"Kerry Washington"

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Speaker 2 Hello, listener. My name is Jason.
I will be one of three hosts. I'm an on-time host.

Speaker 2 You're going to have a couple of tardy hosts joining us soon. If not, you're just going to get me.
Just a solo episode with me. I hope that's not your future.

Speaker 3 But until then, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

Speaker 2 I'm a Capricorn, Sag Moon. I love things sweetened with anything other than sugar.

Speaker 2 I've had addiction issues. I've got a handle on that.
I think, unless you put something sweetened with sugar in front of me, it's a real trigger situation for me.

Speaker 2 I just go right down a hillside full of sin.

Speaker 2 Oh, just in time. here are the idiots.

Speaker 1 Guys, welcome to Smartlist. Smart

Speaker 1 List

Speaker 1 Smart

Speaker 1 Less

Speaker 1 The listener does not know this, but this is our second

Speaker 1 episode today that we're recording. So what did you guys do in between shows?

Speaker 2 I had

Speaker 2 a little egg sandwich

Speaker 2 that I made myself. Not an egg salad sandwich like Sean would have made.

Speaker 1 You had an egg sandwich? No, no, what was the bread? Was it actual bread?

Speaker 2 Not really.

Speaker 2 It was gluten-free bread that

Speaker 2 I had to toast to within an inch of its life, so it tasted decent.

Speaker 2 And then I put a little fake butter on it, and then

Speaker 2 the eggs on top of it.

Speaker 1 Okay, hang on a second.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure the eggs were real.

Speaker 1 We had a conversation with our friend on a different episode

Speaker 1 about enjoying ourselves and stuff, you know.

Speaker 2 But I feel it, but it isn't, but that I enjoy, it tastes great. I enjoy it.
I enjoy. Now,

Speaker 2 last night we went out for a family dinner to this yummy little restaurant down the street that specializes in Italian food.

Speaker 2 So I ordered a nice big fat cheese pizza and I woofed down more of that than probably I should have. And we had some pasta and I had

Speaker 1 in BH or in the valley?

Speaker 2 Down in Laurel Canyon.

Speaker 1 Oh, but Lil Pach. Yeah, yeah, little patch and

Speaker 1 you went poch, not patch. No, I know, but I say patch, you leave it off.
That's how you know the

Speaker 1 when you leave it off.

Speaker 1 Hey, there's Mape, and she can't hear us.

Speaker 1 Oh, wait, that was hi, Maple. That was Maple, yeah.

Speaker 2 She's over here.

Speaker 1 Are you guys going for dinner tonight together?

Speaker 2 We're going to go. No, we're going to go over to our friend's house, and we're going to celebrate our friend Sean

Speaker 2 because he's.

Speaker 1 He had a birthday a while ago.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He had a birthday a while ago.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 1 we,

Speaker 1 I wish I could be there with you again. I know.
I know. I'm going to miss you.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, we'll FaceTime you. You FaceTimed in last week.

Speaker 1 I will FaceTime. I will FaceTime again.
Yeah, FaceTime in again. I will.
I will. This face?

Speaker 1 You've got to get it. You've got time for that.

Speaker 2 Is the rest of your body as dark as your face, Will? Yeah, yeah, of course. No, I didn't ask to see it.

Speaker 1 Put your top back on. I know.
That is a tan that nobody's ever seen. It's really good.

Speaker 2 So do you read, though? You said you read three books while you were there. Is it just for the bounce effect of the paper?

Speaker 2 Or do you enjoy reading?

Speaker 1 He just opens it up.

Speaker 1 That's the sign takeover.

Speaker 2 What were the three books? Do you remember them? Were they all non-fiction?

Speaker 3 Were they all World War II books?

Speaker 1 The Giving Tree? No.

Speaker 1 I haven't finished my third, to be honest.

Speaker 2 What were the first two?

Speaker 2 Were they just airport fiction?

Speaker 1 Well, one of them is my dad's book, Bean Fate,

Speaker 1 which I finally read, which is amazing. I'm so proud of my dad,

Speaker 1 Jim Arnett, who wrote a book during

Speaker 1 the pandemic, and he wrote this sort of fictionalized novel

Speaker 1 on history and got it published. That's cool.
Yeah, it's really cool. And honestly, I was reading it.
I was just thinking the whole time. I'm like, I'm so, my dad did this.
I'm so proud of my dad.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's called Bean Fate, and it's really, really good.

Speaker 2 This is about the bean farmers of Calamongas?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, I think they're.

Speaker 2 It's a remake of the Bean War or something, right? Calamongas.

Speaker 1 The Mago, the Malagro, Bean Tailed War. Yeah, good for him.

Speaker 2 Because I don't think they really got it on the last one.

Speaker 1 So, okay.

Speaker 1 No, it's about booze runners back, you know, Prohibition style. Oh, back in the day, potch.

Speaker 1 Up in Saskatchewan in the Bronfman family, et cetera. So I did that, and then I read The Sympathizer.
Have you guys read that?

Speaker 3 Oh, what is that? I feel like I wrote it.

Speaker 1 It's written by Vietnamese-American author

Speaker 1 Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Speaker 2 It's about the Vietnam War.

Speaker 1 And it's about the Vietnam War. And he himself

Speaker 1 is of Vietnamese origin. Descent.
Descent and origin. And he came here when he was young.
And so it just talks about the experience of, God, honestly, I couldn't have loved it more.

Speaker 1 But it's not just about that. It's just about such an unbelievable story of,

Speaker 1 I don't know, just a guy who led a complex life. and

Speaker 1 there was so many. Are there colored pictures in it for me?

Speaker 2 Any pictures of him sympathizing with folks?

Speaker 1 So many incredible, incredible passages in the book that just blew me away that I would have to read out loud. I'll check that out.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'll bet you $1,000 that you don't.

Speaker 1 You won. Yep.

Speaker 2 Now, how do you decide what you're going to read when you're on the beach there?

Speaker 1 Reading in the sun makes me want to read.

Speaker 3 What I do is

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. Then I just started, I'm now reading this Splendid in the Vial, which a lot of people have read.
These are big books. The Sympathizer one that pulled Surprise.

Speaker 2 Reading in the sun, to me, it's like being trapped in a hot car with the windows rolled up, stuck, broken. I don't know when the driver's coming back, and I have a three-year-old screaming in my ear.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's what reading on a hot beach sounds like.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I'm already sweating and I'm mouthed.

Speaker 1 And I just concentrate on like work.

Speaker 2 And I got the hard bounce off the paper and I can't do it. I got the sweat.
I got sunglasses on. And now the sweat's dripping on the glasses.

Speaker 1 I got to keep wiping the glasses.

Speaker 2 And I hear all the people having fun in the water.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, I can't.

Speaker 1 You know what, though?

Speaker 2 Snacky. I get real hungry on the beach.

Speaker 1 You know what's amazing is our guest today.

Speaker 4 Great segue.

Speaker 1 Our guest today is so fun. I love her.

Speaker 1 She's like a big megastar. No big deal.
Whatever.

Speaker 2 Wait, I've got it. It's a woman.
I've got it.

