhelming relief.

[1373] Like, I didn't feel like, yay.

[1374] I felt more like, okay, like I can relax.

[1375] I can untit in my chest.

[1376] Yes.

[1377] Yeah, it's not elation.

[1378] It's just like, okay, we made it.

[1379] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1380] Unfortunately, you just brought up one other thing that I did want to ask you about.

[1381] This is very hypothetical.

[1382] If you just thought broadly about Chicago and the problem, power of Chicago.

[1383] I also think, like you and I grew up in the same time, you had Oprah in Chicago, the first female black billionaire.

[1384] You had Michael Jordan, the most popular man in the world, billionaire from sports.

[1385] You had R. Kelly at that time.

[1386] I know where I was supposed to say that, but we had that.

[1387] Barack was in Chicago.

[1388] I don't know that you could point to a city that per capita had more black folks escape, rise above, and become institutions.

[1389] And I just think it's curious that it's Chicago.

[1390] And I wonder if you have any thoughts.

[1391] Do you think it's examples around you?

[1392] What is it about that city?

[1393] I honestly don't know.

[1394] And I don't think I've ever thought about it in that way.

[1395] But you're right.

[1396] A lot of talent comes out of Chicago.

[1397] I can't figure it out either because obviously Chicago had redlining the latest in the game.

[1398] So it's not like it was.

[1399] Not the most integrated place in the world.

[1400] Right.

[1401] Yeah.

[1402] So I just myself was kind of musing on it.

[1403] I read something you said.

[1404] said, you know, you grew up in a time where Eddie Murphy's the biggest star in the world, Oprah's on TV, and Whoopies on Broadway.

[1405] And that's all very powerful stuff.

[1406] But it's even more interesting how much of that is Chicago.

[1407] I know, it's crazy.

[1408] Yeah.

[1409] And now you're another one of the feathers in the cap of the Windy City.

[1410] Truly, that whole thing of those people being out in front, like, I'd never imagined being on TV as a job.

[1411] I'd never imagined writing a play as a job.

[1412] Like, there were all these things that just didn't seem like something that people did.

[1413] And so it was interesting to get that exposure at that time because I was obsessed.

[1414] Yeah.

[1415] I say that all the time as well.

[1416] Like I hear so many actors and interviews going, they're like, when did you know you want to be in movies?

[1417] And they're like, 12, a lot of a night.

[1418] And I'm like, I've never been a single person who made a living in show.

[1419] How would I have thought that?

[1420] Right.

[1421] I knew engineers and car mechanics.

[1422] I was in Detroit.

[1423] I thought maybe I could work at GM in some capacity.

[1424] My parents' response to me going to film school was, oh, my God, she'll be able to teach.

[1425] Right?

[1426] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1427] For them, it was education, education, education.

[1428] And it seemed like I was doing an absolute crazy thing to them.

[1429] Well, Monica's story is her parents were like, she's going to go do this, but she'll clearly go back to grad school and become a lawyer.

[1430] She'll be a lawyer at some.

[1431] So let her go do this for now, I guess.

[1432] Okay.

[1433] Wait, now I have to ask you.

[1434] Did your parents growing up, did they ever make you feel like you were going to have a harder time succeeding because you were black?

[1435] This is a really good question.

[1436] And I say this is a really good question because I know that for a lot of people that was true.

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] My mother especially, they grew up in, you know, segregated south, the whole nine yards.

[1439] My dad's from Milwaukee.

[1440] But we were raised with this very clear idea of you're supposed to be here.

[1441] And not succeeding was an issue.

[1442] And if I came home and crying because a teacher said something or a kid said something, I was like, well, what did you say back?

[1443] Like that.

[1444] Being pretty was not a compliment in my household.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] Like that was not interesting.

[1447] I don't even know if they knew what they were doing but we're all super confident and it never occurred to me I mean I knew obviously that there's racism but it never occurred to me that I should let other people's opinions impede how I succeed.

[1448] I say that like that because that's how my parents spoke all the time it didn't occur to me in a weird way that it was really going to be a problem and I remember feeling like extreme surprise when everyone was like you know you're the first black show runner and I was like what?

[1449] It seemed stupid right in that way of I remember saying television should be embarrassed.

[1450] Like, it shouldn't be that this is how it is.

[1451] Yes.

[1452] But there were a lot of things that I came up against.

[1453] I mean, I wasn't naive about it at all.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] Back to the isolating forces of extreme success.

[1456] And this is dangerous for me to even assume or presuppose I know about who you're attracted to.

[1457] I find the thing I might feel worst for in successful women is how nearly impossible it is for men to not feel.

[1458] emasculated by their success.

[1459] I have to say, that is probably the most frustrating thing to me in the world.

[1460] Maybe I'm a troll, I don't know, but I can't get a date to save my life.

[1461] Like, it's fascinating.

[1462] Well, I think your options get fucking narrower and narrow, which is so cosmically wrong.

[1463] For a man, if he gets more successful, it just widens and widens and widens.

[1464] 18 -year -old.

[1465] We observe this nonstop.

[1466] Almost every successful female we interviewed.

[1467] has to wrestle with the fragile ego of the men in their life.

[1468] And I myself, I can admit, my own issue, I never had any problem with Kristen being more famous than me at all.

[1469] Take it.

[1470] The years when she made more money than me, that was hard.

[1471] I like to think I didn't act passive aggressively towards her, but I just was acknowledging like, this is rough for me that you're the big red winner.

[1472] I feel it, yes.

[1473] Children, at least for me, was like, oh, this is all a joke.

[1474] It's all for them anyways.

[1475] who gives a shit.

[1476] But I'm just saying I think of myself as mildly evolved as a dude raised by a woman and still that was a huge thing for me and I just feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for successful women.

[1477] I think it's incredibly isolating.

[1478] You know, we talk to other women and everybody's in the same place.

[1479] Yeah, I feel that too.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] And there's this also, now this is y 'all's fault a little bit.

[1482] I can't wait to hear of it.

[1483] Because this is a statistic that has now come out of all the data on these dating apps.

[1484] Men will date parallel to themselves.

[1485] status -wise and below.

[1486] A man doesn't care at all of his lady graduated high school in general, in general.

[1487] Because it makes him feel more powerful.

[1488] Right, sure.

[1489] Right.

[1490] There's like a supporting character element.

[1491] Sure.

[1492] I mean, the whole system has been designed that way for thousands of years.

[1493] So yeah, they're fine with that.

[1494] In general, predominantly women date at their status line or above.

[1495] Right.

[1496] Yeah.

[1497] And so if that's the program as you rise in status or right now in this country, 60 % of college entrance are female, And who the fuck are they going to date?

