Sharon Horgan

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

I'm Dan Horgan and I'm joined by Monica Sharon.

Hello.

Hello.

I sure hope people are as obsessed with Sharon as I am.

When I saw Bad Sisters, I was like,

this person intrigues me to no end.

Yeah.

And then only to find out she had created the show and wrote on it

is incredible.

Sharon Horgan is an Emmy-nominated actor, writer, director, and producer.

Bad Sisters, Catastrophe, Motherland, Together, This Way Up.

And she's in the new limited series on Hulu, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.

Yes, if you listen to that episode, you will have heard about Sharon as well.

We've never interviewed someone who's created this many TV shows, and we've interviewed some famous showrunners.

that's true she's the most prolific

oh we did have shonda all right they're both

great women they're both great women we love women we don't need to make them compete we're not pitting a woman against a

body shame anyone that's right we're not doing it please enjoy sharon horgan

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I was gonna ask, because we were all just at the Emmys.

Yeah.

And are you still a little exhausted from that whole thing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How bad?

Well, I went to this mental party at the end of the night.

I mean, it was weird.

On Sunday night.

Yeah.

Without naming names, tell me what brand of mental was it I can't completely remember but I think it was these brothers and I think they just do it every year oh okay and so there was proper people there I fell over look you can see oh my goodness yeah that's a sign of a good evening yeah maybe I'll be like oh that's not gonna work because I stupidly decided to walk home you know when you get very like you know you get ambitious

oh i'm fine

and so i walked home and then went arts over tip but yeah it was these brothers and they do it every year apparently and he sort of remodeled his home to be be like a party house okay that was two nights ago so we're still still struggling still struggling have we started oh yeah yeah we're always starting does it matter that all my shit's just here we're like it yeah yeah as long as you're happy with it you dress so nice you can now pull off anything if you throw up at some point in this interview i have another engagement after okay

podcast because i didn't know whether to be casual or dress it up but because i got to be dressed up for this other thing it's just the whole thing of of coming over for the Emmy stuff is how many outfits you've got to pack.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And change into and put jewelry on and get your hair done.

How many days was this trip?

I arrived over on Friday.

Did you go on Saturday night or did you not?

I went out Friday night.

Oh, Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night.

Yeah.

So you're just barely with us.

And last night.

You went out last night.

Yeah, but last night was just eating pork chops and drinking water.

Okay.

And maybe just one dinner time

because i hadn't seen my friend for a long time did you go to the dunsmore no why are they pork chop well that's the only place i could think of that has pork chops no i went to sunset tower oh i love sunset they do a really good pork chop wow i was so obsessed with eating last night you know when there's like four things on the menu you want yes and there's this whole internal struggle and worry that you're going to pick the wrong thing yeah oh yeah but then i picked the right thing it was the pork chops and what did your friend get he got the filet mignon.

And did you sample that or you stuck with your porch?

I didn't, actually.

Did he want to try your porch?

I felt like even that was too complicated a move.

Okay.

You know, the splitting.

Just leaning over.

You were hanging on by a thread yesterday.

It's a little tiredness.

It's the jet lag.

I woke up at 4.30 a.m.

And then I went back.

to sleep for about half an hour at about 7.30.

Well, I did learn something about you in the story that you revealed accidentally or intentionally,

which is

so probably

a normal person, if they had had those three days and they had already had on the calendar, like, I got to meet Mike, it would have been like, Mike, I love you, but I really need to stay in bed all night tonight.

Yes.

But I've learned that if you tell someone you're going to be somewhere, come hell or high water, you're going to be there.

Absolutely.

He's my good pal, who I've known since I was 18.

And he's got three tiny children, all under five.

He doesn't get out much.

Exactly.

So I felt like if I'd canceled canceled he had scheduled it.

He probably had asked his wife two weeks ahead of time.

He doesn't have a wife, but like, yeah, got a babysitter.

Yeah.

I'm glad I did, but I warned him that I was going to be brilliant company, but it was fine.

Yeah.

Actually, the pork chop prevailed.

I mean, the pork chop was great.

It lifted you off, didn't it?

Yeah.

We did.

I mean, we really had

to do it.

Okay, so.

Quickly, you're one of five, two younger, two older.

Yeah.

I'm a middle child myself.

Are you?

I'm not middler, but I'm second eldest.

That's in the middle, my friend.

If you're not the oldest or the youngest, you're in the middle, right?

All right.

I'm one of three in the middle.

Yes.

Three in the middle.

You're one of the three middle.

Okay.

And then at four, you guys leave and go to Ireland.

Yeah.

And dad's.

Irish, but he's a Kiwi.

How did that happen?

He's a Kiwi, but he ended up in Ireland.

He moved to London from New Zealand when he was really young.

He left New Zealand when he was about 19 and worked on a ship to sort of travel the world and then ended up in London.

I met my mum.

My mum had traveled from the Styx in Ireland and this was at a time when women didn't really leave their rural environment to go looking for adventure.

And then they met in London at a Irish club because I think my dad had heard that Irish girls were a party, as we just learned.

I can't imagine you have a ton of memories living in London.

I've got a few.

You do?

Little, tiny.

Why?

Well, because my parents had a pub called The Whitethorn, and I remember it was one of those sort of East End pubs that had a piano and very sort of family feeling, but it was also an East End pub.

So lots of gangsters around and dodgy kind of vibe, which is why we got the hell out.

We lived upstairs above the pub.

I've got a

weird memory of Chinese takeaway.

A cat.

I've got like very sort of snapshots.

Yeah.

And I don't think it's just from photographs because back in the day, no one took any.

I think they're genuine memories from age three to four.

So when you go to Ireland and you go to southern Ireland.

Well, it was sort of southern Ireland.

I mean northern, southern Ireland.

Oh, okay, yeah.

But we were sort of in the center when we moved there first.

We got another pub.

This one was called the Green Kiwi.

We were there for a couple of years.

Can your dad handle his business?

Like when shit would break out in there?

Oh, he was so tough.

He was.

Oh, my God.

Oh, I love it.

Good not masculine.

Interesting.

Not what you associate with the Kiwis, but what you do associate with the Irish.

What?

The toughness?

I don't know about the Fisticuffs.

He just had a very strong

presence.

People admired him, stroke, occasionally feared him.

Sure, sure.

I don't think you could own a pub and be a pushover, right?

But even when he moved away from the whole publican business, he had a certain way of doing business.

Did you like that?

Did you feel safe by that presence?

When you were a kid, everything is embarrassing about your parents.

Right.

So

my dad was the kind of person who didn't give a shit what anyone thought of him.

In his clothes, in his manner.

Like if you were boring him, he'd walk off mid-sentence, you know.

How liberating.

Oh, my God.

It was awful when you're a kid.

You know, when he would take us to McDonald's for a treat and the server was being disinterested and stroke rude, he would call them out for it.

He would pick me up from school in a white van with a Rottweiler sitting in the front seat.

And he walked around in his farming jeans, rubber boots, bits of blood.

You know, he didn't give a shit.

Turkey parts.

But you know what?

I am that parent now.

It's so funny.

There's so many little things that I noticed that I have that he had.

It's maddening, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

It is.

It really is.

I became my dad.

God became him.

First, physically, I look in the mirror.

I'm like, oh, my God.

Yeah, my brother has the same.

My brother has the same thing.

And just all the same character defects, all the same getting into it with people, all this stuff.

And I'm like, oh my God, I hated him for this.

There were things that I didn't love, but there's things that when I think about it now, I'm like, well, it was great to have a dad that was a presence and that you felt like you couldn't mess with him.

Like he would have it out with parents outside the school if he had to.

He would just.

call people out.

And so I'm quite like that with my girls now.

And it's awful for them.

They love it.

I know.

We were at Target.

You're familiar with Target.

Yeah.

It's my daughter's favorite place when we come over here.

It's my daughter's.

She asked if she could sleep there.

We realized we had never taken them to a department store because we order things online.

Then it was COVID.

The first time she went into a Target, she was like seven and she was like, what's going on?

They have everything for sale is here.

Yeah.

And she wanted to sleep there.

She wanted to have a birthday party there.

Anyway,

I have this huge shopping cart on Saturday, and they have a little conveyor belt that'll take your cart down the stairs.

So you meet it at the bottom.

And a guy in front of me put his cart in and it takes off.

And then I put my cart in, I do it correctly.

It gets about six feet and then the whole thing shuts down.

And then this guy starts yelling at me.

He's like, well, you fucking broke the thing.

And I'm like, I didn't fucking break.

How am I going to break this thing?

What are you talking about?

Like, and I immediately get into it with this guy.

And then my older daughter is immediately like, Dad, shut up.

You're not doing this.

And I'm like, oh my God, this was me and my dad.

And I got to let this go that I'm being accused of breaking a machine.

It's pretty hard to.

It's like in your DNA, isn't it?

It's just like deep in your bones.

There's an injustice.

I've been accused of something I didn't do and I'm going to defend myself.

But at the expense of my daughter being like, oh my God, my dad is.

Embarrassing.

Yes.

How did he land in the turkey trade?

He wanted to get out of the.

Publican business.

I like that you call it publican.

We don't have that.

Publican.

That's what he is.

I like it.

That's the name of like a proprietor of a pub is a publican.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

He wanted to get out of that.

Because it wasn't financially great.

No, it was just, I'm sure some people would disagree, but it wasn't a great family environment.

Sure.

And I think my mom

disagree.

My mom was done cleaning out men's toilets and dad is very sociable.

And so

possibly

stayed a little late sometimes.

Yeah, yeah.

So they were like, let's get out of that.

Bruce was fatherhood.

Yeah.

So why turkey farming?

I think by that point, he had a good few kids and

he was just looking for a way to get us into a more rural environment, but also he wasn't trained in anything.

You know, like in London, he worked on the London Underground and he always was able to make money.

But I guess in Ireland, he was like, what do I do here?

I know something about him too now.

He doesn't do well with a boss.

No.

Right.

No.

So he owned one thing and he wanted to do another thing, but he had to be the boss of whatever thing.

So that limits your options.

No one could have told my dad what to do.

So he found this piece of land and it had these turkey sheds on it.

He wanted to build a house on this property where he found the turkey sheds, but there was nothing there.

There was no electricity.

So he managed to convince the local council that he was going to set up this business that was going to employ like a hundred local people.

And so they invested in putting all this infrastructure in.

But, you know, he didn't tell them that it would just be for like five days every Christmas.

My hunch is it employed six people full-time, five children.

Oh, yeah.

Your mom and him.

That's what we did.

We were taken out of school to work on the farm.

Gnarly business, though.

Yeah, it's nice when they're little chicks.

Sure, that's a very short period.

Not very long.

And they shit a tremendous amount, right?

What, more than most farm animals?

I just associate.

There's a lot of shit.

There's a lot of shit, right?

We have this problem in the States, which is we have all this chicken agriculture, and they don't know what to do with with all the shit and then it seeps into the Hudson Bay and it fucking gets rid of all the oxygen in the water.

So I just know we're having a hard time dealing with our chicken shit on an industrial scale.

I don't know what we did with that.

Were you shoveling a ton of it?

No, no, I was mainly plucking and, you know.

Did you kill them?

No, you didn't have to do that.

There was always just some man walking around with very loose jeans.

We were all just the plebs standing around waiting to pluck them.

And then this guy would just saunter over and like break a neck.

That's what I'm going to ask.

the mechanics or is it a shooting situation?

No, they just like drowning, shooting

just like up against the wall.

Do you overdose them?

No, I never killed a bird.

And did you eat a lot of turkey as a result of this?

I became a vegetarian very young because of that.

Yeah.

And you've stuck with that.

No, you had a pork chop the other day.

I did.

I lived with it for 16 years, though.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I got back into it.

Okay, so what age do you leave Ireland and go to London?

