And, This is Ryan Murphy On The Menendez Brothers, The Kennedys, and Kim Kardashian

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This is Gavin Newsom.

From Gleed, Nip Tuck, Monsters, the Lyle, and Eric Menendez story, one of the most prolific writers, producers, and directors in Hollywood today.

This is Ryan Murphy.

So let me get a window into your day.

Okay.

Speaking of windows.

Ready?

I mean,

where do you even hang out on an Emmy nomination day?

Is that, I mean, or is this old hat for you and you just, you know, it's nice.

You act humble.

You say, yeah, it's the work.

We just put it out.

If it's well received, I'm honored.

Or do you sit there with your cell phone and assistants and just bated breath waiting for the Emmy stuff to come out?

It's funny because I used to do that.

I started,

I had my first Emmy nomination in 2003 for directing the pilot of Nip Tuck.

I would say

through Nip Tuck Glee, American Horror Story, even People vs.

OJ, like I was, you know, they used to do it at 5.30 in the morning.

Now they mercifully moved it to 8.30 to be on the New York newscast.

So I used to be up at the crack of dawn and I would sit there and I'd pace and, you know, have my coffee coffee and worry.

The interesting thing about it is today

my company received its 350th Emmy nomination, which, which was a big number for me because I've only been doing this for like 21 years.

So

I found that out later, but that put it in perspective.

No, what happened is I went to bed and I thought, I'm going to wake up.

I'm going to wake up.

And then I woke up and then I forgot and then I remembered remembered and I turned off my phone and I went to the live feed and I just watched them come in and I wrote down all the different ones that my company got.

And, you know, for me at this point, it's all gravy, but I was thrilled.

I was

thrilled for like people like, you know, Javier Bardem, who's a legend.

I think it's his first Emmy nomination.

And, you know, Cooper Koch, who plays Eric Menendez's first Emmy nomination.

So for the people who were, you know, first time at bat, it's amazing.

And then you call everybody.

Yeah, it's a very strange feeling to go from like the underdog to the institution.

So you say, does it like

it's just, it's all a blessing, you know, and I feel happy about it, but I'm oddly very competitive.

Like it is.

Yeah, it matters, right?

Like for me, you're probably a sports guy.

I love sports.

Like, so the Oscars and the Emmys and the Grammys were my Super Bowl, my World Series.

So it's, it's, it's a childhood thing.

And when you say underdog, you mean you're still that guy just starting out?

And that was, I mean, so you still have

that person.

I mean, you know, when I first started out,

it was a really different time in our culture.

And the stuff that I was writing was pretty boundary pushing.

And I was always told you were never, you was never going to go, you were never going to get anywhere.

So then when it would click and it would be a hit,

I would always be surprised.

But people would write, you know, underdog, underdog, new, new kid, new kid in town.

I'm no longer the new kid.

I'm old.

I have three children.

And,

but it is still a thrill.

I'm always shocked where it's like, it's a dopamine buzz.

Yeah.

And also sometimes you don't get in.

Like, and I also,

I have those years,

but to make it into the big three race, comedy, drama, limited, it's, it's a thrill.

And what is, I mean, over the years, how much pressure?

Because it is, it's unbelievable how many projects you're working on at the same time, how many projects have been under the belt, et cetera, and the success obviously you've had.

But, I mean, how about the pressure you put on yourself to constantly, I mean, you're competing against this guy, Ryan Murphy.

Like, you've got, you're competing against yourself.

You're only as good as your next film, your next this, your next that.

Or do you feel like that?

Or is this just all gravy?

And you're like, man, I got nothing to prove.

You know, for me, I just got named into the Hall of Fame and the ceremonies in the middle of the August.

And like, you know, for my business, that's kind of, all right, you did it.

So like, why am I still chasing the carrot?

You know, I got the carrot.

I don't feel that way anymore.

I used to sweat every award nomination and every ratings point.

And now I, you know, I really just do one new thing every quarter, maybe one and a half every quarter.

Right now I'm working on

six shows.

I have six shows coming out starting in September, one a month.

And you you know, if you're- That's not one every quarter.

I'm just talking about since the Hall of Fame.

