Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Sharon Horgan

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Sharon Horgan (The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, Bad Sisters, Catastrophe) is an Emmy Award-nominated actor, writer, and producer. Sharon joins the Armchair Expert to discuss being one of three middle children, growing up with a tough publican father that went into the turkey trade, and an early approach by a famous director in a café to audition for one of his films. Sharon and Dax talk about having great recall for lines but basically no other information, the joy-filled buzz of her first time taking something from the page to the screen, and the sometimes tricky transition from set life back to home life. Sharon explains the unexpected rewards that can come from going in a different direction than originally intended, hitting the chemistry lottery and winning a Peabody for Bad Sisters, and the big swings taken in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dan Horgan and I'm joined by Monica Sharon. Hello. Hello. I sure hope people are as obsessed with Sharon as I am.

When I saw Bad Sisters, I was like, this person intrigues me to know. no end. Yeah. And then only to find out she had created the show and wrote on it. Amazing. It is incredible. Sharon Horgan is an Emmy nominated actor, writer, director, and producer, Bad Sisters, Catastrophe, Motherland, together this way up. And she's in the new limited series on Hulu, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Yes. If you listen to that episode, you will have heard about Sharon as well. We've never interviewed someone who's created this many TV shows, and we've interviewed some famous showrunners. Hmm, that's true.

She's the most prolific. Oh, we did have Shonda. All right. They're both great women. They're both great women. We love women. We don't need to make them compete. We're not pitting a woman against another woman.

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I was going to ask, because we were all just at the Emmys. Yeah. And are you still a little exhausted from that whole thing? Yeah. How bad? Well, I went to this mental party at the end of the night. I mean, it was weird. On Sunday night.

Yeah. Without naming names, tell me what brand of mental was it? I can't completely remember. But I think it was these. brothers. And I think they just do it every year. Oh, okay. And so there was proper people there. I fell over. Look, you can see it. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That's a sign of a good evening.

Yeah. Maybe I'll be like, oh, that's not going to work. Because I stupidly decided to walk home, you know, when you get very, like, you know. You get ambitious sometimes. I'm fine. Yeah, yeah. And so I walked home and then went ours over to it. But yeah, it was these brothers and they do it every year, apparently.

And he's sort of remodeled his home to be like a party house. Okay. That was two nights. ago, so we're still, we're still struggling. Have we started? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're always starting. Does it matter that all my shit's just here? We're like it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you're happy with it. You dress so nice, you can now pull off anything. If you throw up at some point in this interview. I have another engagement after the other podcast, because I didn't know whether to be casual or dress it up, but because I've got to be dressed up for this other thing. It's just the whole thing of coming over for the Emmy stuff is how many outfits You've got a...

Pack. Yeah. And change into and put jewelry on and get your hair done. How many days was this trip? I arrived over on Friday. Did you go out Saturday night or did you know better? I went out Friday night. Oh, Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night.

Yeah, and last night. So you're just barely with us. And last night. But last night was just eating pork chops and drinking water. Okay. And maybe just one gin and tonic because I hadn't seen my friend for a long time. Did you go to the Dunsmore? No, why are they a pork chop place?

Well, that's the only place I could think of that has pork chops. No, I went to Sunset Tower. Oh, I love Sunset Tower. They do a really good pork chop. Wow, I was so obsessed with eating last night. You know when there's like four things on the menu you want? Yes. And there's this whole internal struggle and worry that you're going to pick the wrong thing.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But then I picked the right thing. The porchats. And what did your friend get? He got the filet mignon. And did you sample that? Are you stuck with your pork chop?

I didn't actually. Did he want to try your porch shop? I felt like even that was too complicated a move. Okay. You know. The splitting? Just leaning over. You were hanging on by a thread yesterday.

It's a little tiredness. It's the jet lag. I woke up at 4.30 a.m. Oh. And then I went back to sleep for about half an hour at about 7.30. Well, I did learn something about you in the story that you revealed accidentally or intentionally. Oh, what? Which is...

So probably a normal person if they had had those three days. Yeah. And they had already had on the calendar, like, I got to meet Mike. They would have been like, Mike, I love you, but I really need to stay in bed all night tonight. Yes. But I've learned that if you tell someone you're going to be somewhere, come hell or high water, you're going to be there. Absolutely. He's my good pal who I've known since I was 18, and he's got three tiny children all under five.