Because we have a similar trajectory, I think.

Really?

Yeah.

And then I think we started late.

I did.

We both graduated college in 2000, which was late.

I went to uni in Dublin, but I dropped out.

I didn't even finish my first year.

Let me ask really quick, what kind of kid were you?

Were you a troublemaker?

Were you a class clown?

Were you a popular girl?

Class clown.

Got myself in trouble, but wasn't a troublemaker.

Got myself in trouble because I was an idiot and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like got caught.

I was always sort of second to the popular girl.

I wanted to be friends with the popular girl and I would find a way in.

And what did you want to do?

Did you always want to be in?

No.

Well, actually, it was sort of a mix.

I ended up going to art college.

I didn't know what the job would be at the end of it.

All I wanted to do was go to art college.

Right.

And actually paint and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, paint and draw.

Were you any good at that?

I was okay for a little while, just not good enough.

So I think when I went to art college, I sort of realized my limitations and I found that really hard.

I couldn't find a way to sort of stand out or be the best in any way.

So I dropped out.

And then I went to London when I was 19, maybe nearly 20.

When you were, I'm moving to London.

And what was the fantasy at that time?

I'll just have a big city experience or I'll do the X Y or Z.

To make my fortune.

At that point, I'd started doing my acting classes in Dublin at the weekends and thinking, oh, I think I might like this.

And I had this slightly strange encounter with an Irish director called Jim Sheridan, who just came up to me in a cafe and said, I want you to audition for my film.

The famous Jim Sheridan.

The famous Jim Sheridan.

Wow.

So I went along and auditioned for that film and really failed badly, didn't get it.

But somehow, weirdly, it made me think, I want to not fail at that.

You're right.

So I went to London to sort of do that because there's a great fringe theater scene in London.

And I thought, that's the way I'll do it.

I'll get into fringe theater.

But I just wasn't that good good at pushing myself forward and I hadn't sort of found my confidence at that point.

So I got a job in a job center and I stayed there for six years.

Yeah, that was just a bit of a mistake.

I was doing other things, you know, I was like doing courses and trying to find a back routine.

Were you depressed?

I was going to say.

Yeah, it's depressing.

Yeah, it was very depressing.

But then I left there and that's when I went back to college and did my degree.

And you have a degree in English and American studies.

Yeah.

And did you learn a lot about America?

Do you think you know more about America than most Americans?

I don't know.

My brain doesn't retain.

It's just a pass-through.

It's awful.

So like with learning lines or I can keep five shows in my head at any time.

I've got great recall for that kind of thing.

But anything else, it's just gone immediately.

It's way easier to learn your lines when you've written them, don't you agree?

It's so much easier.

It's so easy.

I've done a few things that I wrote.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, I know the whole script, basically.

I know you have to look at it.

I know everyone else's lines into it.

Because I write lines how I think they make sense to me.

Yeah,

easier to learn.

My interests have changed and expanded a bit.

But at the time, I was just like, I got to get this degree because everyone else in my family had one.

And I was like, I just have to do this thing.

I was a good student, but I was also, I mean, ridiculously still.

class clowning it when I was

an older woman at the ridiculous at the college a ridiculous woman while you were at this college, then you meet Dennis Kelly, right?

Well, actually, no, I met Dennis.

It was just before

we were doing youth theater together.

Youth theater was just under 26, but it was around about the same time.

And you meet him, and he has already declared as I'm going to be a writer.

When I met him, he was concertine to mine Nina in the seagull.

So he was being an actor, but very quickly he realized that he wanted to be a writer.

But we had sort of parted ways and then we met each other one night in the pub, just like bumped into each other.

And he had written his first play.

And so I was just sort of astounded by this.

And that's what got me into the writing.

I was like, I want to write sketch comedy.

Then off the back of that, it kind of sitcom, mainly that, sketch and sitcom.

That's all I wanted to write.

So between 2000 and 2006, you're on TV.

You're in Monkey Dust, which is an animated show, and it's sketchy and funny.

Yes.

And then in 06,

we're now six years past graduation.

Yeah.

You and Dennis create polling together.

Based on the success of polling, no, that's the next one.

What I think is really funny is in 2007, you won the British Comedy Award for Best Female Newcomer for annually retentive.

Yeah.

Now, again, you were 37.

Was I?

I think so in 2007.

Yeah, that's true.

Did you feel like this is a weird, like newcomer feels like something that should go to the kid who won for adolescence or something the other night no because i mean i really really was i'd done a few shows at that point but they were culty kind of no-one watched kind of things right so actually that particular award was for pulling and annually retentive it was my first starring role kind of thing i just remember it being really surreal because six years earlier i'd been doing fuck all and you had done six years as like a temp or whatever

job that was an admin assistant yeah so like 12 years is a long time in the saddle before the newcomer award came out.

Yeah.

There was no structure to what I was doing, even though I was like trying to find a way into the industry.

I was trying to get a job in radio or trying to get a job writing for someone else's show or any route in.

I was trying.

I just didn't have the right focus or the confidence or whatever it takes to sort of take the plunge and do it properly to just all out go.

Amazing.

We're not going to do this now.

There was a lot of time wasted, but once I started doing it it was like super hyper focus and then it kind of just doesn't stop but we must explain this really interesting difference between american television and british television yeah in the states when there's a hit we just keep making it yeah until everyone gets too expensive i guess at some point to keep on the show and it's just not that way in england at all right like it's very rare for a show to go more than three seasons or something yeah it's pretty rare is that maddening and frustrating?

I mean, a good few do.

There's a lot of exceptions to that rule, but there's a lot of sort of standout shows that we're just like, no, two and done.

Well, The Office famously for us was like, wait, do you have this incredible show and you guys are done?

That's it.

Or like 99 or...

Mighty Boosh.

I wanted to do more pulling.

We just didn't get recommissioned.

I was going to say, is that frustrating when you finally have a show and you're actually writing it and you're on?

It's so frustrating.

Yeah.

It's so frustrating because it was a dream scenario.

Probably you'll never get more fun than that with my gas, right?

Ever.

It was the biggest buzz.

We got our show picked up.

We didn't even have to make a pilot.

We wrote this one script.

Next thing we are making a show.

Yeah, if you turn on the television and this thing you thought of is physically on the TV.

It's crazy.

It's such a great buzz.

And I still find it very buzzy, actually.

I still feel like a kid when I'm walking around a set and that whole kind of like,

we did this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Show business.

But like for your first thing.

But also, we got to do it our way with no interference, which makes no sense because we'd never done it before.

Everyone who was in it was brilliant.

It was just a very joy-filled experience.

And when you were doing that, what did you find more fun?

And then which one was more rewarding, the acting or the writing?

So I can tell you personally, I have a lot of pride in being a writer.

Yeah.

Because it's hard.

It is.

And it's lonely.

I don't have a lot of pride in being an actor or being funny.

That's a blast and I like doing it.

I kind of agree with you.

Although I think I'm different now.

Like I get much more joy out of the writing.

But back then, getting the opportunity to be on TV and to be the lead in something, I found it a huge buzz.

And also, it was my first time taking something from the page to the screen and realizing that it can be great on the page and you can make it better and you can exceed your expectations.

And also, it's like six weeks when we make sitcoms.

It's six episodes.

Everyone's almost dedicated to not making any money.

yeah exactly how can we not break even on this thing let's do six so we never amortize no one makes a bean god i was so green but then i did enjoy it then i did get a lot of pride in pulling it off but yeah definitely less so now is the next big thing for you that's obviously like a huge moment for you that show is catastrophe the next kind of big yeah a lot of pilots in between a lot of failed pilots that you had written i had written okay okay and then i made this mental uk show called dead boss that we only did one season of because it didn't really work

it was funny you know it's that thing i think after pulling not that that many people saw it or that people were waiting with bated breath to see what i do next but there was an expectation it did well yeah they would assume your next one's gonna be even better yeah exactly that was her first thing i made this really nutty show set in a women's prison about this woman who's accused of killing her boss.

It was bonkers.

Not many people liked it.

There was lots of funny stuff in it.

It just didn't gel in the way you would hope.

So that and a lot of pilots over here.

I was doing that for years.

Yeah, so when you're there, being London, and you're having some success, I would be like, well, I'm going to go over there where everyone's getting rich.

Yeah, but I had this weird thing where.

I was like, I'll go over there now.

And my agents would be like, no, it's not time for you to go over there.

And I'm like, are you sure?

Yeah.

going over there yeah so it took a while i don't know why like i must talk to my i've still got the same agent because i'm just creature of hubbard and also very loyal per the monday night dinner yeah yeah i hope so but i must ask him it was a real like kind of no you're not ready and then finally when i did go over i think i made about four pilots in a row maybe five wow do you start getting crazy discouraged like man i don't know if i'm gonna be able to no i was kind of you know the weird thing that i noticed that's very different from UK is that people could happily make a great living never getting anything made here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My agents over here was setting me up with the writers where I go, so what are you working on at the moment?

And they're like, haven't had anything produced in five years, but there was this sense of it was successful if you were getting pilot scripts commissioned.

And whereas I was like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

I bet the amount they buy here versus make, I bet that ratio is way different than it is in London.

Yeah.

Like I have sold many TV shows and none of them have been produced.

Yeah.

I think it's changing though.

I think that's what people are starting to do.

I think so.

Yeah.

It's really hard for writers right now because I think they're not doing that.

Yeah, they shouldn't.

I mean, when you think about all those pilots that have never been seen, it just seems extraordinary.

Thousands of hours of television that no one's seen.

They'll probably cost what it takes to make a UK TV series.

Yeah, a lot of people have a really good pilot quote as an actor.

They'll make $150, then get by for the year.

And the next year they do another pilot and it can just be this weird little trap.

Yeah.

But even though I met Rob on Twitter, because I was coming over to make the pilots, we did end up hanging out in real life.

And when I was making one of the pilots, we were sort of moonlighting on catastrophe on the side.

Yeah, so talk about meeting Rob because I, too, was just on Twitter and discovered him.

And still, hands down, of all the tweeters.

Oh, my God.

He was the number one funniest on Twitter ever.

The funniest.

Rob delaney ridiculously yeah making crying laughing 2018 he had some weird tweet i don't even know what it was about and then he just hashtag kony2012.

it was like who thinks to hashtag kony 2012 six years later yeah it's great it was just so funny everything's so funny yeah he's got such an amazingly specific brain and right away you guys thought we should try to create something together no it was more of a sort of mutual like i think you're really funny and then he had seen pulling and not that many people had i mean it was on over here but you had to do a quest you would have needed ai to locate it but he found it then we ended up doing this little sketch it was kind of fun and then because of his twitter fame he got commissioned by the bbc to write a sitcom and then he got in touch with me and said do you want to write it with me so that's how it happened It's a spectacular show.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Did you feel very proud of it?

Yeah, I did.

It was another one of those things where we had a pretty good feeling that it was going to work at the script stage.

But when we started doing it together, it was a nice feeling of relief that we bounced so well off each other as performers as well as writers.

Such an unknown.

You play the chemistry lot.

Yeah, that's it completely.

But I mean, I loved making that show.

And then post-catastrophe, now more doors open, I'm assuming, because your next thing's divorce, which is written for someone else, is written for Sarah Jessica.

Yeah.

So now we're like in another realm where we might just also create shows.

Yes.

Was that scary or exciting?

Or did you feel like, I don't really want to write something, I'm not going to be in?

I love the idea of writing for other people.

It felt exciting.

You're incredibly invested in it, but at the same time, you get to sort of step back a bit and have more of a bird's eye view.

I mean, to me, that felt like the best case scenario to create something that then I could just watch it do its thing.

Did you pitch Sarah the idea or were you approached with like Sarah wants to do this?

Actually, I pitched this other show idea to HBO,

which ended up being Shining Veil made for Courtney Cox.