Speaker 1 I've got it. She's been on one of the hottest primetime dramas in the last few decades.

Speaker 1 She's born and raised in the Bronx. She's a New Yorker through and through.

Speaker 1 This might give it away. At a young age, she performed with the award-winning Ta-Da Youth Theater Teen Group.

Speaker 1 She graduated college with a double major in anthropology and sociology. Clearly, not the right point for her to do.

Speaker 1 Before winning an Emmy, one of her earliest acting kids was, I got to ask her about this, a traveling sex education sketch group.

Speaker 1 Her last name is not only a U.S. state, but also an Apple.
Please welcome the beautiful and extremely talented Carrie Washington.

Speaker 2 Carrie.

Speaker 1 I love Carrie.

Speaker 2 Let's get right into it.

Speaker 1 A traveling, what is it?

Speaker 1 A sex education sketch group.

Speaker 5 What is this sketch? It was not sketchy, although we did sketches.

Speaker 5 We were, oh my God, that's where we're starting.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 We were nervous, by the way.

Speaker 5 I'm such a mega fan of the show. So I'm really excited and a little nervous.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 listen, we're just hanging out.

Speaker 2 You can already hear what idiots we are, right?

Speaker 5 Well, every episode, but that's why we love you.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so bring us up.

Speaker 5 When I was a high schooler, when I was a teenager, I worked for the Adolescent Health Center in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Speaker 5 And it was like the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, like late 80s, early 90s.

Speaker 5 And we used used to, we wrote these sketches, these skits about safer sex issues and losing your virginity and drug abuse and LGBTQ rights.

Speaker 1 And so it was like, I like, I find you attractive. I find you attractive.
Hold on, let me get a condom.

Speaker 5 What was like, how do you ask your boyfriend to put a condom on? Or how do you put a condom on? Or how do you make that conversation sexy?

Speaker 5 Because all the research was like, people have the information, but the behavior change is not there. So we used to write these.

Speaker 1 I used to hear the first few pages.

Speaker 1 I would

Speaker 1 have, by the way, I've had

Speaker 1 Carrie. it's like you gave me a bat and you put me at the plate and I've just been standing here and you've just been throwing softballs at me.
And I'm doing all my best because I want to hold back.

Speaker 1 Don't hold back. Because I don't want to be just a total dirtbag and I'm just like,

Speaker 5 be yourself, Will.

Speaker 1 Be yourself.

Speaker 2 This is your space.

Speaker 5 I'm a guest in your house.

Speaker 1 Do you?

Speaker 2 What was the draft that made it to the stage on how to put on a condom in a funny, funny way?

Speaker 5 Well, we used to teach kids how to put condoms on by using bananas. So that always got a laugh.

Speaker 5 But it was really more like, I mean, there was one, the first sketch I was allowed to do was actually a scene about whether or not I was 13 when I started doing the show. So

Speaker 5 the only sketch they would let me do in the beginning was, should I lose my virginity or not?

Speaker 5 And it was a whole sketch about like my really cute boyfriend who's kind of pressuring me and I don't know if I should or shouldn't.

Speaker 5 And then the cool part, and this was actually incredible acting training, was that we would, the problems of the show were unresolved, and we would stay in character after the show.

Speaker 5 And the audience would like solve our problems. We would ask the audience for advice.
So they would like be in conversation. Yeah, we stayed in character.

Speaker 2 And doesn't that mean the show is still going?

Speaker 5 No, like the show would end and then we'd do a QA, but our QA would be in character. And sometimes I would be playing like more than one character.

Speaker 5 So I'd have like a baseball hat for the girl who wasn't sure she should lose her virginity and then like a red scarf for the girl who was like needed to tell her brother stop selling drugs.

Speaker 5 So we had all these different like you know conflict issues and and I got to develop character backstory and learn to be spontaneous and I found my yes and while doing sex education what was this group that sounds somewhat uh charitable and uh

Speaker 2 you know um

Speaker 2 altruistic

Speaker 5 no no no but it sounds like you're like doing great things I wish I was doing stuff at 13 that was going around and and and doing uh you know but doing shows but doing shows for like hospitals and you said this was like yeah we performed at like schools and community centers how did you get involved in that that sounds like you were walking around with a bunch of very nice people i i my i have a great parents i was really into acting and um my mom had read that there were auditions for this um child i had done children's theater with that company tada that was mentioned which is a company in midtown and this was like for teenagers and my mom had seen an ad about it and she my mother's an educator so she was like educational theater is a great thing and then i came home with all these pamphlets about like gonorrhea and she was like what is this but i

Speaker 1 i'd love to see the one act on gonorrhea don't worry about it we're gonna put a condom over a banana it'll be all good we're gonna fix the world's problems one banana happened on the way to the theater

Speaker 1 um wait carrie let's i want to get this out of the okay guys i have kind of a long story i was wondering if we were gonna we're gonna do it we're gonna do it and we're just gonna get past it because how could we not do it should will and i lay down or yeah no so you guys i was shocked that you asked me to to be your guest because I was like, there's no way we're not telling this story.

Speaker 1 Of course we're talking about it.

Speaker 5 Me being punked by Sean Hayes.

Speaker 1 So these guys have no idea what I'm going to say. So it's like if you can hang in there for like two minutes, which is a long time, but it's a long story.
Here we go.

Speaker 1 It's one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. I was shooting a pilot last year and sent a long email to Carrie asking her to help me out.

Speaker 5 And she mailed me. Let me jump in.
Let me jump in. Yes.
Nicest email I've ever gotten in my life. Great email.
You know the emails, you know the notes you get.

Speaker 5 you know the notes you get from a fan where you're like i should maybe call security because this person is like really loves me it was that but it was like from another famous person so it was okay and it was like somebody that i respect and admire so i was like oh my god i was so moved i was likewise deeply moved i meant every word so and then there was the ask at the bottom of it

Speaker 1 always right so but she emailed carrier emailed me back asking for my number said i'll call i'd love to call you to chat more about it great fantastic wonderful response at At the same time, I was guest hosting a few episodes of Jimmy Kimmel's show, and while there, I had befriended a producer named Aaron, Aaron Irwin, who's now a good friend.

Speaker 1 So, one night on my way home from the shows, I got a text from on my phone saying, I'm watching you on Kimmel right now, and you're doing great.

Speaker 1 And I was pleased by the message, but I was like perplexed because I didn't recognize the number.

Speaker 1 And then I decided, and I deduced that it was Erin from Kimmel, who was maybe watching like a rough cut of the show because we just exchanged phone numbers as I left the studio, but I hadn't put her contact on my phone.

Speaker 1 Here we go. So I pulled over and I saved the number and my contacts as Aaron from Kimmel.

Speaker 5 Now I'm at home, cut to I'm at home eagerly awaiting the call from Sean because this is my number one fan. I mean, my dad doesn't love me this much.

Speaker 5 And now I think I'm going to get a healing because somebody who loves me is going to get on the phone with me and it's going to change my life.

Speaker 5 And even though I'm going to say no to the ask, we're going to be friends forever.