He doesn't get out much. Exactly. So I felt like if I'd canceled. He had scheduled it. He probably had us his wife two weeks ahead of time. Doesn't have a wife, but, like, yeah, got a babysitter. Yeah. I'm glad I did, but I warned him that I was going to be brilliant company.

But it was fine, actually. The pork job prevailed. I mean, the pork shop was great. It lifted you off, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It really really happy.

Okay, so quickly, you're one of five, too younger, too older. Yeah. I'm a middle child myself. Are you? I'm not middleer, but I'm second eldest. That's in the middle, my friend. And if you're not the oldest or the youngest, you're in the middle, right? All right.

I'm one of three in the middle. Yes, you were one of the three middle, one top, one bottom, okay. And then at four, you guys leave and go to Ireland. Yeah. And dad's Irish, but he's a Kiwi, how did that happen? He's a Kiwi, but he ended up in Ireland. He moved to London from New Zealand when he was really young. He left New Zealand when he was about 19 and worked on a ship to sort of travel the world

and then ended up in London. I met my mum. My mum had travelled from the sticks in Ireland. And this was at a time when women didn't really leave their rural environment to go looking for adventure. And then they met in London at an Irish club, because I think my dad had heard that Irish girls were a party, as we just learned. Yeah. I can't imagine you have a ton of memories living in London.

I've got a few. You do? Little, tiny. Why? Well, because my parents had a pub called The White Thorn, and I remember it was one of those sort of East End pubs that had a piano and very sort of family feeling, but it was also an East End pub,

so lots of gangsters around and dodgy kind of vibe, which is why we got the hell out. We lived upstairs above the pub. Uh-huh. I've got a weird memory of Chinese takeaway, a cat. I've got like very sort of snippets. Yeah. And I don't think it's just from photographs.

because back in the day, no one took any. I think they're genuine memories from age three to four. So when you go to Ireland and you go to southern Ireland. Well, it was sort of central. I mean, northern southern Ireland. Oh, okay, yeah. But we were sort of in the center when we moved there first. We got another pub.

This one was called the Green Kiwi. We were there for a couple of years. Can your dad handle his business? Like when shit would break out in there? Oh, he was so tough. He was. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I love it.

He was not mess for them. Oh, interesting. Not what you associate with the Kiwis, but what you do associate with the Irish. What? Just fisticuffs. I don't know about the fisticuffs. He just had a very strong presence.

People admired him, stroke, occasionally feared him. Sure, sure. I don't think you could own a pub and be a pushover, right? But even when he moved away from the whole public in business, he had a certain way of doing business. Did you like that? Did you feel safe by that presence? When you're a kid, everything is embarrassing about your parents.

Right, correct. My dad was the kind of person who didn't give a shit what anyone thought of him. In his clothes, in his manner. Like if you were boring him, he'd walk off mid-sentence, you know? How liberating. Oh, my God. It was awful when you're a kid. You know, when he would take us to McDonald's for a treat

and the server was being disinterested, stroke rude, he would call them out for it. He would pick me up from school in a white van with a Rottweiler sitting in the front seat. And he walked around in his... his farming jeans, rubber boots, bits of blood. You know, he didn't give a shit. Turkey parts? But you know what? I am that parent now.

It's so funny. There's so many little things that I noticed that I have, that he had. It's maddening, isn't it? It is, yeah. It is. I became my dad. When? First physically, I look in the mirror and like, oh, my God.

Yeah, my brother has the same. My brother has the same thing. And just all the same character defects. all the same, getting into it with people, all this stuff. And I'm like, oh, my God, I hated him for this. There were things that I didn't love, but there's things that when I think about it now, I'm like, well, it was great to have a dad that was a presence and that you felt like you couldn't mess with him.

Like, he would have it out with parents outside the school if he had to. He would just call people out. And so I'm quite like that with my girls now, and it's awful for them. I love it. I know. We were at Target. you're familiar with Target. Yeah.

It's my daughter's favorite place when we come over here. It's my daughter. So she asked if she could sleep there. We realized we had never taken them to a department store because we order things online. Then it was COVID. The first time she went into a Target, she was like seven. And she was like, what's going on? They have everything for sale is here.

Yeah. Yeah, and she wanted to sleep there. She wanted to have a birthday party there. That's adorable. I have this huge shopping card on Saturday. And they have a little conveyor belt that'll take your cart down the stairs. so you meet it at the bottom. And a guy in front of me put his card in and it takes off.

