#186 Brett Cooper - The Real Reason She Left The Daily Wire

Brett Cooper, welcome to the show. Thank you.
I'm happy to be here. I'm happy you're here.
We've got a lot to dive into. You ready? Yeah, for sure.
Anything off the table? No. All right.
All right. How's it going independent? It's awesome.
I'm having a ton of fun. Are you? It's very freeing.
Is it more challenging than you thought it would be?

Um, yes and no.

I think I was surprised about the things that have challenged me. Because I knew going into it that there was a lot that I didn't know that other people had managed and that I didn't have a hand on.
And that was one thing that I never really loved was that I didn't completely have a hold and a sense of everything that was going on in terms of my career and brand. So we were to talk about yourself as like a brand, but sort of how it ends up being.
And so it's been really nice to dive into that. But of course, there's a learning curve with that.
But it's been very freeing. Well, we'll dive into that later.
But I say man like i am you're 23 years old right yeah very sharp 23 year old and um i just have a ton of respect for you i don't i don't dabble with the gen z as much i don't get the opportunity but you know i've been i've been stalking you for a little bit sounds kind of creepy but but now like you know I saw you know obviously the transition from daily wire and kind of disappeared for a minute and you pop back up and like you got spunk in your step you're just you're crushing it man and it's yeah it's really like I got a ton of respect for people that can walk away from, you know, something where everything was handed to you. Maybe not handed to you, but, I mean, everything was taken care of over there.
Now, like, you're tackling this thing head on, and it's tough, man. It's a tough business.
And I just want to say you're doing amazing. Thank you.
And, like, I for you. It's really cool to watch your journey.
It's been rewarding thus far. Yeah.
I mean, you came out with a big bang. Yeah.
And that's cool. Everybody starts off with an introduction here.
So, Brett Cooper, you're a conservative and cultural commentator who has captivated audiences with your sharp insights and relatable perspective. You're a former actress who brings a unique blend of entertainment and politics into your audience.
During your nearly three-year tenure at The Daily Wire, you amassed 4.5 million subscribers as the host of the comment section with Brett Cooper cooper you're the host of the brett cooper show now where you tackle current events cultural issues and personal stories you've attracted over a million subscribers in just one month you're the voice you are a voice for gen z challenging the status quo and sparking conversations on topics often overlooked by the mainstream media. And you live on a farm here in Tennessee with your husband, and your one-year anniversary is next week, correct? Congratulations.
Thank you. Congratulations.
So I want to do a life story on you. Okay.
I know there's a lot there, especially for a 23-year-old, man. You've been through it.
And there's a lot of depth that I don't think you've really gone in depth on a lot of this stuff on other podcasts. Very rare.
I want to be the one. I want to be the one that gets it.
That's what my husband said last night as we were leaving dinner with you guys. He was like, this is the podcast to talk about that stuff.
And I was like, I know are you nervous no not at all i love talking about you think you're gonna get emotional probably right on man i cry easily it's like a therapy session i know and i loved therapy people rag on therapy a lot especially on the right and i sort of do when i think people like overuse it it was incredible for me and i when did you start therapy i was like 14 14 years old a lot of shit going on yeah i know man to work through it but no but i i think that's the thing that not to go completely off topic but it there was a time in my life when i needed it when there was so much going on that I couldn't comprehend and I didn't have the tools to navigate through. And so that's why I sought out help.
And I went through a few different therapists trying to find somebody. And I found somebody who was, yes, very empathetic and would listen, but was solutions focused of like, this is how you navigate this.
This is what you need to say to this person. How do we better your communication so you can get what you need in this very, very chaotic family structure that you're living in? It was giving me the tools I needed so I didn't need to go forever.
I got through that period and I got to a point where I was like, I don't need to go trauma dump every Thursday afternoon. So I haven't been back.
And I've wondered if there was like... You don't go today? Mm-mm.
Interesting. Yeah.
Last year, I thought I might need to. I think I need to.
I've been kicking around the idea of going back. I haven't been in probably seven years, I think.
Yeah. If you find a good person, again, somebody that's not an enabler, which I think is hard to find.
You look up like therapists in Nashville and the first person that pops up is like the person who is in Matt Walsh's What is a Woman?

And you're like, oh, fuck.

You're not who I want to talk to. But if you find, again, a good person that is focused on providing you tools so that you can make your life better, because they can't change your life for you.
Yeah. But if they help you break down the things that are in your way, the things that are out of your control, that give you a set of tools so you can move forward, that's an incredible, whether that's a therapist or a life coach or just a mentor in your personal life, in your church, everybody should have something like that.
Yeah. A lot of times I think people just break it down themselves.
Just hearing yourself talk, just hearing yourself talk, you realize how insane you are. And work through a lot of those issues yourself.
But, yeah, I think about going back, I mean, with the rise of the show and, you know, just a lot of people coming at you, it can be enraging. Yeah.
And that's something I'm kind of working through. But you dealt with that at a young age, and I want to talk about that later, too.
Yeah, sounds good. So, but we have a couple things to knock out here.
So I have a Patreon account. Yes.
You know that. I do.
Where's your subscription network? We have our own. BrettCooper.com? No, it's called Cooper Confidential.
Cooper Confidential. Nice.
Yeah. What do you do on there? I do a weekly advice video.

Do you remember like Dear Abby in the newspaper? Yes. I was obsessed with Dear Abby.
And so I have people send in questions because a lot of the times when I get emails from people, it's like I'm having trouble figuring out something in a relationship or with college. Or I know that you've dealt with this with your brother or your parents.
Could you help me through this? So it's like these long, long questions that I've never really had the avenue to answer before.

Because I can't just email people back all day long, even though I would love to.

So we open up the question portal every week.

And people send in their questions.

And then I answer them in just like a casual video.

We just kind of work through them together, basically. So we do that.

And then we have ad-free episodes.

And then like a monthly subscriber-only newsletter that's much more personal stuff. Nice.
Nice. Yeah.
Well, this is from John Wallace. Okay.
Could you comment on the current state of conservative politics now that the new administration is actively making changes and disrupting the liberal agenda? Then there's a follow-. Is there more unity? Or is there behind the scenes drama and power grabs occurring? Oh, gosh, unfortunately, I think it's the latter.
Because I think that was actually my first episode that I did on the new show was sort of about that. I think that we are being very sore winners.
Unfortunately, I think the right is so used to losing. And we talk about a victim mentality all the time of, you know, the left victimizes themselves.
But we've been in a culture, it's like the perfect culture for nonprofits, where it's like, the left's getting us, donate now, whatever. Like, we've just been in that mindset that I think now that we've won in such a massive way and we've won culturally, I think everything, everybody was just like, we don't even know how to function so i have a lot of hope i'm really excited about almost everything that trump is doing and his cabinet is doing i love the people involved i love rfk jr i'm a massive fan of tulsi she i know her you know as you know her in our personal lives i just think that she is one of the most like magnificent people like he's surrounded himself with excellent individuals feels very different than 2016 so in terms of the administration i feel really really strongly in a positive way but in terms of like this weird industry of like right-wing commentators and whatever like you go on x i'm like can you like can everybody just like chill it's crazy over there um so i think when you get out of like there's a lot of x that does feel like the real world, but I'm also like, moms in Minnesota aren't like caring about this stuff.
Like random people just like trying to get through life and hoping that gas prices are going to go down. Like they're not seeing Arian fighting.
So, um, I, so I think it's a, it's a double edged sword of, I feel a lot of hope in terms of where politics are going. And I hope that the right can get their act together and stop pointing fingers.
Yeah, it'd be great to see a little unity. I mean, people are just so far apart nowadays, you know? But I think a lot of people are exhausted from it, too.
Yeah. I know I am.
Yeah. I'm so fucking tired of politics.
Yeah. I can't even.
I think people in this world are, I think just normal voters are. I think it's just been, it's probably one of the reasons why he won was people are just like, I can't do this anymore.
Like, I don't care what you're going to say about me. Like, I just want my life to be better.
Yeah. So I think that that part, again, with with normal people i think that there has been some unity i hope the pendulum just like starts slowing down a little bit here yeah you know i think maybe hopefully you know hopefully everybody's learned some lessons yeah and maybe we don't need to go so fucking extreme and uh yeah that would be amazing.
Probably way off. Probably wishful thinking.
So everybody gets a gift. Oh, I'm so excited about this.
Yeah, yeah. There they are.
Oh, my gosh. The magnificent Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states made here

in the USA.

I can't wait.

I'm so bummed because I wanted to bring you a gift because I know that you

give people your gummy bears.

So I gave you your gift last night.

So for anybody watching,

I gave Sean some of our chicken eggs and one of our duck eggs.

Cause we get those this morning.

We didn't eat the duck egg yet.

Oh,

that one's special,

but we did have like a special omelet for that or something.

Thank you.

Thank you for those.

Did you,

I'm just going to show it. So you got this cookie idea.
I know. You got to do it, man.
I know. You got to do it.
I desperately want to have cookie company. Would crush it.
People love food, man. I know.
You got to do it. I love food.
I mean, it's like it's like the yeah yeah your husband was telling us at dinner last night you like the cookie monster over there six cookies in one sitting amazing yeah but um all right so let's let's dig in you ready let's do it so you grew up in chattanooga right yeah well we moved around a lot but i call Chattanooga. I split my hometown, depending on how I'm feeling about it, between LA and Chattanooga.
But I was born on an island in Washington State called Orcas Island off the coast of, it's in the San Juans, so out past Bellingham. And my family just randomly moved there.
My brothers had gone to summer camp there for many years. And I think that's one of those places where you're either seeking something or you're hiding from something, basically.
And I think my family was, my parents' marriage was never really strong. My dad was very unhappy, and they just needed to, like, escape.
So they went to, like, the tiniest island possible. It was, like, idyllic in hopes that that would fix things.
And so that's how we kind of ended up there. So they were there for 10 years.
My brothers are 12 and 14 years older than me. So I was born at the tail end of that stint.
And I think then they kind of outgrew it. And my brothers were, the education system wasn't great on the island.
And my mom had tried to homeschool them because she had homeschooled. She ended up homeschooling me.
But I think every kid is different. And homeschooling just wasn't really why were your parents not happy they're very different people incredibly different people they were friends in my mom had a previous marriage so my brothers and I have different dads and he died of brain cancer when they were very very young so I think your your brother's dad's your brother's dad died of brain cancer when they were very young.

How young?

Like three and five, maybe?

Shit.

Yeah.

It was really, it was, so we have my oldest brother, Chase, and then two twins.

So my mom had tiny children and a terminally ill husband flying back and forth between Mayo Clinic.

It was awful.

Damn. And I think his brain cancer made their marriage very hard as well because everything obviously just flips.
And so he passed away, and my mom is chronically efficient, I would say. And she was like, well, my sons need a, my sons need a father and I don't want to be alone.

And she had known my dad in college and they were good friends. And he's, he's a wonderful guy.
He's

very sweet, but they're very different people. And they dated for a short amount of time and it was

always long distance because he was in North Carolina and she was in California, which is where

she and her first husband and the boys lived. And so they didn't spend a ton of time together.
I think it was very, like, rose-colored glasses. And it just wasn't from the get-go.
I don't think it was right. They're very different people.
I think they would have been much happier with different, you know, my mom's very headstrong, very dominant personality, super very, very similar. And I think that she needed somebody who could stand up to her and combat that it's like when i met alex who was my husband it was like i'd finally met somebody who was like a sparring partner of mine who wouldn't like put me in my place because that sounds bad but who was willing to like push back and go no you are in the wrong here and here's how you could be better and i could do this like i was so used to being able to do that with other people and to have somebody who was not going to be a pushover, basically.

And would be willing to debate things with me and discuss really like heavy and interesting subjects and wasn't intimidated by me in the slightest and i don't think that was my dad he needed somebody a lot softer i think and my mom needed somebody who was probably more dominant And so I think it was just always very out of back. Like we talk about, you know, masculine and feminine traits and finding that in a marriage, in a relationship.
I think they were always off balance. So it was not great from the start, I don't think.
Your father wanted you aborted. Yeah.
Correct? Yeah. When did you find that out? Oh, gosh.
Probably when I was 15 or 16. 16.
How did that come up? I was living in L.A. It was a child actor.
Everybody there was super pro-choice. I think I had been on some set and everybody was like wearing their Bernie pins or whatever, pro-choice.
And I just like very innocently asked my mom. I was like, what? Like, can we just like talk through this issue? She was super, I think that's why my brothers and I ended up the way that we did.
Like my oldest brother and I are very, very principled in our values and very comfortable like speaking about them openly because it was like the dinner table and just like even being in the car with our mom was like, debate was accepted. The hard conversations were not to be shied away from, whether it was things that were going on in our family or things going on in the world.
It was like, no, let's break these out together. She's a very like introspective, she's not academic, but she's incredibly intellectual.
And so that was just a normal thing. So I was like, let's talk about abortion.
Like, I don't understand, like, what are these two sides of the coin? Like, I just didn't understand the issue. And so we started talking about that, you know, it was just like over the course of a few months.
And I think that she had kind of weighed whether to bring that up. But that was what really changed her mind permanently about abortion was when my dad came to her.
I was like, I don't want a child. Like, their marriage was already not great.
It was an accident. I don't think he really got along with my brothers very well, and it was just like, I don't want this child.
So you're living in L.A., the abortion topic comes up, you bring it up to your mom.

I mean, how did she bring that up to you?

I don't even remember.

But it was probably something that was very straightforward.

She doesn't mince words.

She's not somebody who is, I guess, soft or brings anything in.

Very matter-of-fact. Yeah, it's just like this happened this happened and she had always been in her mind.
She was like, I think she was more pro-life, but kind of understood the pro-choice argument in terms of like government overreach. And, you know, it is a woman's body.
And then what it was actually an issue that she had to decide and what was put in front of her and i think that complete she had to reanalyze the issue from a like a much more personal perspective and i think she basically said to my dad she was like if you want this so badly you go make the appointment and he couldn't bring himself to do it it's like he couldn't even it was just like such a like a threat basically the you have to, he just wanted her to go do it. Yeah.
She was like, I'm not. And that was, it was all like...
I mean, how did you, do you remember her telling you? Yeah, but it also didn't surprise me because I knew my dad. My dad and I never had a great relationship.
It was just kind of like, okay, yeah, I guess. How about today? Much better.
Have you ever asked him about it? No. Will you? The second half of basketball season is here, and the race to the playoffs is heating up on PrizePix.
With over 10 million members and billions of dollars in awarded winnings, PrizePix has made daily fantasy sports more accessible than ever. It's simple.
Get the app, pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projection, and you could win up to 1,000 times your money. Don't miss your chance to cash in as the league's best fight for playoff positioning.
Join PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app available to play in more than 40-plus states, including California and Texas. Download the PrizePix app today and use code SRS to get $50 in bonus promo funds instantly when you play $5.
That's code SRS on PrizePix to get $50 in bonus promo funds instantly when you play $5. Win or lose, you'll get $50 bonus credit just for

playing, guaranteed. PrizePix, run your game.
Must be present in certain states. Visit

prizepix.com for restrictions and details. Part of the reason I do what I do is for my family.

I want to leave them a better country than the one I was born into. I also want to make sure

they're taken care of financially, and that's why I make it a priority to help protect the money I've worked so hard to earn and save. And one of the ways I do that is by diversifying into gold and silver.
Precious metals have been a store of value for thousands of years, and they are known as a hedge against market risk and inflation. If you're interested in learning about how precious metals can help you, you should reach out to my partners at Gold Co.
They're an amazing company. They support this show and I trust them.
Right now, they're offering a free gold and silver kit. All you have to do is go to seanlikesgold.com.
You'll also learn about a special offer to get up to a 10 instant match and bonus

silver for qualified orders so go to sean likes gold.com that's sean likes gold.com s-h-a-w-n

likes gold.com make sure you do everything in your power to help protect what's yours

maybe one day i've talked about having him on the show and

break like trying to break through a lot of different things i have a lot more um

Thank you. to help protect what's yours.
Maybe one day I've talked about having him on the show and trying to break through a lot of different things. I have a lot more empathy for him as I've gotten older, and I understand it more.
Because I think that I saw him for his faults in my parents' marriage, which they both had their faults, but outside of that marriage, I think I saw a broken man who was just not in the right relationship. He'd had a really hard family life growing up.
Do you think he'll watch this? Yeah, probably. He watches everything.
Well, that'll probably strike up some questions. Yeah, for sure.
Like, I had done a, I think he watched the video I did with Raelynn where we talked about this and we sang together because she has a song about her mom almost aborting her. So I believe

he watched that, but. And it's never come up? Mm-mm.
How often do you talk to him? Every month or so.

I definitely still have some boundaries up for sure. Mm for sure.
And I think he does as well. But I think in one of the greatest parts of growing up is seeing your parents as humans with their own childhood, their own baggage.
God, learning so much about, like I knew what my mom had gone through as a mother of losing a husband one of my brothers died at 17 years old going through a really really bitter divorce and being in a very unhappy marriage when my other brother now has schizophrenia I mean she's just been like hit after hit her like joke is like it was like Gingas Khan and like former life like what happened um but seeing that but then understanding things from her family and her past if like you see this full human being that as a kid you don't you can't comprehend and I think I got to start seeing that at a younger age because of her honesty and her transparency um and even her honesty about my dad of things that that he wouldn't bring up, but of her comfort in being able to say, X, Y, Z happened. It's not really my story to tell, but this happened with your grandfather and your dad.
And he went through that. And being able to see that at 17, 18 years old was like, oh, God, okay.
So this was not the right marriage. This was a hard childhood.
And this is somebody who has really been lost I don't think has ever found like true fulfillment and I look at him and I'm just like I'm trying to give you a hug basically and it's really helped our relationship and the other thing too that I never expected was marrying Alex and bringing somebody into my life who didn't carry the baggage and the weight of growing up in this environment and didn't experience the heartbreaks and didn't experience feeling let down, didn't experience growing up in the shadow of schizophrenia and death and divorce and was able to look at my dad as just a human and who was able to find him so endearing and funny and kind and then being able to see him through my husband's lens of like picking up the phone every time he calls and be like hi i just talked to mike wow and that's made me so much better i mean it's it's pretty amazing you I want to dive into all of it, but it does sound like you had a really tough childhood. And a lot of the stuff we spoke about at dinner last night, I mean, a lot of people don't get out of that.
It just carries on from generation to generation to generation. And somehow, you broke through it.
You're obviously a very strong woman. But what did your parents do? What did your mom do? She was a stay-at-home mom.
She was a stay-at-home mom. And your dad? He worked in finance.
And not finance in any kind of really cool or very, but he was a banker at a local bank in Chattanooga doing like non-profit stuff and i don't think that's ever what he wanted to do he was good at it but i think that he there was he would have been a great professor he's super academic very esoteric so i think that's probably also you know there's such a lesson in i think i learned a lot from from watching him. There's such a lesson in, I think I learned a lot from watching him, there's such a lesson in that of you don't have to love everything about what you do, but if you don't find a sort of fulfillment and passion in some sort of your life to fill that void and to fill that cup, you're always going to be searching and you're always going to feel lost and you're always going to, you know, substitute it with other things and other vices.
And so I think there's often people kind of like joke about the cliche of like, do what you love. But it's like, if you don't have some kind of like, if you don't feel like what you're doing is important or like it speaks to some part of you and you can't identify that, then you have to find it in some other part of your life.

And if you don't have both, I think that's what I watched with him,

where there was like, it wasn't in his career, wasn't in his personal life.

He wasn't happy in his marriage.

Our family was a mess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Trapped.

Yeah.

What were you into as a kid?

Everything.

I basically did everything.