[1498] This is clearly an asymmetrical issue that's happening.

[1499] It's growing and growing.

[1500] And we haven't sorted it out.

[1501] So it's like men need to get over their shit.

[1502] And women got to date below themselves as well.

[1503] Here's the thing.

[1504] I would happily date like an amazing carpenter.

[1505] I don't care as long as they're passionate about what they do.

[1506] I say that exact line every day.

[1507] It's like it doesn't matter what they're doing, but they have to have their own thing going on.

[1508] They have to be driven.

[1509] That brings them something.

[1510] Right.

[1511] That's not about my.

[1512] Or not about them just waiting for me to be around.

[1513] Be a broke painter.

[1514] Come home and he's got paintings he's happy with.

[1515] I'd be fine.

[1516] Yes, yes.

[1517] It's just would he be fine?

[1518] Right, that's the problem.

[1519] Yeah, exactly.

[1520] I'm in this position right now.

[1521] I'm 35 and I just froze my eggs.

[1522] I'm going to do it again because I didn't get that many.

[1523] We put them in a bad fridge.

[1524] Yeah, I'm really in the place where I'm considering, am I going to just do this by myself?

[1525] Yeah, she owns the house across the street, right?

[1526] Yeah, she told me she walked over here.

[1527] Yeah, yeah.

[1528] So the dude's going to go over there and like, oh my God, you got a house in the little floor.

[1529] It's going to, like, he's already going to be like, I'm a piece.

[1530] That was happening early in my career, too.

[1531] I had a little house and it was like, woof.

[1532] Yes.

[1533] Oh, wait, you're in this position.

[1534] But yeah, so I'm in this position.

[1535] I'm just thinking, like, is this something I'm going to do by myself?

[1536] And I'm finding, even I have some sense of patriarchy and misogyny that's in there where I'm like, I can't possibly do that by myself.

[1537] How will I do that by myself?

[1538] So how was that decision made?

[1539] Really?

[1540] Was that whole the world's going to end tomorrow?

[1541] But also, I've always been this person.

[1542] I'd never really been somebody who, like, imagined my wedding or that kind of thing.

[1543] I'd always just known for sure that I was going to be a parent.

[1544] Like, that was just a thing.

[1545] They were older than me, but all my siblings were married.

[1546] They all had kids.

[1547] It felt like I was missing something that I really wanted.

[1548] And I wasn't financially secure in the Grey's Anatomy world because that hadn't happened yet.

[1549] Right.

[1550] So I had like a little necessary.

[1551] stag of money and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this.

[1552] Not knowing, like, trying to make it as a writer, what are you going to do when that money runs out?

[1553] You're watching the mailbox for those Princess Diary two residuals.

[1554] Oh, yeah.

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] I was very excited by the Crossroads residuals.

[1557] Yeah, I bet.

[1558] Yeah.

[1559] Very successful.

[1560] $60 million, really, really good.

[1561] Crazy.

[1562] But yeah, it was bonkers.

[1563] And so to just do it was just be taking a leap.

[1564] Yeah.

[1565] And then to do it again, 10 years later, when it all was going on, literally I was making 70 hours in television a week when that happened.

[1566] I just decided I know the family I want and I'm holding it back for reasons that don't make any sense.

[1567] I literally don't have time to be out there looking for a husband and I'm not a husband shopper anyway.

[1568] Right.

[1569] So it was like, let's just do it.

[1570] I think it's a brave decision, which sounds like I don't even think we're allowed to use the word brave anymore, but it is because we have an idea of what, quote, family means in this country and society and whatever.

[1571] To break those molds we can say like it's empowering and it is but it's scary too yeah and I couldn't have come from a more traditional family yeah there were a lot of questions yeah who kills the bugs in your house yeah how are you possibly dealing with all these bugs I kill the bugs now it's terrible you do what needs doing that's very affirming yeah okay queen charl we're there I have watched the pilot I was four minutes late getting up here because I was sucked into the pilot in a very romantic wedding that was happening how do we decide that's what's next in the world of Bridgeton?

[1572] Well, I've been fascinated by that character.

[1573] I mean, the way Golda plays Queen Charlotte and Bridgeton, to me, like, she's the Beyonce of that world.

[1574] I just kept wanting to watch her.

[1575] Yeah.

[1576] And then Ted Sarandos, who runs Netflix, called me up and said, why aren't we making a show about Queen Charlotte?

[1577] Like, the perfect time.

[1578] And I was like, why aren't we?

[1579] I'm going to do that.

[1580] And that's what happened.

[1581] And then Queen Charlotte is loosely based on a Charlotte of Meckleburg.

[1582] Skirulitz.

[1583] Yes, Michael Mnichstrelitz.

[1584] Whatever.

[1585] I can't say it either.

[1586] 1744, way back.

[1587] It was actually really fun to do to take what has been a history point for some people that Queen Charlotte actually was a woman of color and run with it.

[1588] But also, you know, I kept saying, like, it's not a history lesson.

[1589] The story we're telling is a story of Queen Charlotte that we created in Bridgeton, not the actual Queen Charlotte.

[1590] Right.

[1591] Really cute, romantic scene when she's trying to escape.

[1592] Yes.

[1593] I found myself getting very hooked.

[1594] by that.

[1595] Would we call that a meat cute?

[1596] That's a version of a meat cute.

[1597] I think it's a Georgian version of a meat cute.

[1598] A Georgian version of a meat cute.

[1599] But it's the dream scenario where she has no idea who she's talking to.

[1600] Oh, yeah.

[1601] Love that.

[1602] We love that.

[1603] That's also a little bit of, what is it, sterno?

[1604] What's the long nose?

[1605] There's also the old.

[1606] Oh.

[1607] Steranos?

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] Serenose, yeah.

[1611] Who are you talking about?

[1612] Yeah, yeah.

[1613] There's something lovely there.

[1614] A, does it shock you that you do a period drama?

[1615] And B, has it been so fun to do a period drama in ways that you hadn't anticipated?

[1616] It was wildly fun.

[1617] Living in that era, doing the research, rewriting history a little bit, obviously the clothes, the wig, the costumes.

[1618] But it was also just really fun to live in that era because back then, story -wise, there are actual obstacles.

[1619] There are no more obstacles to a couple getting together in modern -day world.

[1620] Right.

[1621] You know, there's not really.

[1622] Transportation is the biggest hurdle.

[1623] Right.

[1624] It's like she decides to do what she would.