Okay,

this is pre-Hall of Fame.

I had something to prove.

But, you know, I have something coming out in September, October, November.

I have a very big slate.

But moving forward,

I'm just kind of, you know, my kids are young and I'm just trying to concentrate more on my family and

all the things I'm working on.

I'm just fascinated by.

But when you're in the volume business,

you have to realize you can't, you know, not everything can be a hit.

Some things aren't going to work and they're going to break your heart, but show business breaks your heart.

You know, only mentally disturbed people go into people, just like politics.

Only if you were a usually unloved child would you go into needing that kind of thing.

Early childhood trauma.

Not enough hugs from mom.

I mean, that's how I feel with enough psychiatry.

Yeah.

So I don't go.

So I don't want to go to therapy.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know.

But I went through that and I'm like, oh, yeah, this hole's never going to be filled up.

So it doesn't really matter.

I just like that I'm able to,

I have a very large company and just so many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs that I'm able to create.

Like that

in my dotage is the thing that I'm actually the most excited about.

When you say volume business, I mean, that is the business or it's become the business or it's the side of the business that you want to pull back from and just focus on quality or is it quality and quantity?

I mean, how do you balance the creative, the artist, at the same time, the commercial with everything?

It's funny.

When I started off, I would go,

I started off as a journalist.

So I moved to California, and I think I told you this years ago when we first met, like I was paid, if I didn't do three stories a day, I would not be paid for the week.

And I had to do 15 stories a week.

to get a paycheck.

And I was young and living off coffee and cigarettes.

And so I've never understood the concept of of writer's block.

I was lucky in that I had that journalistic training like you just write through it.

Love it.

And when I started off, I would do like one thing, but I had so many interests.

And like in my journalistic days, I would cover so much territory.

You know, and you're working for the Miami Herald.

You're working LA Times.

I was in the LA Times.

And what was the, what was the job?

Was it in the, in what, what was, you're not doing sports.

You weren't necessarily doing daily news.

What were you doing primarily?

Well, I started off as a crime reporter.

Crime, that's it.

You know, I started off in journalism when the purple section of USA Today came about, the life section.

So I was going to be a journalist,

and there weren't a lot of people specializing in being culture reporters.

So in college, I started to do that.

But when I came out to LA, I was covering everything from crime, the riots, to the Jajag Gabor trial.

It was very bizarre.

But, But, you know, I was just like in my car driving around trying to find stories.

And from that, I developed a lot of interests and my business, you know, I start my day very early and

I do editing and story meetings and then I put the kids to bed and I stay up till 1.30 or 2 in the morning preparing for the next meeting.

So when I walk into a room, I'm not somebody who says, well, what do you think?

I'm like, okay, well, this is what we're doing because I'm being paid to have a vision.

And also at this point, I have enough hours structurally to figure out.

It's not that I don't take input because I do, but my job is to have a people want to be led, as you know.

They want to be following a direction.

So my business now is there's some things that are just really big commercial hits in my company that I have other people run.

Like Tim Munier, my great friend, runs the 911 franchises.

The only thing my older child likes that I've ever done.

911 Nashville.

We're starting 911 Nashville comes on in September.

And then I do,

it's crazy the things I do.

It's all over the map.

I have a show on Netflix called Monsters that I love.

I have

other things I'm developing for FX.

I'm doing this thing called The Beauty with Jeremy Pope and Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall and Anthony Ramos.

That's

kind of a sci-fi show, which I've never done before.

A lot of action, which I've never done before.

That I'm doing the JFK, Carolyn Bissette.

Yes, sure.

You are.

And next, what, February?

Comes out on Valentine's Day.

I've been dodging a lot of heat for that.

How do you, by the way, I don't even want to go down that rabbit hole, but yeah, I mean, right?

The family, you having consultant or something.

How do you make, how do you even, how do you process that?

I try and have some humility about it.

You know, for example, on that show, and I haven't really spoken about this, you know, when you're starting a show based on a famous person, you're usually able to, for a couple of days, say, well, let's try that and let's try this and let's try that.

And then you look at the dailies and you adjust.

It used to be that you shot the first episode and then you went down and you corrected everything and then you went back up.