Speaker 1 Right, right, perfect, right?

Speaker 2 Big load of junk food just to prop you up.

Speaker 1 Perfect. All right.
So the phone rings. I pick it up.
I say, hey, and I see it's Aaron from Kimmel. What's going on? Aaron says, hi, how are you? Your email is so sweet.

Speaker 3 I couldn't wait to talk to you.

Speaker 1 And I said, email? What email? And Aaron says, the email I sent you. And I was like, I don't remember sending you an email.
Are you sure? And that's when the tone shifted between us.

Speaker 1 And I said, Aaron said, is this Sean? And I said, yeah, who's this? And Aaron says, you didn't send me an email with your number. And then I turned into a total asshole.

Speaker 1 And I go, I think you have the wrong number. Why don't you check that email address and your contact? Then why don't you get back to me? And that's when Aaron was like, that's probably a good idea.

Speaker 1 So I go sit down.

Speaker 5 I hang up the phone and I turn to my husband and I'm like, I'm being fucking punked because Sean Hayes sent me the nicest email I've ever gotten in my life.

Speaker 5 I just got off the phone with him and he was such a jerk to me.

Speaker 1 And he's acting like I made up the email.

Speaker 5 I was like shaking.

Speaker 5 I was so, I was like, why would somebody do that? Does he think I'm untalented?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 I was so upset. I go sit down and talk to my husband.
And I'm chatting. I'm telling you, I just got the craziest phone call.
And 15 minutes in the conversation with Scotty, I did all the math.

Speaker 1 And like

Speaker 1 a shot in a movie came zooming towards my face. I go, I jumped up and I screamed, holy shit, that was Carrie Washington.

Speaker 1 And credits.

Speaker 1 I texted credits back. Yes, I texted you back immediately, explained everything, and went and asked, begged for you to call me back.
And I answered the phone and you were laughing.

Speaker 5 I was, I couldn't stop laughing because I was really like, I thought I was being pranked.

Speaker 1 And I was so relieved.

Speaker 5 It was so, so lovely.

Speaker 1 Wow. Oh, God, that was funny.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 My feelings were so hurt. And I was like, I'm being gaslit.
Like, he's gasliting me.

Speaker 1 You guys have this great, now, this great, like, shared history. Beautiful.
Are you jelly? You're jelly. A little bit jelly because we only had a job.
We had our dinner. We had our dinner.

Speaker 1 We sat next to each other. We didn't know each other.

Speaker 5 You You were there. Don't say woe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were across the table. Yeah, but I mean,

Speaker 5 when you guys worked for me, you know, you guys have all worked for me as a producer.

Speaker 1 We were when we were for you, when we did the

Speaker 1 Facts Alive.

Speaker 5 Live in front of a studio.

Speaker 1 Wait, who was at this dinner? What are you talking about? Jason and Will were at a dinner.

Speaker 5 You know how we, when we did it, we had a cast dinner to kick off for our episode, which I wasn't a producer then. So I have.
Oh, that's right.

Speaker 1 You were a producer on the set.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 5 But I produced them the next two.

Speaker 5 And so these two.

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 Tell the listener what we're talking about. No, we're talking about your sister for your sister.

Speaker 5 This makes me so happy.

Speaker 1 I'm in the family.

Speaker 5 We for Norman Lear's live in front of a studio audience, which all three of you have graced us and blessed us with your

Speaker 1 new specials.

Speaker 2 And if it weren't for really active producers like you and Justin Thoreau, that show would not be moving at all.

Speaker 1 I do a lot more than Justin Thoreau. Let me tell you something.
Let me tell you something.

Speaker 5 I want to put that out there.

Speaker 1 Justin Thoreau, and he must be nominated for free, you know, Producers Guild Award this year. Because, I mean, this guy

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 rolls up his sleeves. He really had them.

Speaker 1 He would have rolled them up. If he had had any sleeves, he would roll them up for sure.

Speaker 5 With your thing with people not having sleeves.

Speaker 1 No, just Justin.

Speaker 1 Everybody wears them except him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, every day of his life, he has a cut off. By the way, sometimes people wear them, don't have them with Jim and stuff.
But not everybody just doesn't wear them ever.

Speaker 2 Even basketball players now wear sort of like an under sort of long sleeve thing over their

Speaker 2 heads.

Speaker 1 You know what usually deters people people from going sleeveless winter that usually

Speaker 1 that usually gets people to you know pop into a sleeve or two not him this not this guy or mosquito infestations he doesn't it doesn't matter to him he's fearless that way he's fearless that way yeah we'll be right back

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Speaker 2 And now back to the show.

Speaker 1 Kara, one thing I didn't know about you was,

Speaker 1 by the way, what a story we'll have for the rest of our life.

Speaker 1 The rest of our lives. But double major anthropology and sociology.
Hey, why, if you knew at such a young age you wanted to act, and have you utilized those degree?

Speaker 2 This is a great question.

Speaker 5 So So it's actually a little more complicated than that, but that's the easy answer that I give people. I designed an interdisciplinary major called Performance Studies.

Speaker 5 And it was inspired by, it was based on the graduate programs at NYU and Northwestern. So it was like the study that performance plays in different societies and cultures.
And

Speaker 5 that's what interested me.

Speaker 5 But you have to, to design your own major, you have to write this whole thesis and defend it because they want to just make sure you're not trying to get out of taking statistics.

Speaker 5 so i had to kind of really work with all these academic mentors and come up with this program and design a curriculum for myself and um

Speaker 5 yeah i'm i'm just i'm super interested in how we perform like professionally all of us but also how we perform just in our everyday lives um and uh yeah i think i have used a lot of it i mean i think you know what we for me

Speaker 5 I tend to think about characters in the kind of social science context.

Speaker 5 Like when I'm playing a character, I like to think about how she's become who she is and how she thinks and how she lives in the world and how society impacts who she is.

Speaker 5 So I do feel like I use some of my,

Speaker 5 I feel like such a nerd. I've been talking too long about this.
But I do, I use some of my social science.

Speaker 1 I was going to talk about my character room that I have here. And I go into my character room.

Speaker 1 And I've kept all the costumes of my great characters, all my costumes. Yes, yes, through the years.

Speaker 1 Wait, now, Carrie,

Speaker 2 I'm the dumbest of the four of us. Will you define anthropology for me? Pause.

Speaker 1 He is.

Speaker 1 Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Anthropology is the study of society, yes?

Speaker 5 Sociology is more the study of society. Virgo, the name.
Culture, yes. But what about

Speaker 1 more about ants?

Speaker 1 Is this just about ants and the ant culture, right?

Speaker 5 I mean, no. It's more, it's more

Speaker 5 anthropology is more indigenous cultures and historical culture. So not present-day society, but more the role of kind of how societies have evolved through time.

Speaker 2 Sociology would be the modern day version of anthropology.

Speaker 1 More modern day version.

Speaker 2 That's enough, Will.

Speaker 1 That's enough, Will.

Speaker 5 And anthropology has a little more ritual, like study of ritual.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's also a fabulous store.