Because I was homeschooled, so I had the time to do so many things. So I was obviously into theater, and I was a dancer, so I did ballet, was a competitive gymnast, did community theater singing lessons, was super weird and outdoors.
I was the homeschool kid that was sitting under the tree, looking at leaves and digging holes with my hands. We lived on five acres, 10 acres in Chattanooga.
Um, had a save the earth club in like second grade and because I was homeschooled, there was like nobody in it. It was just me and like one other friend.
Um, uh, my whole family sails very randomly. Like my dad grew up in North Carolina, so he would sail and then when we lived on the West Coast, Norco side, my brothers learned how how to sail.
And so I would go on the Tennessee River at our tiny little boat club thing where they would have tiny little kid sailboats and opties is what they're called. So I would sail.
I rock climbed. Chattanooga is a huge rock climbing town.
How much did you guys bounce around? So we went from Washington to Chattanooga. And then when I started acting, we bounced around.
Okay. And so I was like, I just fell in love with it.
And my mom was very against it. But I also think she saw kind of an out, like a way to escape her life in a way.
My brother had just died, and I saw an emotional outlet that gave me the ability to be creative and escape my life and what was going on and the intensity of that and gave me a creative outlet. And I just kept wanting to do more.
I was like, I would go on, like, I wasn't allowed to have a computer, but I would go on her like desktop and be like, Annie, Annie, like, auditions nearby. And I'd be like, there's one happening, like, an hour away.
I want to go do this musical. And so we would go audition.
My mom would drive me, like, an hour plus to rehearsals and to shows. And then I was like, I think I want to be on Broadway.
And so I wrote a letter to a manager in New York and was like, I want to be Jane Banks and Mary Poppins. And I'll, like, I will fly up to meet you and do an audition.
And then you'll help me get this role. Whatever.
I was just super motivated. And I think she saw kind of an escape, but she also, after my brother David died, her perspective as a parent changed where she was like, if I had known that David only had 17 years, but what I have said yes to, and obviously not give in to your child's every whims, but if there was something he loved more than anything, what would I have done? Let's rewind a little bit before we get into the acting.
So we moved from Washington to Chattanooga. How much older were your brothers than you? 12 and 14 years.
12 and 14 years. Were you close with them? Are you close with them? Yeah.
I was never super close to my oldest brother, Chase, because when I was born, he was already going off to boarding school. He knew he wanted to be in the military, so he went to the Marine Military Academy in Texas because the Marines don't have a college, but they have a high school.
So he did that and then basically spent the next four years working to get into a service academy and got into all of them and chose the Air Force Academy. So he was, and he spent every summer, you know, at the summer programs, at the Naval Academy at Air Force, at West Point, got his pilot's license at like 15 years old.
So he was super incredibly motivated, knew what he wanted to do with his life. So he was kind of out of the house by the time that I was born.
So I didn't get to know him as well as a kid. I think I was probably around 15 years old when we really started getting close.
When all the stuff, I think we can talk about later, that happened with my older brother, my other brother, we really got close then. But Reed and David are the twins.
And so I grew up with them. It was super close.
Super close. 12 years older and you guys are super close.
Yeah. And David died at, because we were all living together, so like when I think about my childhood, you know, David died when I was five years old.
So I don't have a ton of memories, unfortunately, but it was just like me and Reed and my mom. That's the surviving twin.
What kind of stuff were you experiencing in home with your mom and your dad? I unfortunately didn't know anything different. Like, it was icy.
I never saw any affection. There was a lot of disdain for each other.
We lived in a big house that was like very long. It would be like on opposite ends of it, basically.
And to their credit, I think that they tried. And they tried for me, and especially after David died and my brother Reed really started struggling.
I think that the damage after that was irreparable after losing a child. But they did try in their own ways.
But it was like, I'm so grateful that I'm here and I wouldn't change the world but it was it's like I look at that as like that was probably a marriage that never should have happened just because they're so so different like and it's not like a different like complimentary way like it's just like you are just and there's a lot of affection there and you spend 20 plus years with someone because they were married for a long time. And they got through the divorce.
And they're friendly now. How old were you when they got divorced? Fifteen.
Fifteen. Mm-hmm.
Okay. And that's when I had emancipated myself as well.
We'll get there. Yeah.
We'll get there. Let's go back.
Yeah. So your brother dies.
At five. At age five.
I'm age five. He's 17.
He dies on a, they went to a school in Chattanooga. They were on the rowing team.
They were both super athletic, very artistic. I mean, they were like the most well-rounded guys.
They're both brilliant, incredibly artistically talented. Like I can't even, I have my own creative talents, like I can't draw for crap.
And they were both, I mean, brilliant, but also brilliant at math. Like my brother Reed had a perfect SAT score.
I mean, just so well-rounded, incredibly athletic. They were on the rowing team, just good guys.
And out of nowhere, David had a cardiac arrest and fell off the rowing machine right in front of Reed. So they were 17 years old, identical twins.
They never had that like separation that like psychologically twins have to go through. And if you're not a twin, like I don't even think I can understand what that feels like, but I've talked to enough twins now.
I've talked to Reed, you know, 17. I think this is the, we're going into the 18th year since David has died, so he's now been gone longer than he was here.
And I've spent enough time talking with Reed throughout that period of, like, they had never, they were still one person. They had done everything together.
And he watched his brother die in front of of him there were no defibrillators in the gym there was nothing anybody could do he was basically dead on sight and it was valentine's day in 2007 um and yeah it was i mean that changes the family forever and it's there, there were so many different, it's like a, grief is such a patchwork, like a quilt in my opinion, because everybody's perspective and journey is different. My mom's journey was completely different than my dad's.
You know, this is not my dad's biological son. He never adopted my brothers.

They had a lot of, it was very tense.

Like the week before David died, they had a huge, my dad and David had a huge blowout.

David even went to my mom that week and was like, why are you still in this marriage?

Like this doesn't work.

I think she had a ton of regret over that. And he...
So my dad's journey was completely different. I think he's...
But just because he wasn't their biological father, I mean, he had spent 14 years with them. It was very different than my mother's.
Reed's journey as an identical twin was completely different, something that none of us could ever understand. My older brother, Chase, had a completely different journey that I don't even think I really know much about.
He's very, he's military. He's like, close case, done.
And he was far away at the time he was in college. Then mine was completely different than anybody else's because I didn't know him.
I did. Like, I have these memories of things we would do together, and we would wake up on Saturdays, and he would make me waffles, and we'd go, like, ride in the car together and that kind of thing.
But you, my grief was, like, growing up and everybody has all of these memories with this person, and you don't Do you remember how you found out? Yeah, so it was Valentine's Day. I got a phone call from the school.
And again, that's like, my mom is so, I truly think it's one of the best things she's ever done in terms of raising us. She was so honest.

There was no hiding anything.

Which I think in the world of helicopter parenting and trying to protect your kids and kind of putting them in this glass box,

like that's become very abnormal and people would look at our life and be like,

why would you not shield them from this?

But I'm very glad that she didn't.

But it was just like looked at me and went, David's collapsed. We need to go to the put down your valentines that you remember we were like having a valentine's day party and we have to go and i remember getting in the car and i had like the valentine that i had made david and i was just like five years old and holding it oh god i haven't talked about this in so long.
I watched all of it. I got to the school.
This was being put in the ambulance. We went to the hospital and I had like a nurse take me out.
They were, you know, talking about what was going on and they had no idea what happened. I was wearing lime green clogs.
And I remember because it was, we were there until very late. I was walking through the halls of the hospital.
I could hear my, like, Hannah Anderson clogs, like, clomp through the hospital hallways. It's, like, funny the things you remember.
And they were in, like, a very dark, purple-y room. And, um, I had no idea what happened.
they think it's some kind of like like epigenetics if something you know environmental happened genuinely no idea at the time nothing came with the autopsy we all immediately especially read you know we came to nashville and went to vanderbilt. They have one of the best pediatric cardiology programs in the country, probably the best.
I mean, hundreds of tests to figure out, you know, was there any risk for Reed? And there was nothing. Nothing.
And David always drank Red Bulls in the morning. He would drink like two Red Bulls a day.
He would drink one on the way to school. And my mom would always kind of like, David, he probably shouldn't drink that.
And he would be like, mom, everybody's drinking them. But she said there was like a gut feeling of, I don't think this is good for you.
And she asked the doctor at the time, like, do you think this, like, his caffeine intake?

Like, what?

Like, there's no, we have no answers.

What could have happened for a completely fit, no chronic illness, no history of anything, collapse and die within 15 minutes?

When you have an identical twin brother standing here with no problems.

Who still to this day doesn't have any problems?

Never had any scares or anything um and she was like could it have been you know let's talk about what he my mom was very matter of fact of like let's figure it out like what happened we need to you know obviously like prevent this from happening um to any of the other kids she brought up the red bull and they like laughed at her and last year study came out that over like from the last 10 years about the cardiac effects of drinks like red bull and so that's just like one thing but again you have no they threw around something called long qt which is a rhythmic condition which i actually, I go in for like EKGs and testing. We all do.
I don't know if Chase still does, but every five years or so, we'd go in and I'd get routine testing and they noticed something a few years ago. So I came back up to Vanderbilt.
We did all of that, but it was nothing worth really addressing. But I monitor my caffeine intake for that reason.
I kind of always, I look for like defibrillators in rooms at gyms and that kind of stuff, but nothing serious. But that long QT, that was just kind of a shot in the dark of like, maybe it was that.
And that can be just spurred by environmental things. So yeah, that's completely out of the blue.
What did the Valentine say? I think it was just Happy Valentine's Day. Like, love, Brett.
To David with a little heart. It was a lollipop.
It was one of those ones you get at the store where you have the little note that, like, sticks up on it. I still have it.
You still have it? Oh, yeah. I had a little book that I made him after the fact.
My mom was, again, she's so intentional about everything. And she faces it head on.
Which I think when you were in the fog of grief, I look back and I'm like, wow, you did this. But if she knew, even at that time, that my experience was going to be so different than everybody else's.
And so she, you know, put all these little papers together and made a booklet. And she was like, I want you to draw out your favorite memories with David.
She knew I would forget them. So I have this whole little book of like my terrible stick figure drawings of, you know, going skiing and, you know, making waffles in the morning.
And I would love when, you know, David would be, like, in the car with me and he would, like, play Float Rider or whatever. So I have all those written down.
And she has those in her house that I can go back and look at. But I'm very, like, she knew even at that point that it was going to be a very different journey for all of us.
And I think that she handled mine very, very well. And I, you know, she ended up running a grief organization for many years called Compassionate Friends, which if anybody out there has experienced, the death of a child or sibling is an incredible organization that is just about the death of a child.
There wasn't a chapter in Tennessee region, and so she created one and ran it. And through that, I met kids that had been in a very similar situation as me, where they lost somebody that was older than them.
And again, it's so weird because you grow up and you watch your family struggle, and you hit every Christmas and every anniversary, and it's your, you know, Christmas was never never the same in our house. Like you can't, holidays after losing somebody so close to you will always feel just empty.
This goes like, this is a deep cut. I was like an English major, but Alfred Lord Tennyson is a very famous English poet.
And he has a very, very long poem. It's basically a book called In Memoriam that tracks his experience through grief after losing his best friend.
And I remember I read it in college and I was just like, hit. Because I'd never heard anybody show the waves of grief over like the course of, you know, 10 years of of like and there was these moments each year that he would cover in the poem about holidays and Christmas specifically well like there's something about those days that are so you know they're about family and about community and about coming together in love and how can you do that when you've lost somebody that's so important? And I'm just seeing that was like, okay, it's not abnormal.
My family is feeling and having that community through that organization was really helpful. And through that, I met other kids, like I said, who had lost siblings that were older than them because you, you grew up in the shadow of grief, which changes your childhood forever.
You grew up desperately wanting to have the memories that everybody else does. I was like, you got 17 years with him.
I got five, you know, three of which I have no concept of any memory. Um, one of which he was at a boarding school.
So it's like, maybe I got one year. And then you feel kind of stupid because it's like, should this even impact me? I was five years old school so it's like maybe i got one year and then you feel kind of stupid because it's like should this even impact me i was five years old but it completely changes the trajectory of your family and your life and then i was i i literally i almost said subconsciously but it was much more tangible than that i didn't think i was going to live beyond 17 years in one week, because that was when he died.
His birthday was February 7th. He died February 14th.
Because you idolize this person. And I've talked to people who have lost parents at a young age and who have lost older siblings.
And I had 12 years of still looking up to him. He was still my older brother.
I mean, it's not just one year, though. You know what I mean? I mean, even though you don't have a memory of the first three years, I mean, it's there.
Yeah. You know, I see it with my kids.
Yeah. You know, one and three.
And I see my youngest, you know, totally infatuated with my three-year-old. I mean, so there's still that bond that's forming every minute of every day.
She doesn't want to do anything that her brother's not doing. So, well, you don't have a memory of it.
The psyche's in Yeah. It's ingrained.
And it's hard to rationalize that when you feel ridiculous. But it's like that bond, that idolization that you see with your daughter and your son of, like, you just keep having that.
And I was like, I want to go do the things that he did. And I want to be as smart as he was.
And I want to be as good of a person as he was.

And then you get to that point.

And I didn't like see a life beyond 17 in a week.

And I remember it was my birthday is October 12th.

I had midterms.

It was a week after that.

And I had like an English midterm.

And then it was like my second year at community college. And I had a Spanish midterm later in the afternoon, so I was sitting in the parking garage in my car, sobbing.
Because I had like made it. I felt so guilty.
Man. What age did you start thinking that? What age did you start thinking you wouldn't make it past 17? Probably like tween.
Here's when I really started to be able to think critically about the entire experience. And as it got closer, then it was like, oh.
Like, it genuinely felt like such a betrayal. A betrayal? Yeah, of him, of like, how did I get here? Like, why am I...
How do I get to live longer than you? Especially when you idolize somebody for so many years. Like, you're a much better person than I was.
It's like you deserve so much more, and why am I here? But that's also's also like on the flip side, it's such a fire under your ass.

Of like, I always say I feel like I'm living for two people. Because he had such big dreams.
Like he was so smart, he was so creative. It's like I never want to waste an opportunity.
my mom gave gave so much to me and pushed so hard for me to pursue the things that I loved that would make me better, happier, more fulfilled. Does that turn you into an overachiever? Sure.
Yeah. We're doing pretty damn good.
I know, yeah. I don't even think about it as overachieving.
It's just like, just don't stop. Push it to the limit? Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know we have a, you know, this is a huge veteran audience. Yeah.
And a lot of kids, you know, that have lost parents, lost siblings. Yeah.
I mean, what advice do you have for them? Especially the young kids. I've seen it.
Yeah. I've seen it I've seen

I've seen my friends die and I've seen their five year olds

show up to the casket

with an American flag over it

they don't know what's going on

no

I think

or maybe they do

you know

but I don't think you understand the magnitude of it until later Thank you. I think...
Or maybe they do.

You know.

But I don't think you understand the magnitude of it until later.

You understand the magnitude because they're gone.

But as you get older, you realize the magnitude of what that means for the rest of your life and what you'll carry.

So I think that would kind of be the advice is just know it will never go away.

And that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's just like, I think people think of like, oh, you're grieving.
You're in mourning and we would have, you know, family, friends, and even people in our family who would say just like, literally somebody in our family told my mom, it's been 10 years, why aren't you over it? But you'll never be over it. And you can choose

to let that cripple you, or you can choose to let it fuel you. You can choose to let it

determine your life in a really negative way, where you are constantly living in the shadow

of this, or you can make a choice to live a life that's great in spite of it and in honor of them which I think is the decision that I made pretty clearly at a very young age like I remember I'm like 11 years old being like I'm doing this for me and David and be very clear about it um and I was probably like a chronically self-aware kid, which is very abnormal, but you have to, you make a very conscious choice because it's been 17 years and I still on the anniversary of his death was like sitting in the bank parking lot, just like crying a couple of weeks ago. But it's also really special because you have the opportunity to never let somebody's legacy go away.
And be able to, like, speak their name and share their stories for your benefit, but for other people's benefit as well. And so, yeah, it will never, it will, grief will change over the years.
It will feel less all consuming. You might go, you know, when you're in the thick of it, I think my mom would say she never felt like there would be a day that she could get through without consuming her.
She can now. She thinks about him every single day.
It drives so much of what she does. It

drives the fact that she's never given up on my brother Reed who struggles so much.

But it changes and it does get easier and you learn how to cope with it better.

But it will always be there and so you should try to look for the beauty in it.

And the other thing that she always said to me starting from when I was very young

is that, you know, grief wouldn't exist if we didn't love so deeply.

And that's a blessing.

You got to love.

It's kind of like it's love that doesn't have anywhere to go anymore.

So now you can choose where you're going to put it

and what you're going to do with it.

Do you believe in God?

Mm-hmm.

Do you think your brother's watching over you? Yeah. I think of every time I see a cardinal.
Do you know the idea with redbirds that they're... Oh yeah, I know.
I drive out of our house, live in the middle of, you know, the backwoods. There's one spot where I'm driving out on this dirt road and every single day without fail,, even in like the season when Cardinal should not be there, drives right in front of my car.

How does that make you feel?

Incredible.

And it wasn't there all the time.

I didn't see him a lot.

Say, hey, because I literally, I'm just like, hey, yeah, that's David.

Started this summer. I was really going through a hard time.
Felt very lost. Was really questioning if what I was doing was right.
And some, you know, career decisions that I was going to be making. And that's when I started seeing him.
And I haven't gotten a day without seeing him since. And what did that tell you? Because I'm doing okay.
Laying into your gut? Yeah. We did all sorts of things.
My mom visited mediums right after. I mean, I haven't done that and I kind of want to, but she's like, she did, she went to multiple mediums, like one in New York where you don't tell them or even his assistant, like who you or anything about you and you go to this hotel room and he would just like sit there.
I was like talking about it just so weird. And both her first husband and David popped up.
Are you serious? Yeah. And we're like there's a 17 year old young man here who wants to speak to you i mean it was like i was actually just thinking about this meeting the other day i was googling trying to see if i could find him i need to ask my mom the name because i would love to go just do this but yeah she was able to speak to don her first husband to hear from him she had a miscarriage between the between the boys i think and i'm pretty sure that in one of the medium things that baby came in said something.
You know the light's just dim behind you twice. I saw that.
I believe in all that stuff. Me too.
I know it's real, man. There's not a doubt in my mind.
Yeah. Which also is another part of this that can be very special.
Again, it's all like, it's something that's really hard to hear and it's hard to implement, but it is about perspective at the end of the day. If you can think of it as, I will let this drive me.
I will be a better person in spite of this.

I will live for both you and me, and I will make you proud.

I will know that you're always around me.

Like, that's pretty cool.

It is.

Do you think he's Sarah right now?

Absolutely.

I think I'm so, like, selfish, but I'm like,

he doesn't go a day without being with me.

Yeah.