It was called pilots.

They don't do that anymore.

Yeah, great point.

So that show was the double whammy of, you know, we were shooting a couple things.

And I guess it's a blessing that people went absolutely ape shit crazy about you got the purse wrong, you got the hair wrong.

So

it would be stupid not to listen to that yeah yeah yeah you know and i would looked at it i'm like yeah they're right we should not have carolyn bassette our actress rebecca pigeon had black hair it's a lot to ask an actress with dark hair to go blonde and so i was trying to do wigs and work around that but finally i was like you know we we have to we have to

sarah pigeon rather we have to we have to dye your hair so it's not going to work um

so we corrected that And then the thing that I was not prepared for was sort of the Kennedy firestorm,

which I thought was very strange because

nobody's read anything.

It's very sympathetic, by the way.

It's a love story.

It's not a takedown.

It's a story about youth taken too soon and idealism,

things that we need more in politics.

JFK Jr.

was probably going to be on that path of his father.

Understatement.

So it's a tragedy.

So

then you have a member of the family, you know, speaking out.

And

I took it with a grain of salt.

You know, it's a younger generation.

But I will say in finality about that project, you know, there have been over 88 things, movies, and television shows about the Kennedys.

Right.

Not one has ever been authorized by the family.

I never even thought they wanted to do that.

So

ours is based on a book that's very sympathetic to

both people

with Paul and Sarah playing their hearts out.

So

that was an odd dark moment for me where I've never...

That criticism hurt.

I thought it was an odd choice to be mad about your

relative that you really don't remember.

I think, but you know this from being in the public eye yourself.

Like the days of civil discourse are over.

No doubt.

And it's it's very hard.

And you kind of either get into the muck or you try and rise above it.

Yeah.

I found that hard to do, but I did it.

And I just have a better

attitude about it, I think, than I did before I started.

And you know, but I'm also thankful for the criticism because if you're smart, you listen to critical voices and you say, okay, that's great.

And we fixed it.

We rolled up our sleeves and we listened to people and corrected it.

and I liked doing that.

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See, but you take on these projects that by definition, everyone feels very attached and connected with you.

Which I'm stupid because I never think that.

Like, I'm like, what?

Like, what?

I always am drawn to things that I guess are

naturally provocative

I don't think of them as being that and then I put them out and people

have huge opinions of them and I'm always like wait what I don't understand but

that's a blessing and a curse you know and is this I mean

is it you is it a team of people said, hey, Ryan, I got this great idea.

You know, it's been a few years since Jackie or this or or that.

I mean, Menendez, where there's a couple of things that weren't, here's a new angle.

Or is it you, you just, you know, you're constantly absorbing and you're sort of picking, I mean, your ability to sort of this intersection of how you're able to pull genres and sort of connect dots that other people are seeing.

Is that you?

Or is that the team you've assembled?

And is that expression as it relates to your leadership, your ability to sort of create the conditions where this kind of creativity formats?

Well, first and foremost, you know, I have amazing collaborators, many of whom I've had for many years, like, you know, Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, who did Versace and OJ with me and Pose with me, and Ian Brennan, who does all of the monster scripts, is one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant, writers I've ever worked with.

I work with Max Winkler, who is Henry Winkler's son, who's an amazing collaborator.

Many, many people.

But it really kind of, my world, my company starts with me saying, hey, I'm interested in that.

And that.

And then I assemble people people and we have points of view.

Sometimes I'm very hands-on.

Sometimes I'm more like, well, you write a script and show it to me and I'll give you thoughts.

But anything that I make, I have really big opinions on because I'm passionate about it, about it.

And over the years, have you learned through trial and error that things you weren't passionate about were reflected negatively in the outcome?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, that truly.

Oh, yeah.

Like you just, that was, it showed.

Well, the biggest bomb I ever had was a sitcom.

I've really only had one or two misfires in my career.

Just that one NBC thing, right?

You're so, yeah.

No, but that was it.

That was it.

One year.

One season.

Yes, the other ones I've made the decision, okay, that's not for me.

Maybe I don't want to keep doing it because, you know, in my contract, I can make those decisions now.

Right.

But yeah, I made a thing called the New Normal because I'm like, you know what?