And then I put my card in. I do it correctly. It gets about six feet. And then the whole thing shuts down. And then this guy starts yelling at me. He's like, well, you fucking broke the thing. And I'm like, I didn't fucking break. How am I going to break this thing?

What do you talk? And I immediately get into it with this guy. And then my older daughter is immediately like, Dad, shut up. You're not doing this. And I'm like, oh, my God. This was me and my dad. and I got to let this go that I'm being accused

of breaking a machine it's very hard to it's like in your DNA isn't it? It's just like deep in your bones. There's an injustice I've been accused of something I didn't do

and I'm going to defend myself but at the expense of my daughter being like, oh my God, my dad's. Yes, embarrassed them. How did he land in the turkey trade? He wanted to get out of the publican business. I like that you call it publican.

I keep thinking you're saying Republican and I'm like, A publican, that's for you. I like it. That's the name of like a proprietor of a pub is a publican. Yeah. Wonderful. He wanted to get out of that.

Because it wasn't financially great? No, it was just, I'm sure some people would disagree, but it wasn't a great family environment. Right. And I think my mom was done. Some people disagree. My mom was done cleaning out men's toilets and dad is very sociable and so possibly. Stayed a little late sometimes. Yeah, yeah.

So they were like, let's get out of that. With fatherhood a little bit. Yeah. So why turkey farming? I think by that point he had a good few kids and he was just looking for a way to get us into a more rural environment, but also he wasn't trained in anything. You know, like in London, he worked on the London Underground and he always was able to make money. But I guess in Ireland, he was like, what do I do here? I know something about him too now.

He doesn't do well with the boss. No. Right. So he owned one thing and he wanted to do another thing, but he had to be the boss of whatever thing, so that limits your options. No one could have told my dad what to do. So he found this piece of land

and it had these turkey sheds on it. He wanted to build a house on this property where he found the turkey sheds, but there was nothing there. There was no electricity. So he managed to convince the local council that he was going to set up this business that was going to employ like 100 local people.

And so they invested in putting all this infrastructure. structure in, but, you know, you didn't tell them that it would just be for like five days every Christmas. My hunch is they'd employed six people full time. Five children. Oh, yes. Your mom and him. That's what we did.

We were taken out of school to work on the farm. It's a gnarly business, though. Yeah. It's nice when they're little chicks. Sure, that's a very short period of time. Not very long. And they shit a tremendous amount, right? What, more than most farm animals?

I just associate. There's a lot of shit. There's a lot of shit, right? Yeah. We have this problem. in the States, which is we have all this chicken agriculture, and they don't know what to do with all the shit, and then it seeps into the Hudson Bay, and

it fucking gets rid all the oxygen in the water. So I just know we're having a hard time dealing with our chicken shit on an industrial scale. I don't know what we did with our own. Were you shoveling a ton of it? No, no. I was mainly plucking and, you know... Did you kill them? No, no. You didn't have to do that.

There was always just some man walking around with very loose jeans. We were all just the plebs standing around waiting to pluck them, and then this guy would just saund her over and like break a neck. That's what I was going to ask what the mechanics were. Is it a shooting situation? No, they just like.

Drowning, fire. Just like up against the wall. Do you overdose them? No, I never killed a bird. And did you eat a lot of turkey as a result of this? I became a vegetarian very young because of that. Oh, yeah. And you've stuck with that.

No, you had a pork chop the other day. I did. I stuck with it for 16 years, though. Yeah, yeah. And then I got back into it. Okay, so what age do you leave Ireland? and go to London. Because we have a similar trajectory, I think.

Really? Yeah, and then I think we started late. I did. We both graduated college in 2000, which was late. I went to uni in Dublin, but I dropped out. I didn't even finish my first year. Let me ask really quick, what kind of kid were you? Were you a troublemaker?

Were you a class clown? Were you a popular girl? Class clown. Got myself in trouble, but wasn't a troublemaker. Got myself in trouble because I was an idiot. And in the wrong place at the wrong time. got caught. I was always sort of second to the popular girl. I wanted to be friends with the popular girl and I would find a way in. And what did you want to do? Did you always want to be in?