He's got a bunch of people to bounce around with,

but I'm like, no, here. You're the baby.
I know. Exactly.
I need to send him over to my other brother, though. You need to go help him.
We'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah.
Let's take a quick break. Sounds good.
Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a passcode on your phone. You're just making it insanely easy for anybody who steals your phone to also steal your whole digital life.
Every time you connect to an unencrypted network, like in a hotel, your online data is not secure, and hackers on the same network can try to steal your personal data like your passwords. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure tunnel between your device and the internet.
ExpressVPN is so easy to use and super secure, you just need to fire up the app and click one button to get protected. And it works on all devices, your phones, laptops, tablets, and more.
I know for me, helping to protect myself from hackers is a top priority, and I really like that ExpressVPN can be used and trusted when I'm on the go or in the studio. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash srs.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-n.com slash srs to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free expressvpn.com slash srs i'm always looking for ways to make sure i feel comfortable in what i wear through the whole day that's even more important when the weather is changing from winter to spring, and True Classic helps make it easy. Their active wear is moisture wicking and quick drying.
And for spring, they have short sleeve comfort knit button ups that look as good at the gym as they do in meetings. True Classic makes premium clothes at an affordable price with shirts designed for your best features with a perfect fit.
Their best-selling t-shirts and more come in three, six, and nine packs. The more you bundle, the more you save.
Plus, you get free shipping on all orders, a 100% perfect fit guarantee, and easy returns so there's no risk. Whether you're bundling up for the cold or getting ready for spring, level up your style with the clothes that actually fit right.
Just go to my exclusive link at trueclassic.com slash SRS to save. That's trueclassic.com slash SRS.
Shop now and elevate your wardrobe today. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses.
That's right, more than 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C.S.
Lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meeting of the U.S. Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian, with Hillsdale College's free online courses.
I've talked pretty openly about my return to faith on the show, and Hillsdale offers some incredible courses to help discover the Bible's profound lessons about fatherhood, the nature of sin, and the consequences of sin on both a family and a nation. Their online courses are self-paced so you can start whenever and wherever.
Go right now to hillsdale.edu slash srs to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started.
That's hillsdale.edu slash srs to enroll for free. hillsdale.edu slash srs all right so we're back from the break yeah the medium stuff yeah have you ever heard of the long island medium i think that's what they call her yes yeah wasn't she on some reality shows yeah i think she's been on a ton of stuff yeah but my wife's uh my wife's family had some crazy stuff happen with with that they went to i guess they do like a show yeah and um it sounded like it was pretty intimate and um without getting too into detail about her family she had she had some family members that um they lost their dad and they went to this they went to this medium it's kind of like you know just entertainment yeah and you know she was like oh the medium was like oh you know i'm getting this and all these people raised their hand i'm like no it's not you and oh like they're saying this and all these other people raise their hand and it's like no it's not you and she said they know that you go in the closet and spray your dad's old cologne in total privacy to remember him and her family member just started like crying immediately and then you know and then there was a little bit more I can't remember the rest of it but it's like and that stuff is wild yeah you.
Have you seen the telepathy tapes? No. You'll have to ask the team downstairs about it, but there's a, I'll butcher the explanation, but it is, it's a podcast that's been blowing up.
And it focuses on nonverbal people with autism. Really? And just telepathy and all of that and not just being able to communicate but like being in separate rooms and like this person will have like a ball or something and they'll have this person in the other room and it's like so what are they looking at? It's like ball that's crazy man it's just all like it's like some type of connected consciousness yeah yeah the brain is like there's so much we don't know and i think that cannot be fully explained and probably never will be explained and that's probably you know faith but yeah i'm with you you know it's like i just i don't think any i don't think that we are aware of our full capability you know i've i've delved into the subject several times with the psychic type stuff and the remote viewers and stuff like that.
And I think that's a fascinating subject. And, you know, there's, of course, there's everybody else who claims it, which is just complete bullshit.
But, yeah, I think that the human mind is capable of so much more than we can even fathom. Yeah.
And I think it's been dubbed down just from century to century to century into what we are today. But, I mean, and a lot of those guys talk about it, you know, like how they think that it may have happened but yeah and i use i mean i just

in a weird way i use that in business and what i'm doing and there are no fucking limits you

know and and um like we're just capable of so much and we put these false limitations on ourselves

and and trap ourselves in these little prisons yeah you know You know, and a lot of people, we all suffer from it somewhat, right? But some a lot more than others. But we just, anyways, yeah, I just, I think that we are capable of so much more than what we're doing.
And if you can wrap your head around that and start to realize there are no limitations then amazing things can be accomplished and you're doing that by the way so congratulations but let's lighten it up a little bit yeah so you moved to california you start getting into acting yeah so i um at least i that's light. I don't know how you feel about California.
No, no, California is fine. No, I spent 10 years of my life there.
It's like I think of my childhood in Chattanooga, and that is where the most formative things in my entire life happened. You know, it's where I lost my brother.
I mean, it's just like that's,

I'm rooted there in so many ways.

But I, my adolescence was spent in LA.

And my mom was born there

and they had lived in California prior to me being born.

They lived in Northern California.

So in a lot of ways for her, it was just, you know,

going back home.

Yeah, I started back in film. I mean, that had to be a culture shock, oh completely from Chattanooga Tennessee I hated it LA you hated LA well I loved what I was doing because I I didn't ever think of acting as a job I didn't think of it as a job until I was like 15 and started you know just going into college and had to start thinking of it as like a career and a job.
And then I was like, oh, I don't know. It was just fun.

Again, it was like you go through something so intense as a small child and you have nowhere to put that emotion.

And to have something that allowed me to walk around in somebody else's shoes and to kind of safely express things I didn't feel comfortable expressing in our home. Like, I would, after my brother died, I would hide in cabinets.
Really? Like, I would go in the kitchen cupboard and, like, shut the door. There was, like, a cabinet in our house in North Chattanooga where I would do it.
There was a house, a cabinet on Signal Mountain where I would do it. And I would lock my, like, I was just a shutdown.
And acting gave me the. Hold on.
Why would you go in the cabinet? I just wanted to be alone. It was safer.
You felt safer then? It was like I could be somewhere that was like my own space. There's like...
I mean, I still do that sometimes. Do you still lock yourself in the cabinet? Not in a cupboard.
But there was a day I was working on the show, and I just felt so, like, last week I felt so overwhelmed.

And it was like every noise in the house was just, like, too much.

And I went and I literally sat in my dark closet, closed the door, didn't turn the light on, and just finished writing the show.

And I was like, I just have to be.

You just kind of, like, turn stuff off.

And I think I felt that at a very young age of there was so much noise, emotional noise. There was my brother.
There was my mom and dad grieving individually and fighting and a lot of change. And I felt like I didn't have something of my own.
And it being a small, confined space just felt like that pressure of like, this is safe. And acting gave me the ability to, I guess, be big, to like express things in a way that I wasn't able to express.
Like I, my mom would always say like I would go on stage and become like an animal. Like, I would just, like, light up.
I loved being able to not be Brett and be somebody else and experience their experiences. That's why I love doing things on stage.
And, you know, I love theater. Theater's my first love, I would say.
And I ended up going to L.A. And the reason why I went to L.A.
is because if you're under 18 and you want to be on Broadway, there are height limits. You can't be taller than five feet most of the time.
And I was super tall. I grew like a string bean.
So the manager that I had written a letter to at eight years old saying I want to be on Broadway was like, you can go home to Chattanooga and you can just keep doing regional theater and maybe audition for a show here and there. Or you can go to L.A.
if you want to keep acting. Because you are five foot two, you're 11 years old, and you're not going to be hired for anything.
You've got seven years to kill, basically. Because they won't.
And the reason for that is when you're at the very back of the house on stage, they want you to look significantly smaller than the adults on stage. There can be no confusion about whether you are an adult or whether you are a child on stage.
So it makes sense. But that was heartbreaking for me because all I wanted to do was be on Broadway.
At eight years old, you knew you wanted to be on Broadway? Oh, yes. I was like, that's what I want to do.
We would go see Broadway shows. It would come through Atlanta.
We would drive up and see them. I was like, that is what what i want to do would you act just as an eight-year-old just playing around yeah so yeah what would you do i would act out things in our front yard i was constantly writing stories and the funny thing is i we went and saw theater we didn't have television in our house we had atv and i was allowed we were talking about this last night i was allowed to watch the andy griffith show and i love lucy and that was.
So it wasn't like I was watching movies and TV shows, like I want to be on Disney Channel or whatever it was. But I just, I read constantly.
I love stories. At the end of the day, what drives me more than anything in like this career still today in acting is a love of story, is understanding why people do the things that they do, how stories change us.
I've been personally positively impacted by stories, whether they be through literature or on stage or on film, of seeing yourself in a character or being able to put yourself in their shoes and that being an incredibly transformative experience. For me, politics is storytelling because it's all about human nature.
I think that's why I am interested in it because it's reality TV, it's a Shakespeare tragedy, depending on the day. Those can kind of be interchanged a bit, but it is about story.
And I love every day getting on my show and being able to tell a story and bring people in and weave that together and take them along on this journey and have a beginning, middle and end and hopefully leave them changed at the end. And like have them think about something in a different light or feel something through me telling this story.
And that's why I loved acting. So I didn't, you know, 11 years old, I didn't care if it was on stage or on film.
I was like, I just want to tell stories. I just want to act.
So it was both a hobby and an escape. Yes.
I don't think I could have like said that at 10 years old. It was just like, You didn't realize it was an escape? I was just like, I love to act.
When did you realize it was an escape? I think a lot of things clicked for me around 13 years old, 13, 14. It's when stuff really took off with my parents.
Divorce got messy. It's when my brother Reed had his first psychotic break.
It was when I think I just became a lot more self-aware as all of those things were happening. And I think that's when I kind of realized, like, oh, this is why I love it.
Because I'm not me. And that was also why starting to do things on camera for like this whatever industry I've ended up in of like this like cultural commentary, whatever it is.
It was so weird for me because I was just being Brett. Being Brett was very hard.
It was the reason why I never sang in public. My first professional job actually was singing.
First time I was ever paid was to be in the Atlanta Symphony Opera's production of Lobo M. I'm a classically trained singer.
I've been doing it the longest out of any of these things just because I was in like choir when I was younger. And to this day, I am petrified of singing in public because it's, it's me.
Like I can sing in a musical and I can be a character and I'm on this ride of you know whatever character I'm playing I'm you know getting through the entire show beginning middle and end I'm not Brett I'm this person but if you ask me to get up on stage and just sing you a song it it is like I have stripped down.

And I might be better at it now that I've gotten so comfortable of like,

I'm sitting here, I'm just being Brett.

Stream to millions of people.

It's like I have however many billions of views over the last three years,

so I've gotten more comfortable with it.

But I spent over 10 years avoiding just being Brett and being a character because it helped me.

I think that helped me understand me more.

Do you think you still have a lot of walls up?

Yeah, for sure.

I've gotten, I mean, I would have never cried in front of you five, six years ago.

I remember the first time that I ever cried in front of somebody.

I was sitting in the Burbank Public Library, sitting outside in the grass having a picnic

with one of my good friends at the time in LA. And something had happened with my brother.

And that was the first time I ever cried in front of

somebody that was not my mom. Like even like

showing any kind of emotion in that regard. Terrified of letting people in.

Could not like, I felt like I'd been burned enough

by my dad. I couldn't let him in.
I wasn't like he wanted to let me in either. I was just like...
I was really having a hard time processing things. Have you ever thought about psychedelics? No, I'm terrified of them.
Why? Things that could go wrong. What could go wrong? My brother is...
I don't think my brother did them well. But I look at my brother who has basically tried every single drug in the book.
And didn't do anything that was intentional or for healing. And so I think I've...
My impression has been tainted by that. But we even were like talking last night of like, maybe that would be good for him to go do something that is intentional and tailored for healing.
Maybe it would be good for you. I know.
What I did do though was, you ever heard of EMDR? And that was kind of the, and that's not even close to psychedelics, but that was probably the most transformative thing I ever did in therapy. I don't think I, and that was like, I wouldn't be able to be here having this conversation with you without that.
of like tapping into things that I had never even considered processing

or thinking about the way that they impacted. of like tapping into things that I had never even considered processing

or thinking about the way that they impacted me and my childhood.

And there were so many things that I had forgotten that in doing that therapy,

and I did multiple different kinds.

I did the rapid eye movement, which is harder for me.

What ended up really working are the eggs that they like put in your hands

that are little vibrating things, and you hold them and they go,

and that was super, I mean, it was like i locked in immediately and it was like floodgates floodgates of everything i watched and saw and even things were relatively recent that i was you know it was going on with my brother and his schizophrenia of stuff that i just didn't consider, didn't talk. It was so normal to me at that point.
So that was... The thing about psychedelics is the walls completely come down.
That's scary. It is, until you do it.
But they completely come down, and there's aspects of yourself that you never realized were there. You find out who you are because the walls come down.
And some of the walls, I think, at least with myself, you don't even realize certain walls are up because they've been up so damn long. Yeah.
And then when they completely go away, you find a lot of things out about yourself. Might be something to look into.
Maybe not. I don't know.
You'd go with my brother. Would I? I said, no, I could go with my brother.
That could be really good. Yeah.
That could be really good. Mm-hmm.
Did we talk about this on your show? Can't remember. No, I don't think so.
Yeah, I did it. And I didn't realize I had all these walls up.
And it just changed. It changed the entire trajectory of my life.
And it was already, it was going like this. But with my family, with my wife, with my son at the time, I didn't have my daughter yet.
And it me be in the more in the moment it helped me be more open with my wife it took a lot of the fear that I didn't even realize I had business-wise and then my business went straight up yeah because I realized it wasn't beholden to anybody. And all the fears of, well, you know the fears.
The fears of being in the limelight and having millions of people following you and feeling beholden to an audience. I mean, all of that shit went away.
It all fucking went away, man. And I'm just, I'm a huge proponent of it.
I've seen so many people turn their lives around with, get rid of addictions, anxieties, depression, post-traumatic stress, all that kind of stuff, man. Like the walls come down in your life trajectory.
You find out who you are and you lean into that. And it also kind of reassures that your intuition is pretty much right on the money.
Yeah. But, yeah.
Probably good with, I don't think I'm somebody that's super anxious, but there is a perfectionism that is ingrained in me. I think when you, um, and I really, I mean, even yesterday on Alex's and my drive to dinner, I was just like, I don't even know what set it off, but I'm such a...
My entire childhood between David's death and my parents' divorce and my dad is somebody that desperately wanted to please and could never really please. And there was so much going on that I was constantly a peacemaker.
And it's ironic that I do what I do, but rocking the boat in my personal life is incredibly difficult. I can stand up to people in business.
I've done really hard things when it comes to career and business. I've taken a lot of risks.
I put myself out there. But when it comes to my personal life, there are little minute things of where I feel like I'm going to let somebody down and disappoint them.
And I'm like, I allow myself to be a doormat because I'm so terrified of the repercussions of not being too loud of being. And again, I think that goes back to acting of like, it gave me the opportunity to be big, to be a hundred percent me, even though I was like playing another character.
I went from being in this house where I felt like I had to be in this, like, I'd put myself in this cupboard, make myself small. So because everybody else was dealing with much bigger things, I was like, I remember thinking that as a kid, like I'm, whatever I'm going through, it's not as important.
And I was aware enough of that. And I just desperately wanted to keep the peace.
I was like, if I can fix this situation, if I can just keep people together and happy, and we can just walk on eggshells, we can get through this, and maybe they won't fight, maybe he won't drink, maybe Reid won't do X, Y, Z. And I think I still carry that.
And it's this, it's so ironic because I

get online and I, especially three years ago when I was first starting shared, things were very controversial. I think now I, it's more culturally acceptable to talk about what we talk about and what I do on the show.
But three years ago, it's like ironic that I have so, I carry so much weight and anxiety in my personal life.

Like I, and that's why Alex, I'm so like,

he's the greatest man of, I could not like let him be angry at me. Not even be angry, but just to like, oh, Brett, why do you, like I was petrified.
I couldn't like, I don't even know how to describe it. Like, I didn't even want to take, like, one misstep.
And I think another person would have seen that and kind of rolled with it and been like, great, she's going to do whatever I want. And he looked at that and he was like, that is inhibited.
That's, like, a problem that you can't even, that you burst into tears and are hysterically crying at the thought of disappointing me over you burned chicken for dinner. And I was just like, because I was this person that I respected and loved so much already early on in our relationship.
And I was like, you're just another person I can't let down. I can't let you down.
He was like, it's chicken. It's like, if you can't even, and that's probably the thing that my mom and looking at our

relationship has had like the most gratitude for Alex for helping me with is standing up for myself in family, in work. I don't think I would have done anything I did in the last 12 months without him.
I don't think I would be as confident in my family and navigating the relationships and anything in my personal life without having that person who looked at me and went, that's really not normal. Like, what happened to you to make you think that this is so? But I still, like, I've gotten a lot better, but I still will just, like, be set like be set off I had another like chicken incident the other day where I opened a package of chicken and it was mislabeled and I was like had this recipe that I was making for dinner and I thought it was one kind of chicken and I opened it up but it wasn't and I was just like just like oh no it's all gonna be ruined and I like threw the package of chicken and I was like oh my god it's one of when he came home from the he was like, what the hell have I like walked into? And I was like, you're going to like be disappointed.
And then it was like five minutes later, I was like, oh, I'm doing it again, aren't I? Lights just flickered. And you hear that and you're like, but I'm in like the most loving, supportive relationship with the most like, he's so even tempered.
It's one of the things that I love most about. He's like, but I'm in like the most loving, supportive relationship with the most, like, he's so even tempered.
That's one of the things that I love most about it. He's like unflappable.
He has like had the most normal, healthy family. They're incredible.
I love my in-laws. And he met this girl who was like, has been through all of this stuff and he's, youeterred and is so steady and never looked at it as like, you're broken, you're whatever.
It's just like, this is... Your life will be better for you.
Anyway, so that's probably what I would... It's interesting.
That would help me with that. Because you're overconfident.
You know what I mean? Maybe not overconfident. You're very confident.
The Brett Cooper that we all know is very confident. Oh, incredibly.
There's like nothing I can't do in my mind. Then behind the scenes, you're very self-conscious.
Yeah. Which I feel like to an extent is like a healthy balance because I, not the way that it manifests in like my very personal life where I still am having to, that's such like a weird lefty like psychological term, but like I'm learning those things, but I'm having to let go of that because I'm not in a relationship or an environment where that's going to hurt me anymore.
I'm going to feel any repercussions for that. I don't need to keep a boat steady anymore.
And I still like will have moments where I feel that. So that part of it isn't healthy and I know that.
But I do think there's something to be said for when I go to work, when I turn on the camera, when I'm talking about the things that I care about, that I know are good for people that I believe in, that I believe in truth, that my voice doesn't waver, that I have lofty goals for myself, that I think about my brother and I'm going to live for both of us. I want to do all these things.
I'm never going to say no to an opportunity. I'm going to take a huge risk.
And then, but I also go home and I know that I'm like, I'm not really the shit. I'm not the most important person in the world.
I don't think that I am. I'm not in it for fame or power or money, whatever it is.
I genuinely love what I do. I love telling stories.
So I think there's an aspect of it that's, I think, probably has helped me a little bit. But the self-conscious aspect of it certainly doesn't.
You're a wise woman, man. I'm being serious, especially for 23 years old.
But just in general, you're very wise. And it's super impressive to me that that's how you've taken your brother's death is living for him.
And this is something we talk about so much right here because we talk about a lot of loss because my background and a lot of the guest background being military special operations we just it's just part of it and it's powerful i'm not the only person who comes on here and breaks down and cries it's you have a something in this room well the thing is a lot of people will take death and they'll take the loss of a loved one and it will debilitate their entire existence. You know and when people ask me for advice on you know how to deal with loss or I ask a guess on how to deal with loss to include you at at 23, having been through it at five.
I mean, it's like, that's how you have to look at it. That's how you, that's how you have to look at it.
Do you think that person would want to watch you suffer and mourn and, and, and ruin your entire life out of grief? No, man. That's not what they would want.
They would want you to win. They would want you to live your life to the fullest.
And so I think it's just amazing that you've already figured that out. And it sounded like you figured it out a long time ago.
And so. I don't know how.
Good for you. It shocks me.
Intuition, man. Yeah.
Powerful. It's very, it's genuinely thinking back and now looking at kids that I meet that were, you know, this age and looking at young people and knowing that at 12, 13 years old, I was tangibly thinking I'm going to break a cycle.
That's weird. So, I mean, it's powerful, but it's like, I was thinking that already.
It's not normal. No.
It shouldn't be weird. That should be, I wish that for any young person that's, you know, I haven't, I didn't have the worst childhood in the world.
I had something that was very abnormal and it was very hard, but I know that there are a lot of kids that have gone through far worse things and very different things and we've all had our own different walks of life. And I think that there are some of us that see, again, that see that as fuel and that are given the gift of being able to be like chronically self-aware or just aware of your situations to have that light bulb moment.
But I was articulating that in my mind and to other people I remember talking to my like Sunday school teacher at a young age and being like I will not replicate what I've seen because there was so much unhappiness and so much. My parents were both brilliant individuals, and that marriage held them back in a magnitude of ways.
And there was so much unhappiness already. And then adding in my brother's death, adding in, you know, schizophrenic diagnosis, adding in my father's

major depressive disorder, adding in suicide attempts into our family. It was like, I'm not, I'm going to do everything I can because I knew there's more to life than that.
Did you go through family suicide attempts at a young age or is this later on? No. Yeah.
Did you know that? Mm-hmm. What was the first one? 12, 13.
And that, like, those years, shit went down, basically. Yeah, my dad.
There was a lot leading up to that. Of threats of it, and my mom had dealt with that.
That was something she didn't share. I think she was right, too.
I don't think it's my right to even share that here and talk about his family. That was very personal.
And they worked, she fought those battles in private. It was a heavy weight to carry.
And then, yeah, around, I don't know, it was 12, 13, it was, there wasn't any hiding it. It was in front of us and not, you know, physically, but it was, we were involved.
I was driving around Chattanooga with my brother Reed at 3 a.m. looking for him,

standing on the Chattanooga walking bridge wondering if he had jumped,

because we had no idea where he went.

We knew he was somewhere.

Jeez.

So there's...

incredible unhappiness.

This was common?

Mm-hmm.

That was the only time that...

I think a step was taken.

And that I was...

that my brother and I were involved.

It brought into kind of the circle of it.

Where did you find him?

He came home.

How did you know it was a suicide attempt?

Gave us postcards as he walked out the door.