These modern family guys are raking in the dough with this half hour.

I want to try a half hour sitcom.

And I tried it and I loved the talent, particularly Andrew Reynolds, who loosely played me.

You know,

Ellen Barkin was amazing in it.

Justin Bartha was amazing in it.

And I got somebody like Max Winkler.

That was the first time I worked with him.

But it just was not me.

It wasn't, I don't think it was dark enough or

my comedy tends to be much more sardonic or sarcastic.

And it's a family show, you know?

Right.

i learned like no and was that chasing as you say

back to the competitor and you yeah you were chasing competition or was it chasing money success in that respect both what when you look back well it was two things like i mean the big comedy of that time that was dealing with you know provocative issues was modern family and i was a big fan of that show and i knew those guys

from award show circuits because it was always us, them versus glee.

Yeah, glee.

But I wanted the money, to be honest.

Like I was like, you know, there's nothing better than to have a half hour that works.

You know, because, but back then,

that was where they were pre-streaming.

You could, you know, syndicate it forever.

I love it.

And that was always one of the holy grails of show business.

This thing that

Norman Lear told me,

who I was friends with, he said, kid, get a half hour.

Get it.

And I was like, okay.

I tried and I just couldn't do it.

I had a great collaborator in Ali Ali Adler, but I just could not do it.

And I hated doing it.

Like, I did, it was like, it wasn't me.

It was just like I had an allergy to it.

And I've had other things that I've tried where I'm like, nah, maybe I'll pick it up down the road.

This wasn't the right fit for me right now.

Right.

What on the flip side, just something that just, you know, you didn't expect, but you just, that popped.

God, so many things.

I mean, almost all of my big hits were, and I've had a handful, more than a handful, are things that people said, this will never work.

And I had great mentors in Dana Walden, who we were talking about, and John Landgraff and Ted Sarandos.

For example, Glee

was told it was a horrible show by people in that company, but Dana stuck with that.

American horror story, everyone is like, what?

You're going to...

burn down the sets at the end of the year and start over.

It made no sense.

Right, right.

John Landgraff was with it.

Nobody, you know, I tried to get

the Jeffrey Dahmer story made for a decade.

Couldn't get that made.

I was shocked at that.

It was so big.

I would say almost everything that I've had that is successful, I'm surprised by.

Did you know Menendez would be such a huge global?

I mean, it was worldwide just off the charts, right?

12 million or something within that first weekend.

I don't, those are, I mean.

You know, it was interesting because I realized like what was the thing that made Dahmer so

popular?

And I think it was, it was scary.

Yeah.

You know, it was your secret about the guy next door who's, you know, doing dastardly things.

Menendez, I always thought, was smaller because it was a Rasha Monsteria who'd done it.

Like, why not who'd done it?

But why do they do it?

I was very surprised that

it became such a lightning rod literally within a day.

I was very surprised initially that the brothers

spoke out so vociferously against it.

You didn't expect that.

No, and I was very surprised where, you know, two months ago, they thanked me and said, you know, actually, you helped us.

Like, you did a good thing.

I was surprised at that.

I'm always surprised.

at success and I always expect failure, I guess.

You're that guy?

It's the Irish in you?

Yeah, because like, you know, I have always lived my life as a Catholic.

Yeah.

I was an altar boy, right?

So my motto in my life.

Singing in the choir of all things.

Yes, and running cross-country, don't forget.

I was a jock a little bit.

Forgive me.

My motto in my life has been, guess what happens when the pope dies?

You get a new pope.

That's always what I have been raised to think.

Yeah.

So if something doesn't work out,

roll up your sleeves and try again.

You know, when I started off, I was in a writer's group of six people.

I was in two writers group.

The first one, they were all much more talented than me, but the problem was they just, they gave up.

They got one rejection and they literally psychologically, you know, you're in politics.

It's hard.

It's devastating when you're not chosen.

You know, and in politics, like in show business, you've won big.

You know that feeling where you win.

And you also know the feeling, well, maybe not.

I don't think you've ever really publicly lost that much, but, but, you know, you've, you've had a a bit of recall efforts.

I mean, it's

been up to the edge.