No. Well, actually, it was sort of a mix. I ended up going to art college. I didn't know what the job would be at the end of it. All I wanted to do was go to art college. Right. And actually paint and stuff? Yeah, yeah. Paint and draw. Were you any good at that? I was okay for a little a while, just not good enough. So I think when I went to art college, I sort of realized my limitations that I found that really hard. I couldn't find a way to sort of stand out or be the best in any way. So I dropped out. And then I went to London when I was 19, maybe nearly 20. When you were, I'm moving to London and what was the fantasy at that time? I'll just have a big city experience or I'll do X, Y, or Z? No, it was to make my fortune. At that point, I'd started doing

like acting classes in Dublin at the weekends and thinking, oh, I think I might like this. And I had this slightly strange encounter with an Irish director called Jim Sheridan, who just came up to me in a cafe and said, I want you to audition for my film. The famous Jim Sheridan. The famous Jim Sheridan. Yeah, wow. So I went along an audition for that film and really failed badly, didn't get it. But somehow, weirdly, it made me think, I want to not fail at that.

Yeah, right. So I went to London to start. sort of do that because there's a great fringe theater scene in London and I thought that's the way I'll do it. I'll get into fringe theater. But I just wasn't that good at pushing myself forward and I hadn't sort of found my confidence at that point. So I got a job and a job center and I stayed there for six years. Six years. Yeah. That was just a bit of a mistake. I was doing other things. You know, I was like doing courses and trying to find a back route in. Were you depressed? I was going to say, yeah. Yeah, it's depressing. Yeah, it was.

very depressing. But then I left there and that's when I went back to college and did my degree. And you have a degree in English and American Studies? Yeah. And did you learn a lot about America? Do you think you know more about America than most Americans? I don't know. My brain doesn't retain... It's just a pass-through.

It's awful. So like with learning lines or I can keep five shows in my head at any time. I've got great recall for that kind of thing. But anything else, it's just gone. In and out. Immediately. It's way easier to learn your lines when you've written them, don't you agree?

It's so much easy. It's so easy. I've done a few things that I wrote. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I know the whole script, basically. I don't even have to look at it. I know everyone else's lines included. Because I write lines how I think they make sense to me.

They should sound like this. Yeah, yeah. My interests have changed and expanded a bit. But at the time, I was just like, I've got to get this degree because everyone else in my family had one. And I was like, I just have to do this thing. I was a good student, but I was also, I mean, ridiculously still. class clowning it when I was...

Right. An older woman at the... Ridiculous. At the college. A ridiculous woman. So while you were at this college, then you meet Dennis Kelly, right? Well, actually, no.

I met Dennis. It was just before we were doing youth theater together. Youth theater was just under 26, but it was around about the same time. And you meet him, and he has already declared as I'm going to be a writer.

When I met him, he was concertine to mind Nina in The Seagull. So he was being an actor, but very quickly he realized that he wanted to be a writer. But we had sort of parted ways, and then we met each other one night in the pub, just like bumped into each other, and he had written his first play. And so I was just sort of astounded by this. And that's what got me into the writing. I was like, I want to write sketch comedy.

Then off the back of that, a kind of sitcom, mainly that sketch and sitcom, that's all I wanted to write. So between 2000 and 2006, you're on. on TV. You're in Monkey Dust, which is an animated show, and it's sketchy and funny. Yes. And then in 2006, we're now six years past graduation. Yeah. You and Dennis create polling together. Based on the success of polling, no, that's the next one. What I think is really funny is in 2007, you won the British Comedy Award for Best Female Newcomer for Annually Retentive. Yeah. Now, again, you were 37. Was I?

I think so in 2007. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Did you feel like this is a weird, like newcomer feels like something that should go to the kid who won for fucking adolescence or something the other night? No, because I mean, I really, really was. I'd done a few shows at that point, but they were culty kind of no-one-watched kind of things. So actually that particular award was for pulling and annually retentive. It was my first starring role kind of thing. I just remember it being really.

surreal because six years earlier I'd been doing fuck all. And you had done six years as like a temp or whatever the fuck job that was for six years. So like 12 years is a long time in the saddle before the newcomer award comes. Yeah. There was no structure to what

I was doing even though I was like trying to find a way into the industry. I was trying to get a job in radio or trying to get a job writing for someone else's show or any route in I was trying. I just didn't have the right focus or the confidence or whatever it takes. to sort of take the plunge and do it properly,

to just all out go. I'm going to do this now. There was a lot of time wasted, but once I started doing it, it was like super hyper-focus. And then it kind of just doesn't stop, but we must explain this really interesting difference between American television and British television.