He gave everybody a postcard? He couldn't really understand it, and then we put the pieces together, and, um, they're very ominous. And I, uh, you know how I was telling you at dinner last night that I had a Nancy Drew fixation, and I would go? I busted my brother's high school party and that kind of thing.
And I, anyway, we were given these, um, I guess I went back into Nancy Drew mode. We're given these postcards.
And, um, I was like, something's not right. My mom was super confused.
Reed and I were watching some movie on the couch. He walked out of his office, gave us a postcard, gave my mom a postcard, and left.
Didn't say a word. Again, I was just like, something's not right.
I started looking around the house, and I found a manila envelope with a suicide note.

On his bedside table.

With all of his information, will, testament.

And I brought that in to my mom and we called the police.

Holy shit.

I'm so grateful he didn't do it. What was it like when he came home?

I ignored him.

I was so angry.

I don't think he wanted to see us anyway. He went straight to my mom.
And then looking back, I don't know. I ignored him because I was so hurt, I just went into my room.
I don't even know the right, you don't know how to handle that at 12, 13 years old.

I don't know if what I did was right, but I really shut him out after the fact.

And we already had, even at that young age, we were like,

because I'm so much like my mom.

And I've often wondered if he saw that and kind of resented it because they had so many problems,

and he wanted me to be something that she wasn't and that I wasn't.

There was already a lot of anger there and a lot of hurt. I'd been let down a lot.
He wasn't super involved. And that was when I started asking questions.
I think I was probably 13. I need to get my dates right.
Because that kind of led into that whole period of all the curtains were pulled back. And that's when I learned about his family and everything he had gone through.
And suddenly it all made sense. And even with understanding that and going through the process of learning it over those years after the fact, it was just really hurtful.
But I often wonder, again, what's the best way to, as a kid, what do you do? I felt so much guilt. And like, did I, should I have, you know, that goes into the whole doormat kind of thing.
Should I just have tried more? Should I have been what he wanted? Should I not have, should I have kept the peace more? Is there anything I could have done? Did I cause any of this? Because there was so much anger. and that I was so hurt that he would have attempted to do such a thing.
And it really made things hard. After that.
Where do you go from there as a family? Divorce.

I had him blocked for a long time.

But again, I look back and I... Was that right?

But I mean, it was like fireworks.

And I just couldn't...

That's when I went into therapy around that time.

I had that.

I had, you know, was living in California still. I would spend six months at home, six months in California.
He stopped coming out to visit. My brother was full of schizophrenia in and out of hospitals, homeless.
There was so much going on and I just had to shut everything out. It took a long, again, it's like, in a way, moving back to Nashville, or moving back to Tennessee, is what I needed in a lot of ways.
I needed to meet Alex. I think I needed to be closer to my dad.
I needed to leave my mom. I had spent basically every waking moment with her.
We were probably a little too connected. I think there was some codependency that we needed to let go of because we had been through, like, shit together.
It was like me and her through suicide and divorce and schizophrenia and death and an acting career, like living in a tiny L.A. apartment.
And I think that I needed to literally move across the country and unwind some of that. And she knows this, and I feel comfortable saying it, but I became a spouse to her.
She was super lonely, as you would be. And I took on a lot of that weight for her.
And I wouldn't change that, because she really needed it. But I had to get here and separate.
And it gave me the chance to connect with my dad as an adult in a way that I hadn't been able to with a lot of just like, I'm going to let it go. Rates have dropped and it's time to take advantage.
A lot of us are struggling to keep up with everyday bills and you're reaching for the credit cards to pay for all of it. But homeowners, listen up.
Interest rates have fallen into the fives. That's nearly a quarter of the average credit card rate.
American Financing is helping homeowners like you save an average of $800 a month by tapping into your home's equity and wiping out high interest debt. And the best part is there are no upfront fees to get started.
Credit card rates are insane, and if you're carrying a balance every month, you're stuck in an endless cycle. Break free today, call American Financing, and see how much you can save.
And if you start now, you may even delay the next two mortgage payments. Call American Financing today at 866-781-8900.
That's 866-781-8900 or go to AmericanFinancing.net slash SRS. You all know what speed dating is, right? Well, if you're the owner of a growing business, what if there was a feature like speed dating, but only for hiring? In other words, you could meet several interested, qualified candidates all at once.
Well, good news, there is. It's Zip Intro from Zip Recruiter.
You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow. And right now, you can try Zip Intro for free.
It's ZipRecruiter.com. Zip Intro gives you the power to quickly assess excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls.
You simply pick a time, and Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. Then, you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the next day.
It's so easy. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro, only from Zip Recruiter clunky.
What was the initial... I mean...
I told him? I mean, after all that... It was very clunky.

What was the initial, I mean...

I told him that I was moving back,

and he drove up to Nashville to help me move into my first rental house.

It was so uncomfortable.

I was so... We were both so awkward.

How long had it been since you'd seen him?

A couple of years.

How long had it been since you'd talked to him?

A while. Yeah.
It was very hard. It still is.
I don't think I'm- I think I could be a lot better. Still.
I think now

I have let go of

X-Men. I think now I have let go of expectations that I don't think will ever be met.
And now I look at him and look at our family and it's like, all right, so we're all here. This is the, my mom would always say, she says this in terms of family and emotions and politics and philosophy, but in order to assess anything, you have to look at your current reality.
You can't think of idealism, of what you hope people would be like, what you hope the world would be like, of what a politician you would love for them to do, of what you hope somebody would do in your life. You have to look at things as they are and go from there.
And I think I'm at a point now where I look at him, I look at our family and I'm like, this is where we're freaking at. This is what we've gone through.
There's no changing that. I'm 23 years old now.
I don't, you have no financial power over me. You have no anything and It's like I have to look at you as a human being who has been hurt, who struggled so much, who I probably hurt, and you hurt me.
And just go from there. Because the last thing I want to do is to the next, you know.
And even when we were really struggling and we didn't talk, that wasn't what I wanted. It's what I felt like I needed.
I think I needed to block a lot of stuff out and just assess everything. But I didn't see that as being healthy or right.
And I don't want to live a life of regret of, I pushed somebody away that needed me. That I'm at a point now where I think I'm grown enough, I'm mature enough, I have my ducks in a row, that we can have an adult relationship and not have the kind of father,

father, daughter, like it's never,

it's never been us, it never will be us.

But I love him.

I want the best for him.

He's given a lot, especially recently,

to my brother who really struggles.

He really showed up for him in a way that

Thank you. He's given a lot, especially recently, to my brother who really struggles.
He really showed up for him in a way that genuinely took me by surprise, which was incredibly, like, I think healing in a way, is that you're putting somebody else first and you're giving a lot. As awkward as it was, did it feel good that he was there? Yeah.
You want your dad to show up. What was the conversation? Well, there was nothing of substance.
It was like, where do you want your couch? And I'll help you move this in and that kind of thing. He lived in Nashville when he was really young,

and actually the neighborhood that I first lived in was like two blocks over from where their little house was,

so that was funny.

We talked about that.

He watches the show.

He does?

And that was really special.

Did he tell you that?

Mm-hmm.

Took a while.

But he did, and he was...

I don't know.

Hearing that somebody's proud of you,

when you've always wanted to hear that.

That's not how late it is.

Still feels good.

I'll bet he's very proud of you. Yeah.
And I think he's doing a lot better. Again, the most important thing I've learned from...
there's always something that you can learn from these situations.

They kill you or they make you better and smarter and more introspective,

but a lot about what works and doesn't work in a marriage,

the finding compatibility, and then I think with him,

the most important thing is finding purpose.

You have to find something that drives you.

Because a life without isn is very, very lonely. You have to get over yourself to pour into people.
And get over your own bullshit. And I think having a career or something that drives you, helps you, kind of get out of your own head and your own own head and your own issues.
And I think it was just a domino effect of all of that and a bad marriage and all that. So it's, yeah, it's funny because I'll sometimes, I was reading a Reddit post at one point, somebody had sent me about me and it was like, does Brad have daddy issues? I was like, I had no idea.
It's like, I guess she's like become, you know, she speaks about it in a way that is like she's learned from it. And that's, that's what I always, I would never say I have daddy.
I think I have family issues. I think as all of us do, I think we all have things that impacted our childhood.
And it was really helpful for me to hear stories like this. You know, I love coming-of-age novels.
And I love family drama. And I think the reason why I loved it and hearing, you know, stories spoken in this way, because it made me feel less crazy.

It's like nobody's family is perfect.

Even meeting my husband of like,

outside perfect family, they all love each other.

I was so stressed the first day I met his parents.

I was like, I don't even know how to operate

in like a functional, people love each other.

You all are like functional,

you're all productive members of society, this is great.

And then you meet him and you're like,

oh no, you've all got your shit too.

Thank you. love each other.
You all are like functional. You're all productive members of society.
This is great. And then you meet him and you're like, oh no, you've all got your, you've got your shit too.

Everybody's going through something.

They have no idea the weight people carry. What's something you would want your dad to know about you?

What would you want to tell him? I'd want to tell him that I forgive him. And, uh...
That I desperately wanted to make him happy.

I think he spent a lot of our, you know, my time growing up with him,

butting heads and being in totally different realities, kind of,

of like, you're just in totally different planes of existence.

Like, ships in the night are, and it was rare. At a very young age, we had a great relationship.
You know, my earliest memories are being in the hiking backpack. You might have one with your kids where they like sit above your head and picking wild blueberries and blackberries on Orcas Island.
And he would do warm milk and poetry. And we would sit in front of the fire and he would warm up milk and he would have like coffee or tea.
And he would read out loud to me. The reason why I love stories is because of him.
And I think when I became older and more headstrong and we went through my brother's death and just so much changed, that changed our relationship dramatically. But I've never stopped loving him.
And we fought constantly. And a lot of it was rooted in I'm just trying to make you happy.
I better love to hear that. You want to go to California now? Yeah.
Let's do it. Nice.
So you got to California? Yeah to California yeah was acting yeah I love I love it there's very few things that I love as much as acting again it goes back to story it goes back to storytelling and escape industry is not for me I mean you got into it so you got into it it by writing letters as an eight-year-old. Yeah.
And painting pictures, really ugly pictures. I wrote a letter to a manager who was representing a ton of kids on Broadway, said, I want to be Jane Banks, Mary Poppins.
They were on Broadway at the time. And I drew a picture of myself on stage.
My mom helped me make little velvet curtains that went on the poster board. And it was me.
In my face, I had a bowl cut. Bangs, my bowl cut.
In the Jane Banks costume on a stage. And I sent it to him.
And he had that up on his wall for like 10 years, however long I was working with him. He was like, nobody has ever, like this was so wild.
Nobody's ever done this. But I knew what I wanted.
I was like, I want to figure out how to make this happen. And I found him by watching YouTube videos of interviews with young people that were on Broadway.
Of these, like, you know, 8 to 15-year-olds. I started putting the pieces together.
I was like, he's in all of these videos. He represents all of these people.
Damn. Yeah.
I was in in it it's like that always sunny meme where he has the i was like putting all the pieces together people talk about that with conspiracy theories i was like how do i get on broadway um yeah and i i just i chased it then my mom was like i don't want to take you to la this sounds awful i begged i begged, I begged And so we would try it here and there We would do like three months at the beginning of the year Which is called pilot season When all the shows are getting greenlit And then we'd go home for the summer And then I'd come back in what's called episodic season When all the shows then are working, they're running And you have guest stars and recurring roles And that kind of thing And would audition for And you know, it's funny, all the hate comments that I get from people, they'll usually go back to acting, they're like, oh, you're a failed D-list actor. It's like, yeah, I didn't become Zendaya or whatever.
But I worked consistently. Like I was able to cover an apartment, I put money away to be able to buy a car at 16 and help put myself through college and, uh, you know, paid for my acting classes.
Like my parents didn't just give me my money to just like go spend at a young age, just put into an account. There's, you know, Cougan accounts where the state takes 15% that I received when I became 18.
And we put all of that back into acting. So acting classes, improv classes, dance classes.
She never wanted me to feel like it was a job or like I was benefiting it, you know, from it. Because like, what 10-year-old should be making tens of tens of thousands of dollars for counting TV shows? That's a mind fuck.
And you emancipated yourself at 15? 15, yeah. And that was for a myriad of reasons.
It was... Family was the root of it.
Because my parents' divorce was incredibly hostile and went on for a long time. And it got to the point that I was being used as a pawn.
I was 15 years old and there was like, if you give me custody, I'll give you your money back. Or whatever it is.
Jeez. And my dad was like, you need to come back to Tennessee and live with me.
And it was just like I became used in that way and didn't like the feeling. And I don't think my mom liked it.
That wasn't how she wanted to end that marriage. And again, I think my dad felt really out of control.
And I just wanted to remove myself from the equation. I was like, you don't get to use me in this.
So that was a big part of it. Cause I was, you know, I was working, I was working as an actor.
I was about to graduate, um, about to graduate high school. I had a full-time job at Trader Joe's cause I always worked outside of acting to make sure I had, you know, fun money.
Cause I't use any of my acting money. That was all just in other accounts.
So if I wanted to go hang out with a friend or buy a dress or whatever, I had to, you know, babysit and go work at Trader Joe's, whatever it was. I could cover, you know, living in an apartment with a roommate.
And, um. How do you find a roommate at age 15? I had a good friend of the family from Atlanta, like at a summer camp that I had gone to, and she was a couple years older, and she was moving out to LA right around the time that I had emancipated myself.
So she moved into the apartment that my mom and I had shared. And so I emancipated myself.
Another big part was my brother's psychosis was really hard. He was, um, he'd gotten pretty violent.
And my mom was kind of torn in a million different directions of the divorce was happening in Tennessee. I was in L.A.
My brother was in L.A. Because he had been bounced around and struggled and went to India for three years to find himself.
And again, did every drug in the book and came back just completely different and really did not get along with my dad. They had a huge falling out.
He came out to LA and just continued to struggle. So he was homeless at the time.
And I had some concerns with like, that sounds bad saying it out loud, but like CPS. Oh, I didn't want, like it was, it was not a good environment.
And I was in therapy at the time and they were just like, you know, this isn normal. Like, the person that lives in the bedroom next to you having, you know, hearing voices and having a psychotic break and knives pulled and chasing through streets.
And, you know, he... When somebody is going through psychosis, they are not the person that you know.
And they don't see you as your sister or as their sister or their mother. They treat you differently.
And they would think of you as a girlfriend, an enemy, or whatever was happening. Can't control it.
And I just felt like I had all of this autonomy. I had so much control in one part of my life.
I was like, I have a career, I guess, because I've been acting and I make money, but I'm about to go to college. I was about to turn.
It was the summer before I turned 16. I had graduated high school.
I had this, like, worked the, you know, 6 a.m. shift at Trader Joe's every day.
Worked 6 to 2. And I'm basically like this adult, and yet, you know, I couldn't go work on set without my mom.
When you're under 18, for good reason, your parents have to be within eyesight and your shot. And at the time, I was working on TV show, Heathers, and they had planned a second season that was going to be shooting internationally.
And that was in the middle of all of this. And I was like, how am I going to get, how am I going to be able to work and do this when there's a war happening in Tennessee that my mom has to handle, when there is a different kind of battle here with her other child that she has to manage.
And I was just bounced in between it. And I think that there's part of me that hears me saying that and is like, that's so selfish to be like, I'm just going to remove myself from it.
But I had the means to do that. And I think it made it easier on everyone, too,

if, like, there was a weight lifted off of my mom

because there was just so much legality of, again,

if anything ever happened with my brother and I.

Wow.

And if I got wrapped into this custody thing

when I was, like, on the cusp of adulthood

and was making strides,

again, was about to start college.

And so it was not contested.

I didn't go to court and bring my family in

and be like, I hate all of you, I'm leaving.

It was just like,

I even had a conversation with my dad.

It was a hard conversation.

But I had a conversation with both of them

and they were both very in support

of it. And I was like, I can't be in the middle of this battle.
I've done it for too long

and I'm not leaving you. I'm not saying I don't want to be around you.
I'm not saying I don't

want to be in this family, but clearly you have crap that you need to work through.

I don't want to even say it's crap. It was heavy, heavy things in their lives.
And I just need to be let go. And it was a very, you know, it's not a, it's not something I suggest.
I wouldn't go around and say, if you're having a hard time, just go emancipate yourself. It was a very unique situation.
It's a very heavy thing. um my oldest brother that's when we got really close had to be brought into it as like an advocate and you know if everything failed and fell apart and I couldn't make money anymore I was gonna go you know live with him or he was like I'll come out to California and I'll take care of you but I just was literally like two coasts these these like battles and both of my parents I think think, acknowledged when they were confronted with it, that it was like, we are putting you in the center of things that you, you know, your future at this age, when so much is about to open up for you, shouldn't be dictated by what's going on here.
And it really, in a lot of ways, it didn't change how we navigated our family. Like I was still super close to my mom when their divorce was finalized she moved back to California she bought a home moved back in my brother would you know come in and out finding out when he was in a hospital when he was homeless I saw my brother constantly he's homeless in Pasadena for years and I would go out and find him.
I was telling you last night, he loves fine cheeses, and so I would go and take him to Whole Foods, and with his, like, shopping cart of things, and would buy him the things that he wanted, I would go, like, literally, like, find him in the park, wherever he was. So it's a very, like, it was a nuanced thing.

I didn't say, screw you, I don't want to be in this family anymore, I'm never going to speak to you.

It was, I need to be legally released from the liabilities of being in this mess.

Of being taken from you and put into a system at 15 years old because of things that are going on that,

I don't want to say I could have handled, but that I felt, I mean, I'd been going through it for a while and I could have, you know, I was able to remove myself from the situation in many ways. But through CPS and stuff with my brother and, you know, I don't want the liability of your divorce and this being messy and a judge dictating where I go and what I do when this is your war and I'm paying for my own life.
Man. And I'm graduating high school at 15 years old and you're about to tell me that everything, that now, you know, my life could be because of my brother or because of a divorce.
So it just, it protected, you know, it removed the protections of being a minor that for me ended up, I think were more of a danger in that. Not a danger, but that were, it was going to make things very difficult.
So it was a, I think it was a very important thing. But again, I don't recommend it.
It's very severe. I mean, do you hear yourself right now? Yes.
At 15. It's crazy.
With everything you've been through, you graduate high school, you emancipate yourself, you have a full-time job at Trader Joe's and a full-time acting career, and you're caring for your schizophrenic brother. Yeah.
I mean, for that summer when I emancipated myself, he was homeless. He was refusing to take meds.
My mom had kicked him out, you know, before that. And

I emancipated myself and she went home to deal with the divorce and to divide their assets and help my dad sell the house because he had to move out. And her going back there, I think, helped make it less contentious.
It was really hard when they were apart. So she had to go handle that and kind of close that chapter.
And so it was just me and Reed. And some days it was funny and go sit with him and his dudes in their shopping cart.
There's the main street in Pasadena, California. There's a place called Earth Cafe for anybody who lives in L.A.
And then across the street there a church. And then there's like a shopping strip mall.
There's an alley. And that's where he slept.
With a couple of other guys, all with their shopping carts. And so yeah, I would go.
Bring him like a little gift bag. Like, here's some water.
Like, I'm not, I haven't given up on you. And sometimes it was funny and just like I was with him, and some days he would be, you know, passed out in front of the target.
Me not knowing whether it was an overdose, whether it was heat stroke, because it was, you know, August in Southern California. Getting calls from people in his homeless community that had little flip phones saying, saying and I one of my my community college was in Pasadena so I just so happened to that was not really intentional but I went to Pasadena City College for a lot of my community college classes that in Santa Monica College but you know I would get calls when I was leaving school from his best homeless friend, Jason, being like, Reed really needs you.
And I would have to go find him. And there was one time when he was high on something, I'm pretty sure it was meth, and was sitting on top of the rubble of a recently demolished house, saying that he was Jesus, when nobody could get him down.
And so when you talk about grief, again, in like talking to people and saying, you know, what advice do you have? Grief isn't just about death. I grieved my brother David.
I grieved the life that I didn't have with him. I grieved his actual existence.
And I grieved my brother Reed because he's nowhere near the person that I grew up with. I don't know if he ever will be.

Like, I was sitting with him last week at visitation hours at his psych hospital.

I see it in his eyes, and he has this, like, he has a twinkle that he's always had.

And he's very, he's very smirky.

He's always been very mischievous.

Everybody loves him.

Like even just like sitting in the little like cafeteria and watching nurses and people walk by and they're all like, oh, you're Reed's sister.

Like, we love Reed.

But he's, there's a lot of him that's gone.

He doesn't speak anymore.

Sometime in the last three years, he stopped speaking.