Speaker 2 There's my fellow dum-dum right there.

Speaker 1 Hi.

Speaker 5 I like an anthropology. I like their story.

Speaker 1 Well, you'd like The Sympathizer. It's a great book.
Hey,

Speaker 1 actually,

Speaker 1 I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 Wait, did you go? It did. Did you go to NYU? Is that what you were saying?

Speaker 5 No, no, no.

Speaker 5 NYU and Northwestern were the schools that had graduate degrees in performance studies that I admired and was interested in, but I didn't actually want to go to graduate school, so I tried to just skip ahead and do it in undergrad.

Speaker 5 I went to GW, G-Dub, DC.

Speaker 1 G-Dub. G-Dub.
G-Dub.

Speaker 2 Now, did you finish with a degree in anthropology and sociology?

Speaker 5 I finished in a degree in performance studies. I got to actually like, I wrote my own own situation.
Got it. I created my reality.

Speaker 1 Wow. Does anybody call you K-Dub?

Speaker 5 Yes, especially because I went to G-Dub. Yeah, people call me K-dub.

Speaker 1 I've thought of that.

Speaker 2 Now, wait, are you the only one with a college degree on this chat?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sean, what's your excuse? How far did you go?

Speaker 1 I went four years and then I got an honorary doctorate, but I never graduated.

Speaker 5 I got one of those too.

Speaker 1 You just show up. I got one of those.
Yeah, if you get a speech, they give you one.

Speaker 5 You can get one of those guys.

Speaker 2 Sean, I don't understand. You went for four years.

Speaker 1 how did you not isn't that how long it takes a great question i was i was two or three courses shy and i just did not have any more gas in me to go i'm i'm fascinated because you seem like a complete

Speaker 1 spend a lot of time with you and you seem to have a tremendous amount of gas i have plenty of gas i i

Speaker 1 i

Speaker 1 especially with the with the amount of tuna salad you are you getting with plain chips and he lights the fuse with that glass of milk and off he goes

Speaker 1 nobody kills a bag of plain chips and a glass of two percent milk like do you really drink a glass of milk?

Speaker 5 Is it real milk? Like just like cow's milk? Yeah, every day.

Speaker 2 He's going to get in his Plymouth and drive off in a minute.

Speaker 2 But wait, Sean,

Speaker 2 so you ran out of gas two credits short.

Speaker 1 Will,

Speaker 2 how far did you get?

Speaker 1 Oh, I made it half a year. Well, half of the first year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. Because college to me wasn't all just about the studies.
It's about the social. It's about growing up, being on your own, and like figuring stuff out.

Speaker 1 I had already been out of the house. You know, I went away to school first when I was 12.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Now, I heard this story on the show about your clothes being taken to

Speaker 5 across town. That was different.
I was like, that's kind of child abuse, no?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, it was difficult.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 they made him plant trees and fix sewer pipes, too.

Speaker 1 And we did a lot of stuff. I mean, like, I didn't have it.
It's not that bad, believe me.

Speaker 1 But I was 12 when I left. So

Speaker 1 someone's running around in your house. That's Emily.

Speaker 1 Locations go to two.

Speaker 1 Guys.

Speaker 5 Emily's actually,

Speaker 5 she has listened to your show longer than I have.

Speaker 1 Hi, Emily. Hi, Emily.

Speaker 5 Emily, they're saying hi.

Speaker 1 Hi, Emily. She's saying hi.
I'm geeking out.

Speaker 5 She's geeking out.

Speaker 5 When I was at dinner with you guys,

Speaker 5 when I was at dinner for the cast for live in front of a studio audience, I actually had not listened to a single episode yet. And I was embarrassed.

Speaker 5 And so I faked having listened to a few episodes and I was able to do so effectively.

Speaker 1 She's got skills. She's got a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 I'm an actor, but I knew just from hearing Emily talk about it and also hearing my husband Namdi talk about it.

Speaker 5 I had enough context clues and like reference points to pretend that I had seen, but I hadn't. I hadn't watched any, I'd listened.
And so then I went home and felt bad. So I started listening.

Speaker 5 And then I was like, this is the best. That's okay.

Speaker 1 Jason, tell Carrie how much you love scandal every episode.

Speaker 2 I've seen as many episodes of scandal as you have seen of Arrested Development, Sean.

Speaker 5 I watched Ozark.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you. Now, what do you guys do about that? Because we all know a lot of people and are friends with a lot of people that do a lot of stuff and you can't possibly see it all.

Speaker 1 You can't watch it all. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you feel bad about that?

Speaker 2 Do you lie about it? Do you make an effort?

Speaker 1 I'm just, I'm terrible about it.

Speaker 5 Well, I've just admitted that I lie sometimes, but I think that's a good idea. Yeah, I mean, Carrie lies.

Speaker 1 I don't think you really lie. I know all her friends, it's out there.
They know. She just lies, and that's fine.

Speaker 1 What I do is, you know, what's hard is, Sean, you know, this one is like when you go, when somebody says, I'm doing, I'm, you know, I'm in a show on Broadway or I'm doing a play or whatever, I'm always reluctant to go because you have to go and say hi to them at the time.

Speaker 1 Well, now, Carrie, talk about that.

Speaker 1 I've changed, Will,

Speaker 1 since we talked about that. Like, I know somebody, I won't say her name, very extremely, gigantically, globally famous who came to one of my shows, and she didn't come back.
And I was like, I get it.

Speaker 1 We don't really know each other. Why would she come back?

Speaker 5 It makes me spiral. When somebody doesn't come back,

Speaker 5 and maybe that just means I'm an insecure person,

Speaker 5 it freaks me out.

Speaker 2 No, but how do you know that they're there?

Speaker 1 Because that's the part that is.

Speaker 5 So, listener, for the house manager tells you.

Speaker 2 So, Tracy,

Speaker 2 when you're doing a show in New York, I think specifically in New York, or is it in Chicago too, Shawnee?

Speaker 2 You end up finding out if there's anybody who has a SAG card uh that's sitting in the audience and and whether you've invited them or not sad card tracy sidebar tracy that's the screen actress guild card double tracy sidebar um so if they don't come back like you have to go back and say that you love the show even if you don't know the people in the cast i just found that that ritual to be

Speaker 1 weird well that's what i mean so i don't want to lie so i just i'm like i just end up not going to stuff because i want your special because you don't want to go and not like what you see and then have to lie about it

Speaker 5 Oh, aren't you a person of integrity?

Speaker 1 No, I'm not.

Speaker 1 But can't you go to

Speaker 1 a show?

Speaker 2 Can't you go to a show without anybody knowing that you're there?

Speaker 1 I mean, like, who's clocking out? I'm not going to my character room.

Speaker 5 It depends on the show and the audience. Like, for me, I could never in my life go to a show that has a black cast and not

Speaker 5 go backstage because they will know that I'm there. But wait a minute.

Speaker 5 You're saying if you were in a show and somebody in the audience has a sad card and doesn't come back you you take that personally yeah there's an actor who i knew had come to see a play i was in called american son and he did not come back stage and unbeknownst to him i held it against him for like a year and a half i was like i i just thought how like why it was you know why yeah why

Speaker 5 did you ever run into that actor and ask him well i then found out because i'm friends with his wife that she was the only one who had come and that she was running straight to the airport afterward.