In the States, when there's a hit, we just keep making it until everyone gets too expensive, I guess, at some point to keep on the show. And it's just not that way in England at all, right? Like, it's very rare for a show to go more than three seasons or something. Yeah, it's pretty rare.

Is that maddening and frustrating? I mean, a good few do. There's a lot of exceptions that rule, but there's a lot of sort of standout shows that were just like, no, two and done. Well, the office famously for us was like, wait, you have this incredible show and you guys are done?

That's it. Or like 99 or Mighty Boosh. I wanted to do more pulling. We just didn't get recommission. I was going to say, is that frustrating when you finally have a show when you're actually writing it and you're on it? It's so frustrating because it was a dream scenario. Probably you'll never get more fun than that with my guess, right?

Ever. It was the biggest buzz. We got our show picked up. We didn't even have to make a pilot. We wrote this one script. Next thing we are making a show. Yeah, if you turn on the television and this thing you thought of is physically on the TV is crazy. Such a great buzz. And I still find it very buzzy, actually.

I still feel like a kid when I'm walking around a set and that whole kind of like, we did this. Yeah, show business. But like for your first thing. But also, we got to do it our way with no interference, which makes no sense because we'd never done it before.

Everyone who was in it was brilliant. It was just a very joy-filled experience. And when you were doing that, what did you find more fun and then which one was more rewarding? the acting or the writing. So I can tell you personally, I have a lot of pride in being a writer.

Yeah. Because it's hard. It is. And it's lonely. I don't have a lot of pride of being an actor or being funny. That's a blast and I like doing it. I kind of agree with you.

Although I think I'm different now. Like I get much more joy at the writing. But back then, getting the opportunity to be on TV and to be the lead and something, I found it a huge buzz. And also it was my first time taking something from the page to the screen. and realizing that it can be great on the page and you can make it better.

And you can exceed your expectations. And also, it's like six weeks. When we make sitcoms, it's six episodes. Everyone's almost dedicated to not making any money. Yeah, exactly. How can we not break even on this thing? Let's do six, so we never amortized the cause. No one makes a bean.

God, I was so green. I did enjoy it then. I did get a lot of pride in pulling it off. But yeah, definitely less so now. Is the next big thing for you, that's obviously like a huge moment for you, that show. Is catastrophe the next kind of big? Yeah, a lot of pilots in between, a lot of failed pilots. That you had written?

I had written. Okay. And then I made this mental UK show called Dead Boss that we only did one season of because it didn't really work. It was funny. You know, it's that thing? I think after pulling, not that that many people saw it or that people were, waiting with baited breath to see what I do next. But there was an expectation.

It did well. Yeah, they would assume your next one's going to be even better. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that was her first thing. I made this really nutty show set in a women's prison about this woman who's accused of killing her boss. It was bonkers. Not many people liked it.

There was lots of funny stuff in it. Yeah, yeah. It just didn't gel in the way you would hope. So that and a lot of pilots over here, I was doing that for years. Yeah, so when you're there being London, and you're having some success, I would be like, well, I'm going to go over there or everyone's getting rich here.

Yeah, but I had this weird thing where I was like, I'll go over there now and my agents be like, no, it's not time for you to go over there. Really? Are you sure? Because people seem to be going over there. So it took a while. I don't know why.

Like I must talk to my, I've still got the same agent because I'm just creature of habit. And I'm very loyal per the Monday night dinner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hope so. But I must ask him, it was a real like kind of know you're not ready. And then finally, when I did go over, I think I made about four pilots in a row, maybe

five. Wow. Do you start getting crazy discouraged? Like, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to. No, I was kind of, you know, the weird thing that I noticed that's very different from UK is that people could happily make a great living, never getting anything made here. Oh, yeah, yeah.

My agents over here were setting me up with the writers where I go, so what are you working at the moment? They were like, I haven't had anything produced in five years. but there was this sense of it was successful if you were getting pilot scripts commissioned. Whereas I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, you can not make anything. I bet the amount they buy here versus make,

I bet that ratio is way different than it is in London. Yeah. Like, I have sold many TV shows and none of them have been produced. Yeah. I think it's changing, though. I think that's what people are shutting to feel. I think so, yeah.

It's really hard for writers right now because I think they're not doing that. Yeah, they shut off that. I mean, when you think about all those pilots that I've never been seen. It just seems extraordinary. Thousands of hours of television that no one's seen. They probably cost what it takes to make a UK TV series. Yeah, a lot of people have a really good pilot quote as an actor.