So when he's out of the hospital and he has his phone,

he will communicate through text or he'll write something in his notes app

and show me.

In the hospital, he doesn't have his phone,

especially in an involuntary hold.

So he has a little notepad.

And so we, you know, sat for an hour talking and writing things back and forth.

But I've had to, I think, let go of the hope that he'll be

who I knew as a kid.

I don't think that's fully gone. There's always part of me that's like, what if? If he did psychedelics.
If he woke up one day and said, I'm going to change my diet, I'm going to change my lifestyle. And this is the thing that's so infuriating, is our medical system basically sets people like my brother up to fail.
And it's this endless cycle where without his meds, he's a danger to society. But with the meds, they're debilitating.
And he's so unhappy. And they pump him, you know, through.
It's so dehumanizing. He's like pinned down and injected.
they cause, you know, paralysis and tremors and, you know, whatever it may be.

Some of them were really scary, had cardiac effects.

You know, our history was so scary.

And nobody ever talks about diet or lifestyle or other options.

He was in an involuntary hold in Idaho for almost three years. I didn't see him for three years.
He stopped speaking somewhere in there, which I don't blame him. These places, they're not like pretty rehab places.
There aren't places like that. There isn't a place where he can go, like live safely in like a nice assisted living rehab.
If there is, somebody should let me know. There are like really shitty halfway houses or psych facilities where you can't leave, where you have no rights.
That's why I don't blame him for shutting down. But you're put on these meds because you can't function without them.
And you're given the crappiest food. And I was so angry just like last month.
And I'm his guardian, by the way. That was another thing we dealt with last year.
We had to fight for so many years. My mom did to get information about him.
I mean, he would be arrested, taken to hospitals. We have no idea where he is.
He would be switched from doctor to doctor to doctor, literally trying to chase him down to get information. Not in like a, we need you back, but of like, how could we help you? We don't even know where you are.
And so we finally were approved guardianship, and Reed knows, and I think he was happy that it was me.

But he trusts me a lot, which I'm really grateful for.

But he was released from this involuntary hold.

He had a halfway house and seemed to be doing better.

But I was talking with my mom and it was in Idaho.

It was in Boise.

He only got to Tennessee recently. It was a whole other situation.
He had kind of accidentally got here. I had to think maybe it was a God thing because my mom and I had been talking.
It's like it'd be really great if he could get close to you. He just went missing one day and showed up in Tennessee.
So, worked out. But, the point being, he was there for three years.
He stopped speaking. And there were no changes to his diet.
He was fed the worst food, his hospital food. I was in visiting hours last week, and we were given, like, crappy cartons of milk and, like, Teddy Grahams.
And all these studies are coming out about, you know, the effects of carbs and sugar on the brain of the, and this has been happening for years of, you know, keto diets, being instrumental in keeping schizophrenia at bay. And we have people that have literally removed the voices from, their brains have been able to now they live totally normal lives are in relationships are getting married by living a very very strict lifestyle and diet and no doctor has encouraged that and it's such a missed opportunity it's like he was there for three years and he came out Man.
And now we're back to square one and it's this awful cycle of, again, of course he's getting worse. Like you go into these places, I've been visiting him for years at various different hospitals.
It's awful. It's prison.
It's maximum security of like in order to go back and visit him, I go through like mazes of hallways and doors and keys and whatever and I have to I can't even bring him like socks like you're not allowed to bring anything in because they could harm themselves like he's it's like again I look at him I'm like no wonder you stopped speaking but whatever option is there and we've brought him He's lived with me, he's lived with my mom, he's lived on the farm, he's tried everything. And it's just a constant cycle of meds, off meds, jail, hospital, out.
Meds, off meds. And I don't know if that'll...
I have no idea if that'll change. But you kind of have to find peace with the fact that maybe that's just, again, going back to, like, this is the reality.
And I'm... It's not what I hope for him, it's not what I hope for our family, but I've, you know've found peace in that.

And I want him to know that I'm never not gonna be there.

Like even if it's three years,

if you end up in Tennessee in your first week in an involuntary hold, I'll be there.

And I think he, he feels a lot of shame. Because we went through hell together.
And I've seen a lot of things that I think he never wanted me to see. He's done things to me that I think he's incredibly embarrassed of.
And we, like, don't really talk about it. But I've tried to let him know as many times as possible without getting into it, that it's like, I know it's not you.
I'm still gonna show up. And it's even harder for my mom, but with, you know, I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think that it would be very easy for her to let go.
Easier. And just to say, you, you know, you're not trying to make any changes in your life.
You are taking advantage of us. You don't want to use the time when you were on meds and you're doing better to try to change something in your lifestyle to do anything.
You would refuse therapy. You would only go to therapy if I went with him.
So we did that for a while together, but I had to go with him. And I think that my oldest brother has always advocated more of like, let him go.
If he wants to do a shit ton of drugs, if he wants to go be crazy and not accept help, let him go be crazy. You can't control that.
And I think my mom is like, I'm not a parent and I don't know what that feels like, but she already lost one.

She's tried to let go. She's done it a ton of times of like, get out of the house.

Like, if you're gonna act this way, go be homeless, because you can't do this under my roof, which she should have done.

And I give her so much credit for ten years later she shows up she's at a halfway house and he needs a new set of clothes and a new you know bedroom because he has a little room in his halfway house she goes and gets it damn bread how do you stay so strong? I don't know. I think there's a...
Not a beauty, but there's a...

Not a beauty, but there's a... There's kind of an advantage to this going on for my whole life, basically.

To where I don't see this as some catastrophe every time something happens.

Which seems like a really fucked up thing to say.

But it's like at this point, it's like, okay, that's life. I'll handle it.
I don't have to say it's normal. Because it's not.
My family's not normal. My relationship with my brother is far from what I would hope or want.
but I think I learned really, really early on

that life is messy.

And I think it's hard learning that as a kid,

but I also, I wouldn't be me without it.

I think I went through hit after hit after hit,

and they were all very different.

Men were saying, okay, I'm gonna pick up the pieces, I going to keep going. What can I learn from each of these things? When's the last time you offloaded like this? Oh, gosh.
A while. Have you ever? Yeah.
How's it feel? It feels really good. I think I did, um, earlier on in being with Alex, there was so much I had to share.
And in the back of my mind, I was always kind of like, I'm just going to scare you off. And I didn't.
I shared a lot of it in therapy. Again, that therapist in LA, I credit her so much.
I wasn't able to verbalize any of it. So much of it hadn't happened at that point.
But I was not able to even break down what I felt because it felt just so commonplace for me.

So it's been in different periods.

I don't make a habit of carrying around open wounds and baggage.

I don't think that that's the healthiest thing, but I think it... You can't go through life suppressing.
And I think that both Reed and my dad suppressed a ton. And so I think that while I might not offload in this capacity, especially not in a public capacity frequently,

this is probably the only time I've ever done it publicly, I'm not afraid of it in this way because I would rather it be out there.

I would rather be vocalizing it and processing it.

And even if I'm not speaking to someone about it, I'm never not thinking about this stuff.

It's all very in my face, especially with my brother.

It was never something that I was able to hide from it.

Like, in the moment, I was able to process it.

And I think about it constantly.

I think about what life will be like in five years.

I think about when my parents pass away and if Reed is still here, what is that going to look like?

I think about our family and how, you know, if things haven't changed, how will I care for you? What do you need? I think about my dad and I think about repairing that and moving forward from that. I think about trying to protect my mom and make her life easier because she spent so much of her life fighting

and rebuilding and things being crushed. And so these are all things that I consider and by default then I process everything.
Because I've seen what happens when you run from the things that have hurt you or the things you can't control in your life. I think my brother

I think a lot of his The things that have hurt you are the things you can't control in your life.

I think my brother, I think a lot of his situation, I never want to call it like a problem or, but you know, when David died, he was 17 years old.

He went to an all-boys school.

It's not really in the environment that you are vulnerable and you process grief, especially when it's so public. He refused therapy.
He'll tell my mom, I cried once. I don't care anymore.
I'm over it. And then you get, you know, 10 years down the line and we're sitting together.
And he has now struggled with drugs and addiction and alcohol and is hearing voices and he finally says like i think about him every single day they were talking last night but he um kind of looks like jesus in a lot of ways like. He keeps his hair super long and stringy.

He's super skinny.

He's really tall.

He's like 6'4". He has a huge beard.

And I would always be like,

Reed, please shave it.

It's so ugly.

It's like scraggly.

We'd call it his flavor saver.

I was like, oh, it's so disgusting.

And there was one point where we were having this conversation.

My sweater's getting all over my hands.

And I was like, I look in the mirror and I see him. He walks through life with this person that he is permanently intertwined with and who is not here anymore, who he sees every single time he looks in the mirror.
And so I think that, you know, again, I've watched

what happens when you don't process things,

when you don't put in the work initially to go through the motions

and feel, you know, the depths of what pain you need to feel and how you're going to learn from it and repair and rebuild. I've seen my dad run from his family and his past and replicate mistakes that his father made and refuse to speak about it.
And I think that there's a lot, um, like my mom did that a lot too, because she felt like she had to, because she had other kids and she had a husband that was struggling, that was suicidal. And so she just kept going.
And I watched all of that. I was like, I'm not going to be that.
How did Alex handle this, your husband? Like a champ. His, um, his mother-in-law, or my mother-in-law, who I adore, I think she was more he was she was like oh this girl's kind of like she's got a lot of stuff uh love you des i know you're gonna listen to this she's gonna be like crying the entire she cries more than i do just saying something but um but no he's i mean it, it's truly like remarkable.

He is completely unfazed and unflappable and not that he doesn't care.

He feels very, very deeply.

And I think rather than looking at me and seeing something that was, you know,

ooh, you're, you know, damaged goods, you have all these problems.

It was like, I don't put words in his mouth, but in the way that I feel, it's like he stepped in and was like, I can create a bubble around you that's safe. And I've never had somebody who is as stable.
Who, like, can take hits and redirect. And I can.
But I think I'm, you know, been through a ton. And I'm, and redirect.
And I can, but I think I've been through a ton. I'm emotional.
Is he the first ability that you've found in life? I think it's the purest form. My mom was very stable.
I mean, a constant. But she's your mom.
She's going to be there. I found stability in external factors like school.
I threw myself into academics. I had my high school transcript put on my wall because I was so proud of it because I could control that and that was stable But I say that it's pure because he doesn't have to be here He didn't have to choose me And he did and he's unwavering And I I have some incredible friends who have, you know, have seen me through a lot of these seasons, who have been very stable, who have been very gracious and have, you know, I've introduced them to things that are definitely out of their element through my family and have stuck with me.
But it's very different when you, you know, fall in love and marry somebody. How does it feel to lean into that? Oh, it's incredible.
I've never felt safer. I've never felt more feminine.
I'm a very capable person. Like, I've navigated a lot, built a career independently as a kid.
I've lived alone, traveled, like I've done a lot. And I met him and I was like, I don't have to carry everything.
I don't have to put all the pieces together by myself. How'd you guys meet? meet through daily wire how though he uh walked in for his second interview and i think his first one was over the phone and i was the first person that he saw at daily wire and apparently i was scowling at him and he walked in he was like oh i don't know who that i didn't have a show yet i didn't have anything and he was like that girl is like we're gonna be enemies in his very alex voice

which you know know of like very sarcastic and funny um and in my mind i was like who is this it just like something clicked i was like that that's somebody and then at the time i didn't have enough i was like in a cubicle and they put his cubicle directly in the row behind me. And this man has the like most explosive, boisterous laugh.
And there's like a pause when he's like telling a joke and then it just, it like, I mean, you can hear it. If he was downstairs right now, you have all the soundproofing, you could hear echoing through the halls.
And it is like the most captivating, endearing thing. But I would just hear him.
He would be right behind me. And I would just find myself turning around like, who is this person? And he kind of reminds me of my brother in a little way.
Like he has this like twinkle in his eye and he's really spunky and he's really, really smart. And he's interested in a million different things.
And again, I could just like, no matter where he was in this huge office, I could, you know, I was like, that's Alex and he's laughing. So then I was trying to look him up because I'm a girl.
I was like, I'm stuck. This guy, who is this? And I wasn't told like, don't shit where you eat.
Don't like whatever. But I was something about it.
I was like, who is this? And I could only find him on LinkedIn. And I didn't have like a,

I think I'd like forgot my password.

I couldn't log in so I could only see like part of his profile.

I like scrolled all the way down and I saw

Chattanooga, Tennessee at my brother's high school.

And he went to high school with him.

And it was like,

and then I would see him going and getting water. He drinks more water than any person I've ever met in my entire life.
Which I were very different because I like dehydrate myself on a daily basis. And so I would go like position myself by the water cooler.
And there was one day where he was walking through and he was getting water. So I don't remember what comment I made, but I sparked up a conversation.
I was like, I desperately have to like, how do I bring up Chattanooga? Like, how do I? And somehow it came up and I was like, oh, you're from Chattanooga. Like, I wasn't going to say, I was like stalking on LinkedIn.
And then I think I ended up like talking with him in the break room for like two hours that day. I don't even know what I was supposed to be doing.
I don't know what he was supposed to be doing. But I was just like, I think that's my person.
He felt the same way. And he like, right off the bat, it was just like, there's something.
And he's always said he felt really similar and wavered back and forth. Cause he was always like, I'm never going to date somebody that I work with.
That's crazy. And he had a conversation with his mom.
And she was like, oh, don't do it. What if you break up with her?

What if it's awful?

Like, she started the show.

And he was like, if I ask her, and she says, yes, we're not breaking up.

Like, that's it.

Like, I think that's, I think she's it.

And asked me out in the parking lot.

I was, like, shitting my pants.

I was like, oh, my God.

And then, yeah, I went on one date.

And it was, we, like, shut down the restaurant down the restaurant to Lachlan Table and eat Snashville. And I mean, it was like, they had been closed for like an hour.
I had no idea. He's great.
Yeah, it was just, I was like instantaneous. And I went home for Christmas that year and I went into my brother's yearbooks

that have been in my mom's desk for 15 years.

And his picture was right there.

And I would sit in her office

because I wanted to see my brothers

and all their friends.

I would flip through, like while she was working,

I'd flip through the yearbooks.

They're called the Facebooks.

I would see all the pictures of the boys.

I would find my brothers. I had no all the pictures of the boys.
I would

find my brothers. I had no idea that he was in there.
Did he know him? I knew his little sister. We had had playdates.
And he's a few years older than me. And we always lived like five miles away from each other and had no idea.
I was really good friends with his other younger, his younger brother's best friend. And our moms had mutual really good friends and never crossed paths.
Did he know your brothers? Mm-mm. He knew of David, I think.
David has a memorial statue at Macaulay. And I think David died the year he was an incoming freshman, but it rocked the school, obviously, in a big way.
And we had that statue put in. It's this big flame.
It's like the eternal flame that's still there at the school. So he knew that, but he didn't know them personally.
They were three years older than him. How long did you guys date before he got married? Year and a half.
How'd he propose? He, I was in Budapest filming Pendragon for Daily Wire. And we had been out there.
He planned on coming with me. And he was training for a triathlon and he tore his ACL and his MCL and had to get surgery like the week that I was leaving.
And so he couldn't get on a plane. He had all this recovery.
He was, like, locked up and all this stuff. So in his mind, he had just bought a break, and he was like, how the hell am I going to propose? I can't even, like, bend my knee.
I don't know. What am I going to do? I can barely walk.
And so unfortunately, but also fortunately, I was in Budapest alone for like eight weeks, I think. And I think that was a really good test in a lot of ways because we were an ocean apart, an entire time zone apart.
And it kind of reminded me, I was like, oh yeah, I can survive alone. Like I'm not with a person, but I want him.
And that was a good reminder.

Because I was like, I don't need you at every moment of every day, even though we spend so much time together. But I want you here.
I want you in every aspect of my life. Which was, I already knew that I wanted to marry him, but that was just kind of a nice, I don't know, confirmation.
And then he flew out and he spent like two months in Budapest

and then went home for, he had a client that needed to be,

he needed to be in person.

Yeah, he flew out and proposed like the second day that he got there.

And he proposed at Fisherman's Bastion in Budapest which is like the right outside of the buddha castle um i had an inkling but i had no idea i was sweating profusely he was so nervous he made me walk from my apartment all the way across budapest over this huge walking bridge because he thought it would be so romantic to walk at like sunset and we had to hike all the way up to the bastion I was like and then we got up there and I was like oh what's happening because I said on his Apple watch something popped up and the photographer was like I'm I'm at the spot I was like oh god so I started having like heart palpitations because I was sweating I was like hiking up these like stairs I was like I don't get any proposed to I'm dripping in sweat I had to like like take off my jacket. And he was like trying to get me to like go where the sunset was where he had like picked out the spot.
I was like, I have to get water. I have to get water.
And then there were so many people there. And apparently he'd gone the night before and it was empty.
And he had like walked around with all the, he had talked to like the cocierge at the nicest hotels, Budapest was like, if you're going to propose, where do you propose Budapest? And while I was on set the day before he had like scoped out all these locations and apparently at sunset the night before nobody was there everybody was there that night everybody and I am like yeah it goes back to the sink of like I'm on camera 24-7 but not 24-7 but I don't like attention in my like normal life and so I was like oh my god does he not know me well enough to know that I don't want to be proposed to in front of whatever so i get my water and i'm like stressing oh my god it's happening come around this corner we're walking down these stairs and there's a violinist and i'm like oh fucking hell it's like there's a violin there's a show what's going on like i don't not want the romantic gestures and it wasn't for me it was just this violinist was just there like busking and there was like i don't know this sounds so bad or racist or whatever but there were like four asian tour groups that were there that night and they all had selfie sticks and they were all there and i was like so overwhelmed i could i looked over at him and he was like also so strong and thankfully we're at this spot where he had picked out it was like it kind of ended up being out of the way but i was walking down and i was like please god don't have this person serenade me like in front of all these people and we just walked past the violence so then it ended up like we got to this point but i had like amped up over this like 45 minute endeavor of getting here and then it was totally normal it was just like in a really sweet spot and you could see the whole Bastion you could see the entire city. Now he proposed there and then it was totally normal.
It was just like in a really sweet spot, and you could see the whole bastion, and you could see the entire city.

Yeah, he proposed there,

and then we spent the next eight weeks

in going between Budapest and Italy

where we were filming the show.

So it was great.

And then we got home end of December.

It was like day before Christmas,

I got home from Budapest,

and then started planning our wedding in January

and got married March 30th, so three months. Where'd you guys get married? The venue at Birchwood.
My best friend owns it. So it was down in Franklin.
They're all past here. Franklin, like Columbia or wherever it is.
But yeah, it's pretty cool. One year next week.
Congratulations. Thanks.

It's been awesome.

Sounds like it.

Yeah.

I've seen so many people, I don't know your experience with this, but I always say like the first year is the hardest.

And it was hard, but not because of him.

It was hard just because we had things going on.

I had work things.

He left the corporate world and started a whole new business. We took a huge risk and bought this farm that definitely couldn't afford at the moment, but we were like, we desperately want this.
So we just like, we're planning a wedding and doing that. We were like, basically like flat broke after we got married.
We had just bought this, you know, all this land and put a wedding together. And he was starting a business.
And then I had a huge work transition and I had family things. And it was, there was just a lot of things we had to go through and deal and build.
And he was the easiest part. Did your family go to the wedding? Yeah.
Reed wasn't able to be there.

Which really sucked, but...

Does your family like him?

They love him.

My dad loves him.

My brother Chase loves him.

My mom loves him.

They sometimes talk more than I do.

They're on the phone at midnight talking about chickens and what kind of eggs the chickens are laying and all that kind of stuff.

I'm terrified of birds, and they love the love the birds but yeah they get along really well i'm happy for you brad thank you so really like an amazing guy yeah he's great with the little i know you know what i mean from last night and and uh going up to your place but really happy person i can see it he's very joyful You picked good. I know.
I'm proud of myself. I broke a cycle.
You should be. Yeah.
But let's take another quick break. Yeah, sounds good.
I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the

success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind-the-scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end-of-the-month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more.
Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com slash vigilance elite. That's patreon.com slash vigilance elite.
Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes,

and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review.

We read every review that comes through,

and we really appreciate the support.

Thank you.

Let's get back to the show.

All right, Brett and Cookie.

Cookie.

Cookie was born when? Eight weeks ago. Eight weeks ago.
Yeah, we got her last night, so she had to make an appearance. There she is.
In all our glory. Cute as hell.
Alex wanted me to not say that we had gotten a puppy last night when you gave me the gummy bears. Be like, actually, I brought you.
Your wife really wanted a dog.