Speaker 5 And that's why she texted me. And so I was like, oh my God, I've been like

Speaker 5 inside my heart snubbing him at parties. Yeah, he's been dead to me for a year and a half for no reason.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm going to start doing? I'm going to start going and taking in a lot of theater and making a point of not going backstage.

Speaker 1 Hanging around outside a lot for a while.

Speaker 1 And then leaving. And then going like, not only did he not come back, but he fucking, he didn't even run off.
He was here.

Speaker 1 He was here for a while, milling around.

Speaker 5 What I learned in that is that I have to be more generous, right?

Speaker 5 Like, and I try to be more generous in my attitude toward people, but that was a really good reminder of like, you don't know what's going on in people's lives.

Speaker 5 Like, even if somebody really snubs you to your face, you don't know if they just had a car accident or like it just was a reminder, like, be generous, Carrie.

Speaker 5 The world just does not revolve around you and your Broadway person.

Speaker 2 But you, you seem constantly

Speaker 2 happy, sunny. You don't seem like

Speaker 2 a dark person.

Speaker 2 How, what, what, what, what, what would get the what what would get the real ire up in you what

Speaker 1 when are you the when are you the nastiest finally we're gonna meet you the real kiri walker

Speaker 5 is it traffic is it people that cut you off and traffic no no is it i'm not a traffic because i'm not a very good driver so i have to be generous when i'm driving here what really pisses you off um you know what um dishonesty like

Speaker 5 to circle back like if i feel like i'm being gaslit or people are keeping information from me

Speaker 5 in that way, you know how like people really like to infantilize actors, like they don't want to talk to the talent, they don't want to tell talent things or like just in my life, throughout my life, whether it's through because of my acting where if I feel like people aren't being honest with me, it really upsets me.

Speaker 2 This is what makes you a good producer, right? Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2 Somebody who's like holding the information and then sort of disseminates it throughout the production, you understand what a value that is and how bad it is when you're on the other side of that, not getting it.

Speaker 1 Carrie, by the way, I can relate to that. I'm like, tell it to me straight.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just let me know. Tell it to me fucking straight and let me, I'll decide how I react.
Right.

Speaker 5 By the way, honestly, Will, if you come to see me in something, like, let's say accidentally, you stumble upon a play that I'm in on Broadway. You don't know I'm in it.
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 5 If you came backstage and you said, I'm not crazy about this one,

Speaker 5 it would make me feel closer to you

Speaker 1 than you leaving.

Speaker 5 And I appreciate the transparency.

Speaker 1 I'm making this pledge to you today.

Speaker 5 You're going to tell me when I suck.

Speaker 1 I will always be honest with you. I will always be straight up with you about what I think about where you're at.
And I want you to know. And forget it.
In performance, on stage, and in your life.

Speaker 1 This is amazing. Carrie, the worst thing, wait really quick.
The worst thing anybody could ever say when they come backstage, boy, it looks like you're having a lot of fun up there.

Speaker 1 That's the kiss of death. That is the worst.

Speaker 5 Or like, or they're like, you guys did that.

Speaker 1 That was, you did.

Speaker 5 Wow. You did that.

Speaker 1 You do this. How many times a week? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Wow. That's the thing, too, is it's so you're so vulnerable.
When you're on stage, you're so, there's no edit room. There's no score to hide the moment that wasn't fully honest.

Speaker 5 Like, you're just so vulnerable up there. So I think that's probably why it was also like a little more raw than usual.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 Now, in the world of not being told everything that maybe they should be told, in the world of series television, Tracy, oftentimes actors will not be told how that particular season is going to end now you're a producer on that show so you probably have more access to storylines but um have you had that instance with the with the head writer about you know let me know what my finish line is as an actor so i can calibrate what the arc is to get there instead of waiting to read each episode you know piecemeal Yeah, I was not a producer in the beginning of Scandal.

Speaker 5 I became a producer later on in the life of the show.

Speaker 1 And director. Yes, and director.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 but my favorite example of not knowing was we had a guest star named Joe Morton.

Speaker 5 And Joe Morton is an actor I'm a huge fan of. He did an incredible John Sales film called Brother from Another Planet.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love Joe Morton. He's so good.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 he's a stellar. And he came out.
He was like the one guest star that came out our show that I called home to mom and dad and was like, oh my God, Joe Morton's on the show.

Speaker 5 And he was, I was never in scenes with him. he was always in scenes with these other characters on the show.
And I, every table read, I'd be like, God, I really hope that we can do a scene together.

Speaker 5 And he'd be like, Me too, me too. And I knew that he had been in talks to do Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, and he had dropped out of that to come to Scandal.

Speaker 5 And I was like, He doesn't even get any scenes with number one. Like, why did he drop out of this play on Broadway? He's got no scenes with me.
Like, why'd he do that?

Speaker 5 And I just was super like, What's going on? At the end of the scene, the very final line of that season was I get in a car, Joe Morton is sitting across from me, and he says hi.

Speaker 5 And I say, with a question mark at the end, dad? Because he was my father on the show.

Speaker 5 And he knew from the beginning, from his first phone call with Shonda Rhimes, he knew that he was going to be my dad. And I didn't know.

Speaker 5 I didn't know until our very, until our table read of that episode.

Speaker 1 Like, live in the world. That was over with everybody.

Speaker 5 It was incredible. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So wonderful.

Speaker 1 It would have been cool if they'd pulled like a Star Wars and didn't tell you until you were actually filming the scene.

Speaker 1 Right? That would have been cool. Is that how it happened with the scene?

Speaker 3 Star Wars?

Speaker 1 yeah empire strikes back they have well do you mean in the movie but not on set right no on the set darth vader uh just blurbs something else and then in post

Speaker 1 they put um you're my you are uh luke i am your father so that the crew so that the crew didn't know nobody knew until the movie came out right and i think mark hamill knew i think mark hamill knew yeah wow isn't that wild they were trying to protect the the crew from leaking that to the fan base yeah i don't i think that's why i know know, but I don't know if it's for you.

Speaker 1 Hey, Sean, any more great tidbits from fucking the winners 70 years ago?

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 2 what about Chris Pine's

Speaker 2 audition process for Star Trek?

Speaker 1 Let's bring Scotty in to give us some light on that.

Speaker 1 And do you know that the bridge on the Enterprise actually wasn't a bridge at all?

Speaker 1 Was scandal the first thing that kind of changed your trajectory, or was it something else that made people really take notice?

Speaker 5 Or do you think that that's the thing that really launched you that was the thing i mean i had a really great film career before that because i had been in like these oscar nominated films like i i if i had a joke that if you hired me to play your wife you would win an oscar because i was with jamie fox and ray and i was in last king of scotland with forrest whitaker and um so i i had done and but nobody connected that the girl from save the last dance was the girl from ray was the girl like i was i was kind of a character actor and it was like sort of disappearing into these, you know, really fun, very different films with accents from all over the world.