[1625] wants you know that's literally it yeah and there there were i mean she's marrying a man she'd only known for six hours so it's like this really great built an obstacle and he's mad king george so there's that like it was there was a lot of great stuff in there to actually build story around that has to be liberating to tell stories in an era before communication even yeah because you can do misunderstandings that play out there's all these devices that exist that don't exist now because we love cell phones that's right in the hurdles to dating that no longer exists are just great and for story.

[1626] So did you find that it just like opened up an entirely new toolbox to you?

[1627] It did.

[1628] Because also, right, there's no easy physicality.

[1629] In general, the women have not been educated in any way about sex.

[1630] If you look at a woman's ankle, you have to marry her.

[1631] Like that idea that it's that closed off a world with those many rules, it really opened up storytelling in a lot of different ways.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] You have consumed, as we've all consumed, in some form or another, whatever medium, thousands of hours of royalty fairy tales.

[1634] Yes.

[1635] In fact, one of our questions to Prince Harry was like, how fucking weird, you had to be reading the same children's books.

[1636] Children get those books.

[1637] How weird was it for you to go like, oh, so the main goal was to end up as me, and I'm not really having too much fun is this?

[1638] Like, if that's the ultimate goal of every human and I'm living in it, it's not that fun.

[1639] Wow.

[1640] Then the other goals, I should skip those too, because this blows.

[1641] But imagine there has to, to be some fun and fulfillment and inserting yourself into a fairy tale that's existed for thousands of years and we've all consumed finally yes but also i mean i feel like everything's about deconstructing the fairy tale yeah so even the first episode like it's happy and that it's not yeah i feel like it's very important to make sure that everybody knows that like and they all lived happily ever after is crap yeah yes but yeah it was very cool but i more think of you being a little black girl right reading all these things as we all did and Living now in a world that your face is in that in some capacity.

[1642] That was really powerful.

[1643] I mean, for me, even watching it, as we went through Bridgeton, it was powerful.

[1644] But really seeing the young Queen Charlotte, it was a big moment for me. Like when we did the costume fittings, I mean, they did the camera tests.

[1645] Yes.

[1646] I, like, saved on my screen this shot of her in her gown and her crown and the outfit she gets married in.

[1647] I got tingles looking at it.

[1648] You haven't seen that.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] Yeah.

[1651] It was a powerful thing.

[1652] Did you see Hamilton?

[1653] Yes, 12 times.

[1654] 12 times.

[1655] 12 times.

[1656] Okay.

[1657] That was one of those people.

[1658] And 13's an unlucky number, so you didn't want to go and die.

[1659] I'm going to get a cap at 12.

[1660] Somehow see you back to back to get to 14.

[1661] What was amazing as a viewer of that for me, and I had read that book, is to see the cast come out.

[1662] And it's like, oh, Alexander Hamilton's black.

[1663] Well, George Washington's black.

[1664] This guy is Latino.

[1665] I'm aware of that for the first seven minutes of it.

[1666] And then the much greater truth of the universe is story.

[1667] and I don't ever think of it again.

[1668] Oh, interesting.

[1669] That was my experience.

[1670] And I think for me it was really a paradigm breaker.

[1671] That to me was a paradigm shifter.

[1672] I'm just curious of that at all was illuminating to you at all like, oh, this doesn't matter nearly as much as I would have guessed.

[1673] Or were you already there?

[1674] I was already there, but also, we're not doing colorblind cancer.

[1675] Right, exactly.

[1676] It's all very color conscious.

[1677] Yes.

[1678] I loved the underpinnings of why he cast it the way he did.

[1679] And, you know, he was like, these would be the revolutionaries of our day.

[1680] And I thought that was brilliant.

[1681] It was thoughtful, yeah.

[1682] Yeah, it was brilliant.

[1683] And it also made it possible to view it from several lenses.

[1684] But enjoying the concept of seeing these people of color, these powerful men on stage.

[1685] It was kind of spectacular.

[1686] Yeah.

[1687] He was saying the reason he wrote a hip -hop musical because he was like the black and Latino men would be the revolutionaries of the day.

[1688] Right.

[1689] Yeah.

[1690] And I thought that was a very cool.

[1691] Yeah.

[1692] Also, I mean, there have been all these things that said that Charlotte was a woman of color.

[1693] There's no definitive.

[1694] We don't have any DNA going on.

[1695] And that's interesting to me. I was like, we'll take that detail and we'll say what if.

[1696] Like, what if that was true?

[1697] Well, I like it because she's a double fish out of water.

[1698] So she's coming from a tiny little region in Germany, I guess.

[1699] And she's already betrothed to someone she's never met.

[1700] That's very fish out of water.

[1701] And then also people are concerned she's darker than they were expecting.

[1702] So now there's also a race fish out of water.

[1703] Yeah.

[1704] I love the moment when she tries to rub her skin, like rub, see if the color will come off.

[1705] Oh, we've all done it.

[1706] Yeah, and it was just such a great moment for me because I was like, we're going there.

[1707] Like, this is not going to be the show that pretends everything, something.

[1708] We're going there.

[1709] Yeah.

[1710] Right.

[1711] It's really good and it's really romantic.

[1712] And the cast is very dreamy.

[1713] They're really talented, too.

[1714] They're pretty great.

[1715] Does your anxiety go?

[1716] We already talked, you love casting, which is great.

[1717] But does it get more stressful when you're going with young performers?

[1718] Is it up it or no?

[1719] No, I mean, I think that's kind of what I've always been doing.

[1720] There's a lot of casting people who have never really done much, before.

[1721] Yeah, there's Julie, whatever name is that you cast, Anderson.

[1722] Julie Andrews.

[1723] Yeah, it's a fresh thing.

[1724] Fresh voice.

[1725] Hey, she's always fresh.

[1726] She's fantastic.

[1727] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1728] But truly, the woman who plays young lady Danbury, this is her first job out of school.

[1729] Really?

[1730] A lot of them, these are like their first big jobs.

[1731] Yeah, that's fun.

[1732] Can you live vicariously?

[1733] Like, as we already just discussed, I think that I haven't been able to experience my triumphs in a way I fantasized about.

[1734] But weirdly, I can definitely vice.

[1735] vicariously enjoy other people.

[1736] Yes.

[1737] I'm excited for what's going to happen to this group, but also, yeah, it's always been that thing.

[1738] I mean, in the beginning, it was shocking.

[1739] I was like, what's happening to them?

[1740] Yeah.

[1741] But later on, you could really say.

[1742] It's happening to them.

[1743] Things were happening to a lot of them.

[1744] There's so much attention on them.

[1745] Yeah, crazy attention.

[1746] And in the beginning, it was, for all of us, it was scary and confusing.