But you beat it.

Yeah, we beat it.

There's no.

No, but the loss.

I've not experienced that.

And, you know, I've had friends who've run for big offices and lost, and it's devastating.

It's personal.

Yeah.

And I guess you didn't feel that way.

You felt that way, but you were resilient.

I just was like, what can I learn from it?

And I always take to my bed for a day.

You know, I always am like, I have a martini and take to my bed.

But then I'm like, all right, well, what are you you going to do here?

You go on because the next one might be a hit.

And in my case, I've been blessed enough that that's exactly what happened in my career.

Honestly,

do you just write a list down of all these crazy ideas?

You're on a trip taking a vacation and then you see, you know, I don't know, you see a.

a statue of someone you're like i'm going to do a movie on marcus aureus or something or a da vinci no one's talked about Da Vinci, and he's, you know, he's an interesting character, a cat.

And then 10 years later, you go back to the diary and you go, Oh, yeah, what about that Da Vinci idea?

I do have a little black book that always starts off, What about dot dot dot, right?

I have that, I've been writing ideas down for you know 22 years.

The model of my career is always do the opposite of what you just did.

So, for example, if you look at my fall in September, I have 911 Nashville, which is very straight up the middle,

Americana, good guys,

you know,

solving problems.

You root for them, heroes.

Right.

And then I did the complete opposite of that, which then in October comes Monster Season 3, which is about Ed Gein.

Yeah.

Do you know Ed Gein?

No.

Okay.

Psycho was based on Ed Gein.

Silence of the Lambs was based on Ed Gein.

I don't want to watch it.

Why do you want to watch all this negative stuff?

I don't know know that it's negative.

You like you love all that stuff.

I remember, by the way, the Menendez.

We were having full disclosure.

I think it was a lunch.

We did.

And you start talking to me about this, and you all but said, I'm sorry.

You said you're sorry.

And I was like, I didn't fully appreciate how right you were.

I think I could be sorry.

I'm not sure what people are going to say, but I think,

well, this is what I knew from the Menendez thing.

You know,

I moved to LA in 1989.

So that was

when you're new to a city and that

double, you know, homicide happened soon after.

You failed.

I was, you know, when I would see Dominique Dunn at the Chateau Marmont and, you know,

what I was aware of is that during COVID, a lot of young people on TikTok had made it a thing.

And I kind of, you know, I'd like to be aware of what people are saying culturally.

Listen, it hadn't even aired, but I think what I said to you.

if TikTok is any indication, I think people will be very interested in this.

But again, I don't know, it could be a bomb.

Yeah.

And the reason.

And I said, we'll talk, and here we are.

We'll talk only because you knew cause and effect.

It will bring this back.

There'll be conversations about their sentencing.

Yeah.

Ultimately, it led to their re-sentencing.

Yeah.

And we're just a few weeks away, August 21st and 2nd, or I think, where the pro board is going to make a decision and make a recommendation that lands on my desk.

Right.

Mr.

Murphy.

That's heavy stuff.

It's heavy stuff.

And you know what?

Intentionally, and I remember that conversation with you.

I remember going back and I kept having a temptation to want to see it, but with the recognition always in the back of my mind that this thing may land on my desk.

I don't want to be persuaded

by.

something

that's not in the files.

Yeah, I get that.

But also, I think it's interesting because

when I was writing it,

you know,

we had an interesting writer's room where I was the one person in the room who kept saying,

I'm not so, I don't think they should get out.

I was the voice of like, I don't know.

I don't know.

You told me this at the lunch.

I remember you saying this to me.

And you know what I think that was is I think

generationally, young people have a much different

way of identifying and talking about and navigating abuse than we did.

It's just like I remember that trial too.

It wasn't even something you could imagine or, you know, people our age

are very different than younger people in terms of what they see as abuse and can talk about it.

We did not.

So in a weird way, what has happened through the show

is I was really, really educated a lot by the other people in the writer's room and by the actors.

I was astonished at how how I went into something with such a predetermined point of view and came out of it at the end of it thinking,

you know, where I am today is I really do think they should be released.

I do think they should be paroled.

And I did not think that when I started.

Is that evolved very recently?