So we were about to start making that, or at least developing it.

And then they said, Sarah Jessica's looking to make a new show and she's looking for a writer.

And she had had a script that she didn't really feel was working.

So we just met up, got a good notion of what it was she wanted to make.

Right, right.

And the kind of things she wanted to talk about, that death of a long-term relationship kind of thing.

And I came up with this divorce sort of setting for it.

Were you post-divorce or about to start that process?

How did it parallel your life?

I wasn't.

I was still in my marriage.

But I guess maybe some of the scenes.

I'm sure you had a lot of fodder of things that are annoying at this point, 14 years in.

I'm sure you had a lot of like...

Oh, yeah, of course.

It's like Amy Gravitz said, anyone who's married knows what it feels like to want to be divorced.

But my friend had just very recently gone through one.

So through talking to her and just getting the detail from her, I could talk about relationships until the cows come home, but the actual mechanics of going through something,

I could write a divorce encyclopedia now.

But back then, no, I just had some feelings.

You think it made you get a divorce?

Yeah, like I don't want to make it too big of a scretch.

Yeah, were you like living in this thought?

experiment of divorce?

No, not at all.

I mean, thank God for my family at that point.

My ex was traveling back and forth with my kids.

It was a tricky time for us as a family, but we were very much all in it together.

Right.

And that sort of overlapped with catastrophe.

So it was just a little bit too much.

Bad time management, I would say.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert,

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So I've been genuinely obsessed with this AI called Claude, and I have to tell you about it because it's completely different from what you'd expect.

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Was it hard for you?

Yeah.

What kind of feelings did you have?

Like, I'm

family.

Oh, yeah.

Family shame.

All of it.

Terrible.

Missed a birthday.

Got back for the party, but missed the actual birthday.

And my daughter's 21 now.

Oh, bro.

And she still talks about it.

Sure.

What else is she going to talk about?

We all need something.

Yeah, we need something.

i play this game all the time our kids are 10 and 12 and i'm like what's gonna be the thing i'm gonna hear about the rest of my life is it that target argument

because they have to have something i've seen so many mothers do it now and having done it myself remembering that awful push-pull of i'm kind of away from the family unit for way too long for it to be healthy i kind of feel like with kids it's a little bit for the most part apart from my daughter remembering the birthday thing, it's a little bit like water of a duck's back, a little bit.

Whereas I think for us, we kind of self-flagellate.

Yeah, and there's like still trauma there.

I still think about it.

Is it fair to say of most of the women, my wife included, that I know that are in this business that have kids?

It's like

you feel guilty at work because you're not with your kids.

And then when you're with your kids, you feel guilty you're not working because that's also your passion.

It's like there's no real sweet spot.

Yeah, that's it.

You also have that weird thing.

I can only assume it's how people feel when when they get out of prison.

You sort of forget how to operate in normal life.

You're sort of isolated from everything else.

And all you do is get up.

Someone picks you up in a car.

feeds you, takes you to Zet, feeds you some more.

All you're doing is sort of working and being closeted and then put back in a car and then brought home.

And when you get back into your family environment, you just don't know how to operate for a while.

Yeah.

You can also get tricked into thinking that that job is the most important thing in the world.

Yeah, and that you are.

And that you are, yes, because that's how you're being treated.

Objectively, you are important to that world.

It's not even like an ego explosion.

That's true.

The lead actors are very important to the project.

The writers are very important to the project.

To the project, but I think because it is so isolated and compartmentalized, and it's every day, and you're in a hotel, and then you go, you can think that the project is the most important thing in the world.

Sure, sure, sure.

You almost have to for it to be good.

Right.

You have to buy in a little bit.

Yeah.

And that's complicated when you leave.

Yeah.

And then you get taken down numerous pegs by your family.

And you just have to deal with it and get back on the horse.

Okay.

Bad Sisters.

This is, I'm imagining your first like American hit.

America's Gone Bat shit.

Yeah.

A lot of people loved catastrophe, but it was definitely like culty.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But Bad Sisters is this epic thing.

I watched it.

It looked interesting.

I saw it.

Oh, thank you.

And then I'm probably having the same thing other people are where it's like, oh, yeah, I love Bad Sisters.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, you know, the one sister created the show.

I'm like, oh, she created the show.

And this is when I find out that you've created all these shows and that you're writing it.

And then it's just so impressive.

Very bowled over by it.

It was a Danish show.

Belgian.

I had seen it.

It was brought to me to adapt it.

So I watched pilot episode and really fell in love with it.

Is it tonally the same?

No, it's completely different.

Is that one darker?

Huh.

It's really hard to explain, but it's just got that scandy kind of thing where it's much more crazy.

You know, so the murders are kind of crazy and there's Chinese mafia in it and hit men and people end up being murdered and then ending up in dog food canning factories.

Right, right.

It was quite extreme, but

it was really amazing tonally because the sisters were really grounded.

Oh, interesting.

But it was just, there was a different approach even to the really brutal serious stuff in it it was just a different approach like eva's rape in the original version she's having sex with her boyfriend

he needs to take a break he goes downstairs to the fridge to have something to eat and to cool down and while she's waiting for him still on all fours oh my gosh the prick comes up and yeah gets in there so they totally got away with it because she's brilliant.

The lady who created it, Malin, and the actors are amazing.

Even in our version, there was a real line to tread in terms of when you're going to be funny and when you're going to destroy people, you know.

I'd argue it's the hardest tone to pull off in anything.

It was when you're bouncing back and forth.

Yeah.

It's scary when you're doing it because you're like, they could maul us to death.

Yeah, it goes wrong and it goes spectacularly wrong.

You need to just sort of take a punt and then just try and hold fast.

Yeah.

Were you shocked with how loved it was?

Yeah, of course.

Did you write the roles with the actors in mind or did you write the whole thing and then cast it?

I wrote the pilot

and then cast it after that.

Ireland's a small country and also it had to be very specific in terms of the ages and for us to seem like we are in the same family.

I just had to pray that those girls that I asked to do it were available.

They were it.

Yeah.

And I'd worked with a lot of them before.

So I kind of knew.

knew and as soon as I started writing the series, I had their voices in my head.

But when it came to like the second season, it was just so much easier because I'd spent all that time with them and I knew how one character would respond to another and I knew what the dynamics were that worked within the family.

And so I found the second season easier, but more challenging story-wise, probably.

Although the first one had huge challenges because even though we had the template, in rethinking it, it sort of threw all the pieces out of whack and then it's got two timelines and i found that really hard how do i say his name is it clays clay spang yeah holy so that was the first time i'd ever seen him oh really because i'd seen the square he's so good i mean he's so repugnant the way he calls her mama mammy mammy oh he's so gross he's so gross yeah he's the most hatable character ever he was

like slimy he's terrible god bless him he just is like yeah i'm gonna be as unlikable as humanly possible.

Did he have any vanity?

What was the process?

He had to get his head around being that odious, and it was a bit of a challenge.

He didn't love being hateful and hated every day.

But then there was this other side to him that reveled in it.

He's fine as an actor.

And he really went for it.

But it is a thing where every scene you're in, you're just being an absolute piece of shit.

But we had to just make sure that there were moments

where you could see who he used to be.

How anyone fell in love with him in the first place?

Exactly.

Why does his child love him?

Exactly.

So we needed to see him be a good dad sometimes.

And we needed to see him be vulnerable or feel like a stranger in this Irish family.

And it really helped that he was not an Irish man.

Exactly.

How did you just come across him?

You had seen The Square?

I had seen The Square, but no, it was Nina Gold, our casting agent.

It was her idea and then i rewrote it kind of for him to lean into that we gave him a swedish mother and it ended up sort of affecting a lot of the scripts but in a way that was only positive and it's amazing when that happens when you have something in your mind and you do something completely different and then you go oh no this has given us so much more What's your explanation of the mass appeal of it?

The time it came along, I think at that time, everyone

really needed the catharsis of hating an awful white man, religious bigot.

We were all on board for it.

And also that thing of despite the thriller of it and the caper, it is about family.

Nobody would ever watch that and not want to be one of the sisters.

Yeah.

I would argue that's like a huge element of it.

It's just, again, you guys hit the chemistry lottery.

There's such a familiarity and fun and everyone's so different.

Yeah.

And it all works cohesively.

Yeah.

We got very lucky i love those girls one of them is the reason why i am this hungover

today was it eve it was eve yeah yeah good cast

that was my next question did you know eve before i didn't and did you know she was mono's daughter before you came i did that was nina gold but once she mentioned her then i remembered other work that i'd seen her in and was like she's amazing but i just didn't know she'd never done any sort of i mean it's a drama but there's a lot of comedy in it yeah so in actual fact, she came in and did a casting and she filmed the casting in Bono's

front room of his castle or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she was so brilliant in the casting, so clearly funny in that way.

Well, you're not trying to push the comedy.

She was just naturally funny.

I wish this were not the case, but it just truly is, which is like, if I know that's Bono's daughter, it's in the mix.

I'm aware of it, right?

And I think the worst guess i would have for bono's daughter is that she's gonna be like

perfect in plastic and spoiled no the contradiction of what potentially you're afraid could be the daughter of someone uber famous and rich

she's in fact quite the opposite at least on screen oh and in person as well Yeah, just in this delightful way where you're like, it's almost even cooler because she seems so fucking good.

She's very sweet, incredibly fun,

takes the work work seriously.

A bad influence.

Well, we all are bad influences on each other.

But no, it was just an immediate family.

We just got really lucky.

We were enjoying ourselves, but at the same time, we had to work as an ensemble, but they all had to be able to sort of carry their own episode, you know, because there would always be an episode that really focused on them.

All of them are just incredible actors, incredibly watchable.

And you just instantly care about them.

Were you ever at any point in it, kind of wishing, I wish I didn't have this dual role where I'm also their boss is a little bit like I just want to be in the riffraff crew and kind of bitch about the production.

Oh my God.

I'm so paranoid.

I am walking around in a constant state of fear that

anything.

You know, I'm always worrying that people aren't happy or have an opinion about how I'm doing things.

I always just wanted to be with them hanging out and chatting instead of on my laptop having having a nervous breakdown about reshoots or edits or whatever else goes along with it.

It's a pain.

You just want to play.

You want to enjoy it.

There's a real feeling of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing something you wrote come to life, but you do miss out on a lot of really good gossip.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You want a Peabody for it.

Yeah.

Did you even know what a Peabody was before you won it?

Yes, I did.

You did.

Yeah, yeah.

We covet the Peabody Award.

We actively campaign to win a Peabody Award.

Yeah, it's great.

I'm not terribly sure what it is, but I really want to.

Yeah, it means something good, doesn't it?

Yeah.

What does it mean?

It's prestigious.

It's prestigious.

It is prestigious.

But what is it?

It's like, it's not an acting award.

It's just like a culture award.

It is, actually.

If you've campaigned for them, you know, you kind of have to do this whole statement.

By campaign, I write in my Instagram

comments.

Please give me one of these.

Well, you have to submit your program for it, obviously.

And then you kind of talk about what it is that you were wanting to achieve with the show.

And I don't know, but I think for the most part, there has to be an aspect to it that makes it socially important, relevant across the board, really, in the storytelling, and the casting, in the diversity, and the amount of female directors you use, why you chose to tell that story representation.

It's a big sort of all-round, and it's about how successful the storytelling was, of course, but it's a bit of a this is important, Yeah.

Success with intent.

I guess it's not just about the entertainment.

I love that it's just properly entertaining, but I like the fact that it's saying something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

The twisted tale of Amanda Knox.

Uh-huh.

We interviewed Amanda Knox.

Did you?

Yes.

I found her to be so brilliant.

I could barely see her.

She's so bright.

She's a great girl.