They'll make 150, then get by for the year. And the next year they do another pilot, and it can just be this weird little trap. But even though I met Rob on Twitter, because I was coming over to make the pilots, we did end up hanging out in real life. And when I was making one of the pilots, we were sort of moonlighting on catastrophe on the side.

Yeah, so talk about meeting, Rob, because I, too, was just on Twitter and discovered him. And still, hands down, of all the tweeters. Oh, my God. He was the number one funniest on Twitter ever. The funniest. Ridiculously. Yeah, like in 2018, he had some weird tweet. I don't even know what was about.

And then he just hashtag Connie 2012. It was like, who thinks they? That hashtag going 2012, six years later. Yeah, that's great. It was just so funny. Everything's so fucking funny. He's got such an amazingly specific brain. And right away, you guys thought we should try to create something together?

No, it was more of a sort of mutual, like, I think you're really funny. And then he had seen pulling, and not that many people had. I mean, it was on over here, but he had to do a quest. You didn't need an AI to locate it. But he found it. Then we ended up doing this little sketch. It was kind of fun. And then because of his Twitter fame, he got commissioned by the BBC to write the sitcom.

And then he got in touch with me and said, do you want to write it with me? So that's how it happened. It's a spectacular show. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It was another one of those things where we had a pretty good feeling that it was going to work at the script stage. But when we started doing it together, it was a nice feeling of relief that we bounced so well off each other as performers as well as writers.

It's such an unknown. You play the chemistry lot. Yeah, that's it completely. But, I mean, I loved making that show. And then post-catastrophe, now more doors open, I'm assuming, because your next thing's divorce, which is written for someone else, is written for Sarah Jessica Parker.

Yeah, yeah. So now we're like in another realm where we might just also create shows. Yes. Was that scary or exciting? Or did you feel like I don't really want to write something I'm not going to be in? I love the idea of writing for other people.

It felt exciting. You're incredibly invested. in it, but at the same time, you get to sort of step back a bit and have more of a bird's eye view. I mean, to me, that felt like the best case scenario to create something that then I could just watch it do its thing.

Did you pitch Sarah the idea, or were you approached like, Sarah wants to do this? Actually, I'd pitch this other show idea to HBO, which ended up being Shining Vale made for Courtney Cox. So we were about to start making that, or at least

developing it. And then they said, Sarah Jessica's looking to make a new show and she's looking for a writer and she had had a script that she didn't really feel was working so we just met off got a good notion of what it was she wanted to make

and the kind of thing she wanted to talk about that death of a long-term relationship kind of thing and I came up with this divorce sort of setting for it were you post-divorce or about to start that process?

How did it parallel your life? I wasn't. I was still in my marriage but I guess maybe some of the scenes. I'm sure you had a lot of fodder of things that are annoying at this point, 14 years in. I'm sure you had a lot of like... Oh, yeah, of course. It's like Amy Gravitt said anyone who's married knows what it feels like to want to be divorced.

Yeah, right, right, right, right. But my friend had just very recently gone through one. So through talking to her and just getting the detail from her, I could talk about relationships until the cows come home, but the actual mechanics of going through something, yeah. I could write a divorce and say, Wikipedia now, but back then, no, I just had some feelings. Do you think it made you get a divorce?

Yeah, like I don't want to make it too big of a stretch. Yeah, were you like living in this thought experiment of divorce? No, not at all. I mean, thank God for my family at that point. My ex was traveling back and forth with my kids. It was a tricky time for us as a family, but we were very much all in it together. Right. That sort of overlapped with catastrophe.

So it was just a little bit too much. Bad time management. I would say. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. We are supported by Cozy. Let me tell you about the time I tried to move my old sectional up three flights of stairs, two broken picture frames, one scuffed wall, and several questionable words later.

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All of it. Terrible. Missed a birthday. Got back for the party, but missed the actual birthday. And my daughter is 21 now. Oh, boy. And she still talks about it. Sure.

What else is she going to talk about? She needs something. We all need something. Yeah, we need something. I play this game all the time. Our kids are 10 and 12 and I'm like, what's going to be the thing I'm going to hear about the rest of my life? Is it that target argument?