Speaker 5 And, but TV is just different, especially before streaming, right? Like TV was a different beast where all of a sudden I was in people's living rooms every single week.

Speaker 5 Like, how many people do you have in your life that you actually spend an hour with every week other than your shrink? Not a lot. So it's a very intimate relationship.

Speaker 1 Talking to you, Sean, obviously.

Speaker 5 Sorry, talking to myself and myself.

Speaker 5 So it did, it did, it definitely changed my, like I, it changed, you know, sort of the level of how i walked in the world maybe or like level of fame or whatever yeah and were you scared to step in a role of a of leadership like that or was it finally like was it like finally ah my god this is like what i've been waiting for to be like the number one on the call sheet kind of thing no i i really there was all this pressure because at the time

Speaker 5 there was all this talk every interview was about the fact that in almost 40 years there had not been a black woman as the lead of a network drama. Every article in the beginning.
That's what I mean.

Speaker 5 And so, and I was like 37 or something at the time. So, in my lifetime, I had never seen a black woman as the lead of a network drama.

Speaker 5 And, um, and so that's all my pressure was my fear of like, if I screw this up, they're not going to let another woman of color be the lead of a network drama for another 40 years.

Speaker 5 Like, I knew that we had to get it right, and I just had to work as hard as I'd ever worked on anything in my life. But luckily, I've worked with amazing number ones.

Speaker 5 Like, Jamie Foxx is the best number one in the business. No offense to you other number ones on here, but he's just the king.

Speaker 5 Django, Ray, like having worked with him in those, he's, he's just a fun. He's a, he's so generous.
He's a team leader. He's a coach.
He's a cheerleader. He's everybody.

Speaker 1 And so you picked, you picked up stuff from him.

Speaker 5 And like, yeah, I tried to collect like Forrest Whitaker is a beautiful number one. Julia Styles was an incredible number one.

Speaker 5 Like I just tried to remember the things that I admired about the leaders,

Speaker 5 the good leaders. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So great.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. Django and Chain is one of my favorite movies of all time.
You are unbelievable in that. And I've seen it so many times.

Speaker 1 It's always, Quentin has, Quentin Tarantino is great at the theme of revenge, right?

Speaker 1 And that scene, I watched, whenever I watch that movie, it's disturbing to see you, that character. It's so disturbing.

Speaker 1 Any kind of fun Quentin stories? I mean, I love that he inserted himself in there in that one scene. It was so fantastic.

Speaker 2 Wait, which one? I forget.

Speaker 1 Django and Chain.

Speaker 5 I got a call. I was asleep in my apartment in New Orleans.
We were like halfway through filming, and I got a call at like two or three in the morning. And I pick up the phone.
It's like,

Speaker 5 I was like, hello. And I hear Leo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx being like, yo, we need to talk.
And I was like, what's happening? And they were like, Quinn wants to be in the movie. And I was like, what?

Speaker 5 So that like unfolded in the middle of shooting.

Speaker 5 We were all shocked, but it was great. He was great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Jay, just to remind you, in the movie, he intercepts like the transfer of

Speaker 1 the collected slaves, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And frees them or something. I can't remember.

Speaker 2 I'm so bad about remembering movies.

Speaker 1 I swear to God. Oh, me too.
I don't remember. I remember the movie last week and forget the entire thing.
Same.

Speaker 5 Same. Even movies I've been in.
I don't remember movies I've been in. I don't remember.

Speaker 2 I like to think it's for a positive reason that maybe we're so good about getting completely inside that world that once you leave that world, it stays over there.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's kind of like in Memento, like how he forgets, like the neck, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Do you have an easy time memorizing lines, though?

Speaker 4 Yeah, Jason does.

Speaker 1 Jason's unbelievable.

Speaker 5 And do they stay with you or do you forget them?

Speaker 2 No, I can drop them just as easily as I learn them. But it seems like all my memory skills have just been channeled into that one very narrow lane.

Speaker 2 It's not great.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

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Speaker 1 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 1 Cara,

Speaker 1 if I answered you, I mean, if I asked you this question and you had to think of something really, really fast,

Speaker 1 who's one or two of your favorite actors of all time that you worked with?

Speaker 5 Meryl Streep.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 2 controversial.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm being honest.

Speaker 2 Not a lot of people agree with you on that whole talent assessment thing.

Speaker 1 What TikToks is she in?

Speaker 1 Have we seen her on a a TikTok? What TikToks has she been on?

Speaker 5 And I mean, it's hard. There's so many.

Speaker 1 But Meryl's the obvious. I love that.
That was the first one. And Jamie.

Speaker 4 I love Jamie.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
I just love him. I love him.

Speaker 1 What was your first paid acting gig?

Speaker 5 My first paid acting gig, I played a cheerleader. I don't think I had a name.
I think I was like cheerleader number two in an ABC after school special

Speaker 5 called My Special Angel.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 I think. Who was the angel?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't remember.

Speaker 5 I may have done a PSA or something before that.

Speaker 2 God, after-school specials.

Speaker 1 Remember those? After school specials. Jason, did you ever do one? An after-school special?

Speaker 2 I don't know if I did an after-school special, but I did a few movies of the week.

Speaker 2 Those were good. Remember there used to be CBS, NBC, ABC, they all used to make their own movies and they'd run Sunday nights.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Now it's like Hallmark Channel does those in Lifetime.

Speaker 1 Wait, so Carrie, the other thing that I went on and on about before, but I'm going to do it again because you're so amazing, was American Sun on Broadway, which I didn't get to see because I was doing something.

Speaker 1 And then, but I lated to see it on Netflix. So, first of all,

Speaker 1 it was such an ingenious idea to film the play like that. It was like, it was like a hybrid of stage and film.
I'd never seen anything like it. Your performance was off.
the chart.

Speaker 1 Like it was amazing.

Speaker 4 Wait, you're allowed to do that?

Speaker 2 You can film a play on Broadway?

Speaker 5 No, it wasn't.

Speaker 5 No, we like, so really the reason I came up with that idea was because I've never never seen anything like producing. I love producing.
I fell in love with producing at Scandal.

Speaker 5 And the first film I produced was a film called Confirmation for HBO, where I played Anita Hill.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then I fell in love with it. And so they came to me to do this play on Broadway, the producers, and I said, sure, I'll be in it if I can help produce.

Speaker 5 But on Broadway, producing really just means finding money. Like you get to be a creative producer as well.
But I was like, oh, I don't do the financing thing. I haven't done that.

Speaker 5 But I was like, okay, I'll jump in and I'll try. And one of the ideas I had for how I could make the money to help produce the play was like, what if we film it? What if we can sell it to a streamer?

Speaker 5 Sell the rights. So

Speaker 5 Netflix, you know, Ted read it and loved it.

Speaker 1 And he but Jay, it was filmed not in a proscenium. It was filmed.

Speaker 5 We built us on stages. We built on stages.
We kind of like built a fourth wall to complete the room because the play all takes place in one room.

Speaker 5 And so we just completed the room and shot it on a stage in the one room.