When we were talking earlier about being a mother and like a father as well, sometimes, but for the most part, it's harder to be a mother and leave your kids behind but kj steinberg who created the show because we shot it in rome in budapest in vancouver all over italy and she had to leave her kids at home and do this i'm so glad for her it's taking quite a big swing isn't it like stylistically it's a terrible tragic story but there's also a lot of absurdity in what happened in the situation and kj was not scared to show that some of these things were so absurd they were funny.

Yeah.

And the stylistic approach of this sort of Amelie-esque kind of filming style at the beginning and all those things are big swings, you know.

It's very ambitious.

Yeah.

And the fact that she pulled it off, I'm just delighted for her because it was really hard.

for her being that far away from her family and dealing with something that wasn't easy.

You know, it's a difficult story to tell for loads of reasons, you know, legally.

But Amanda was around a good bit.

And you met her mom.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I met her mom.

I met her kids.

I met her husband.

I met them all.

I met her sister.

Some of the days they were there for some lighter scenes, but some of the days they were there for some really heavy scenes that brought them right back to it.

I remember her mom saying to me, it's really hard to watch for loads of reasons, but I wish I'd been that articulate when it was happening.

I wish I'd known how to deal with my emotions and I wish I'd known how to operate within that.

situation and it's like how could you well i said to her towards the end and now she has kids So it's not hard to imagine.

But I'm, of course, watching that thing.

And I'm no longer putting myself in the position of her.

I'm putting myself in the position of, oh my God, if this happened to one of my daughters.

Yes, completely.

I would a million times would rather sit in prison than have them sit in prison.

In a bizarre way, I do think it could be harder for the parent.

And she agreed.

I did the Zoom initially with the producers in KJ, but then I did the second Zoom with Amanda.

And I don't know about you, but most of the times if I'm offered a job, I'm kind of like, why do you want me to do it?

I was a bit like, I don't know.

You were a little scared of this role, right?

Oh, completely.

Yeah.

But it was her talking about that.

It was really emotional on the Zoom, you know, because when she was talking about her mother and what she went through, I sort of realized then that maybe I could play it because you had the emotion.

Exactly.

And I was more sort of nervous about it.

It was a bit exhausting doing that.

Coming in frazzled.

panic.

Being frazzled all day long.

It's hardcore and it takes it out of you.

But yeah, she's a great girl.

So you were scared.

It's a big acting challenge.

And also you didn't write it.

It's not going to be how you might like to land in that challenge.

But I feel like in stuff like that, you have to just be on board for the ride.

And for the most part, if you're working with normal people, they do want a bit of feedback or they do appreciate a suggestion or two.

But really, at the end of the day, I like just to

do it and not think about all the other stuff because my day job is so thinking about everything.

Yeah, yeah.

And in actual fact, it's kind of fun just to go there and be an actor.

And then at the end of the day, go to your trailer and look at your phone.

Yeah.

And not just be like, writing more scripts.

So I was nervous about it for that reason, but also because it's a divisive subject area.

People have opinions about her.

And you would have opinions about why the show's even being made.

Strongest opinions, knowing the least amount, the actual story.

That seems to be related.

You just never know how something is going to be received.

Yeah.

How has it been?

Have people reached out to you?

There was a little bit of, like there would be, because people are.

There's no consensus.

Yeah.

Online was a little bit.

Yeah, people like to be really very upset on Meredith's behalf.

As if this person's not also allowed to tell their story.

Because one scenario is worse.

Say we got in a car accident and you died and I got fucking paralyzed.

I wouldn't be allowed to talk about being paralyzed because they would go, what about Sharon?

Yeah, there was people who were angry on her behalf.

But for the most part, I would say the response has been really good.

People thought they knew that story, like you were saying, and then there's so much that you didn't know.

And my hunch is anyone who's even complaining still hasn't seen the story.

I would say not.

There were people in our comments sounding off.

And I literally wrote a few times like, this couldn't be more obvious that you didn't listen to the episode.

That's what I know from this comment.

I thought when she was on the show.

She did it.

What about Mary?

Yes.

And I'm like, what I know for sure is you did not listen to this episode.

Yeah, because there's no way you could write that comment had you listened.

But the show and the story, the thing that happened to her, is just a reflection of the world acting very sinister.

And then there's a lot of defensiveness that comes out of it.

So yeah, I think a lot of people are like, no, because they are not okay feeling like they live in a world where we could do that to someone or that they themselves have done it unfairly.

Or enjoyed the opera of it while it was happening.

Yeah.

So to do something lighter, lighter, you've taken on Jeanette McCurdy's book.

I'm glad my mom died.

We interviewed her when she first was promoting that book, and it's for sure one of our best episodes ever.

She's amazing.

She's incredible.

She's again a giant-brained person, ridiculously talented.

It's a really difficult story to tell, and somehow she's managing to do it.

And it's funny and entertaining and traumatic.

I think the defining attribute that allows you to enjoy it or not enjoy it, be it Amanda Knox or Jeanette, is if they weren't destroyed by it, it's great.

And that really is Jeanette.

It's like, oh no, this bitch ain't destroyed by it.

She's gotten stronger.

It's so inspiring.

She is.

You play the mom?

No, she's not.

Oh, no, no, no.

Producing the project.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, got it.

I'm just delighted to be involved in any way, just getting to see her work.

And it was a book that I was obsessed with.

And talking to her about it before we had it picked up, before we went out and pitched it, even I knew I wanted to be involved.

She's really something now.

I'm scared for you.

You're writing two different projects for yourself.

One at Amazon, one at HBO.

I wonder what the Amazon thing is because someone else has asked me that as well.

We're developing something with Amazon.

But not necessarily you starring.

Not for me.

No, I'm writing an HBO show.

For you.

Yeah, for me.

I always still get embarrassed by that.

Like, really?

Writing it for me.

Like,

no one else will be in it.

Yeah.

I think it's braggy.

Well, no, I felt it with pulling as well, even though that was the first thing.

I was like, and I will cast me.

You know, it just feels a bit indulgent, maybe.

Yes, but it's not.

There's something else.

But the workload, I'm a little worried about the workload.

Are you?

I am.

You've now created more shows than almost anyone, really.

You're just racking them up.

It's a lot, and you're fine.

How many hours a day do you work?

It depends.

Well, at the moment, we are making a show for Netflix called Vladimir and it's shooting in Toronto and it's like mad hours because there's a different time zone.

So at the moment, it's not great because I finish my work in the UK and then I go and eat dinner with my girls and then I go back to work.

But for the most part, when you're writing, I'll do a sort of 10 till five kind of thing.

If my girl's at school and she's leaving at eight in the morning, I start at eight and then might end a little little earlier, but I don't know.

I mean, I'm just sitting at a desk.

You don't feel like you're approaching burnout level or anything.

No, you're worrying me.

Yeah, you should be a little bit worried.

No.

Here's why.

I watched this incredible documentary.

I did not know this DJ.

I don't know.

I just randomly watched it.

Avici.

Have you ever heard that?

Avici.

He was this enormous global DJ.

The kind that can make a million dollars a night.

And now everyone wants to start working with him.

So it's like this amazing artist, this amazing artist.

And this documentary is heartbreaking because, and I can so relate to it.

It's just like, you want something so bad, it takes so long to get it.

And when it comes, it's nearly impossible to throttle it.

And this took him down.

I think he died of working.

Yeah, he killed himself.

No, he killed himself.

He killed himself.

Okay.

Slash, maybe fell on a broken wine bottle, whatever.

He was not in a good spot.

Very tragic story.

And I was watching it just going like, I very much relate to this.

These opportunities don't come around.

He had to have felt that way.

And it's really hard to govern yourself when it's all things you want.

That's true.

And there is definitely an element of that because I did start late.

And so I've always felt like I'm fighting catch up.

But the other element of it is

that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't.

Yeah, you said I'm not very good at twiddling my thumbs.

I become a bit more hyperactive as I get older.

I don't really know how to relax.

Yeah, I don't really know how to relax.

But here's the thing, right?

I was writing this episode of something that was set in Germany.

And then every day over the two weeks that I was writing it, I was just like, going to Germany, get out of my head and my house and just be in a different world.

And I find it very relaxing.

Okay, God.

When I was doing Divorce and Catastrophe, that was hard.

And I remember having, I guess they were sort of panic attacks.

I didn't know what they were at the time.

I was like, yeah.

Oh my God.

You're drowning in the commitments.

Yeah.

But it doesn't feel like that now.

I mean, I've got a company of amazing people.

The new show, you're playing a divorcee moving through the world.

Yeah.

Is there more plot than that that I'm leaving out?

Well, I'm the mother of a son.

It's kind of about the sandwich generation, really.

It's about that point in your life where your children are adults, but they haven't left and you're still looking after them and your parents are getting older.

And that becomes also a responsibility but it's this time in your life when the stakes are so raised because you suddenly become incredibly aware of your mortality

and in this particular situation she wants to meet someone she wants to fall in love before she stops being a sexual person yeah you know so there's this clock but the world isn't allowing her well here's my pitch you're gonna have a lot of lovers in this show you're gonna have to go on a lot of dates and there'll be good ones and bad ones and i'm volunteering to be one of the lovers

i can't commit to like a lot of episodes but if it's one something within reason i'm letting you know i will do that would you be a force for good or a force for bad whatever you choose that morning you're like i want to see him be naughty no i want to see the sweet side of him who has kids not like a bill i don't want to play a parking meter maid but let's just say i was giving you a ticket but then somehow i charmed you and you're like i hate you well this is a can you imagine going out with a parking meter it would be rough Yeah.

But they're just people, too.

No, you're right.

They deserve to love.

They deserve to be in love.

No, it's okay.

You're giving us tickets.

You can only like them so much.

They are in charge of giving us tickets.

And it's not their fault.

It's not their fault.

Once in a while, one will hang out in front of my kids' school at drop-off.

Really?

And I can't let it go.

I can't let it go.

Because, you know, everyone's so fucking hectic.

Everyone's trying to get to work.

It's a mess.

Yeah, they're like vultures.

And I have on a couple of occasions said, you know, an even better spot is the emergency room.

You should go hang out at the emergency room where people really don't have time to park.

Blank face or do they give it to you back?

No.

There's nothing.

Then I feel bad.

Then I regret it.

And then I've done it twice.

No one wants that job.

Well, is it

takes a unique person to post up in front of elementary school to do your ticking?

That person, I'm going to say it's a he.

I don't know.

You sexy.

Probably has to

have so many tickets.

Yeah, exactly.

Meeting their quota with parents that are struggling to get to work on time.

I think we could pick on a better.

Let's go in front of an agency.

You get a showbiz school.

No.

And other Shoba's parents.

Because in a way, I'd sort of go like, it's a fair call.

No, and in fact, it has more kids on free lunch than probably any other school in the city.

So, no, it's the opposite.

Now, these people can't afford a ticket.

Let one of those people say it, not you.

I got to use my privilege for good.

I'm trying to protect these people, Monica.

I can't believe you're not supporting them.

You're not protecting them.

You're protecting yourself.

No, I don't care if I get a ticket.

I literally do fight.

No, we always fight.

Yeah, it's part of the charm, I guess.

I've got a very weird relationship with money.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do too.

I think I just need a bit of therapy for it.

So, yeah, so if you don't cast me on your show, I could also work you through financial insecurity.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

So a few different services I provide.

You know what's weird about writing a show that does have sex in it?

Yeah.

Is that then you just get embarrassed when you send it out to people.

That they think you're a pervert or something?

You can't lose that

feeling.

Is that the Irish Catholic?

I don't know.

I mean, Rob and I used to get it a bit when we would write these sex scenes like side by side.

And then all of a sudden we'd realize that we were writing for each other and we'd get really embarrassed and awkward.

It feels like that when you write something and then you send it to an actor because you're saying, we're going to do it.

Yes, yes.