[1747] But as later years went on, I could say to them, before things aired, okay, here's what's going to happen.

[1748] And here's the person who did it before you, who you should talk to.

[1749] Like Carrie talked to Ellen, you know, Janely talked to Carrie.

[1750] It was that thing of them.

[1751] The actors, yeah.

[1752] Of just sharing with them, this is what it's going to feel like.

[1753] And it's been interesting that we've had to do that.

[1754] But with this cast, I was like, this is going to be big.

[1755] Yeah.

[1756] The entire country of Germany will see you in the total numbers.

[1757] Well, it's so exciting.

[1758] And I'm really impressed that you went into basically a completely different landscape with different fences and that you have found a rhythm there that is huge.

[1759] Impressive.

[1760] It's pretty wild.

[1761] I'm having fun, which is great.

[1762] Is it the reduced episode number that allows it to now be more manageable?

[1763] Or are you just at a phase in your life where you finally?

[1764] Right.

[1765] I feel like I'm in a phase of my life where I'm not running on the treadmill of fear.

[1766] You're not strangleholding the thing.

[1767] And now I'm able to just put it out there and enjoy it.

[1768] Like I'm no longer like this will be the end of me. It's just like I hope people like this and that's been amazing.

[1769] Yes.

[1770] It's a crazy feeling because I've truly never felt this way before.

[1771] Yeah.

[1772] That's wonderful.

[1773] Yeah.

[1774] Last question.

[1775] Do you ever worry about your hunger?

[1776] To keep doing this?

[1777] Yeah.

[1778] Because I look at you and I'm like, of all the things one could be impressed with, to me, I think more the stamina is the thing I'm pretty shocked by.

[1779] There was a moment when I was like, I'm moving to Connecticut and I announced everybody I was retiring.

[1780] Everybody patted my head and they're like, yeah.

[1781] Talk to you in nine weeks.

[1782] But for me, it's more about the fact that I have stories to tell still.

[1783] As long as I have stories to tell that I'm excited about, then we're going to tell them.

[1784] I am not going to just tell a story because I'm supposed to be putting something out.

[1785] And I feel like I've earned that to just get to relax in it.

[1786] So now it's really fun.

[1787] I'm not chasing a calendar.

[1788] I'm not afraid of anything happening.

[1789] And now it's just, oh, that sounds like a great story.

[1790] I'll tell it.

[1791] You avail yourself to inspiration.

[1792] And when it hits, you act.

[1793] And when it doesn't, you don't.

[1794] And it's a place I never thought I would get to.

[1795] Well, you earned it.

[1796] I hope so.

[1797] I mean, it's going there.

[1798] Well, we started intimidated by you.

[1799] And although I still am, it's just bored by me. No, we talked sex scenes.

[1800] Yeah, yeah, no. It has gotten to a manageable level.

[1801] So I thank you for that.

[1802] Your personal, personal ability, personal?

[1803] That's not a word.

[1804] Affability.

[1805] Yeah, I'm really flattered.

[1806] You came to talk to us.

[1807] This has been really, really interesting.

[1808] And I wish you a ton of luck on Queen Charlotte.

[1809] I watched it.

[1810] I loved it.

[1811] It's very romantic.

[1812] I felt very butterfly.

[1813] It made me feel young.

[1814] You're going to add yourself to the list of people who watched Bridgeton in one day.

[1815] I'm probably going to have to get merch.

[1816] Is there merch?

[1817] There's always merch.

[1818] Okay.

[1819] There's times of merch.

[1820] Well, Shonda, what a pleasure meeting you.

[1821] Thanks so much for coming.

[1822] Thank you for having me. I feel honored.

[1823] Wonderful.

[1824] Everybody watch Queen Charlotte on Netflix.

[1825] It'll be out now.

[1826] So enjoy it.

[1827] Do you have a preference if people plow through it in a day or two or they take their time?

[1828] Do you care?

[1829] It's made to be binge -watched.

[1830] I feel like, yeah.

[1831] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1832] That's the other thing that's fun.

[1833] Yeah.

[1834] Okay.

[1835] So sit down, clear out your schedule and go for a romantic.

[1836] engaging ride through 1800s England.

[1837] Great to meet you.

[1838] Thanks so much for our...

[1839] Wonderful to meet you.

[1840] And everybody watch Queen Charlotte.

[1841] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1842] Are you fixing your part?

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] With headphones on?

[1845] You have a part you like?

[1846] No. I didn't think you did.

[1847] That's what was so weird about watching that.

[1848] I used...

[1849] I did.

[1850] I have a side part.

[1851] That's my normal.

[1852] I know it's like out.

[1853] Is it?

[1854] Yeah.

[1855] You're supposed to have a middle part?

[1856] Yeah.

[1857] Oh.

[1858] But my face looks best on a side part, I think.

[1859] That's what I think.

[1860] So I always have a side part kind of extreme.

[1861] Hmm.

[1862] And then a couple of people who've done my hair professionals have been like, okay, you have a side part, right?

[1863] And I'm like, yeah.

[1864] And so they'll start on the other side and like, oh, no, it's this side.

[1865] And they're like, oh, and I can tell that maybe it's wrong.

[1866] They think it should be the other way.

[1867] Yes.

[1868] I've had the same thing.

[1869] by the way.

[1870] Enough that I thought I should try the other side.

[1871] Oh, interesting.

[1872] So then I switched.

[1873] Wow, this is a big, this is like an identity shatterer.

[1874] This was a while ago, but I switched to the other side, and then this is a ding, ding, ding.

[1875] Because a couple days ago, I was looking in the mirror, I was messing with my hair, and I couldn't remember where your part is.

[1876] What's the original versus what's the new?

[1877] I don't even know.

[1878] And you're looking in a mirror and it's opposite.

[1879] Now you're all Skaddywompus.

[1880] And I've been also I toy with the middle parts sometimes but I just don't think my face looks good in it.

[1881] I would love to evaluate that.

[1882] Okay, right now?

[1883] I want to be a part of it.

[1884] I guess we could do it right now.

[1885] Okay.

[1886] Yeah, I was gonna say like give me a picture of you with a middle part.

[1887] I mean, my hair's a little it's a little greasy right now.

[1888] Yeah, that's nice though.

[1889] It's nice to have all over is.

[1890] Well, you know who has middle parts?

[1891] Who?

[1892] Eric, Kate and Ashley.

[1893] Oh, that one.

[1894] Well, no, it just like is.

[1895] People think side parts are for millennials, which I am one.

[1896] Okay.

[1897] Okay, I think it's sort of middle right now.

[1898] It's middle -ish.

[1899] Let me see.