Speaker 1 Your performance was just mindful.

Speaker 5 It means so much coming from you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Not that much, but

Speaker 1 I really want to see it. I really, really, by the way, it's on Netflix.

Speaker 5 Do you have an account?

Speaker 1 Well, I share it with like 20 people, but

Speaker 1 I'm going to watch it and then I'm going to get your number from Sean.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to text Aaron from Kimmel.

Speaker 1 I was going to say

Speaker 1 you might be texting Aaron. And I'm going to be honest.
Now, Carrie, where are you right now?

Speaker 2 Are you home? Are you traveling? Are you on location?

Speaker 5 I'm not home. I'm on location because i'm doing we're doing a new youtube series at my company really um called um the street you grew up on

Speaker 5 and it's something i started in pandemic because my my production company is named after the street that my mother grew up on in the bronx simpson street yeah and when when we were kids we used to hear all these stories about like all the shenanigans that went on in simpson street so i feel like that's my once upon a time like my grandparents came to the states through ellis island they immigrated from the caribbean and they lived in the Bronx.

Speaker 5 And Simpson Street was like, you know, where it all started, where the dreams began. So I want to, I interview people that I really like and respect and admire,

Speaker 5 other than the three of you, and

Speaker 5 about the street that they grew on.

Speaker 1 How do you have room after the three of us?

Speaker 5 So, so, yeah, and I asked them questions about the street they grew up on and what their childhoods were like.

Speaker 1 Right, it's really cool.

Speaker 5 It's fun. So, we're doing a bunch of them today.

Speaker 1 You know, I always wanted to do, but you can, by the way, you can have this idea if you want. Eat an entire carton of ice cream by yourself and then do it again right after?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, yes, and

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 it's like similar to that idea, which is go visit with a celebrity the places they lived before they made it, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 So like go back to their apartment and knock on the door and interview the family that lived there,

Speaker 1 that lives there now, and kind of swap stories about how you lived when you were there. And I think that'd be really cool.
All the apartments and whatever.

Speaker 5 I have a dream about maybe next season going to some of the locations with our guests.

Speaker 1 Because the stories are incredible. It's freaking.
But think about the stories you'd get from the people that lived there. Yeah, the people that live there now.

Speaker 1 You're like our next Barbara Walters. This is incredible.

Speaker 5 Wait, so

Speaker 5 the first question that I ask everybody is to learn the name of the street that they grew up on. I asked their porn name.
So I want to know the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on.

Speaker 5 So can I, I want to ask the you three your porn names.

Speaker 2 Not your actual porn names that you have used in the past because I know you have those so it's the pet's first name and the street you lived on your first pet first pet for me was a little bird that was a cinnamon color and so he was called Cine or she was Cinny.

Speaker 2 So and then the first treat was Emerson. Cine Emerson.

Speaker 1 There you go.

Speaker 2 That's a cute kind of cute little Cine Emerson.

Speaker 1 That's my middle name. Emerson's my middle name.

Speaker 2 Cine Emerson receives a lot in these porns.

Speaker 1 Not a lot of giving.

Speaker 2 Mostly catching.

Speaker 1 She's good at it. Yep.

Speaker 1 Catches bird for real passive. Will, what about you?

Speaker 1 We had a cat.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I don't have to explain the story. Just what's the name of the story? It's just how porn he is.

Speaker 1 And receiving and catching up.

Speaker 5 You guys are like my kids.

Speaker 1 He got to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It would be Minu Edgar.

Speaker 2 Minu Edgar. Now, Minu Edgar is giving a lot of pain under these horns.

Speaker 2 Cindy sees Mino coming and just starts running.

Speaker 1 Johnny, what about you? What about you? Mine's Josh Valley. Josh Valley.
What kind of animal's name, Josh?

Speaker 1 Your pet's name was Josh? My dog's name was Josh, and I lived on Valley Avenue. Your dog's name was Josh.

Speaker 5 Why did you name your dog Josh?

Speaker 1 I didn't name it.

Speaker 3 My dad did.

Speaker 1 Huh. Oh, this guy.

Speaker 7 Now, Sherry, what was yours?

Speaker 5 Mine.

Speaker 5 The best was that I interviewed my mom for the series and and i was like you didn't have any pets mom did you and she said no no we did we did we had a a cat named big boy so my mom's my mother's porn name is big boy simpson

Speaker 1 that's fantastic

Speaker 5 hamsters yeah yeah

Speaker 5 I had hamsters named Trick and Treat, and I grew up on Pugsley Avenue. So Trick and Treat Pugsley.

Speaker 2 Also, very active. Trick or treat Pugs is

Speaker 1 wow. That's so cool.
I love that. And that's how you launch into that's how we start each episode.
That's great. I love that.

Speaker 2 So, in a perfect balance, then how often are you working? How often are you home?

Speaker 2 Like, how often do you like to be bored throughout the year? Because I think boredom is the route to relaxation. If you can try to find

Speaker 5 you're right, but so I'm not very relaxed these days because I haven't been very bored.

Speaker 5 This is the main theme of my therapy these days:

Speaker 5 figuring out how to schedule more

Speaker 5 like open creative time. Cause I am a doer.
Like I really like to be busy and I like to accomplish things and feel like I'm being productive and useful in the world. But

Speaker 5 I also really, really love my family and spending time with them and being able to read a book on the beach. I'm with the reading the book on the beach team.

Speaker 1 I can't do it. Thank you.

Speaker 5 I do. I'm with that.

Speaker 5 Or even a listen and audio book.

Speaker 2 Sean, what if you were in like in a nice cabana, right? So we've got, we've got nice, breathable fabric around three sides of you. We've got a nice roof over the top.

Speaker 2 We've got some sort of a frosty drink. You're in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

Speaker 1 You're going to be thinking, I know what you're asking. Could I read a book then?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and you got a nice fan on you.

Speaker 1 Maybe there's even a little bit of a fan that has the mistake. Oh, believe me, Sean's never met a fan he didn't like, okay?

Speaker 1 Cut him.

Speaker 1 Sean, that would work, right? Well, I'm going to ask you the same question. You know that, but it probably wouldn't because I'd be distracted distracted by the beauty and the breeze.

Speaker 1 And I'd want to go do something.

Speaker 1 You can't sit still.

Speaker 5 But it's not the whole day. It's just like a section of the day where you get to disappear.

Speaker 1 Terry, what you need to understand is Sean can't sit still and not fidget and do that and read a book and cut you.

Speaker 1 However, I have been with him on a return. 14 hours each way flight to LA to Istanbul, where he played Candy Crush the entire fucking time.

Speaker 1 So he visited the games.

Speaker 1 So he can just just do, and by the way, calling that a game is like fucking,

Speaker 1 you know, like calling a pamphlet a book.

Speaker 2 It's just like, why don't you just rip the door open and jump out somewhere over the Atlantic? And just like, how could I still be engaged with this eight hours in?

Speaker 1 I'll never forget that flight too, because they fed us.

Speaker 1 80,000 pounds of food. Like, yeah.
Just did not stop serving.