We're going to do this.

It could be even more.

Are you on board?

Yeah.

It's like asking someone out in real life.

It's vulnerable.

God.

But I would think this is where the positive side of being a woman, that side of the coin, you should embrace, which is if I write that scene and I send it to Sidney Sweeney.

And I'm a 50-year-old dude and I send this scene.

I have this great scene I wrote.

You shouldn't do that there.

No, I shouldn't.

Correct.

I agree.

That's a bit woody.

I agree.

Yeah.

I'm with you.

That's a bit Robert Duval, Emma Watson.

Yes.

I'm in full agreement.

That's why I'm using it to illustrate my point.

But you can do that, and it's totally fine, and you should feel nothing about it.

Yes.

If you've earned anything, it should be that.

Is that we know you're not a predator.

In general, women are not predators.

So you're free.

That's true.

Free to do that.

There are some.

There's a few.

Thank God.

I don't know any.

If you're a predator and you're a female, please in the comments.

Signal yourself out.

Are you vaping?

It's a nicotine spray.

Oh, a spray.

Yeah, so it's a very healthy delivery system.

I was very addicted to vaping and nicotine gum and occasional rollies.

And so I did some hypnotherapy about four years ago.

Well, that brings us to my very last question for you.

We've arrived.

Oh, wow.

So you quit drinking for three years.

Yeah.

And you loved it, right?

I did.

Apparently, I was annoying.

You loved it so much you talked about it?

I did a little bit.

I wasn't like evangelical, but I was just suddenly going on walks for no reason other than to enjoy the beauty of the walk.

And prior to that, there had to have been a pub at the end of it.

So what it did was sort of just give me a whole new perspective.

And I kind of loved it.

And I figure my brain was like on fire at the time.

When you go up a couple years without a hangover, for me, I had hangovers every single morning for a decade.

To not have have hangovers.

Yeah.

It was almost unimaginable.

Like so much of my life was dealing with a hangover.

Yeah.

And going to work and hoping it would break.

And oh, I'm sweating.

Okay, it's going to break.

Just that whole madness.

And then when we had kids, and even we'd be on vacation with our pod, Monica's a member of, and they drink and we don't.

And I'd wake up and I'm like, I can barely deal with the kids without a hangover.

I can't imagine what it's like to deal with kids without a hangover.

God, I remember.

It's awful.

So my great curiosity is like, what brought you back?

Oh, my dad died.

Oh, your dad?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a good reason.

But it wasn't like my dad died and I had to have a drink.

I just wanted to, with my brothers and sisters, drink a Guinness.

We all needed it.

But I didn't go back in like full bore.

It was very, very occasional.

And I was still on my sort of like smug thing because I was like, I just don't drink it the same way anymore.

And then like suddenly it just sort of creeps in again.

And And then the next thing, because I remember saying to my daughters, do you remember when I used to drink a glass of wine every night with dinner?

Then sometimes I would have two glasses of wine and they couldn't remember it.

And I was like, well, that's great.

Yeah.

Because I thought that would be something that they'd be really aware of.

Yes.

So I started slightly getting back into that.

Now I've stopped.

It was like the excitement of suddenly.

drinking again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got a bit giddy.

I was buying nice wines.

It was like, I remember when I started eating meat for the first time after 16 years.

I was so horny for meat.

I was just like, give me meat.

So it was a bit like that with the booze.

And now the last few days have been nuts because of the parties, but it has adjusted things a bit.

And it's not like a habit.

It was a habit before where you don't even notice that you're drinking wine because you're just always drinking wine.

Yeah, I have that.

Yeah.

I 100% have that.

But I, I don't know.

I'm back and forth on whether I care.

But you know what?

What happened was, and you know the way your phone sort of really gets into your head and sends you loads of videos about whatever it is you're fretting about.

So while I was not drinking, it kept sending me all these videos about how terrible booze is for your brain.

I know.

So it fed into my smugness and I was like, this is brilliant.

Everything is positive about this.

And now they're continuing to come up and I'm like, no, no, no, no,

no.

They look at me.

I know.

Yeah, the algorithm is really on one right now.

True.

Awful.

No alcohol, but whatever.

Some really unfortunate studies, I think.

But what about also all the hundred-year-old people who drink every day?

No one wants to talk about them anymore.

They used to talk about them a lot.

Yeah, they used to tell you you have to drink a glass of wine every day.

It'll be good for your heart.

They're all over the band.

Wow.

Well, I mean, I think red wine

on the continent.

It's tasty and it's fine.

Live long.

Did you drink beamish?

I've never loved beamish.

It's too sweet.

Are you beamish?

But not Guinness.

I love Guinness.

I love Guinness.

You'll be happy to know I've literally forced Monica to have a Guinness when we were in London.

They're not in love.

Yeah, but come here.

London.

London, Guinness.

That's awesome.

Maybe that's.

Unless you go to Devonshire.

Have you been to Devonshire?

No.

Yeah.

Unless it was across the street from our hotel.

Unless that was the one.

Where was your hotel?

Claridge's?

No, we weren't at Claridge's.

We were at another one of those.

It's not far from there.

It wasn't that.

I've got a lot of money.

It was kind of a shit.

There's no way it was.

Well, they do quite good Guinness.

And then, obviously, if you go to Dublin or anywhere in Ireland.

Oh, it's so good!

So it's just very thick, yeah,

it's a little thick.

Well, Sharon, you're as lovely in person as you are on screen.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, this has been so fun.

Sorry, I was a bit hungover.

I was not even hungover because it was from two days ago, but you're just exhausted.

I'm just tired.

Yeah, I've needed to eat for about the last 40 days.

You could have told us, okay.

Also, you can go on the couch.

Yes, yes.

All right, we adore you.

Thank you.

Everyone, Everyone watch the 96 projects you're in.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs.

Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong.

Okay.

Well, the last time I saw you.

Yes, ma'am.

Or the last time the people saw you.

And me, I guess.

You and the people.

Yeah, I am one of the people.

Yeah.

You're going to go to the hospital.

Which I did.

Yeah, so tell everyone what transpired.

I went to the hospital.

They hooked me up to...

No, I peed first.

Yan.

You were able to?

Yan sample remind everyone what happened you couldn't pee i couldn't pee it was painful i got a crazy fever i gave blood and yan at my gp that stands for general practitioner yes although he's not he's an internist and he doesn't like but at any rate um and then my family was concerned i was sepsis yeah Again, I don't know if you say septic or he has sepsis.

He's in sep.

There's something weird about sepsis, but I don't know.

Do you?

Yeah, I think it's like, and turns out I was in sepsis.

He went seps.

He went sepsis.

Or did he went septic?

No, I think septic's only about the tank.

Okay, the septic field and the septic tank.

Anyways, get there, do some samples.

They hook me up to a

stronger antibiotic.

My vitals are good, though.

Great.

So I'm there for some hours.

I get a bag of fluid.

I, oh, oh, yes.

And then, and then

he takes an ultrasound of my bladder.

And, uh, and it's, it's full.

Yeah.

But I just peed.

Yeah, but you didn't get a lot of pee out.

Yeah.

So he's like, um,

yeah, we're going to have to do a catheter.

And I was like, oh, no.

Of all the things in life I hope to avoid.

Yeah.

It was putting two feet of cable up my pee hole.

Yeah.

God, I did not want to do that.

So I think I've had one before, but I think I woke up post-surgery with it.

I also have had one, but it was gone by the time I woke up.

And then I think I was on a tremendous amount of opiates in the hospital when they removed it or something.

I don't know.

I just have no memory of this.

So I guess I'm not saying where I went or anyone's name.

So this is the first order of business: the nurse was going to,

and she told me, I got to put lidocaine in your urethra.

Okay.

So she has this

syringe about this big, about six inches long.

It's a fat boy, boy, right?

There's a ton of fluid in there.

Oh, and um, so she's holding my penis and she puts it uh right up to the urethra.

And I'm laying on my back trying to just be in another zone, right?

I'm just trying to are you worried about getting erect, yeah, no, not at all.

Really?

No, no, no, no.

I am so

terrified about getting this procedure.

Oh, wow.

Okay, that's good, I guess, for yeah, yeah,

positive side.

So she has this syringe, she's she has it up to the

hole.

And I don't know if it was stuck or whatever happened, but there was an audible POC.

And then the whole thing went in like boom.

And I went, oh my God.

Like I yelled, which I, oh my God.

And she goes, oh, oh, I'm so sorry.

That's not supposed to happen.

What?

Oh, no.

That's not what you want to hear.

Obviously, slowly put all that fluid in.

But again, I think it was stuck or something.

Maybe she pushed you hard and it just made this loud pop and then it fucking just gushed six ounces of jam in my penis at once.

Jam.

Wait a minute.

Was it?

And I was like, whoa, whoa,

rough start.

Was this nurse an armchair?

No, but I loved her and I learned a ton about her.

We had a very, very like connected, intimate conversation about like her, someone in her life who passed.

And

like we had had a really great time.

Okay, I feel like, I feel like this nurse is an arm cherry and got like nervous.

She was holding the armchair expert's penis.

Yeah.

And like how much?

I don't think so because we were speaking so candidly.

She would have said she liked the show.

I think that's where we were at.

Okay.

No, I don't think she was an armchair.

Okay.

I still do.

Okay.

Okay.

So anyways, you know, that happens and then and then they come back with the tube and then they put the tube in and I'm like, and it is, it's just horrendous.

I can't believe you don't get anything for it other than the topical elected cake.

Yeah.

I guess it's just where I'm such a baby.

These like zones where I'm a total baby, I guess.

So it goes in.

It's insane.

It's insane.

And it takes so long because it's got to go through your whole penis and then up and then into your bladder, which is deep in there.

And it just feels like forever.

And it's, it's the worst feeling.

Then they blow up the balloon.

Then they strap the bag to my flag and they stick the thing.

Now, my one complaint was like big sticky pad to pin to secure the

bag and everything.

And you know, I have hairy thighs.

Sure.

She slapped it right on there.

I was like, take a set.

Let's get a razor.

I'm mad.

I didn't advocate for myself.

Oh, okay.

Because as it turns out, when I got home, she had put it up too high.

So my penis was hanging down much lower than where that thing was, which was making the tube go upward

and pull my penis up.

And I was afraid you can pull the thing up.

So as soon as I got home, I had Kristen and Lincoln reattached it lower.

And then we shaved my my leg.

But getting that thing off with all the hair, okay, whatever.

Okay, here's, I'm, I'm is it like belted?

No, no, it's just there's a hose, and then I took a photo and I sent it to Eric and Aaron, and they screamed out loud, both of them.

They said

because you can tell it looks absolutely miserable.

But there's a strap that there's like, there's the sticky piece with clamps that hold the top of the

hoses.

And then you've got two elastic belts that go around two parts of your legs and then a big bag to fill with young.

Right, right.

You immediately look 85 years old.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so many funny things that happened over the course of the three days I had it.

One was we kept telling, you know, I kept complaining about the tube in my penis.

And at one point,

like

day two or three, I was emptying the bag in the toilet and Delta came into the bathroom and she goes, oh my God, daddy, I thought you were saying that metaphorically.

Tube in my penis.

She didn't know I had a literal.

What did she think?

I don't know, but I loved that she knew to say metaphorically.

Yeah.

I was like, so distracted by how wonderfully she said.

Provocab.

Yeah, I thought you were saying that metaphorically.

Oh, my God.

And I go, I know.

You immediately look like you're in.

Some serious medical.

And I felt like it, you know,

I felt like, what's going on?

Like a week ago.

Yeah, just a week ago, I felt indomitable.

And now I have this bag and then the bag and maybe, maybe other people have positive experiences with it.

So I'm not bashing caffeine.

Sure.

I mean, again, a lot of these things I think were just chickens coming home to roost because you remember the calf, calf at a cowboy commercial.