[1900] But I didn't.

[1901] I'm trying to think of AI would even go like, oh, she has it.

[1902] I think I would.

[1903] You'd go what?

[1904] I think I would notice that you were parted it in the middle now that you've done it.

[1905] Okay.

[1906] As you were fuzzing with it and grooming it with your fingernails.

[1907] So it's not perfect.

[1908] It's not perfect right now.

[1909] Yeah.

[1910] But it is Diff, and I like it.

[1911] You do?

[1912] I do, yeah, yeah.

[1913] Oh, wow.

[1914] Okay, let me, now close your eyes.

[1915] Okay.

[1916] Just like waiting for a...

[1917] What?

[1918] You get slapped in the face.

[1919] You, fucking, the rascal's going to throw a bucket of water over my head while you're doing this.

[1920] This whole thing was a long game set up.

[1921] Okay, open, open, open.

[1922] Oh, yeah, open up a bag of lays.

[1923] Oh, I've farted.

[1924] Oh, that would have been a great time to do it.

[1925] Yeah, cook some broccoli real quick.

[1926] Time when we're doing...

[1927] Now I can open?

[1928] Yeah.

[1929] That's great too.

[1930] I can see where it's hard to decide.

[1931] But if I open your eyes and your head was shaved.

[1932] I'll scream like there was a ghost in the room.

[1933] Okay, this is fun.

[1934] Oh.

[1935] See?

[1936] You don't like this one?

[1937] No, I just...

[1938] I know what you've done.

[1939] You've now gone to the other side for a part.

[1940] Yeah.

[1941] I've done now middle and both side part.

[1942] Truly, they all look great.

[1943] You look great.

[1944] No, no, no, I'm not fucking bullshitting you.

[1945] You look beautiful on all three versions.

[1946] Thank you.

[1947] I guess the side part from the other side seemed more natural to you.

[1948] That felt more familiar.

[1949] Right.

[1950] Which side is it?

[1951] I don't know.

[1952] We know.

[1953] I think it was the second option.

[1954] Was your standard part?

[1955] Was my original?

[1956] Uh -huh.

[1957] Your O -P.

[1958] Yeah.

[1959] Not OPP.

[1960] O -P original part, not other people's pussies.

[1961] Ew.

[1962] That's the same.

[1963] You down with OPP?

[1964] Yeah, you know me. You down with OPP?

[1965] What, Chris Cross?

[1966] That's what it meant?

[1967] Or that might even be, it might not be Christopher Cross.

[1968] It's naughty by nature.

[1969] Naughty by nature.

[1970] If you name your group, naughty by nature, you're damn right.

[1971] You're going to get a song OPP.

[1972] I didn't know that's what it was saying.

[1973] That's what I was always told.

[1974] Don't sue me naughty by nature.

[1975] Speaking of, we got to give a big shout out.

[1976] I know you guys are watching it too.

[1977] Jury duty.

[1978] I'm not watching it.

[1979] Oh, you're not?

[1980] No, no, no. We started the first.

[1981] episode but then through I don't even know what twist and turns we're into the diplomat I'm watching that it's really good yeah I like it I love Carrie Russell she's so fucking good well Kristen sent us all a text about jury duty here's my issue of jury duty and you can help me understand it so the premise of jury duty is yes without giving too much away but this is this is the very like you turn it on you're going to learn this immediately, is that someone thinks they're an actual juror in a real trial in everyone else's actors, the judge, the other jurors, the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs, I get so distracted with figuring out whether I believe it or not because they're filming something.

[1982] There's got to be food breaks.

[1983] There's got to be crafty.

[1984] It's also, they're saying they're making a documentary.

[1985] Okay, but that would explain people like all the actors having lunch and holding rooms.

[1986] Okay.

[1987] But you believe it.

[1988] Uh -huh.

[1989] I'm distracted by whether I think that could be pulled off and whether that person's playing along.

[1990] And then, you know, I get really distracted by that whole.

[1991] You know what I can't be duped.

[1992] Yeah.

[1993] What was the bias, the make a fool of?

[1994] No, the one that the woman came and explained to us, the made a fool of.

[1995] I won't be made a fool of.

[1996] Oh, right.

[1997] Do you remember that bias?

[1998] Yeah.

[1999] Oh, she called it, um, full bias.

[2000] Yeah, it was called full bias.

[2001] The little blonde guy in it, the beard.

[2002] Yeah.

[2003] He does our, um, so doodle boy does the drawings for Aramptor Notamus.

[2004] Yeah?

[2005] He's the guy that assembles it.

[2006] No. For us as little animations.

[2007] Are you kidding me?

[2008] Yeah, David Brown's his name.

[2009] He's like a video editor.

[2010] He's so funny.

[2011] Is he?

[2012] And so, well, oh my God.

[2013] I can't, the problem is I really can't give very much away.

[2014] You don't want to ruin it for anyone.

[2015] But you love it.

[2016] I loved it.

[2017] I laughed so hard.

[2018] And it can only work because this person is a unicorn?

[2019] Yes, like a very good person.

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] And he's also.

[2022] And tall and white and handsome.

[2023] So you don't also feel...

[2024] Feel bad for him.

[2025] Yes.

[2026] Yeah, why would you?

[2027] Also, you don't because people are like, no one's mean to him or anything.

[2028] Right, he's not getting physically abused or anything.

[2029] It's so funny.

[2030] And then I looked him up.

[2031] We've looked, yesterday we looked him up on Instagram.

[2032] And it's so cute.

[2033] Seeing him...

[2034] Navigate being a star now?

[2035] Yeah, and not a star.

[2036] Well, it's a huge...

[2037] I mean, everyone I know told me to watch it.

[2038] It's definitely going through our group.

[2039] It is.

[2040] But you see, like, the first, all of his posts, like up until this, are solar panels because he installs solar panels.

[2041] He loves solar.

[2042] And it's just, he's great.

[2043] He's great.

[2044] And the actors are insanely good.

[2045] I guess the judge is Ike's dad.

[2046] I thought so, because they said Barron Holtz.

[2047] Yeah.

[2048] I love the judge.

[2049] I was buying him big time when I was watching it.

[2050] I was doing a great job.

[2051] It's also because James Marsden is in it as himself.

[2052] Yes.

[2053] And he's like.

[2054] He's so good.

[2055] Aging on his face so bad.

[2056] Like the sword he's falling on to perpetuate this bit.

[2057] He's making himself out to be the worst.

[2058] Yes.

[2059] Yeah, yeah.

[2060] Like such an actor's actor.

[2061] But that was another thing.

[2062] I was like, this guy is being so rude to James Marsden.