Speaker 2 Where are you guys sitting up front?

Speaker 1 I remember, I remember eating.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I remember sleeping

Speaker 1 for like six hours at one point and then waking up and being like, oh man, I really, and looking in Sean's Scotty, same position.

Speaker 5 Is that your meditation? Is Kim Push your meditation?

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah.
That's, that's what I'm addicted to is like the solace of that.

Speaker 5 Well, they work hard on that. They work hard all those games to control your brain.

Speaker 1 I know. By the way, they can have it.
And, right? Oh, my God. Don't worry.

Speaker 1 Turns out they claimed there wasn't much to grab.

Speaker 5 They took what they could.

Speaker 1 They really candy crushed my brain. All right.
So listen, we're going to let you go soon, I promise, but I want you to talk about the prophecy podcast. What is it? Because it sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 You're starring in it. You're EP on it.
And it stars Lawrence Fishburne, Daniel Day Kim, and David Oyeloo. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 I want to... Yes, so I also want to thank so many.

Speaker 5 A lot of the folks that I work with wanted me to do this podcast, podcast even more than I mean I really I'm such an uber fan but my there was a guy on my team named Will who was like we have a podcast coming out prophecy so you yeah it's a bad name but um he sounds brilliant will was like because we're doing a podcast we have to be on the best podcast so that is part of why I'm so happy to be talking to you guys um so prophecy is it's a it's a narrative podcast on audible It's a really cool concept.

Speaker 5 The concept is like, what if the Bible wasn't a document about about things that people thought happened in the past, but what if it was a prophetic document about things that were going to happen in the future?

Speaker 5 And so I play this woman, this scientist, who winds up being pregnant and I don't know how because my husband can't impregnate me. We know that.
And my name is Virginia Maryland.

Speaker 5 So like Virgin Mary. And there's a scientist named Jonah who gets in a situation with a whale and stays alive for three days.

Speaker 5 And there's a guy named Daniel who's a zoologist who winds up in a lion's den and they don't kill him.

Speaker 5 And it's kind of like these biblical happenings are popping up and what does it mean and how do we deal with it? It's very cool.

Speaker 1 It's a great idea.

Speaker 5 It's like sci-fi.

Speaker 3 And has that yet been optioned?

Speaker 5 Well, a part of why I wanted to, I'm in this deal with Audible to create podcasts in the narrative space. And I feel like it's a really good way to test out story and figure out, is this limited?

Speaker 5 Is it a film? I think this one is a film.

Speaker 1 Are you kidding? That's cool. And is the idea then to like, maybe if it goes well, make it an actual series?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
Or a film.

Speaker 1 I think it might be a trilogy of films yeah maybe i'm not sure i would watch that yeah i would watch that

Speaker 1 let me look at my schedule

Speaker 1 what do you how long is the shoot start start oh oh do you want to be in it yeah how do you feel about number one will i want to be number one carrie you're talking about number ones and i'm like what is she working towards here what is she trying and i'm like oh here it comes here comes the pitch so the number ones

Speaker 1 then she pitches this show and it could be a movie actually and then she looks right at me and i'm like here we go all right so tell me, I'll tell you what, you know him at CAA, launched some numbers our way.

Speaker 1 Fucking let me look at the sketch. Give me something to react to.
Let me see what you're talking about. You fit it around your goal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.

Speaker 1 Carrie Washington, you know how much I love you. You got the email.

Speaker 3 I love you. I love you so much.

Speaker 1 I think you guys are incredible. And I'm a massive, massive fan, as you all know.

Speaker 5 Can I just say, I want to say, as somebody who, like, this is what we do all the time, we have to talk to people. We do these interviews.
It's so real.

Speaker 5 I can tell every time I listen that people are, they don't want to get off with you. They're like, they love these interviews.
It's a good time.

Speaker 1 They don't want to get off the situation for a long time. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 She did it. That was a good idea.
She's self-bied. She's self-bied.
She's so good.

Speaker 2 No one has ever self-bied before.

Speaker 4 That was great.

Speaker 2 Carrie Washington. East.
Carrie Washington.

Speaker 1 Oh, she had the full district of Columbia. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 So it's Carrie Washington.

Speaker 1 Not a lot of people know that.

Speaker 1 So she's a dream. Carrie Washington would actually be the great name for a, like, just like a detective series, too.
Carrie Washington, like that's. That's the name of her character.

Speaker 2 Well, no, no, no, no, but you'd spell it C-A-R-R-Y

Speaker 2 because trying to like keep her.

Speaker 3 Like she's carrying what? Like trying to keep her shoulders.

Speaker 1 Sheight of her carry her shoulders. Yeah, she's got a carry wattle.
Oh, my gosh. By the way, let's pitch her.
Get her back on.

Speaker 2 Can you call her back?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll call. Well, Sean doesn't have her number, but

Speaker 2 email her, Sean.

Speaker 1 Isn't that the dumbest story? Sean, that story is so fucking so good. I mean, it's so embarrassing.
So on brand for you, by the way, you just made the leave.

Speaker 2 I love that Aaron was on the other end of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then Aaron, Aaron's the other person.

Speaker 1 And obviously, Aaron knows the story. I think I told her, yeah.
Yeah, Aaron Irwin, who's the best. So good.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute. What about how great she is? And she's so delightful and so smart and so gorgeous and so talented and so real and normal.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I always say that about every guest of ours, but like, I can't stop. That's the thing when you're surprised to me, because we know there's a lot of people in this business and

Speaker 1 Washington, a lot of other businesses, whatever, that you never get like the real them, and that's the real her.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, I sat with, so at that dinner, we talked about that cast dinner, uh, Jay, when you're like, What dinner did you have when you were you literally sat across, you literally sat across from Kimmel?

Speaker 2 That came back to me eventually.

Speaker 1 We were Jimmies, but we were at, so we're at Kimmel's, and she, and I didn't didn't know her at all, but she was producing that thing that we've all done. And

Speaker 1 I had the same reaction. I was like, man, she is so cool and comfortable with who she is and in her own skin and so real.

Speaker 1 And you're getting, you just had the sense that you were getting this genuine person.

Speaker 1 And she was a delight. We laughed a ton.
She was great. Yeah, she's except for she lied about watching the listening.
She's a dirty liar.

Speaker 2 She admitted it.

Speaker 1 She was a dirty liar. Maybe she should do an art coming.
She's also liars, all right? She's also really funny. Like, she should do more comedy.
She's so funny.

Speaker 2 Why are we so surprised every time we meet somebody nice and normal?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because we know too many of the others.

Speaker 2 But maybe, maybe that's just a vestige of what this business was.

Speaker 1 Well, it's not that bad.

Speaker 2 Now we ought to just embrace the fact that there are actually a lot of really nice, normal people in this business now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's a thing. It's not necessarily

Speaker 1 a result of it, but

Speaker 1 maybe it is.

Speaker 1 There are bad people because maybe it's just a body product. Bye, product, bai.
I think you can see it coming.

Speaker 1 Smart

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Speaker 1 Smart

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Speaker 1 Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbico, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Armjarff.

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