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

apart from my daughter remembering the birthday thing, it's a little bit like water of a duck's back a little bit. Whereas I think for us, we kind of... Self-flagellate. Yeah, and there's, like, still trauma there. I still think about it. Is it fair to say? Most of the women, my wife included that I know that are in this business,

I have kids, it's like you feel guilty at work because you're not with your kids. And then when you're with your kids, you feel guilty you're not working because that's also your passion. It's like there's no real sweet spot. Yeah, that's it. You also have that weird thing. I can only assume it's how people feel when they get out of prison. You sort of forget how to operate in normal life. you're sort of isolated from everything else

and all you do is get up someone picks you up in a car feeds you, takes you to set feed you some more all you're doing is sort of working and being coseted and then put back in a car and then brought home and when you get back into your family environment

you just don't know how to operate for a while. You can also get tricked into thinking that that job is the most important thing in the world. Yeah and that you are important. Yes because that's how you're Being treated. Objectively, you are important to that world.

It's not even like an ego explosion. No, that's true. The lead actors are very important to the project. The writers are very important to the project. To the project, but I think because it is so isolated and compartmentalize and it's every day and you're in a hotel and then you go, you can think that the project is the most important thing in the world. Sure, sure, sure. You almost have to have to be good. Right.

You have to buy in a little bit. Yeah. And then that's complicated when you leave it. Yeah. And then you get taken down numerous pegs far your family. And you just have to deal with it and get back on the horse. Okay. Bad Sisters, this is, I'm imagining your first, like, American hit.

America's gone bat shit. Yeah. A lot of people loved catastrophe, but it was definitely like culty. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But Bad Sisters is this epic thing. I watched it. It looked interesting.

I saw it. Oh, thank you. And then I'm probably having the same thing. other people are where it's like, oh, yeah, I love bad sister. Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, the one sister created the show. I'm like, oh, she created the show. And this is when I find out that you've created all these shows

and that you're writing it. And then it's just so impressive. Very bold over by it. It was a Danish show? Belgian. I had seen it. It was brought to me to adapt it. So I watched pilot episode and really fell in love with it.

Is it tonally the same? No, it's completely different. Is that one darker? It's really hard to explain but it's just got that Scandy kind of thing where it's much more crazy you know so the murders are kind of crazy and there's Chinese mafia in it

and hit men and people end up being murdered and then ending up in dog food canning factories it was quite extreme but it was really amazing totally because the sisters were really grounded but it was just there was a different approach

even to the really brutal, serious stuff in it, it was just a different approach. Like Eva's rape. In the original version, she's having sex with her boyfriend. He needs to take a break. He goes downstairs to the fridge to have something to eat and to cool down.

And while she's waiting for him, still on all fours, the break comes up and gets in there. So they totally got away with it because she's brilliant. The lady who comes. created at Malam. And the actors are amazing.

Even in our version, there was a real line to tread in terms of when you're going to be funny and when you're going to destroy people, you know. I'd argue it's the hardest tone to pull off in anything. It was when you're bouncing back and forth. Yeah. It's scary when you're doing it because you're like, they could mall us to death. Yeah. If it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong.

You need to just sort of take a punt and then just try and hold fast. Yeah. Were you shocked with how loved it was? Yeah, of course. Did you write the roles with the actors in mind, or did you write the whole thing and then cast it? I wrote the pilot and then cast it after that. Ireland's a small country.

And also it had to be very specific in terms of the ages and for us to seem like we are in the same family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had to pray that those girls that I asked to do it were available. They were it. Yeah. And I'd worked with a lot of them before, So I kind of knew, and as soon as I started writing the series, I had their voices in my head.

But when it came to like the second season, it was just so much easier because I'd spent all that time with them. And I knew how one character would respond to another. And I knew what the dynamics were that worked within the family. And so I found the second season easier. But more challenging story-wise, probably. Although the first one had huge challenges because even though we had the template in rethinking it, it sort of threw all the pieces out of whack and then it's got two timelines

and I found that really hard. How do I say his name? Is it Clay's? Clay's bang, yeah. Holy shit. So that was the first time I'd ever seen him. Oh, really? Because I'd seen the square. He's so good.

I mean, he's so repugnant. The way he calls her Mama, Mammy. Oh, he's so gross. He's so gross. Yeah. The most hateable character ever. He was perfect. And he's like slimy.

He's terrible. God bless him. He just was like, yeah, I'm going to be as unlikable as humanly possible. Did he have any vanity? What was the process? He had to get his head around being that odious. And it was a bit of a challenge. He didn't love being hateful and hated every day.