She does, man.

She's got puppy fever. She should be in here to beat Cookie.
Oh, yeah. But so let's move back into acting.
So we got. We've rerouted about 10 times.
Yeah, we went down some rabbit holes, and it's been amazing. But so you started, where did you start kind of getting into political commentary? You were at PragerU for a little bit, right? Yes.
So it was 2020. I was at UCLA, and I lost basically all my friends due to politics.
I think it's a very common story that a lot of people have, well, I know, Cookie, have been through. Especially young people and in 2020 where I didn't really say anything that was, is this not going to work, Cookie? You don't want to hear about me being canceled? I think she might distract.
I'm going to get Alex. Alex, come up and get her.
I don't think you like this. So Cookie's not a little camera shy.
He's a little camera shy. Oh, she.
She. Don't misgender my dog.
My bad. I know.
I'm sorry.

No, she's camera shy.

It's funny, our other St. Bernard, I brought her and did a live stream with her right after we got her on.
I was still doing comment section. She fell asleep on the desk and was just like, oh.
She's a lot more chill. um no i there was so much political unrest, obviously, through COVID and we were getting into the midterms, um, just past the midterms and George Floyd and BLM.
And I never intended to make a political statement. I just kind of realized that things were...
There wasn't as much love and tolerance as I thought there was. And I knew that most of my friends thought differently than I did.
I was in a very liberal industry. I was still acting when I was at UCLA.
And I knew, you know, people would walk around with their I'm with her pins. I had really good friends, you know, during 2016 election that literally had like I'm with her painted on their nails and all this stuff.
So I knew that I had different opinions. I just never brought it up.
I didn't think that it was for a workplace. I was also very young.
I didn't vote in the 2016 election. And it was still kind of, I knew what my values were, what my principles were, but I didn't really understand how that translated to politics in current events.
And I kind of had to learn that and it came to a head in 2020. And yeah, I literally did nothing other than saying I'm not a registered Democrat.
That's what you said? And I'm not voting for Bernie or Biden in the midterms. And there was already some unrest because one of my best friends at the time, my big and my sorority, actually, she was voting for Biden because Bernie was too extreme for her.
She even got flack. Like, how could you do that? He's like some establishment politician.
He's a shill, all of this stuff. So she got a ton of hate.

And then I come in here.

And it's like, yeah, I'm not voting for either of them.

And things started to change then.

And it wasn't like a, you're canceled, we hate you.

But it was a lot of vitriol, a lot of questioning.

I had communist manifestos chucked at my head. I walked into a party.
Literally had one. Hey, Brett, like, fucking read this.
Literally thrown at me when I walked into a party. People knew that, you know, I had family from the South.
My dad's whole family. Like, going back in our lineage, like, I could be like a Daughters of the Revolution.
I have a, you know, direct line back to a revolutionary soldier. Deep, deep roots in the South, in North Carolina.
And my grandmother was raised on a tobacco farm. Very poor.
And we were just talking about family and history, and they heard that. And they were like, so you own slaves.
And so then, like, drunkenly at parties, they would say, yeah, Brett's like, they're a racist friend from Tennessee her family owned slaves just things like that are you serious yes and it got more and more heated and I was supposed to live with this whole group of friends going into my senior year and this all came just because you said you weren't going to vote for buddy nor birdie does it no mention of anything else no I think they understood it and we had a conversation later and i was like i mean yeah at the time i wasn't like gung-ho for trump but i wasn't anti him i was just like yeah i'll vote for trump he's our president now and he's doing a good job he's the republican but he says makes sense i was never thrown off by any of the media hit pieces or things that he said. I was just like, he's just like an abrasive guy.
He's an entertainer. It was like totally normal.
I was like, okay. And my mom was very, and I was, you know, living at home going to school.
So we would talk about politics a lot and she was never his biggest fan, but voted for him and really respected the fact that he was a businessman. And that made total sense.
My brain was like, yeah, why would I not want somebody who has run businesses and built empires to run our country? That makes total sense. Like, it's him or these people that have been in government for 50 years and have done jack shit.
like it just made it move it was so clear in my head, didn't even think of it being majorly controversial, especially when I knew that my friends and I had differences and we had never, like I respected them. I accepted that we had different, it was just so, I just hadn't been faced with that yet.
And then suddenly it all flipped. And then after COVID, you know, everybody had gone home and we were in these group chats.
We would be on Zoom together. We'd hang out, you know, in that weird twilight zone of playing like games over Zoom and have hangouts and whatever it was.
Me and all these group chats and they would, you know, say things like, you know, we're road tripping to the beach. And it was like June of 2020.
His friends like getting out of their homes in Chicago and going to South Carolina so they could go to the beach while simultaneously shitting on Republicans. Being like, yeah, we just saw like an idiot with a Trump flag on out of his car.
My dad said that if we had hit him he wouldn't have given a shit. Like that kind of stuff.
And I'm like in the group chat and you're saying that to me. Like I hope we just run over all these Trump supporters.
Knowing that I was in there. And I was still just like, oh, it's fine.
It was like an indirect shot at you. Yeah.
And I went along with it. I was like, oh, it's okay.
Like, they still love me. We're still friends.
I'm still in the group chat. We're still going to live together.
And my brother Chase, you know, I wasn't really listening to my mom. And she called him.
And I was like, I think you need to talk to Brett. This is weird.
And he called me and he was like, you know, those aren't friends. You're about to go live in like a tiny two bedroom Westwood apartment with these four people.
And they can't even respect you for having a different opinion when you've spent the last two and a half years not bringing anything up, not starting fights, loving them, caring for them, being supportive. That's not what friendship's about.
And that's kind of when it clicked. And so I told him I, you know, it had really reached ahead where it was like, we were, it had gotten less indirect.
And I had a conversation with like each of them individually. I was like, we're going into this election.
Can I trust that we're all going to be friends after this? And it was like, oh, I don't know. It was just very, very intense.
Maybe you should live with this after all. I was like, maybe I shouldn't.
That was around the time we got, you know, my sorority basically turned freaking upside upside down during BLM and girls were getting called out and kicked out of the sorority because they racially profiled people because there was a guy who, you see it was a very public campus.

It's not closed off.

It's in the city.

Sorority row is just in a Westwood neighborhood.

So anybody can walk up and there was a couple of guys that were coming in and breaking into the sorority houses and trying to attack young women. One of them was black.
And they were trying to find this guy. And so one of the girls had seen a man who was an exact description wearing the exact hoodie walking, especially around campus, and wrote in our group chat, I think I saw him.
I'm going to send him to the police. And it was a black guy.
And she got absolutely tarred and feathered for racially profiling. Wow.
Like publicly in this group chat of like, I don't remember her name, Becca, whatever it was of like, you, this is so disgraceful. You really need to check your privileges.
She was like called in front of the board. I was watching all this transpire.
Like, we lost our ever loving minds. There's a man who's breaking into sorority houses.
And this is, that had been going on for months at this point. And the campus was like, sort of shutting down, but some people still lived on campus.
It was like a ghost town. And like, these houses were being broken into.
And this girl was absolutely like, destroyed in front of everybody.

And then there was all this stuff of like, well, we as like the Panhellenic Council and, you know, Kappa Delta has, we have to make a BLM statement. I was like, we're a fucking UCLA sorority.
And then Kappa Delta, like the head chapter made a statement that wasn't good enough. And then that was super messy.
And Amy Coney Barrett was a Kappa Delta. And so right after all the BLM stuff, when she was nominated, Kappa Delta, the head chapter, made a statement, as they should have, saying, this is now our most successful alum.
She's going to the Supreme Court. They had to apologize for celebrating because she was anti-women's rights.

It was a mess. And then the thing that I was just like, I'm done with all of this.
I had just said, okay, no, I'm not going to live in this apartment. But I was like, maybe I'll stick it out in the sorority like the last year.
Why not? Maybe there's, because I kept thinking if campus reopened, it was nice to have like a place to go and study and activities to go do. I was like, I might as well.
I'm already paid. And they sent out the house manager mom person, sent out a letter talking about the election, telling us all that she hoped we voted correctly.
And we voted for women's rights. And that we didn't forget that there was a man in office that was going to take all of that away from us.
And that she, you know, being older than us, knew all of this. was wiser and that we didn't forget that said there was a man in office that was going to take all of that away from us and that she, you know, being older than us, knew all of this and was wiser and that she hoped that we showed up and voted correctly.
I was like, I can't freaking deal with this. I mean, it's just like...
Yeah. So then I, that was at the end of 2020, like, going into the fall semester.
So I basically just disconnected from everything, which honestly was like the greatest gift I could have been given. Because I think it wasn't a bad thing, but I'd gotten really engaged in UCLA life over that year and a half.
Because I'd gone to community college and I transferred into UCLA as a junior. Man had joined the sorority, had gone to the football games, had gone to the parties, had met people met people was going to live on campus all of that and covid just pulled me out of it and recalibrated me in a lot of ways where i had to become very intentional about my values my principles and people that i was surrounding myself with i became super lonely because the world was shut down and my family was one of the only ones that was like yeah sure let's go to yosemite my brother's gonna fly across the country and come vacation with us.
I'm gonna go outside and not wear a mask. I was still working at Trader Joe's, so I was with people 24 seven.
I didn't get sick, I was fine. I was like, what's happening? Like the world moves on.
I was able to focus on where I wanted my career to go because it was at that point where I was looking at the, was looking at the Hollywood industry, and I'd already kind of at that moment thought that maybe acting wasn't for me.

I thought I didn't love it, but I hated the way that the industry operates.

I looked around at the people who I considered mentors who were older than me in the industry,

and I did not like the lives that they were leading. Why? What about it? They had no control.
Control over what? Their own personal lives. I mean, it was like a good friend of mine was on probably one of the most famous TV shows of the last 20 years.
It was a lead role. Had to live out of state for months at a time.
Husband stayed home and raised the kids, barely saw them. Kids went off to boarding school.
She was not engaged. You know, friends of mine who were in their 30s, who I would be on TV shows with, they would, you know, we'd work together.
They'd go on and they'd, you know, be a series regular on a Netflix show and they'd be 30-something living in a townhome with four four other adults because they couldn't afford their own home. Wow.
People who didn't see their kids. And the thing is, even at a young age, I did not like the fact that every part of my being was just a tool for you to use.
Like, you have an audition at 2 p.m. today.
You have to be there at this time.

Turn your entire life upside down.

If you book it, you're flying to Vancouver tomorrow for four months.

And it was hard as a kid, too, because you were...

I loved it so much, but you would have friends book a job,

and it would be one of your best friends,

and they'd literally move to Vancouver for however many months or years

because they were shooting a show.

Or you'd go to Arizona or Texas, where people work. So few things actually film in L.A.
these days. I'd go abroad.
And I thought about what I really wanted in life. And I wanted to be a mom.
I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a family.
And I really wanted, and this probably is, you know,

now in knowing what you know about my family and talking about this,

where I had a lack of control,

I don't think I was the right person to just hand that over.

Where it's like, you tell me where to be at any point.

Like, it could just be for an audition in Santa Monica at 5 p.m.

That's really annoying to get to. Or it's, I'm moving abroad for however many months.
I'm going to be away from my whole community, family, whatever it is. But also, you tell me, you know, dye your hair.
You're not skinny enough. You're not fat enough.
You need to, you know, you're just a shell for somebody."

Which is a really beautiful part of acting, and it's one of the reasons why I fell in love with it. But it got to a point where when I started to think about it instead of a hobby and an escape, and I thought about it as a career, I was like, I don't think this works for me.
for me. And I didn't like the fact that I didn't have control over the projects that I did because

I was in no position. I don't think this works for me.
And I didn't like the fact

that I didn't have control over the projects that I did because I was in no position.

I was a working actor, but I was in no position

to like pick and choose my projects, obviously.

I just did, I went where the work was.

I didn't like that I hated the characters

in almost every script I was sent.

I just like, they were bad people.

Like the stories that I was, you know, being put in to tell, I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would sent. I just, like, they were bad people.
Like, the stories that I was, you know, being put in to tell,

I would go and audition for these roles and be like,

what is, like, what is society getting from these stories?

They're so awful.

Like, all these characters, they're bad people.

I'm putting, like, filth into the world.

So that was really hard.

I felt just, like, such a values disconnect.

I just felt trapped.

And so then I thought, okay,

maybe I'll go work in production.

I could change things.

I could go be a producer.

I could go tell stories.

Then I worked at,

it was kind of like my dream job, honestly, at the time.

I worked at this production company

that I massively respected the work that they were doing.

It was very story first and character first. It was like big budget, independent films.
Like they weren't going through any huge studios. And I was working for them in 2020 because I'd already kind of been thinking through all of this while I was in college that, you know, I emancipated myself at 15.
We've already kind of like gone through that. So I was making my own money, paying for my life.
And now it had become a job. And so I had a couple of years to think about that.
And I was working at this production company in 2020, it happened, George Floyd happened, and my job changed from receiving scripts and passing them on to the producer on the basis of, or the production team on the basis of it being really good characters and good people that would leave an audience changed and a story that was worth telling because it, the whole idea of this production company and what I was supposed to seek out was that at the end of the film, you were better in some way. It's not hitting you over the head with a Bible.
It's not like, this is a feel good, whatever. It was just at the end of it, something's been sparked in you.
And there's good people in it who are complex who are broken who you see heal you're pumping good into the world yeah and it changed from that to we have way too many white stories i need you to find me a native american story right now we don't have any trans stories we're going to be attacked it. So it became identity first.
I was like, oh God, like, so I can't even, you know, I'm an entry level person. I can't even change it from here.
So I felt very lost there. And so I did finish out my time at UCLA.
Again, I'm very, you know, find the good in everything. Find, you know, the lesson that you're going to learn in this experience.
What good thing can you take from it? The good thing that COVID gave me was that it removed me from all those environments. It took acting away.
It took production. Like, the whole industry basically shut down.
UCLA shut down. My social life sorority, everything went away.
And I just dove into studying what I believed in and trying to build something for myself. So I did a business program at UC Berkeley's grad school for business, Haas School of Business, which is where you as an undergrad could go and basically get a condensed MBA.
And so I did that, which I would have never had the time to do, but I was able to do it because it was remote. I did what every, you know, English major who's confused about her future would do, and I studied for the LSAT.
I took the LSAT. I was like, I'll go to law school.
And at that time, I was super engaged in politics. I was like, I'll go be a 2A lawyer.
I'll go into constitutional law. I'd been shooting for years with my brother.
I felt like the world was under attack. Like, I had no idea what was happening.
My mom, you know, was a prepper. I'd become a prepper.
And I was like, I'll go into two-way law. And then I was like, what am I doing? Like, I shouldn't be a lawyer.
I hate, like, I don't want to go read contracts for the rest of my life. And I had talked with some constitutional liars and they were like, there's too many liars right now because there's too many grad schools because it's there's a financial incentive for universities

to create grad programs because the government gives unsur the government gives subsidized

limitless loans for grad school so they that's why grad programs for lesbian dance theory that's

a joke we all make interesting i didn't know that because you don't have to have the financial

incentive to be able to make money after or have a job afterwards you have limitless loans so

So, let's go. I didn't know that.
Because you don't have to have the financial incentive to be able to make money or have a job afterwards. You have limitless loans.
So every university and their mother created a law school. And you can see in times of recession, lawyers spike.
Because people can't get jobs. They just go back to grad school.
They get a student loan. It's happening right now.
Interesting. And so I talked to some lawyers and a mentor of mine who worked at the Foundation for Economic Education.
I kind of missed a chapter, but I'll go back. But I was writing for the Foundation of Economic Education.
She knew that I was going to go to law school. Her name's Hannah Cox.
People have probably seen her on Twitter. And she gave me an assignment.
And she said, I want you to... I told her about this conversation that I'd had with these constitutional lawyers who were like't think this is, this isn't what it's cracked up to be.
And I think that your skills are better used elsewhere. If you want to do advocacy, you can do everything that we're doing except signing the briefs.
Do you need to go put your life and career on hold when you're already engaged with, you know, in that year when everything shut down and I had no friends, I found community at PragerU. And I was like, I'm an actor.
I can do things on camera. I can help produce things.
You want me to make social media videos for you? I have nothing to lose at this point. I'll go be an outward conservative.
So I started making videos that way and made videos for Young Americans for Liberty and got hired there. And it was obviously an English major.
What age were you when you jumped into PragerU? 18. 18? Yeah.
And you found them? Mm-hmm. I reached out.
They brought me into their office and had a whole tour. Yeah.
They're head of PR now. Her name is Sabrina.
She was running PragerForce, which was their student program, which is still, I think, an incredible program. She knew that I was in LA, and I had joined Prager Force to just try to meet people, and they would do monthly Zoom calls for all the lonely teenage conservatives around the country.
And she was like, oh, you're in LA, you should come into the office. And I really like all of this.
I give a ton of credit to her, because she brought me in, and she said, I think that you could have a could we, what can we offer you? Would you like to do videos for us? Can we give you resources? Like here, we can all, you know, love to be friends with you. Like she gave me a community and she really helped put me in the right direction and said, I think you could do something here.
I had never even thought of it. I was like, commentary, like, what do you mean? Um, and so everything spiraled from there and started working at, you know, doing videos for Young Americans for Liberty and got a job there and got a fellowship.
I was a Hazlitt fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and was writing for them because I had a writing background through school. I'd gone to, you know, the TPUSA events, just became engaged purely out of a utilitarian, you know, standpoint of I just, I needed community.
I felt so lonely. I never thought, like, I'm going to go be a right-wing influencer.
This is going to be like, I'm going to go do commentary. I just wanted people.
And I thought I had a unique skill set that it was kind of missing on the young right. Like, there were no younger voices.
Will Witt at PragerU was the only one. And so she started making videos here and there and

grew an Instagram page from zero to like 7,000. But yeah, I was still thinking I'll go to law

school and I'll just go do constitutional law. Like that's how I'll make a difference.
And

Hannah Cox at Fee said, she gave me a writing assignment. She said, I want you to go tell me

why there are so many lawyers. Like, okay.
and then tell me the economic ramifications of that and how the

government has screwed with the free market in that regard a great assignment and i did that

and i was like holy shit i can't go to law school did you hear did you ever hear from your uh

your old sorority friends well i not my friends but i've heard from girls who were in my sorority at the same time who knew me who like three years later were like you probably don't remember me but we were in capitals we were in the same pledge class we were like you know pledge class after me and i wish i had known you at school because it was so alienating. I mean, we couldn't find each other.

Damn. Yeah, I don't really have.
So I have a couple of friends from UCLA, but they weren't from my time there. Yeah, gotcha.
Yeah, but that's how it all kind of started. So I withdrew from law school the day of my orientation.
I was like, this is not for me. It was after that writing assignment, after all those conversations.
I was like, I'm not going to do this. I was living in Idaho with my mom.

Because I had, she, after the divorce and when COVID happened, she was like, this is the sign I need

to get out. You know, you don't need me anymore.
I had applied for, you know, law school at UCLA,

at Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount. And then she had said that she wanted to go to Idaho.
So I was like,

I'll apply for University of Idaho. Why not? And they had a dual JD MBA program, which I was

just at Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount. And then she had said that she wanted to go to Idaho.
So I was like, I'll apply for University of Idaho. Why not? And they had a dual JD MBA program, which I was really interested in.
So rather than three years, it'd be four years, I'd get an MBA and a JD. So I got into that and she bought this farm sight unseen in Idaho and said, I'm getting the hell out of California.
I don't want to be, you know, carded for a vaccine. I don't want to wear a mask.
So I left. My brother left.
We, it was my brother Reed. He was doing really well at the time.
And we all moved to Idaho and Reed and I got a little duplex. And I quit Trader Joe's in LA and I came to Idaho and I was writing for Fee and doing all these like conservative nonprofit stuff.
I was working as a waitress at a steakhouse in Boise, which was such a fun job. People like crap on serving.
I had a hell of a time serving. I loved that.
Um, and yeah, I, so I withdrew, I had this whole plan ahead of me. I was like, I'll go to university of Idaho.
Cause I didn't want to be in California either. And my whole family's here now.
And I withdrew and my mom looked at me and she said, you have to figure out what you're going to do with your life. Like you can't just, are you just going to live in Idaho and be, you know, a waitress? Like you need to come up with a plan.
And so I got a permanent role at Young Americans for Liberty being their marketing strategist. And I did social media for them.
I did copywriting for their development team, which in the nonprofit sphere is, you know, sending out emails for development is fundraising. So brand campaigns for them.
And I had like a big girl salary to the time I thought was like, I'm making a lot of money. It's like more than my, you know, minimum wage at Trader Joe's.
And although Trader Joe's actually pays very well. We're a great company.
If you need a job, it's the best place to work, hands down. I'll keep that in mind.
I know, yeah. If everything goes to hell, we'll both be back there.
I'll be in the box, stocking the milk again. That was my favorite job.
And yeah, so I kept doing that and then randomly got a DM from Daily from daily wire who said we we're looking to start a show with the young person we love your social media and what you're doing and so I took some meetings with them they sent me some videos to react to just to like hear me on camera and it was there I told you this at dinner last night but I haven't shared this publicly. My brother's most recent, well, now it's second to most recent psychotic break happened.
The week that I was offered the job with Daily Wire. It's like December of 21.
I was really weighing a lot of things and I was petrified to take this job. Because as I've kind of, you know, set the scene for you, my mom and I were super intertwined.