Does it evolved over the course?

of just that discourse with friends, people observing, people that watched?

it me is it tell me what's been your journey in terms of coming to that conclusion it was just a lot of things it was it was learning about um

listen what happened between the menendez brothers was between them and their two parents and nobody else will ever know what happened right yeah um

What happened to me was there was a lot of very interesting voices in my path along the way.

You know, for example,

one of my good friends who's the star of one of my shows coming up, Kim Kardashian, you may have heard of her, arguably the most famous woman on the face of the earth.

You know, she's a very big victims' rights advocate and she's very, very smart.

And she's, you know, I can't even get her on the phone to talk about our show right now because she's practicing for the bar.

And she's constantly.

reaching out, talking about

cases, advocating for

our fire crews that are part of our state prison.

I mean,

a lot of substance there.

Yeah, she's an amazing amazing person and very, very educated about this topic.

And so she went, she, she

watched the show.

I sent it to her early because she said,

can I see this?

And I sent it to her early.

Yeah, yeah.

And she was really obsessed with it and then went to visit them.

Interesting.

And then called me up and said, you know, like, I really feel like they deserve to be paroled.

And I said, why?

And she talked a lot about a really interesting points of view that I had not really thought about, which is, you know, they were under 25,

you know, which I think is an interesting point of view.

There's many studies that shows, you know, the prefrontal cortex for men do not fully develop.

About 26.

So there's that argument.

Also, they've been modeled prisoners.

Also, I was very moved by their family recently and how the family is so unified.

And I guess it just begs the question, like,

if not now, when?

Like,

what benefit to society do we have by keeping them there if they can come out of prison and actually serve some good?

And I think that's a powerful thing.

Yeah, it's interesting.

The flip side is I've had people say, what good can come from sending a message that you can kill both your parents and be released?

Sure.

Why society benefited?

with them being released, which is, I mean, it's interesting.

The parole process is a much more limited process you can't even get it the the conversation there is have they exercised a process to rehabilitate themselves and through an independent psych evaluation and risk assessment uh are they quote unquote suitable for parole on the basis of in prison behavior and a series of other criteria that's well established and laid out and so it's an almost separate it's not almost but it is a separate question than the broader feeling of whether or not it's the right or wrong thing.

So it's an interesting for these things.

It's why for me, I didn't want to be colored or don't want to be colored by sort of the atmospheric.

So I had to deal with this with Saran-Saran.

Yeah.

Which was, that was, I mean, that's a whole nother, one of these days we'll see your, your efforts.

I want to see what you pull together.

I think the Kennedys have had enough of me.

Maybe they've had enough of me.

But what do we ask you about?

Like, what about, you know, one of the recent Manson girls, Tough Pearl.

Tough.

How did you make that decision?

They're brutal.

I mean, I've had multiple opportunities and the burden opportunities the gift but anyone's perspective to make judgments on that there's a number of of the manson uh folks that have been rejected by the last three governors that i rejected a few times um the last rejection was overturned by the court

uh that felt we were we were abusing our discretionary um in our parole office And they're tough.

I mean, and it's things notoriety works in both ways.

Right.

It works absolutely for you, but it is a sword used against you at the same time.

And I think that's what the Menendez,

what your series did is it really elevated that conversation as well.

Because there are a lot of other people in prison that don't get any attention, that don't even get in front of the parole board, that don't have advocates, that don't have Kim Kardashian making phone calls, that don't have their day in court, so to speak, at least the court of the parole board.

And

so it's, you know, it's trying to balance all that.

Same time, you've got people that are releasing that have

done equivalent or worse that have spent less time.

Right.

Less time.

It's a very, it's a very slippery slope and it's a really hard road.

And I feel for you.

But, you know, I don't know.

It's sort of like

the penal system in this country operates differently than any other country on earth.

And you have to question why.

And like,

I mean, my God, if they could get out and help two people, like, isn't that worth it in some way?

I don't know.

Maybe I'm being too Catholic about it all.

But I was astonished that I flipped.

That you flipped.

And I really did flip.

And I flipped.

No, because

I don't remember how long ago that launch was, but you were definitely not there.