[2063] No, he was so nice to him.

[2064] No, he's like, oh, I didn't even know you're in that.

[2065] You're in that?

[2066] like that kind of stuff and i was like god would he really say that you have to keep what i mean he ends up like helping him with this audition oh wow oh my gosh okay all right well i'm gonna i'm gonna continue i'm just saying and this is no fault of the show this is my own yes perverse obsession with am i being fooled totally and i just found myself so distracted by trying to figure out if this was legit or not but i'm gonna now continue on and just shut my mind up yeah if you can't mean I mean, you know, if you can, because I thought it was very funny.

[2067] They're calling Ike's dad, a Nepo dad.

[2068] Oh, man. This is a ding, ding, ding, because this is for Shonda Rhymes.

[2069] Because Shonda is a TV showrunner.

[2070] Oh, good job.

[2071] She works in entertainment.

[2072] That's right.

[2073] Yeah.

[2074] Most people we interview are in show business.

[2075] But not show runners.

[2076] In fact, that is one thing.

[2077] We have Catam's and then her, which is not normal for us.

[2078] To have back -to -back showrunners, yeah.

[2079] Right.

[2080] Yeah, we've only had three or four.

[2081] Yeah, not very many.

[2082] Yeah, we've had Scher, McElhenney, Rhymes, and Catam's.

[2083] And that's it.

[2084] Okay, well, I want to tell you about my trip.

[2085] I want to hear about that, yes.

[2086] Yes, so I, well, the whole family went up to my nieces.

[2087] I have three nieces from my brother.

[2088] Yes.

[2089] And the oldest one got married.

[2090] Yeah.

[2091] And first of all, just scheduling, it was challenging to get up to Oregon for whatever reason.

[2092] So wake up super early, the kids, blah, they don't know.

[2093] We're going to a wedding.

[2094] You know, we've never flown anywhere to go to a wedding.

[2095] They're so fun.

[2096] Well, I don't love weddings for a few reasons.

[2097] one the actual ceremony can be really long sometimes sometimes it's like it becomes bible study sure you got a super religious person wedding them and you got to listen to many many psalms and all this stuff and i just personally don't love that yeah sometimes i'm uncomfortable then i don't drink so that big gap between cocktail hour yes is like so long i just want to get to the table sure and then generally food's pretty bad at weddings we all accept that that's just part for the course i'm dressed up blah blah blah blah you know i got my issue people get pretty hammered at these things sometimes all and all i'm like i don't go into it thinking i'm going to have a bad time but i also am not excited to go to a wedding right okay this wedding was fantastic i think it might be the best wedding i've ever gone to wonderful we have the best time ever good the girls it's so interesting i'm really really currently fascinated with this phenomenon which is sadly our kids have grown up without a lot of family around because we live in LA and the only person here is their aunt Titi and thank God she's here so they have an aunt that is around nonstop and that's lovely but the extended family stuff is like maybe once a year this or that well we arrive at the wedding and my kids well one of them shy and one of them will could fucking become best friends with anybody right right but even the shy one is immediately something weird happens around family like they understand they're their cousins these are Even my uncle Rob, who they really don't have any memory of meaning, they're so comfortable with him right away.

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] It's something about knowing he's our uncle.

[2100] Huh.

[2101] And they had the time of their life at this wedding.

[2102] They were running around and they were with all these different family members.

[2103] And then I'm witnessing my fucking brother.

[2104] Yeah.

[2105] How sweet.

[2106] Oh, my God.

[2107] Even his little girl away.

[2108] Oh, my God.

[2109] my brother I just stared at him the whole night Yeah Was he so happy He was all the things Monica And then he had to make a speech Oh Well so the groom's parents Make a speech Sean's parents And then Sadie is my niece And then Sadie's parents My brother And sister -in -law make a speech Tammy's dynamite What a public speaker Not a shock She's a manager Of these different stores She's just so extrovert She's very easy to talk too and yeah very confident it's great she does an incredible job my brother gets up there and he tries to start talking he's already full -blown crying and he's a little embarrassed about it and i am so proud of him yeah for being emotional and i am cheering for him fuck yes this is what it's all about and it is what it's all about it's what if you're lucky enough your life is about he is absolutely incapacitated with emotion, which is the most beautiful thing to witness.

[2110] But even within the crying, he ends up pulling off this beautiful speech.

[2111] And he says, my three girls are my moon, my stars, and my son.

[2112] And Sadie's my son.

[2113] And he said, I'm afraid I can't give you my son, but I'll let you have Sadie to be your world.

[2114] Oh, David.

[2115] fucking tore up by them.

[2116] Monica, this fucking speech was a, it was an 11 out of 10.

[2117] He's crying.

[2118] He's laughing.

[2119] He's like, it's just so wonderful.

[2120] He comes and he sits down.

[2121] He's just a fucking mess.

[2122] And we were sitting next to each other, which was what I was so grateful that we got seated next to each other.

[2123] We spent the whole night chatting and being brothers and it was beautiful.

[2124] And it was just so fun.

[2125] And then we dance and the girls dance nonstop.

[2126] And they just had this level of safety I could feel them having.

[2127] And we left and we were walking through the parking lot.

[2128] And I said to Kristen, we don't get a lot of it.

[2129] But when you have that family experience and it's one of the good ones, it's like it's just beautiful.

[2130] You see this whole chain of people raising other people.

[2131] And, you know, for me, it's like I spent the first half of my life being at those functions, watching other people's dads make these speeches.

[2132] And now it's like my brother's making the speech.

[2133] I will soon be making this speech.

[2134] Life is evolving and everyone's going on the journey that is life.

[2135] I don't know.

[2136] It was beautiful.

[2137] And I was walking in the car and I said, you know, something feels right.

[2138] There's something about that feeling that's so unique.

[2139] It's like the family is at harmony and we have each other and we love each other for life.

[2140] And it's, I could only describe it as like there's just this little netting around my insides.

[2141] that gives me the most content feeling.

[2142] So it was just a wonderful, wonderful trip.

[2143] And it made me so grateful for my family.

[2144] That's lovely.

[2145] And so happy for my brother.

[2146] Carly went, I assume.

[2147] Oh, yeah.

[2148] Carly went a couple days before us.

[2149] She very much helped.

[2150] She did everyone's hair for the wedding.

[2151] She was busy, busy, busy.

[2152] She cut my mom's boyfriend's hair, gave my hair cut right before.

[2153] Your mom is a boyfriend?

[2154] Yes, she has a boyfriend.

[2155] Yeah, I'm trying to think if she wouldn't give a fuck.