There was a lot of weight to carry.

I felt like things were good for the first time.

Like, she was happy.

She bought this farm that she had always wanted to have a farm forever.

My dad never wanted her, her first husband never wanted her to have a farm.

And I was happy, you know, I was living with Reed. Reed was doing great.
He was even talking about going back to school. And it just felt like things were humming.
And I had a job where I felt like I was making a difference. And I thought, I'll just meet like a nice guy in Idaho.
And I'll live near my mom. And well, I'll buy a farm soon.
And you know, I had horses at her property. and it was all normal, and I was like, I can't believe this.
And she had a pretty hard conversation with me where she basically grabbed me by the neck because I was petrified to even take the call with Daily Wire and send in a tape because I was so out of the game. I hadn't auditioned in so long because I hadn't been acting in a couple of years and I felt like that was behind me.

And it's such a testament, I think, to like risk-taking and betting on yourself is habitual. I don't think that's something that is ingrained in most people.
It's certainly not in me. It's like a practice that I like every couple of years I got a, I just did it a couple of months ago.
You have to take a leap and shake something up and challenge yourself. if something isn't right, you just, you have to do it.
And I was definitely at a stall in my life. I didn't, I just, you know, I was a waitress.
I was withdrawing from law school. I was working this marketing job, but you know, it was remote.
So I was working his way, whatever it was, but I was comfortable. And with acting, the beautiful thing about it is that you get told no 90% of the time.
From a really young age, I had learned how to get rejected. I didn't care.
I was like, you know, 12 years old, I would go in and you bare your soul to somebody and you're performing, you're singing, whatever it is. And they go, okay, thank you.
And you walk out the door and you 90% of the time, you never hear anything from them. So if you're somebody who likes gratification and that kind of thing, to be an actor that's not some kind of celebrity, it's really hard.
That just doesn't work that way because most of the time they don't give a shit about you. You don't hear anything from anybody.
They don't say, it was really great, we're going in a different direction. You maybe hear that 1% of the time.
You just go in and you... So that was such a crucial part of my growing up and I hadn't done that in two years.
So this felt like a huge risk. I was, you know, having to like sort of audition for this and send in a tape.
They, obviously they're gonna have a show with you. They want to see what are this girl's values beyond, you know, social media? What can she do in a longer format? Cause I basically only done TikToks and that kind of thing.
And, um, I basically, I got up to the deadline and I was like not going to in a video. And I went over to the house and I was like bitching and moaning about it and saying, I don't think I'm gonna do it.
I just wanna stay here. I'm gonna be in Idaho.
And she grabbed me by the neck and she said, I don't care. My mom rarely swears.
She basically said, I don't give a fuck. If you decide not to take this job or do whatever, but if you stand in front of me and say, you're not even to try, then I'm incredibly disappointed in you.
And hearing her saying she's, I was like, okay. Because that's like, she is the person, like, I want to please her.
The most we've been through everything together. I respect her so much.
I was like, if she's saying that, and she was like, then you're not the person that I know that I raise you to be. Wow.
Who took every risk, who put yourself out there constantly, that went on stage, was an animal, that tried everything, that would go in, that has, you know, for the last, you know, it was eight years at that point. Ten years, really.
Yeah, I was 18, so it was ten years. A decade of auditioning and being on stage and, you know, being, you know, rejected and getting up and trying again, even if you never got a role and you're going to in front of me and say you're not even gonna try.
And I was like, you were right. So I went home, I recorded it and I got the job.
And then I had to decide whether, and then she was like, if you don't wanna take it, you don't wanna take it. That's a once in a lifetime, they weren't gonna come back and ask me in a year, like you wanna still wanna do a show? They would've found somebody else on social media to do a show with.
And the part that I had talked to you about last night is that I was trying to decide whether I wanted to uproot my life and do this and leave and start this whole new thing. And I could tell in my brother's eyes that something was not right.
He was on his meds. He wasn't taking drugs.
Boys is a very clean city, Idaho's, very buttoned up. We lived in a very, like in the outskirts, he had no access to anything.
And he just started to crack. They just, the drugs just weren't working anymore.
And you can always tell when he's kind of, when you hear, when he's hearing the voices. Cause when you're having a conversation with him, if you've had a conversation with anybody that has schizophrenia, they're talking to you, but they're also talking with the voices that they hear, and they're telling them how to respond to them.
So our conversations really slowed down. He started to get more unstable.
And it was like two days before I had to make my decision about whether I was going to leave and do this, take this job. And he asked me to come downstairs, and I walked down to his apartment, which was under my house, or our house.
I had a little apartment upstairs. He had one downstairs.
and he asked me to come downstairs and I walked down to his apartment which was under my house or our house I had a little apartment upstairs he had one downstairs and he looked at me and he gave me this purple crystal that I still have he put it in my hand and he said you need to go to Nashville it's your destiny I was like what do you mean what do you mean and he was like you have to promise me that you're gonna go to go. I was like, for this job, he was like, you must move.
You must be there. And he was like, they're telling me that you have to go.
And in my mind, I was like, okay, your voices have told you like some crazy things. Like we have spent the last 10 years.
Like, I don't even know. I don't want to know if I want to trust these voices.
And he was like, I'm telling you, this is your destiny. You must go.
i was like okay well whatever and i woke up the next morning he was gone and he had a full psychotic break and the police found him it was in december out on a bench in the cold completely in a full psychotic state and that was the last sort of coherent conversation we had was him telling me to go. I take that stuff seriously.

Yeah. Yeah.
I was going to be working with a lot of people in this world that I respected. I mean, I'd been listening to Matt Walsh and Michael and Candace and Ben.

You'd heard them all before.

Yeah, in the last couple of years. It was a big deal.

Yeah, huge deal.

And I knew more than anything that what I would get from it,

even if things didn't work out, even if the show didn't take off,

even if we never developed a show, if it never got greenlit, whatever it was,

that I had the opportunity to work with people who were better than me at what I was doing, who were principled, who were great at what they did, and even not in like this weird industry, but who just seemed like good people. And I got there, and those individuals, like, I'll always say this, but, you know, you hear Matt Walsh online, that's who he is in real life.
Like Michael Knowles, he walks the walk. It was like crazy.
Jordan Peterson, I'm doing my show. And he was like, I want to meet the internet girl.
And he's like walking in and wants me. But I get to have these.
He was like, you do the TikToks, right the youtubes um the tiktoks and the youtube yeah exactly um and so in my mind like i knew that it was a huge deal but i was petrified and again i was comfortable and i said okay screw it i'm gonna go do it they brought you on to do a show and so walking in there for the first time i mean how how often was it that you were listening to them? Pretty frequently, yeah. You were listening to them all, all the time.
Yeah. And so you walk in and there's— I mean, Ben, at like 15 years old, when I was—we had that conversation about abortion when I learned that my dad wanted to abort me.
Like when I was looking up, you know, information, it was his debates that came up. Wow.
It was like him at college campuses. I love listening to Michael.
Michael made me think about God in a way that I hadn't in a really long time. I just kind of shut off from that, especially living in L.
That's the most secular place you can be, especially in Hollywood. So these were people that meant something to me and still do became very good friends and mentors and will always be grateful for that.
Were they all there when you walked in the door? No, Jordan wasn't there yet. and it took me a while to meet them because you know i was in development for the show so like i was brought on to do the show but i was like social media content creator and then we took a few months to do the show so when the show launched that's when i really got to know them because then they were like oh you're legit here they gave you a show how How was it made in Candace for the first time? Terrifying.
Are you kidding me? She's like, so I had met her. I'd gone to mass.
And she was, you know, George is Catholic. And she had not converted at that time.
But I knew, like, she sort of knew who I was. And she filmed in a different part of the studio than I did.
So I didn't really cross paths with her. And her husband, George, was like, it's so funny if you know him, but he loves YouTube.
So he would watch my show and be like, hey, this is the girl at 3 Wire. And she's like, I haven't even met her.
Like, who is this? And then I accidentally parked next to her at Mass one Sunday. And this is like the Michael Knowles effect of like, I need to go to Mass.
I need to get my life together, whatever it was. And I was like, oh my God, Guinness is here.
And then I saw George look over at me. And apparently he was like, that's the girl at Daily Wire.
And that was like the first time she had ever like seen me in person. And then she was in the office like a couple of weeks later and officially met me.
But she's one of those people, we were talking about this downstairs, that she is this like firecracker of personality. And you like see her on screen.
Like, oh my God, I don't even know what to expect about this person. And she is one of the warmest individuals.
She's incredibly charismatic. She's incredibly loyal.
And I would, you know, hear things around the office of like, oh, Candace, oh, Candace walking in. And it was like everybody like revered her and kind of feared her.
And she just comes up and gives you like a huge hug. So, yeah, that was really special.
And Matt, you know, I think the first time he ever like really officially met me was when his team was like, you got to go on her show to promote something that he was doing or help her promote her show. And we just had a ton of fun.
So it was welcoming right off the bat. Yeah.
I mean, how did it feel walking in there, starting a show with the people like i don't know if you'd call them idols but yeah you know people that you look up to in the industry and i mean now you're right there with them that was a fish out of water for sure imposter syndrome but also you know you were i'm very overconfident so there was some imposter syndrome but it was like yeah i yeah, I can do this. I can talk to a camera.

I have opinions, and I don't waver in what I believe,

and I have fun telling stories, and that's what I got to do every day.

That's what I still get to do.

What I loved about acting, what I loved about working at that production company

and searching for stories at the end of the day

was telling stories with interesting characters and with interesting meaning that leave people changed. That leave you thinking about something in a different light that make you feel something.
And I got to do that every single day. And it was a really nice marrying of all the things that I loved.
So I wasn't acting and there's always a part of me that's like, you know, I love that. I love being on stage.
I'm doing my tour in the next couple of months, which I'm so excited about, because I love feeding off of an audience and this is like the whole, I love entertaining, I love telling stories in that medium. So I was able to kind of like mesh together all the things that I cared about.
And it was not the career that I ever expected for myself, but I think it's really beautiful because you, if you follow the things, like if you find the, if you find the core of why you love what you love, because it's usually a lot deeper than what you think. It's not the superficial, like I like this job because of X, Y, Z, but it's like, why does that fill your cup? Is it the people? Is it the things that you accomplish? Is it the feeling that you're making a difference? Whatever it might be.
Is it the storytelling aspect? Is it the solving of a problem? Whatever it may be. And if you can't do what you, you know, dreamed of as a kid or, you know, spent 10 years of your life in LA like I did, thinking like, yeah, I'll just go be an actor forever and work in this industry.
I'm totally content and fulfilled now with what I'm doing because the meat of why I loved all of that I get to do every day. And I get to do it now especially being independent I get to do it and I'm in the driver's seat.
I get to decide, you know, who I work with. And I can, you know, honestly tell my audience that if I'm sitting down with somebody, if I'm collaborating with somebody, if I'm partnering with somebody, it's because I want to.
It's because I trust them. How did you, before we get into independent, how did you guys come up with the concept? How did you come up with the comments section? So it was a funny story because there were two different sides of it.
But I had the idea for a very similar show that I pitched to PragerU, actually. And it was like a quippy, funny.
I still have the pilot, actually. And it's me in my L.A.
apartment. I've got my leg up on the chair because that was my whole thing at the beginning of comment section.
Like, I always had my leg up. And I was going through news stories from a more, like, right-wing common sense perspective.
And I even read some comments. And I had all the funny memes and edits in there.
And I edited it myself in iMovie. And my purpose of that was, it was, you know, trifold, I think.
Because, one, I didn't feel like there was enough content on this side of the aisle that was short form that would reach my generation because we have the you know attention span of a P and that was why I added in all the edits and the memes and the sound effects which is a lot of youtubers doing at that at the time I was a big fan of this girl named Emma Chamberlain who had blown up on YouTube, you know, over the past 10 years or so. And she always had really funny edits and sound effects, and they would keep me just captivated in these videos.
And I also felt like there wasn't anybody that was like me speaking to young people. Like I said, Will Witt was the only one.
I had a lot of people that I would find on YouTube, and, you, I would listen to Dennis sometimes and he would pop up on my YouTube feed or Michael and, you know, Ben and Canada would watch Candace's. I was like consuming her stuff during BLM, all of her live streams and her rants and all that.
But there wasn't anybody that was, there wasn't anybody who was young or just like an average girl. Mm-hmm women that I saw were like the Trump admin interns and they're like pencil skirts or like the Fox News women.
Or they were like the, you know, the hunters in Montana. I wasn't either of those.
I was like, I'm just kind of a, I don't know, I'm not, I'm just sort of in the middle. I'm just don't want to really be preached at, but there's a lot of stuff going on in the world that doesn't make sense and that's chaotic and I'm losing friends and I feel alienated and lonely and if I feel this way, then I know other people do.
So maybe I could do something about it. Was it all you? Mm-hmm.
You came up with it all? Well, so that was my side of it. And so I had this pilot pitched and so when A.L.O.I.
approached me, I was like, actually, I had this idea for a show and they have obviously a very strict pitch policy as anybody does in entertainment. They were like, actually, we can't, if you pitched it somewhere else, like we can't accept your pitch.
You're not even hired yet. And so we were just sitting in this Zoom meeting.
They were like, this is our idea. You know, it'll be a short form show.
We want, you know, really funny edits and memes and you'll read comments. I was like, this is like, this is perfect.
This is like the meeting of the minds. And it was so cool.
And I think people assume, and I've said this before, that it was like the suits there that were going, we need to reach the young people. It was like the entire show was created by people that were around my age.
They were all newly graduated. I think the oldest was like 24.
So it was created by, out of necessity for the content that we wanted to consume,

made by us, for people our age. And so we had, they got the green light to hire me, even though I don't think the suits knew, you know, why I was being hired, but they were like, okay, you know, try it out.
And somehow got it greenlit, even though the execs were like, we don't really, we don't understand the show, but if you think it's gonna, just try. So we had no money, tiny budget.

You know, I was in the back of a studio

that was shared by two other people. I had a little tiny corner.
We had no paid ads, nothing. No marketing machine.
They were just like, see if anybody watches. And it was just really, really was perfect because the people that we were working with, we just had like, that's how you kind of know that something's hopefully going to work and that you've created something great when it's like, we've all felt this need for something that's very similar.
We all came together and had already been thinking about this. It was like, this has got to be magic.
And they brought the comment section, like the name, they had already had the name and they had tried the concept with another young woman who'd worked there previously. And what they brought to it was having it be driven by comments of like, that's a unique, you know, kind of value add of, don't just talk about your values and opinions.
But like, what are normal people on the internet saying? I was like, that's a great addition. So they contributed that part and we developed it for three months and then launched it in the end of February or March in 2022.
And in the back corner of that tiny studio with no money, no paid ads, nobody really paying attention, we hit a million in four months. You hit a million in four months.
Yeah. You amassed 4.5 million in three years.
Yeah. It was a rocket ship.
We were the fastest growing show. And on the right, we were one of the top three fastest growing YouTube channels on all of YouTube.

Wow.

Again, no money, no anything.

I mean, we had money.

We had support.

They gave us like $10,000, $20,000 to buy the cameras and build a set and get like the

headphones, the mic and all of that stuff.

But it was, a lot of it was organic of people just sharing it.

Wow.

So they gave you a $10,000 budget and you created a 4.5 million viewership.

Thank you. a lot of it was organic of people just sharing it.
Wow. So they gave you a $10,000 budget and you created a 4.5 million viewership.
Yeah. That's fucking insane.
Yeah. In three years.
How did that rank against the other shows? We, um, Ben always had significantly more. I helped paste.
A lot of them. Yeah.
Any jealousy? No, I don't think so. Felt good.
Yeah. I mean, I was just like shocked as anybody.
I was like, I don't even know how. I was like, this is wild.
No, and I'm so, and I like, I think about, you know, my brother saying that and all of these things that have now happened since then, and I'm, I'm really, really grateful for the shot that they gave me. And, um, and I had great people, you know, that core team who launched the show with me, that was, like, dream team.
And we were, there was so much synergy. And it made me, like, doing that show every day, we day we did 10 episodes a week sometimes more but two episodes a day it made me so much better in basically every aspect of my life i get comfortable being brett on camera not being behind a role kind of like we talked about very early on i became incredibly articulate in my beliefs i became unwavering i think i became less of a people pleaser in my work because I had to go on camera every day and share what I thought, and I was getting death threats and being called a transphobe and a racist and whatever.
You're a POS. Did that bother you? Not really, actually.
Because I felt so strongly about what I believed and I felt like what I was doing was important. Because I would meet people in person, I think that was really, really helpful, who were my age or around my age who said, like, thank you for saying what I'm too afraid to say.
Or what I felt, and I felt crazy for thinking this. And you make me feel like I'm not as alone.
Especially young women who came up to me and said that. Because it was all born out of purpose of me feeling that exact same way.
Did that start happening immediately? Pretty soon after, yeah. It was very weird.
But thankfully, because I had been in acting, my mom was very proactive in conversations like that. Because she was like, at any moment, any of these auditions,itions you know i was auditioning for things like wolverine and or disney whatever these things that you know if i had actually booked any of those my life would have blown up in an instant we watched that happen on a regular basis people that i knew was in acting classes with so we had lengthy conversations about fame and influence growing up because my mom was like you could walk away from acting in, I wouldn't care.
Because I would believe that what you learned was important and you had a great time doing it. You have no pressure to do this.
But if this is what you are going to be doing, and you're auditioning for these huge things that could literally change your entire world, you need to know what fame is. And you need to have such a secure sense of self and understand that the reason why you have that and why you would have the money and the power and the influence is because of those people.
So you better not act like a piece of shit, basically. Good advice.
And you can't compromise that. And it was like that was from a young age.
Because, again, you never know. You could have booked something and then suddenly you're on some show every, and everybody knows who you are.
So it was very proactive. And that, you know, when I left to move to Nashville, she had the same conversation with me again.
She was like, I don't know if they're ever going to make a show with you. I don't know if you're going to become some well-known person.
Don't forget everything that we've talked about over the last 10 years, because it's still applicable. And I didn't.
She was right. Yeah.
And it happened really fast. So I think I was prepared.
But I remember the first time I was like actually recognized in public, I was in my pajamas at Costco. I was like, maybe I shouldn't wear my pajamas out in public anymore.
Maybe that's not the best thing to do. Yeah.
What did the execs think? I mean, a million in four months. It was like shocking.
What were they saying to you? Well, they brought us into a meeting

and, uh,

one of the masks, like,

turned to somebody on my team

and was like, so how much money did we put, like, behind this?

Like, how many paid ads? And he was like, none.

Nothing. And they were just

like, okay.

Like, I guess let's just keep going. Yeah.
But I just tried to, like, stay in my lane and keep going. I was undeterred.
I was like, this is a rocket ship. Let's just keep going.
I mean, with that kind of a success in that amount of time, I mean, that's damn near unheard of.

Yeah.

What was your motivation to go independent?

When did that pop into your head?

I was ready for something different.

You just wanted a new challenge, or?

Yeah, I mean, I, um, you know, we've covered a lot of different things. And there have been different moments in my life where I had to make kind of like a decision that was like, you know, that leap of faith and that risk.
And I hadn't taken one in a while. And I felt very complacent, and I was good at what I was doing, and I was doing it every single day, and we were making a difference.
And I was in a very good rhythm, but I had gotten complacent was it freedom yeah you wanted more freedom what was the final straw i mean almost nobody would give that up yeah and start from scratch and that's why i respect you so much oh it was terrifying i had to you know alex i had a conversation many this was not like a like this is a lot of thinking and praying and analyzing and we looked at each other and we're just kind of like are you willing to, or we, basically willing to lose everything and start from scratch?