There's a cowboy.

He goes,

I've been cowboying for 25 years.

I don't like pain when a calf.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that.

And you've been making fun of that for

the guy was like 75.

I'm like, hold on, let me get this straight.

You started cowboying at 50?

He might have.

Look, you're 50.

I'm not ready to start cowboying.

I'm ready to start riding a soft chair.

The thing about it is mid-sneeze, I was like, oh my God.

Anything abdominal

sucks because you have that balloon in there.

And also just the balloon at the end of your bladder.

What it feels like is that painful moment you have to pee so bad you don't think you can hold it.

It just felt like that for three days.

And anytime I moved, it was just like the sharp pain in there.

I hated it.

I, I really

did not enjoy it.

Saturday, I woke up and I said to Chris, and I'm like,

I'm going in and get up, take it out today.

I cannot wait till Sunday.

She's like, okay, but remember, they didn't say that arbitrarily.

So then she talked me off the ledge and

I waited till Sunday.

That's good.

I was so happy to get it out.

Yeah.

I don't ever want one of those again.

I understand.

No, silver linings.

Okay.

Let's go through them.

I slept in the guest house for three days.

And I really didn't do anything because I couldn't move.

Anytime I moved, it was just the worst grody feeling of like I'm peeing my pants.

Oh, I'm going to add.

Yeah.

This is too much information.

What?

Goating doodles was almost impossible because you're.

Goating doodles.

Going doodles.

Oh, pooping.

Because

you're really, I don't know about for a girl, but for a boy, you're using the same area to push the doodles and to push yawn out.

Those two things are married for a boy when you sit down on the toilet.

You just push and everything comes out at once.

But I have this tube.

And so there were times where I was trying to doodles.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, pee just started coming out of around the tube.

Not in the tube.

No.

So it's somehow it's pushing around the balloon inside the bladder.

Okay.

Also, you take these pills to make your yawn super dark orange.

It looks like the McDonald's.

Remember McDonald's orange drink?

No.

Okay.

They got to call it orange drink.

It wasn't orange

orange shoes.

Okay.

And I don't even know if it was orange soda, maybe orange soda.

It was dark as hell orange.

Okay.

Okay.

And I'm just on the toilet and I'm like, oh, fuck.

And then my penis can't be in the toilet because it's got a tube hang coming out of it that's attached to my lower leg.

Okay, so the bag's like at your ankle?

Yes.

Oh, it's that far down.

Not at my ankle, but around my knee.

Oh, wow.

I imagined it supposed, I imagined it like high up.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna

post the picture.

No, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna crop the photo.

Okay,

so you can at least see the placement on the leg.

Okay, all these pictures of Eric's dad as a wizard.

Sure, we touched on that last week.

Okay, so I've mocked out the offensive.

Okay, hold on.

Oh, boy.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Also, yeah, hold on.

The color, yeah, the color of the peas

McDonald's orange.

Again, see specific pills they make you take because they want to be able to see the line in the bag really clearly.

They don't want to like see through yawn.

They don't want.

Wow.

Okay, because it's like it's.

It's humility.

Can I have it back?

No, I'm still looking at it.

Come on.

I don't like this anymore.

Can I have it back now?

Okay, the belt is made of.

I'll send you the whole one with my penis so you can see the tube coming out.

Great.

Fuck.

So, yeah.

And then, so I got it out and then I thought,

oh, that's my only problem in life is this, this catheter.

How did it smell?

There wasn't any smells, but I didn't.

Did I wrap up?

Like, there's nothing more disconcerting than there's like yawn coming out around the tube.

Yeah, that's uncomfortable.

I'm like, what's happening?

Why is there

me coming through this hose?

What's wrong with the hose?

Is the hose blocked?

Why am I?

Were you worried you were going to get it in the tube?

No, no.

I've had some follow-up questions throughout this process, but these ones are definitely the best.

What about, was it warm?

The pee on your leg?

Yeah.

Yeah.

that feel kind of good i mean it was really hard to enjoy anything the other thing i was living in like abject fear of is like

i hope i don't get a boner that's what oh you mean during it

oh with this holes in like sometimes you're sleeping and you just you have a erotic dream and you wake up morning wood aroused and i'm like is it gonna jerk what part of the tube is it gonna

huh interesting i'm sure there's some slack so that it.

Kristen did not think this was a thing, but Eric and I thought it was a thing.

I was texting with him most.

He had to deal with most of my complaints.

Sure.

And I said, Eric, I'm not going to masturbate, but don't you think they should have told me I can't?

Maybe you can.

Oh, my God.

I mean, seriously, some people have catheters in like for life.

Like, I'm sure they have to masturbate.

I don't think you can.

And then also, where is the semen coming from?

It doesn't come from your bladder.

And you have a two.

Your vas deferens.

Your vas deferens is the muscle that's like pumping and pushing.

The semen out.

Anyways,

the semen would go through the catheter.

Well, that's the thing is I don't think it can because I don't think the semen goes into your bladder and then out urine somehow.

It would leak out the way the.

Yes, a man can ejaculate while you're leaving.

Okay, Rob's pulled up an indwelling urinary catheter.

He googled it.

Okay.

Though it requires specific consideration, depending on the type of catheter, the individual's comfort level, mine was low.

And the desired sexual activity, mine was low.

While intermittent catheters used for self-catheterization are removed before sex,

indwelling folly catheters

can be kept in place.

A submission subic catheter, which enters the bladder through the abdomen is

preferred for sexual activity as it doesn't interfere with inner core.

Okay.

So if you have one for a long time, they probably give you a specific kind so you can have sex and masturbate.

But yours was only a couple days.

And I was living in like absolute fear, fear of that happening.

Sure.

To the degree that I was like, oh, I might give myself one because I'm so happy.

That's what I was about to say when you were talking about getting it inserted.

Like, this is what happens during waxes.

Like, it's so uncomfortable, but they're like,

there's a little worry.

Like, what if you get yeah visibly yeah

and not because you're you're into it but just because like you're you're convinced you're worried you're so afraid of it you might manifest yourself sabotage yeah

so anyways i got it out okay great well more than that i was bold i went out to eat on saturday night i was like this i'm going out i did this and i had to walk i had to walk like a grampy i could only walk like a step like eight inch steps at a time Yeah.

Dude, were you worried it was going to fall out of your pants?

Sure.

But that I knew it wouldn't happen because the balloon would catch it and it'd be start pulling my bladder through my body.

So I was more nervous about that.

Like, am I going to feel you know?

We had an armchair anonymous nurse talking about a patient who ripped his catheter out with the balloon inflated.

I kept thinking of that the whole weekend.

Oh my God.

Now, when I just saw that picture,

it kind of reminded me of my

water babies.

Oh, sure, sure.

When I grew up, you know, and I would make babies out of those

grocery bags.

And then I'd fill it with water and cared on and it'd be my water baby.

That kind of looked like a water baby.

Yeah.

Oh, another interesting thing is I was the one thing I was excited about.

I was like, oh, cool.

I kind of have my dream.

I don't have to get up to go pee in the room.

Exactly.

So I was looking forward to that.

Yeah.

Well, I woke up in the middle of the night, like 4 a.m.

And I'm like, fuck, I have to pee so bad.

What's going on?

I have this bag on.

Yeah.

Lift up my pant leg.

It's 100% full.

Oh.

So it's 100% full.

So I am trying to relieve it, but it's just backing up another bladder.

So now I am feeling like I have to pee.

So now I'm rushing to the bathroom, not to pee, but to fucking empty my bag.

Mom, like, this is over.

I might get fired from the acting job.

I got

squares.

Okay.

Wait.

Go ahead.

But was it a relief as soon as they put it in at least?

Like then, like, because you were all backed up with pee.

No.

And I, you know, my stubbornness, I maintain I probably didn't need

that.

I could have.

It's not like.

And then on my subsequent vidis to get it removed, they were looking at the amount of urine that was in my bladder when I got it.

She said, well, that'sn't a ton of urine.

And I was like, yeah, I think it would have been.

Anyways, who cares?

Did they find out what happened?

We'll get to that.

Okay.

I mean, they don't find out what happened, but all my blood stuff comes back and I have all kinds of different things going on.

But

I just wanted to finish by saying I had in my mind I was going to feel like a million dollars when I got this catheter out on Sunday.

And then I got the catheter out and I got home and I was like, oh,

I still feel like shit, you know, I still have a.

massive infection.

I'm still on like

and I'm on really heavy ones now got it that make you not feel good so some of the results one is e coli was in my

uti i said that you did not want to hear it but i did say that uti i think prostitis okay like infection you're prostituting e coli weird i was in the mix But you didn't have any tummy troubles.

I never had Hannas

or throw up.

But I had had, did I ever tell you that part?

That right before I got the fever, I had had a piece of bacon?

Elk.

Yeah, elk.

Oh.

That Kristen had cooked while I was away.

And I was like, that was in the fridge too long.

I took some, a bite, and I was like, I think we should throw this away.

I don't think this is good.

So I had eaten.

So you had one bite of it.

One, just one bite.

Well, then maybe

that was.

And threw it away.

Ewah.

So I don't fucking know, Monica.

Like, what?

I asked about my, they're not carbonos.

I call them carbonos, but I don't even think I actually have carbonos.

Maybe it is.

I asked about those.

The doctor says it's completely unrelated.

He looked.

He's like, there's nothing.

Did he say they're okay?

Yeah, he looked and said,

there's nothing cooking here.

I was like,

I diagnosed you with something.

What did you have me on?

MRSA.

Right.

You have me on MRSA.

And then, and he said, now that thing, MRSA is very common when you cycle and wear tight clothes.

So he did recommend I use a surgical soap when I cycle.

I am disgusting.

I sound like a complete Petri dish.

You're just a person.

You're just saying it to hang me on.

So I guess say even more.

They tell you that they phoned anal warts all over my face.

No.

Oh, wow.

No.

Okay.

Wait, but MRSA is scary.

Like, remember when MRSA was this huge, there was a huge thing in the hospitals and they were quarantined and stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's degrees of it.

But yes, all to say, I was a little sad that I didn't like spring back to full health.

I think it's going to be a longer process than I normally like.

I'm impatient.

I want to feel good.

I'm exhausted all day.

Okay, so you're on antibiotics.

You're washing with MRSA soap.

No, I haven't gotten that yet.

Oh, okay.

But I'll go get that.

Okay.

And you miss your pea bag a little bit.

No.

No, no.

But again, chickens coming home to roost.

The other thing I was thinking is I took a Uber home from the hospital

on Thursday.

And there's a line in chips where Steve is the cab driver and he goes to pick me up,

my character.

And it's in front of the emergency room at the hospital.

AG's character goes, Hold on before you get in.

You don't have any fucking leaky tubes or bags or anything, do you?

Whoa.

And because I made fun of people that might have tubes and leaky bags,

I gave myself one.

And then the making fun of the caffeine cowboy.

Yeah.

So, man, the chickens, they're home.

They're roost, roost, roosting.

Simmy Simpson.

Wow.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts about all this?

Oh,

I mean,

I love it.

I mean, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that it was painful and uncomfortable.

And did it?

So I had a catheter put in when I got my eggs frozen.

Oh, you did?

Yeah.

And I didn't know.

They told me after they had to do that.

Okay.

And it hurt.

after to pee so bad for a while.

So does it hurt still?

Cause it's like sore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That sucks.

Um, yeah, it's the whole thing sucks.

I am insistent.

I am willing

that I am going to wake up Thursday morning somehow and I'm going to feel a million

bucks.

Okay.

Like a million bucks.

I think you will, but I think you need to be smart about these next few days if you want that to be true.

This isn't just going to happen like a miracle.

Right.