[2156] Yeah, she's got a boyfriend.

[2157] First time I've ever met him.

[2158] Mm -hmm.

[2159] Lovely guy.

[2160] He reminded me of Walter Mathau playing Einstein.

[2161] Whoa.

[2162] And he got on the dance floor and he let it rip.

[2163] Wow.

[2164] And he loves dancing.

[2165] It was very cute to see this older man, particularly his hips were on fire.

[2166] Old men don't generally dance with their hips.

[2167] It makes me know he was an incredible dancer when he was younger.

[2168] Oh, wow.

[2169] Because he was still fucking moving, hardcore.

[2170] That's exciting.

[2171] Yeah, yeah.

[2172] Well, good.

[2173] I'm glad it was.

[2174] It was a heartwarming trip.

[2175] It was.

[2176] I also drove a monster truck since we last talked.

[2177] Oh, yeah.

[2178] You guys went on a date.

[2179] Yeah, we went and drove monster trucks, which was, you know, my birthday present every year on January 2nd was tickets to the truck polls, which always came into town early January to the Silver Dome.

[2180] And at the truck polls, the intermission show was monster trucks.

[2181] They were brand new and they drove over cars and stuff.

[2182] And I love Bigfoot, and I had posters.

[2183] and all this stuff.

[2184] That was my first motorsports to love was the truck pulls and monster trucks.

[2185] Yeah.

[2186] And to buckle into one and be told how to drive it and then be turned loose, it was...

[2187] Fun?

[2188] Yes, absolutely.

[2189] I was in an arena, flooring it in a monster truck.

[2190] How fast do they go?

[2191] That's a great question.

[2192] I don't know.

[2193] They're only two speeds, and the arena's short, but they're 1 ,500 horsepower.

[2194] They have got a lot of motor.

[2195] Wow.

[2196] And when you punch it, it is so loud because the exhaust is right next to your head and the motor is right behind your head.

[2197] It is a thrilling experience.

[2198] A whole thing like goes up in the air in the front.

[2199] Oh, my God.

[2200] It's wild.

[2201] I don't know how they're doing flips in them and all the shit they do in them.

[2202] It's incredible.

[2203] Wow.

[2204] Shout out to Monster Jam.

[2205] If you get a chance to go see Monster Jam in your life, you have to take it up.

[2206] It's so fun.

[2207] Yeah.

[2208] Okay.

[2209] Okay, so Shonda.

[2210] Now, I just wanted to, because in case, just in case, people are going to be mad that she didn't say where she lives.

[2211] She did say, I just cut it.

[2212] Oh, okay, great, great.

[2213] Because I felt, I just felt that she didn't really want to say it, but she did.

[2214] And then she doesn't need to say it.

[2215] Tulsa.

[2216] Tulsa, Oklahoma.

[2217] If you're in Tulsa, look for it.

[2218] She's there.

[2219] The main fact was how many scripts has Shonda written?

[2220] Oh, right.

[2221] You were supposed to compile.

[2222] You've been counting since the end of the video.

[2223] Oh, my God.

[2224] Oh, my God.

[2225] Have you done this?

[2226] No, I haven't.

[2227] I haven't.

[2228] Are you going to try to do it real time right now?

[2229] Yeah, I'm going to do a list.

[2230] Well, can you just go to writing credits on IMDB?

[2231] Yes, I can multiply that by 60.

[2232] Brett, she hasn't written every episode.

[2233] So that's where things get.

[2234] But she doesn't get a writing credit unless she's written the episode.

[2235] Well, no, because on IMDB versus this other thing.

[2236] I did try to do some stuff on this wiki.

[2237] It does have it listed for the first few seasons of grays.

[2238] Okay.

[2239] Of like how many.

[2240] But then on IMDB.

[2241] It credits her with every single episode.

[2242] It has, it has writer 23.

[2243] But then when you click it, it just has like station 19, 93 episodes, which obviously, you know.

[2244] Like it hasn't listed, although this isn't pro.

[2245] Okay.

[2246] So maybe pro would be better, but Grey's Anatomy, 404 episodes.

[2247] But obviously she did.

[2248] How many did she write?

[2249] Well, even if she only wrote 23, one -hour episodes, that would be 1 ,80 pages she's typed.

[2250] That's too many pages.

[2251] That's a lot.

[2252] Okay, we tried to say the name Serino de Bergerac.

[2253] We couldn't really.

[2254] I was mostly, whenever I think of Serenow, I go straight to the movie Roxanne with Steve Martin.

[2255] Where his nose grew.

[2256] He had a really long nose.

[2257] And then it's such a good concept.

[2258] And then what is the concept?

[2259] The concept is, is one guy speaking through another guy.

[2260] So in this case, Steve Martin, with this preposterously long prosthetic nose, doesn't think this girl will like him.

[2261] Right.

[2262] His buddy, he's a firefighter.

[2263] And then a younger firefighter gets a date with the girl he's in love with.

[2264] But he's so nervous and he doesn't know how to talk to women.

[2265] So he starts, they work out a system where he's going to have a little.

[2266] earpiece in and Steve Martin will tell him what to say.

[2267] Well, so then the woman falls in love with basically Steve Martin's words.

[2268] Right.

[2269] Because it's a play.

[2270] Well, it's originally what, a Greek or Latin?

[2271] It's a play written in 1897 by Edmund Ross Stand.

[2272] Fictionalization following the broad outlines of Cyrano de Bergerac's life.

[2273] He was, he wasn't author.

[2274] Okay.

[2275] But Roxanne is a big character, obviously.

[2276] it's a very common theme that gets explored whether you're posing as someone else but it's all about like this is my voice but you've got it confused yeah it's well worn also um it says that it's responsible for introducing the word panash oh panash into the english language he has a lot of panash that means he's smooth right i think so yeah okay shonda's parent's sex life i didn't check in so i have no updates why not she's seemed pretty private, and I didn't really think that asking for her parents' number felt appropriate.

[2277] About the second wave of children.

[2278] Yeah.

[2279] Yeah, the horniness.

[2280] Yeah, the level of horniness.

[2281] Life is long and life is short, but life is long.

[2282] So I'm not going to make a declaration but I'm going to make a declaration.

[2283] Okay.

[2284] There'll be no second round for me. Yeah, well, you have a vasectomy.

[2285] That's right.

[2286] I mean, I guess they can be reversed with some accuracy.

[2287] But yeah, I think as a maybe I started late.

[2288] a 38 -year -old first -time dad.

[2289] So when the second round be, when I'm 65, I can barely keep up at 48.

[2290] You'd be like 60 probably.

[2291] Mm -hmm.