Because again, we had, you know,

Alex had just started his own business.

We had bought this farm that was like,

it was a stretch, but we really wanted it.

And I was like, I could leave,

and it could backfire on me immediately. Nobody could care.
Maybe I wouldn't make any money. Maybe I would have no anything.
And I basically just had to decide, like, does that matter to me? And it didn't. And it worked.
Yeah. But it wasn't because I because i was like yeah a million subs in one month when you launched your new show yeah it was very humbling and gratifying i was like okay but it was i mean it's terrifying and i literally like our conversation was like are we willing my mom had just decided to move to nashville I was like, are we willing to like go move back in with her and like literally start over? If like you're funding our life now, Alex, and I can't help it all.
And I'm making no money. Like if all of it went away.
And at the end of the day, like, I don't really care about being famous. Like it comes with what I do, but I would be very, I would be just as happy if I was telling stories in a different capacity.
Again, it's finding the root of what you love to do and then applying it. I don't need this to survive.
I don't crave it. I do it because I love sharing stories with people.
I love hopefully making them think differently about the world. I love making people feel like they're not alone in whatever they're going through, whether that's like on my subscription platform where we do our Dear Brett series and I'm able to talk to people.
I had a girl last week talk to me about she has a grandfather with dementia who is forgetting who gotten violent and is like, how do you, how do you go through that? Like, how do you still love somebody and be there, but protect yourself and know that, you know, that isn't the person that you know anymore. I got to talk about my brother, which I don't often get to do.
And it's like, I've had so much crap happen in 23 years. It's like I hope that I can make somebody's life a little better

if they haven't experienced this and they're now going through it for the first time.

I hope I can make you feel less crazy about the world and feel less alone.

But I don't have to have 4 million or a million subs to do that.

Like that isn't why I do this.

I can go work. I can go back to Trader Joe's and I'll be happy.
Well, you just't why I do this. I can go work.

I can go back to Trader Joe's and I'll be happy.

Well, you just described the why.

Yeah.

And you definitely, you hit it.

And you seem very fulfilled.

Yeah.

That's good to see.

Not a lot of people have that, man.

Yeah.

Not a lot of people feel fulfilled in what they're doing.

Yeah.

And that was the first step to freedom.

Of being like, I'm okay if this doesn't work,

and I'm willing to fight to make that happen.

When you left, your maid of honor, best friend,

was it Reagan?

Is that her name?

Took over the comments section.

How did that feel?

Thank you. best friend, was it Reagan? Is that her name? Took over the comments section.
How did that feel? Friendships are hard. Are you guys still friends? I wouldn't say so.
Would you like to still be friends? Of course. I talked about that actually in another Dear Brett thing.
Adult friendships are really hard. You always think it's going to get easier.
It kind of just gets harder. And with more people knowing who you are, and having influence and having eyes on you, then you kind of question people's motives in being friends with you.
And it's kind of like a hard knowing how to meet people. And so I'm, I'm like loyal to a, maybe a fault, but I like, Do you feel that she was disloyal in taking the role?

No, she can do it.

She's an adult.

She is.

She, and this is what I will always stand by,

you have to make the decision that is good for you and your family.

I did that and she did that.

Why do you think the friendship fell apart?

If you wish her the best of success. Friendships are hard.
Do you want to say anything to her? That's a difficult question. But at the end of the day, I do.
I wish you success and I wish you well. And I hope that she chases the things that she wants and I never wish that, you know, to not work for anybody.
But I mean that genuinely. I have people, you know, there have been so many people that have come in and out of my life over the years.
And I think that it's important to let go. Can't control everything, even though you might like to.
People make their own decisions. Sometimes it hurts, but at the end of the day, everybody's figuring it out.
And we make choices, we live with choices, we do what we believe is best for us and our goals and our dreams. So, yeah.
Good for you. That's a healthier way to...

handle it.

Good for you.

How long was it after you left The Daily Wire that you started it?

Um, my last day was December 10th. And I think we started the show at the end of January, I believe.
It was a good rest period. I had a lot to consider and recalibrate and reflect on.
And it seemed a lot longer in the moment because you go from to silence.

It was really nice.

And I had to think about a lot of the things we've just spoken about.

And I had already been thinking about that for months leading up to that, of the why and the how.

And what can I build and how can I produce it in a way that is authentic, that is meaningful, that doesn't compromise values?

And I wanted to do right by people.

I care so deeply about this audience and this community that I've built.

And I know that they trust me.

And I care for them.

And I wouldn't have what I have today. I mean, they've changed my life in a myriad of ways where it's like having this community of people that tunes in and watches you, it makes me better.
It makes me articulate. It makes me have more integrity with myself.
Like they hold me to high standards and encourage me to continue holding myself to high standards. I think about the impact that I'm having in the world on a much broader scale.
I want to make sure I am being consistent with what I say on screen and what I'm doing in my personal life. And if I'm saying I believe in independent voices and freedom and doing what you believe in and standing strong in that, I have to do the same and I can't.
Like, it just forces you to go. Like, I think if you are a person with integrity and you have eyes on you and you're speaking about that, I don't know how you can not do that behind the scenes.
I just, like, I can't comprehend that. And so I think it was really good, you know, I spent months thinking of, like, what is the best way? What does this next chapter look like? and there was a lot that I wanted to consider in terms of you know

Alex is in my life and I do want to be a mom. And that's the thing that I've dreamt about for my entire childhood and life and now.
And how can I build a life and a career where I get to do what I love, but I get to be the kind of mother that I want to be

and have the kind of balance that I hope to have.

And again, if it didn't work, if nobody cared,

I would be fine.

Having babies, working a job, being with my family,

being with the people that I love,

might not be as exciting as some of the stuff

that I get to do,

but that's a really good life. And at the end of the day, that's what I think about.
And I now have the freedom to build that. What are you thinking about having kids? I hope as soon as possible.
Really? Yeah. Good for you.
Yeah. How will you balance it all? I think I've put myself in a very good position over the last couple of months of thinking of, you know, having that in mind of I have, you know, I've scaled back a ton and which I think has made me better actually, and probably made me better on camera and what I do.
But I'm building a life and putting something in place, and Alex actually has taken on a much bigger role because he's in advertising, so he actually handles a lot of that side of the work for me, and he manages a lot of the business side of it, which is, he's much better at it than I am, which is great, where I have a lot more free time than I ever, you know, kind of expected. And so I look at that and I'm like, this is, is obviously how I want to fill that time.
And I think I actually just recently did an episode about this because there's this whole idea that, you know, started in the 80s of women being able to have it all. You should have it all and, you know, be this girl boss.
And it's ironic that they said have it all because they never intended children to be included in that. But women thought that they were.
And so they would go work their, you know, nine-to-five jobs and climb the corporate ladder. And they'd be like, how do I? Now I can't.
Like, I can't have it all. I'm, you know, camel's burning at both ends.
And so, you know, I'm not there yet. I don't know exactly how on a day-to-day basis that will be managed, but I know that I'll be saying no to things.
And life is prioritizing things based on the stage of life that you're in. And if we weren't planning on having kids, if that wasn't my future, I would probably be building a very different career.
Maybe I wouldn't have, you know, taken a shot to try to go build something myself, but it was important to me to be able to say, I want to have the freedom to say no. And not have to go...
It's the same thing with, you know, with acting. I want to be in control and know that I can be the kind of wife that I want to be and the kind of daughter that I want to be and the kind of mother that I want to be.
And it's a real privilege and a blessing that I'm working on building that and I still get to do what I love. But I probably won't do it.
I don't know. The analogy that I made on my show is that, yes, a woman can have eight children and go and be a partner at a law firm, but she definitely won't be the super engaged homeschool mom that drives her kids to every single single appointment and thing that, you know, a mom that prioritizes being at Homewood.
And that mom that homeschools all of her kids, she might have a part-time job. She might have, you know, so many of the mothers that I know do work, but they have built a career and a life that allows them to be the mother that they want to be.
And so they have, you know, like I think about my mom, she didn't work, but she ran organizations and she would write for the newspaper and she would teach cooking classes out of our house, just because there were so many things that she as a person just enjoyed and wanted to share with people and would do things here and there to keep herself engaged. And it was so impressive, I think, to my brothers and I to see this woman who was so engaged and so dedicated to the career of being a mother, of building and nurturing productive, intelligent members of society.
But she had so many interests, and she built so many different things, and she was so impressive, and she brought us along with all of it. And she gave up a corporate career she was in textbook publishing she was working at w.w.
Norton she walked away from that she could have had a totally and I asked her about that growing up like do you regret that she was like well I often think about what it would have been like if I had stayed in the you know the more commonplace path of pursuing that you know I'm I'm going to go be the partner at the law firm. I'm going to go be the president of publishing.
I'm going to go run this real estate agency. She worked in real estate later on.
She was like, but at the end of the day, that wasn't what drove me. And so I found other ways to be fulfilled in buildings.
And she built incredible things. She ran that incredible organization.
She ran a cooking school when my brothers were younger, but it was like out of her house. So I like have always thought about that and knowing that my career might look different than a woman who decides to have a, you know, a full-time man or not have kids.
And I never want to shame women for doing that because every person is on their own path. But no individual man or woman can have it all.
We talked about that when you came on of, you know, you give and you take. And there are times when I've been so ingrained in work and I've had to scale back.
And I just know that it'll be about prioritizing what is important at that moment and building something where I can give to my family in the way that I want to give. There's not a lot of people doing it.
You're in a very unique position here. And I mean, who will you look to for advice?

Especially with the mom stuff.

Yeah.

Business stuff.

I mean, Candace seems to manage it all.

Yeah.

Candace says, and they keep it all in house,

which is wonderful.

And, you know, she and George run everything together,

which was really the, I loved watching that.

And I looked at Alex and I was like, I want that. I don't want to, I don't want to offload this

to anybody else anymore. Like, I trust you.
I'll trust a lot of people. I trust you.
And let's do this together. And he, through helping me build this, gives me the...
He's giving me and our family the freedom to be able to go, you know, have a farm, have a bunch of kids. By, you know, this is not what he, it's like sort of in line with some of the work that he does, but he's taken on a huge bulk of it, which I'm so grateful for.
Um, but yeah, for sure her. And then the other one is, um, Liz Wheeler.
She's incredible. And she is, uh, she's a mom.
She has two kids. She's at The Blaze.
She has a podcast, and her husband works, and she is the most dedicated mother. And she, you know, when she's doing her show for an hour and a half during the day, her husband is with their kids, and then for the rest of the day, she is like they're never out of her sight.
yeah and they go wherever she goes and he like if you hire liz for a speaking engagement if you had her on your show she would be she would have her kids there and if she can't have them there she says no and if it means missing out on something she says no and we had a long conversation about this actually last year where she was like you have to put yourself in a situation where you have the freedom to do that. And if that's the kind of mother that you want to be, if you still, if you feel called to this vocation to do this work, you have to be able to set those boundaries.
Because otherwise you're going to be pushed around. You're going to be told what to do.
And she set just an incredible example. And I don't know if she talks about that often.
She talked about it in a speech. She was given an award recently and I went and saw her talking.
So she talked about that, but I don't know if she's talked about it very publicly, but she's been a wonderful resource and inspiration in that regard. They don't have staff, you know, they, you know, have family that comes and helps and that's their support, which, you know, my mom, a saint, is leaving Idaho.
She's like selling this dream farm and she's coming here to be in Nebraska. She was like, I want to be here and, you know, Alex's family is here and we're going to be this village because she didn't have that.
And that was really, really hard on her. And she didn't have that kind of, you know, when her husband was dying of brain cancer, she had nobody nearby to care for my three brothers when she had to go to the Mayo Clinic for three days at a time or anything like that.
And she was like, I'm going to give you the support that I never had. We're going to do this.
I'm going to be down the street from you. And if you're busy and you're doing a show and there's this opportunity that you don't want to give up, I never want you to feel like you have to say no.
Like you will have to because you'll be prioritizing things, but I'm going to be there. I'm going to support you.
And that was, was you know liz has done it with her family and so she's like she's really really wonderful she deserves a lot more cred than that's cool yeah she's great she's super consistent too she is like a firecracker i'll bet she is yeah and a very good mother so yeah it's what it's a weird industry, and it's a unique situation, but it's also not, because every family is thinking about this. I think this is a thing that women think about all the time when they get to this point in life, and how you are going to balance it and what you're going to prioritize.
And I think that society has, like, become very skewed, where for so many years, like, starting when my mom was having kids, I mean, she was absolutely crapped on for choosing to not work. I was like, this is so embarrassing.
You're giving up your entire career. How could you do this? You're just a mom, you're just a mom.
And then we just went so far in that one direction. And then now on the right, I see if you go on right go on, like, right-wing Twitter, and I get called, like, you know, Allie Beth Stuckey, Liz Wheeler, and I, Candace, we get called, like, undercover feminists because we actually have a job.
And we work. And it's like, guys, I sit in front of a freaking camera, and I, like, talk about the things that I care about, like, a couple times a week.
And then I go outside, and I, like, birth cows and take care of chickens and cook dinner and, you know, write about things that I care about. I want to write a book this year.
I'm like, I'm going to go do that. But it's like, it's really not that big of a deal.
Like, um, so now I feel like the pendulum has shifted in this other direction where there's so many women and Allie Beth and I talked about this very recently where it's like, there's normal women who are balancing it all. And in this, like, economy especially, it's rare for a family to be able to live off of when it comes.
I don't think it's comfortable for a lot of people. So now we have these people on the right that are, you know, sitting on their high horses saying, that's so embarrassing.
You're a terrible husband if your wife has a job. You're a terrible woman if you don't give it up or whatever it is if you have a side hustle it's like for the entirety of history women have worked and contributed to their families that's you know i quoted you know proverbs 31 in that episode where i did where you know she contributes to her community and she's engaged and she works in the fields to, you know, bring food.
It was like when we, you know, when we were an agricultural society, women were engaged in the family businesses. You read, you know, Jane Austen stories, they worked in the dress shops.
Like, it was always a very specific class where the women didn't work. And then we had, like, the 1950s where there was that period of, like, the housework.
But even that was like a very specific class where the women didn't work. And then we had the 1950s where there was that period of the housework.
But even that was a very middle-class, upper-class idea. And I feel like now on the right, we've glamorized that to the point where so many people have now looked at women and been like, well, you're an embarrassment.
If you work, that's feminism running through your veins. I'm like, actually, I think it's just...
Everybody's got an opinion. And you're at a level where a lot of people want to drag you down.
Oh, of course. And, you know, being independent, it's kind of like being a free agent.
Everybody wants a piece. Everybody wants what you have.
Yeah. Everybody wants to consume you.
All the sharks are after you. So how do you, and I know that's happening to you from conversations we've had offline and so what i am curious about is how do you how do you know who to trust how do you know who's not full of shit especially in this industry everybody's full of shit yeah Have you found anybody that's not?

I have. You've got a great team around you.
Yeah, I have a great team, many of whom I've worked with for a while or worked with at the beginning of starting all of this. And I think keeping it small is key for me right now.
Keep a lot of it in-house. I've had tons of

requests and offers to outsource to XYZ. And I'll never say that there isn't a time where I would consider like, okay, maybe I could work with this person or build something with this person or do a collaboration.
But right now I'm at such a period, like we're just building this as this tiny little team and it's working and it's humming and I'm learning so much. And I trust every single person that I interact with on a daily basis that they have, you know, that they are a person of integrity, that I trust them, that they have my best interests at heart, that we have a shared vision for what I want to accomplish with every video that I put out in the world.
I want to make sure that every single thing that I do matters and that I'm not just doing something for views or for clicks or because it'll be a means to some end, but that it's like I'm sharing something that is important. And they get that.
And so we're, you know, and they push me in the ways that I should be pushed, question things that need to be questioned. Like we have hard conversations of like, okay, you want to do this, but why? Like the why is like we keep hammering back to there should be a reason for every single move that I make or video that I put out.
and so right now it's just it's people that I put out. And so right now it's just, it's people that I,

it's funny to say, how do you know who to trust?

It's just, it's a very tiny group.

Small pool.

Yeah. And I think it takes spending more time

learning about the opportunities and the options and not jumping into anything too quickly. And I also think building something that I'm proud of that can stand on two legs where, you know, there's a lot of freedom and not needing somebody else.
I feel like I'm in a very, very, very fortunate and lucky position where right now I can say no to things. Because I'm very honored.
I'm grateful. But I can do it on my own.
And I don't want to expand this bubble and invite people in to now begin to start telling me who to be, where to go, how to do what I do who I don't know intimately.

Because it's a very... but again, start telling me who to be, where to go, how to do what I do, who I don't know intimately.

Because it's a very, and we've talked about this too off camera, but it's a weird situation when it's a brand, but it's you.

If you hand the reins off, you know, to somebody else and you lose control,

and it's like, I don't like what you're doing to my brand, but that's me as a person. Yeah.
And if I don't have control over that, like at the end of the day, I have to live with myself and look in the mirror. And so I want to make sure that, you know, again, it's like the business of self or the business of personality or whatever it is.

So you just have to constantly thinking about that.

Yeah.

Which also, you know, it's important for the audience.

It's important for what you're building, but also as a human being.

Like, again, when I go to sleep tonight, when I look at my husband, I have to feel like I'm being consistent. I have to know that I'm having integrity with myself, with an audience, and feel really good about that because it's so public.
Good. Good.
What do you see it developing into? I don't know. I'm excited.
What is the cookie company? We talked about that earlier. You've got to do the cookies.
Yeah. You've got to do the cookies.
I'm excited. I'll be your best customer.
Sounds good. Guarantee it.
I have a subscription. And my wife.
But. No, I'm not sure.
And that's kind of the exciting thing. I think that you have to be nimble and flexible.
And, you know, my life is going to change.

I'm going to get older.

I'm going to be, you know, hopefully be a mom and have other things happening in my life. And I think you have to be adept and nimble and I'm going to let that be the driving force.
And then everything, you know, I'll have to work around that and still build something that I'm proud of. I don't't like, I really, it's such a, I want to build something big that's meaningful, but I don't have an image in mind of what that is.
I just want to be able to continue sharing goodness and entertaining people. Like I genuinely, I love telling stories.
I love making people laugh. I love making them feel like I'm an entertainer at heart, which is so weird to say in this whole world.
But it's like, I do love making people feel something. I love sitting in the audience and watching something that moves me to tears.
I love watching a great film. I love reading a book that I can't put down because it's completely changed the way that I've thought about the world.

And I love being able to do that.

And so I don't know the, you know, the avenues that that'll take me down.

But I think if I keep that as the forefront, I'm sure I'll have a great time.

Build a foundation, stay true to yourself, and just be open, man. Yep.
But, Brad, amazing interview. And I mean, I don't know if you ever think about this, you know, but if you don't, you might want to.
But just think about all the people, you know, that you've influenced.

I mean, you're an inspiration.

I mean, at 23 years old, you've already built a hell of a legacy.

Yeah.

And you're making it okay for people to talk about what they believe in, no matter what that is.

And you're a pioneer.

That takes a lot of courage.

So congratulations.

Thank you.

And you inspire me.

I'm grateful.

It's really cool. Well, you're paving a path of your own, and you were asking about people that I look up to.
I mean, you are like, I hope all of your viewers know, and I think you guys do, but you are the real deal deal and like who you are sitting across from me being on camera doing your interviews that is who you are and you are like a steadfast example of integrity and consistency the guy I think especially in this weird political world doesn't exist well that's also like in, in Hollywood and entertainment. There's so many people when it comes to this world of having influence and...

It's pretty great. It's very special.

Thank you. Thank you.

Well, Brett, I wish you the best of success.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me. Michael Rosenbaum and his Small Bill co-stars take you behind the scenes of one of the greatest shows of all time.
We're going to watch every episode. Join us.

It's Big Talk.

You remember when I had to shave my head?

Oh, I think I was angry with this one.

On Smallville.

Yeah, I mean, I get it.

The scene you did, and this is the one that got me fired.

Okay.

What?

Here we go.

I love the excursions with me and Welling.

It's everything that Superman stands for.

It's Talkville.

Talkville, we always talk about it.

It's a great thing.

The Smallville Rewatch Podcast.

Follow and listen on your favorite platform.