You need to be careful with how you're treating your body over the next few days i'm taking my medicine take it easy oh i left out a silver lining i was in that i was in the guest house for three days by myself and i got to watch a lot of tv oh yeah and guilt free yeah so i can really only watch so much and i start getting mad at myself sure this was like go for it and i watched the entire house of guinness oh

steven knight peaky blinders

yeah it's very peaky blinders oh fun

and it makes you want to drink guinness so bad so i ordered Guinness NAs oh fun and at night I get in my bed with my tube hanging out of my dick and I would have my little pint glass and I let it breathe the way they said in the show

yeah and I'd sip my Guinness with my piss tube

and I really liked it this is a ding ding ding why

because this we talk about Guinness on Sharon oh yes we do we do that's right yeah that's

exciting Their NA is really good.

That's great.

Not as good as Ted Seeger's.

Well, nothing's as good as Ted Seeger's.

That's what they say.

That's what they're saying.

Everybody.

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Wow.

Well, that is harrowing.

You went through all of your weekend.

My weekend was good because while you were going through that, the same day,

actually,

Taylor Swift dropped her album.

Oh, I know, I listened.

Okay, yes.

Yes.

Yes.

So, how does one eventize a whole day?

Like, what was your whole, what was your day?

It's dedicated to that, right?

Well, so it dropped Thursday at, I guess, midnight East Coast, so nine hour time, which, you know, there are, there are moments in life where I feel just so, so, so grateful to be on the west coast.

For the time.

Yeah.

This is one.

Super Bowl.

Super Bowl is always one.

I'm always very grateful.

Now,

so I was working, editing, I must have been, because I didn't have time to listen that night.

And I'm on a group text, okay,

with three other Swifties.

Two are

Molly, Jake, and Audra.

Two.

Well, one is the biggest Swifty I've in the world.

And people are going to be so mad at me for saying that because they're going to be like, no, I am.

And then that's Jake.

Yeah, Jake.

Molly is number two.

She's very, she's, she's very high up on the Swifty scale.

Yep.

Audra and I are some deviations below that,

but love her so much, obviously.

Yeah.

So anyway, I'm like

trying to not really look at my phone because these texts are they started at nine.

They started.

They started at nine.

They are coming in.

They're talking about each song.

I was like, oh, fuck.

Like, I don't know what anyone's talking about.

Yeah.

So I start listening Friday around two west coast time and and it's fun it's easy listening yeah it comes out it's it's very easy to consume it's just like yeah this is taylor swift it's it's breezy it's it's poppy like it's it's fun i enjoy it a lot yeah i

Oh wow, we're inching closer to something.

We're like crawling.

We're crawling.

No, I love her so much.

We're making our way to like the edge of the cliff where the bad guys might be able to see us, but we can continue to.

I know.

I mean,

yeah, this is one of those things.

You can't say anything, but I'm gonna.

Like,

I thought it was great.

I've been listening to it a lot.

It's, it's fun.

Um, and is it a shower or a grower?

Is it like the more you listen to it, the more you appreciate it?

The more I listen, the more I like the sound.

Uh-huh.

But the lyrics for you are

not hitting the way some of them have.

Yeah.

So the reason she's so special to me is because of her poetry, the way she writes.

I do think this album isn't

the best lyrically of hers.

Okay.

That's okay.

Not everything has to be

the best.

Yeah, yeah.

There's one song on there, Father Figure, that I think is Michaels.

Is George Michaels.

Yes, he's credited on it.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that is quintessential Taylor lyrics.

I think it's so smart and good and has this great turn.

And I love it.

Yeah.

I love it.

But the rest are kind of like.

They're fun.

They're just fun.

And that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is a song.

I don't know if you've heard about already all the like drama.

There's drama.

Please tell me.

Okay.

There's a song that's about.

so romantic.

Actually romantic.

Actually romantic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And who is it about?

Is it about KZZ Swigs?

Charlie XCX.

Charlie XCX.

You're really date.

You in the bag.

That's a lot.

It pairs nicely with my piss bag.

Charlie XCX is seeming it's seemingly about her.

It's

not a nice song.

You know, it is not a nice song.

Well, okay, now great.

There's already, I've heard that, that's not how i've heard the reaction really what have you heard well the reaction is like what a cool way to turn this endless you're this i'm that into like i'm kind of flattered by your obsession

it's actually quite romantic that you're thinking about me that i know which is it's a little catty it's so catty it's

so catty it's look by the way it is a bop.

Like, I, and I'm kind of, I feel very personally conflicted about this because I really like the sound of this and I like find myself.

You find yourself really grooving to it, moving your hips and your shoulders.

And yet, I am fundamentally kind of like

you're the most famous person in the world.

You don't need to do it.

You just don't need to do that.

Really quick.

Yeah.

I think this is where you're seeing tension between the internal identity and the external identity.

So yeah, she's the biggest pop star to ever be.

Yes.

This is below her.

Yeah.

But to me, it's like she'll always be the mid-level kid in school.

That's who she feels.

Yeah, she will always be that in her heart, like a mid-level kid in school.

And I don't know anything about Charlie XEX, but the name makes me think she feels like that she's owning her sexuality.

And is that, I've literally haven't seen a picture of her, she's cool, right?

She's cool, yes, she's cool.

So, when your internal identity is stuck in eighth grade, and someone who's cool, then you don't lose sight of the fact that no, actually, I won the bigger war, and this is kind of below me.

This is me,

this is my dissonance when I am the boss of 100 people on a set of a movie.

It is really hard for me to understand that, it shouldn't be, but it

is.

I know, like, I'm against the principal at high school and the

boss.

So to be one is so confusing.

Yes, I understand.

And that's exactly.

I think actually that is a through line through this whole album.

I think there's a lot.

There are parts of it that to me read like, all these cool kids rejected me.

And so I'm kind of swinging back into this other direction.

Or just this like.

Hollywood didn't like me, so I'm choosing a simple life.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in it that I'm, that is funny, because for me, I'm just like, oh, I know that's how you, that is how you perceive what's going on.

And that's your, that's your internal stuff to work

on, because that is not true.

You're a billionaire because the world showed up for you, the world, not just

middle America,

coasts, everyone voted, you know, and everyone picked you.

But I also, yes, it's endearing.

We all just have stuff that we have to work on.

But I do think if you are at that level, you have a bigger responsibility than most to work on it or to have someone tell you, like, hey,

you're punching down.

I know you don't, you can't see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you objectively are.

But can I devil's advocate that?

And I don't, I don't really have an opinion on it.

I don't know enough about the players.

And I don't, but my devil's advocate argument would be like, no, no, your obligation as an artist is actually write about whatever you're going through and not try to be, like, not try to be the person you're hoping to be in three years.

And maybe in three years, she'll be what you wanted this to be.

But she's clearly annoyed, and it's taking up space in her head that this girl wrote this song about her.

And that's the reality of what she's processing.

Right.

And in that way, I think that's the exact song she should write.

And then maybe in a year,

she'll be able to look back like, I got that venom out of my system and

that was below me.

I should have been above that.

And that'll be a part of the process.

And then hopefully she'll put that experience on the next album.

But my, my devil's advocate would simply be like, no, I don't think you should ever write for who you should be.

I think you should write for exactly what you are right now and what you're going through.

And you got to like live with the mistakes that are inherent.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you're right about that.

I don't, I think she should write anything she wants to write.

Yeah, yeah.

What you choose to put out in the world when you are

saying the most influential

attractive look, whether it

you support her right to do.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

Of course, it's her right.

She can do whatever she wants.

But it's, to me, it's like, own

that unfairly or fairly, it's, it's going to be a little hard for me to say unfairly when she seems to come to a lot of prizes.

Is that that when this has happened, these are girls she gave a shot to?

Yeah, she feels betrayed.

Yeah, so that's deep, right?

That's very deep.

And I have people I want to, I have plenty of things I want to say, and I never will.

Yeah, yeah.

I am not her.

That's the other, it's like, if I don't get to, then you surely can't.

This is what's great too.

Because obviously we see in each other what we see, what we're struggling with ourselves.

And

I would say, you are her, actually.

And I don't, I don't know that you,

I can, it's hard to update.

Well, I'm not her.

We have to be very, we, we just literally have to look at our Instagram following and be realistic.

And I'm not trying to be her.

Oh, I know.

I'm just saying.

I think you should identify with it because I think it's hard to onboard.

But I'll to say I feel a responsibility.

Like, and there are things I would love to say to the world that I'll never, ever, ever say to the world.

Sure.

And it is because it's, it's not the right thing to do it's not gonna make the world better it's not it's not gonna make the world better and it's causing pain yeah for no reason and that's for me to deal with in my in therapy not you know again i'll write about it do whatever but to put it out is a real real real choice last counter just thought of it there's nothing in the history of rap that's been better for the industry than the feuds diss tracks yes they they fuel everything yep this whole drake and i mean

I would not be surprised if we saw them having lunch in Italy somewhere.

For sure.

I mean, really.

Yeah.

And

you, now that a lot of these rappers are long past that phase, you'll hear ice cube.

Like Jay-Z's writing songs back in the day for, you know, East Coast, West Coast.

Yeah.

Jay-Z's writing a Dre song, his most popular song.

Like, none of that, a lot of that was not real and it was great for business.

Is it possible that Taylor's like, yeah, this is below me, but like, this is part of the game.

This is part of the product.

And so now Charlie XCX gets to write a counter song to this one.

That thing will pop.

And this thing popped.

And maybe it's just business.

Look,

she is a business genius.

A true business genius.

She's a mastermind.

I would not be shocked if, yes.

Also, look.

This album is happy.

She's happy right now.

And that's amazing.

I want that for her.

That's what I want to get to.

She is happy.

And that is clear.

Right.

And there are songs that aren't happy.

Father figure and this

that

I almost feel like she's so happy that she almost has to find like she has to find the fuel again.

Like maybe manufacture a little bit.

Or yeah.

Mixed with like, oh yeah, what is bothering me?

Oh yeah, Charlie XCX did this.

Like, I don't know that that's really on her mind all the time, and I hope it's not.

Yeah, yeah.

But this is so fun because normally I'm a little critical.

I know.

So I love her and I love the album.

This has been a fun reversal.

Yeah.

And it's been a joy.

Well, because I can't, I'm not ever going to just be like blindly.

Blindly.

So I have.

I'm listening nonstop.

So Erica Molly came over on Sunday and I wanted to hear her opinion.

Again, as we know, she's a number one top tier Swifty.

Yep.

So I was asking her what she thought of all the tracks and she was saying on this one.

She loves the album.

And I said, you know,

there is a sad truth to art.

And I experience it and I'm aware of it, which is, I might have even said this,

you know, a few episodes.

I'm watching Hit and Run.

And this is so cocky to say, but it's true.

I'm feeling so much pride over the script.

Forget everything else.

And I'm just like, God, that was, that's as good as I could have done.

You're proud proud of it.

You should be.

I'm very proud of it.

Yeah.

And then immediate next thought is, I don't think I could write that.

I wrote that script in two weeks.

And I thought I just stepped on a dog.

It was my background.

I just was like, man, I don't think I could fucking write this.

And it was the scariest feeling.

And what I ended up coming up with is the only way I could write the sequel would be like, we start them divorced.

And then we're figuring out what happened.

Right.

Because the most recent thing I can even remember is that turmoil of having children and how you both get lost.

So I got to go back a bunch of years.

But in general, I'm so lucky.

My life's pretty fucking good.

I'm not like, I'm not wrestling

with demons.

Pain, right?

Yeah.

Which I do think is the fodder of art.

And so we were in this audience, I was saying, like,

I applaud her if she can figure out how to be creative, happily married, happily financially secure,

accomplished her goals.

I think that's a hard place to create.

It's hard.

And I was saying, like, if you look at her early music, like

if

between 17 years old and 30,

70% of that audience is either looking to go out tonight to find love or they're dealing with having lost it.