I was not because you asked me point blank and I said, I don't know.

I don't know.

I was very on the fence about it.

And

yeah.

And also, I just think listening to people younger than you is part of the job for me at this point.

It reminds me of the generation.

There's a big generational shift happening in like Hollywood in particular.

And also, maybe I'm just that age, but

I tried to listen with an open heart and educate myself about abuse.

victims and it was an interesting process for me and of course I love the show so much because you asked me why are you making this gross thing all the time?

No, I mean, back to, yeah, back to we'll get back to the Hannibal Lecter and this stuff.

Like, what's the problem?

Well, like, it's a it's a point of view.

Like, trying to relax here, and you're making me watch this stuff.

I'm trying to go to bed.

I got a beautiful

buzzy law show coming up with Tim Carter.

I need that kind of stuff.

That's what I need to be relaxing.

You need

enough stress in my life.

Okay.

Yeah.

I got you introducing all this additional anxiety.

I know.

Murder Dahmer.

Seriously.

See, maybe you can now, with you, get this, what, the 21st, 22nd?

Yeah.

Then you can watch the menintez brothers over your labor day i made i'm gonna do see if i made the right decision

i would love for you to watch it actually because the thing about that show that i love is it it asks the question are monsters made or are they born and you're and what is your ultimate i think ultimately in the case of these two brothers i think they were made made yeah and you think that's always the case

i think that's what i love about the show like if it's very complicated like

you can be,

you know, if you think about season three, which is coming up, where Charlie Hunnan plays Ed Gein, which is not, you know, for the squeamish.

But really, what it is about is

this was a person who was mentally ill, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic his entire life.

And not until it was too late, until he was in prison, I believe in his...

50s, was he diagnosed?

So it really is sort of a story mental health and awareness.

Right, that's what I love about telling those sort of stories.

I'm not in it for the blood,

I'm not in it for the gore, I'm in it for like, well, what is it?

Was he made or was he born that way?

Yeah, I think that that story of Ed Gein is both.

He was born that way and made that way.

Yeah, and are you?

Do you do?

I mean, so you have a team doing that research, but you're writing.

I mean, you're, I mean, as you're writing this, is it coming from your own research?

Yeah, is it?

I mean, on all of my shows that are are

you know true stories yeah

i would say based on my research like i have a very large amount of of researchers who spend years

um before we write something like if you look at um at gein jfk carolyn bassett

um

we spend a lot of time

you know because those things what what you try and do with the biopic right is you don't want to do a wikipedia thing right you want to find like the most bizarre factoids that you're like, oh, that.

You know, I remember when we were doing Dahmer, I was astonished by the fact that he, and I never heard this before, that he in prison would play whale noises to fall asleep.

Like, you can't make that up.

No.

You cannot make that up.

No.

So I was like, well, we have to put that in.

And that launched the sound of the score.

Like, it's fascinating.

You should watch it.

You would like.

Don't you, I can handle glee.

What is your favorite show on TV right now?

As a pop culture guy, you watch stuff.

I watch a little stuff, not a lot of stuff.

You called me to say you got to watch The Politician.

Remember, you did that?

Okay, so

you said you're going to watch that.

So I watched that.

You're a town lasso guy, right?

I love that.

Makes me feel good, man.

Like a little tear in my eye.

I need a little bit of a shit.

I appreciate that.

I love that show.

Yeah, right.

Lasso was great.

Life is so.

Here's the thing about it.

Life's hard, right?

Well, this is my business does this, right?

Life is hard.

Yeah.

Everybody's struggling.

So I think you either want to watch something that makes you forget it and makes you laugh and is light, or you want something that is dark where you can put your anxiety into that thing.

I did that with OJ.

I mean, that was next level.

It was fantastic.

That was, come on.

Yeah, that was a good one.

What?

Not good.

It was great.

I love doing it.

It wasn't good.

That was off the charts good.

But again, that was like, that had been kicking around.

Nobody wanted to make that.

It's funny about you think now, like, well, yeah,

the home run, but it was, it's, it's always interesting to me about

what

because it, you know, when we were making it, so many people said, Why are you making this to me?

And I was like, I don't know, I like the story,

you know.

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