[2292] I'm tired.

[2293] I feel tired just thinking about that.

[2294] Okay, so it's not for you.

[2295] No. And I need to be an inner coastal waterway captain in my life.

[2296] Yeah, you're trying to fit that in.

[2297] Yeah, I got to be a seaman, an explorer.

[2298] Of the waterways.

[2299] But maybe you could have...

[2300] Fun not intended because I don't want to be a seaman.

[2301] Right.

[2302] I want to be a seaman.

[2303] Right.

[2304] Yeah.

[2305] But maybe you could have a little buddy with you, a little sea buddy.

[2306] Oh, a little captain.

[2307] Yeah.

[2308] A little hat.

[2309] A little capy.

[2310] Yeah.

[2311] Before he or she needs to go to school and has time to tour the waterways of America.

[2312] Yeah.

[2313] And he's going to wear the outfit.

[2314] Oh, my God.

[2315] A little skipper.

[2316] Let a little guy drive.

[2317] Take a nap up, front.

[2318] Wake up when we crash into some pylons.

[2319] Tell him not to worry.

[2320] about it happens to everybody honest mistake let's get a new boat we got some lying to do to the insurance company but we can get through that it's good life lesson you're gonna have to lie eventually yeah got to practice now might as well practice now oh man all right that's really it is Oprah the first female black billionaire yes yes yes Anna said but I thought this was very sweet so Anna was outside with Kristen when Shonda left Yeah.

[2321] And Anna has worked on all her shows.

[2322] As a PA.

[2323] Not all, but several, right?

[2324] A lot.

[2325] A lot.

[2326] Scandal.

[2327] Gray's?

[2328] Gray's scandal, how to get away with murder.

[2329] Yeah.

[2330] I said, oh, Anna, like, come meet her.

[2331] And she did.

[2332] And then later she said, she's a huge part of why I moved here and why I wanted to be in work in the industry.

[2333] That's lovely that she was inspirational like that.

[2334] I know.

[2335] I don't want to say this because I'm worried how you're going to feel, but it would feel unethical to not give her credit for it.

[2336] But she did send a beautiful arrangement of flowers or it's a plant.

[2337] Lovely.

[2338] Maybe orchid or something.

[2339] It's in dirt.

[2340] It's going to grow.

[2341] It's not a one and done.

[2342] Great.

[2343] So I don't know if she sent you some, so I'm afraid to say that.

[2344] But I think it's very classy that she's.

[2345] sent flowers afterwards and I felt very flattered.

[2346] Yeah, you should.

[2347] Are you upset?

[2348] No. But I liked her.

[2349] I loved her.

[2350] I like her so much.

[2351] And I like, particularly I like when shy people win.

[2352] That's a very up front, like out in front job.

[2353] Pitching is, look, my dad was a car salesman.

[2354] My first sales job was at 14 working for him.

[2355] I've been calling, cold calling people on the phone, trying to raise money for fucking dare shit.

[2356] Like, I've been selling since I was a kid.

[2357] And even I walking into a network to pitch, it's very stressful.

[2358] To be shy and not in sales, it's almost cruel that that's a part of a writer's life.

[2359] I know, I know.

[2360] So I'm just really blown away when someone can push through that.

[2361] Yeah.

[2362] You know how bad you want to want something to have that disposition and go, I'm going to have to go like a carpet salesman or a vacuum cleaner salesman.

[2363] Yeah, and get so outside of my comfort zone.

[2364] Yeah, you're right.

[2365] So I really like it.

[2366] I'm really proud of people.

[2367] Like when McElheny has a show, you're like, yeah, duh, that motherfucker can't wait to sell somebody something.

[2368] Right.

[2369] But Catom's, her, these really sweet, thoughtful writers that have to rise to that challenge.

[2370] I'm very impressed with it.

[2371] That's very, that's really true.

[2372] It should be hopeful.

[2373] Like picture Emily Dickinson having to pitch a studio.

[2374] She couldn't leave her bedroom, one of our best writers ever.

[2375] Well, luckily there's Zoom now.

[2376] She would work well now.

[2377] Emily?

[2378] Yeah.

[2379] I think she just sat in her bedroom and lived in her mind, Emily.

[2380] Dickinson?

[2381] Yeah, that's right.

[2382] I think because Charles Dickens.

[2383] Oh.

[2384] I get nervous when I say Dickinson.

[2385] Dixon.

[2386] You can also say Dixonian for Dickens.

[2387] For Dickens, yeah.

[2388] You're right.

[2389] It is all getting confusing.

[2390] Emily Dickinson, the Bronte sisters.

[2391] Oh, who are the Bronte sisters?

[2392] Charlotte Bronte and they're also of that ilk.

[2393] Oh, okay, wonderful.

[2394] Writers of that time.

[2395] E. E. E. Cummys, lowercase, lower case, lower case.

[2396] All right, well, I love Shonda.

[2397] Yes, that was a big get.

[2398] I've been trying to get her for a long time.

[2399] Tried to get her on this show for a long time.

[2400] Tried to get her on, we are supported by, I've tried.

[2401] You've tried it.

[2402] She wasn't ready until now because now she's saying, Makes me think maybe Mindy's next.

[2403] Oh, that'd be great.

[2404] You can't wait to sink your teeth into Mindy, huh?

[2405] Is she doing a side part or a middle part these days?

[2406] Mins.

[2407] Mindy's doing a middle.

[2408] Middle part.

[2409] You know that.

[2410] That's incredible.

[2411] Yeah, because I follow her on Instagram.

[2412] I looked at Rob less than a minute and a half ago.

[2413] I'm not going to look at him right now.

[2414] I don't know if he's wearing a hat.

[2415] If his hair is out, I don't know where he's.

[2416] his hair is parted.

[2417] Nobody's going to like this, but I don't either.

[2418] Wait, I don't, I do think he's wearing a hat today.

[2419] Yes.

[2420] And wear a hat, like, almost ever.

[2421] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2422] And it's getting long and back.

[2423] Of course, when I see it, I know what it is.

[2424] But I don't know what anyone's hair is.

[2425] That wasn't to isolate.

[2426] Oh, my God, yes.

[2427] Let's see.

[2428] Bravo the middle part.

[2429] Which makes you a burnout immediately, right?

[2430] Your hair won't even go in the middle.

[2431] It's kind of like a 60 -40 split, like a bench.

[2432] seat you still look cute yeah well we've had a real visual check in this episode yeah great for podcasting all right love you follow armchair expert on the wondry app amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to every episode of armchair expert early and ad free right now by joining wondery plus in the wondery app or on apple podcasts before you go tells about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.