Right.

It's like a breakup or pursuit.

There's a lot of emotional turmoil with relationships, with work.

Establishing yourself in your identity as in a career.

Like all the main topics that drive pop music, unfortunately, she's just not, she's no longer embroiled in.

She's not dealing with huge breakups.

She's not dealing with, she's not dealing with getting love or falling love.

She's like stable.

And it's not, yeah.

So, you know, it's a challenge.

It's a challenge.

But I also think you like even you, everyone is wrestling with stuff and you, you do have to be introspective about that, like your age or your relevance.

I agree.

I agree.

I left that part out.

So I'm definitely wrestling with stuff, but it's stuff that very, a very small percent of the potential audience is wrestling with.

That's what happens is your potential audience narrows and narrows.

So like mine right now is like existential work identity loss.

But that's, but that is not narrow.

I think a good artist

makes something very specific, very universal.

And I think that she has the capacity to do that and does that.

Like she's writing about John Mayer, one person.

And yet that song resonates with

so many people.

And it's specific.

It is talking about his chess game.

And so many people are like, I have, I know that person.

I have this.

I understand it.

And same with these things as we get older, too.

But I think she'll write a motherhood album.

I do too.

Yes.

And I think that'll appeal deeply to whatever percentage of young people are mothers.

But again, it's not this like 100% of people are looking for love in their 20s.

Right.

You know, that's just, I think, the fact.

And like all the pop songs are about love.

Yeah, a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it's obviously the most common.

So the next thing she'll be able to do that has the broadest appeal will be to write a like a really revealing and truthful album about motherhood.

But again, it's just a much tinier when no one in their 20s is really.

But again,

I don't.

You don't like that.

I don't think it's true.

I think it's the most obvious.

It's the most obvious thing going on.

But

there are deep things going on with all of us all the time.

And if you choose to deep dive into those things,

like Eldest, there's a song on there called Eldest Daughter.

And like that is,

well, I think some people think that's about him, but I don't think it is at all.

About Travis, like or connecting it to Travis, but I don't.

I think it's about the

responsibility of being the eldest daughter.

And it's like, there are things.

Like, we're, we're just so, we're multifaceted.

We are.

But you could, you could look at our most prolific songwriters.

There's a bell curve.

And then you got to ask yourself, why is there a bell curve?

Does it, does, does their brain deteriorate?

You know, are they losing their creative?

I don't think that's it.

Yeah.

And then there are some artists that stay,

but also look at their lives.

There are people that never leave the cycle of love addiction, and they can be writing about heartbreak and obsession into their 60s.

Right.

And so, yeah, if you want to keep your life a mess, which some people did, but I think in general, if you look at people that kind of like They deal with all these big mercurial events in life, I do think you just look at the output output disappear.

And also, that's, that's probably okay.

That's, that's the, that would be the hard part to get to.

Like that would be my song or my script today, which so few people would, they're not at a place in their life they would understand.

It's like, can I let all that go and still love myself and think I have value and let go of something I work so hard to get?

Like, that's where I'm at in life.

Right.

Could I make that message broadly appealing?

That's the challenge.

Yeah.

That would be the challenge.

Anyway,

any whom.

Okay.

Let's do some facts.

Okay, great.

I want to say Hogan.

I'm going to be honest with you.

Interesting.

I have these little hiccups with people's names sometimes, and this is one of them.

In my mind, it's Sharon Hogan.

I know why.

It's because there's two R's, and that's confusing.

Sharon Horgan.

And what's Hulk Hogan's wife's name?

Or daughter?

Rob?

I have no idea.

You don't know off the top of your head what the Hulkster's family means.

Candace Hogan?

Skye, brooke hogan sky

linda jennifer yeah he's had a lot of wives there's no reason though also he's passed i forgot yeah yeah we lost him yeah it's sad when people die he entertained a generation he really did oh he really did i love the hulkster when i was a little boy yeah i really did what a character he body slammed andre the giant it's a 500 pound man Torres.

I wonder if when he did that, if Andre took a fart.

When he landed, I'm almost certain he took a fart.

Yeah, I think he took.

Do you ever see the memes about Andre the Giant, how many beers he drank?

I know in the dock they talked about it.

I don't remember.

But there's these claims that

they seem to be substantiated, that he drank like 126 beers in one second.

And I'm just like,

I'm like, I understand that he's 500 pounds, but 126, that's...

That's 10, 12 packs, and a six pack.

And it's not like shots.

It's like

liquid.

That's like cases of beer.

I do not believe that.

Think how many farts he took.

Ew.

Oh, man.

This is a ding, ding, ding.

Do turkeys poop more than other farm animals?

Wow.

Turkeys do not necessarily poop more than other farm animals in terms of total volume, but they do poop very frequently.

The larger and heavier an animal is, the more waste it generally produces.

A turkey's waste output differs significantly from that of a cow or pig, both in volume and how it's concentrated.

Like chickens, turkeys have a fast-working metabolism that causes them to excrete waste often, as frequently as every 20 to 30 minutes.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

You were right.

We're watching this nature show about dolphins, the girls and I.

Uh-huh.

And this very, very assertive bird lands on the boat.

And the guy's just standing there doing his two-camera thing.

And all of a sudden, this bird just lands and it comes right up to his face.

Like, I've never seen a more confident bird.

It's not afraid of this human at all.

That's nice.

And then it's sitting there and they kind of are getting a bang out of it.

And then it just goes, oh, it just sprays rude, it sprays bird poop on the front of the boat, and then it does like four more squirts throughout the thing.

And I'm like, I fucking hate how they squirt their poop.

And then it brought back PTSD of that woman in the grocery store that we saw.

Oh, my

jersey.

We didn't see, we saw a video.

We saw a video.

We did not see him.

She pulled her jersey material shorts to the side and just squirted like a goose on the floor of a million of a grocery store.

It was

so,

and like we have a high tolerance for poop stories and like we understand that sometimes you have to tonka but this was so just like go outside

yeah grab i mean also like here's what i would have done if it was like that and it was that desperate she was in the vegetable section grab one of the plastic bags that are everywhere around you and squirt into that she didn't care about others at all yeah she had no regard for anyone i feel like if you're going to do that, you liked it.

Like you enjoyed it.

It's a kink.

Although we have had some Armature Anonymous stories where people do crazy stuff when they have to poop.

And they're like, they're just like, my brain wasn't working.

They're good people.

And they're good people.

They're really good people.

So

I don't know, but I

it is such a disturbing yeah, the waste this bird was just

it's squirting.

Yeah.

It's so gross.

They're so smug about about it yeah okay um the waste called hot manure is very high in nitrogen and phosphorus compared to most other livestock manure cattle the sheer size of cattle means they produce a much greater volume of manure per day than turkeys a large dairy cow can produce more than a hundred pounds of manure daily a hundred you

yeah a cow shits you out every day

compared to a turkey's fraction of a pound so they're doing a lot but but tinies.

Yeah.

Interesting.

When I watch nature shows, I'm just so grateful that I'm an omnivore because if you're a herbivore, you have to eat so much to get any calories out of it.

There's just no calories in hay.

You have to eat a bale of hay and then dump a manica.

Does hay have fiber in it?

Seems to have.

Yeah, I think it has a lot of fiber.

Oh my God, imagine the constipation.

Okay.

And then it's got to go through their four-chambered stomach because it's like impossible to

break down.

Ugh.

Um,

okay, I did a little more research on this.

Yeah.

While the largest individual poop comes from blue whales and elephants,

animals that poop the most frequently are small, energy-intensive creatures like some birds, ding, ding, ding, 40 times a day.

Oh, my God.

Rabbits, 200 to 300 times a day.

And penguins, six to eight times an hour.

How are their butts not so raw?

I hate rabbit poop.

I don't hate it.

I'm just so confused.

Is that their food or the poop?

Because their food looks identical to their turtles.

Yeah, how can they tell?

They probably

can't tell.

They probably don't.

Ew.

Okay, last thing I'll say about doodle.

Okay.

Because I just said it getting off the commode the other morning, Saturday morning.

I said, I was about to, I was flushing and I was like, it is funny how disgusting we think it is when it is food.

That's all you're looking at.

You're looking at food.

But mixed with food.

It's not like you're looking at, you know, a carcass.

Like, it's just, it's just the food that you thought looked so good when you were putting it in your mouth.

And now it,

you know, nothing, that's its food.

No, but it's mixed with like

bacteria and stinky bile and stuff.

I know.

It's just, it is just food.

It's good that we're not, we, that we don't think it's just food because it is bad for, if we ate it, it would be very bad bad for us because bacteria so we don't need to get confused like the rabbits i have a hunch we have once once we started living in such compact

uh societies that's when diseases started spreading a ton when we started living with animals these are when like all these really wild pathogens so i i wonder if when we were hunting and gathering if we had the same aversion to duty because again no other animal does they like go right up to each other while the other ones they also though ate differently than we eat now so the waste we're producing is so much more complicated than they were just eating like bare natural foods.

I think I'm eating kind of like they ate, which is just like a tremendous amount of meat.

But you would put mustard on it.

I do, but that's a seed sauce, but it's a seed.

Yeah, but the one kind you eat isn't just mustard seed, it's it's made into a paste sauce.

I have no idea what kind of mustard you eat.

Sugar.

Actually, there's probably not added sugar, but whatever.

It's not, it's not pure.

Okay.

Um, I love mustard.

Yeah, it's a great condiment.

Great for salad dressings.

Okay.

Oh,

to the point that has she made the most shows.

Aaron Spelling holds the Guinness World

record for the most prolific TV producer, having created over 4,500 hours of television programming by 2003.

Whoa.

I saw this funny thing of Howard Stern talking about the summer I turned pretty.

He loves it.

Yeah, he loves a lot of like teen shows and stuff.

He's Team Conrad, for people who are wondering.

Okay.

Okay.

So you said that your kids' school, and I'm not going to say what it is, has more free lunch than any other school in the city.

I couldn't, they, there was no, it wouldn't let me find that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But more than an exaggeration.

That school,

45% of families qualify for free or reduced lunch.

So that's a lot.

Yeah.

I feel like when I was in elementary school, you know, you knew the kids that were on on welfare because they didn't have to pay for lunch.

Like they, I forget what they had, but you'd be in line and you'd see it.

And I think, you know, and I didn't grow up in like the fancy part of Michigan.

I still think it was like, well, only one in 15 or 20 kids was on the

free lunch.

I wonder what

quality, like, is it just family income, right?

Yeah, it's just income.

Yeah.

Oh, shit.

I forgot to find an important fact, which is where we stayed in London.

It started with a C, but it was not Clared.

Claredge.

Claridge's.

Nope.

That's the same one we've been saying.

Connot.

Nope.

I've stayed there.

That's a great hotel.

Caesar Hotel.

Maybe it doesn't start with a C.

Maybe it starts with an M.

An N?

What's that little area we're in?

It's by the theater district.

West End?

Corinthia.

Oh, wow, that wouldn't have even rung a bell for me.

It was the Corinthia Hotel in London.

That's where we stayed.

And I don't think we went to the pub that she wanted.

There's no way that was the pub.

The pub we went into was like something that would be on the Jersey boardwalk.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it wasn't really authentic or nice.

No.

They did serve Guinness on tap, but that's all you can say about it.

Yes.

Speaking of, you know, we talked about drinking and, you know, of course, yes, there are all these studies.

There's lots of debate about.

how bad is it.

How bad is it?

And this Harvard article says,

yes, there are, of course, bad things, but it also says everything in moderation.

So,

anywho, um, that is it for facts.

Okay, God bless Sharon Horgan.

She is a gift to us.

Yes.

Consume all of her stuff.

She's so consistently great.

Agree.

Yeah.

Right.

All right.

Love you.

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