But then there was this other side to him that revel did it. It's fine as an actor. And he really went for it. But it is a thing where every scene you're in, you're just being an absolute piece of shit. But we had to just make sure that there were moments where you could see who he used to be. How anyone fell in love with him in the first place. Exactly. Why does his child love him?

Exactly. So we needed to see him be a good dad sometimes. And we needed to see him be vulnerable or feel like a stranger in this Irish family. And it really helped that he was not an Irish man. An outsider. How did you just come across him? You had seen the square? I had seen the square, but no, it was Nina Gold, our casting agent was her idea.

And then I rewrote it kind of for him to lean into that. We gave him a Swedish mother, and it ended up sort of affecting a lot of the scripts, but in a way that was only positive. And it's amazing when that happens, when you have something in your mind and you do something completely different, and then you go, oh, no, this has given us so much more. What's your explanation of the mass appeal of it? The time it came along, I think at that time, everyone really needed the catharsis of hating an awful white religious bigot. We were all on board for it.

And also that thing of, despite the thriller of it and the caper, it is about family. Nobody would ever watch that and not want to be one of the sisters. I would argue that's like a huge element of it. It's just, again, you guys hit the chemistry lottery. There's such a familiarity. fun and everyone's so different. Yeah. And it all works cohesively.

Yeah. We got very lucky. I love those girls. One of them is the reason why I am this hungover today. Was it Eve? It was Eve. Yeah, yeah, good cast. That was my next question.

Did you know Eve before? I didn't. And did you know she was Bono's daughter before you cast her? I did. That was Nina Gold. But once she mentioned her, then I remembered other work that I'd seen her in and was like, she's amazing. but I just didn't know.

She'd never done any sort of... I mean, it's a drama, but there's a lot of comedy in it. Yeah. So in actual fact, she came in and did a casting. And she filmed the casting in Bono's front room of his castle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she was so brilliant in the casting, so clearly funny in that way, where you're not trying to push the comedy.

She was just naturally funny. I wish this were not the case, but it just truly is, which is like if I know that's Bono's daughter, It's in the mix. I'm aware of it, right? And I think the worst guess I would have for Bono's daughter is that she's going to be like perfect in plastic and spoiled. No.

The contradiction of what potentially you're afraid could be the daughter of someone Uber famous and rich. She's in fact quite the opposite, at least on screen. Oh, and in person as well. Yeah, just in this delightful way where you're like, it's almost even cooler because she seems so far. fucking real. I know. She's very sweet, incredibly fun. Bad influence. Like, takes the work seriously. A bad influence. Well, we all are bad influences on each other.

But no, it was just an immediate family. We just got really lucky. We were enjoying ourselves, but at the same time, we had to work as an ensemble, but they all had to be able to sort of carry their own episode, you know, because there would always be an episode that really focused on them, and all of them are just incredible, actors incredibly watchable. And you just instantly care about them. Were you ever at any point in it kind of wishing, I wish I didn't have this dual role where I'm also their boss is a little bit. Like I just want to be in the riff-ref,

grew and kind of bitch about the production. Oh my God. I'm so paranoid. I am walking around in a constant state of fear that anything. You know, I'm always worrying that people aren't happy or have an opinion about how I'm doing things. Yeah. I always just wanted to be with them hanging out and chatting instead of on my laptop having a nervous breakdown about reshoots or edits

or whatever else goes along with it. It's a pain. You just want to play, you want to enjoy it. There's a real feeling of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing something you wrote come to life. But you do miss out on a lot of really good gossip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want a Peabody for it.

Yeah. Did you even know what a Peabody was before you won it? Yes, I did. You did? Yeah, yeah. It's a big deal. We covet the Peabody Award. We actively campaigned to win a Peabody Award.

Yeah, it's great. I'm not terribly sure what it is, but I really want that award. It means something good, doesn't that? Yeah. What does it mean? It's prestigious. It's prestigious. It is prestigious.

But what is it? It's like, it's not an acting award. It's just like a culture award? It is, actually. If you've campaigned for them, you know, you kind of have to do this whole statement. By campaign, I campaign. write in my Instagram comments. Please give me one of these.

Well, you have to submit your program for it, obviously. And then you kind of talk about what it is that you were wanting to achieve with the show. And I don't know, but I think for the most part, there has to be an aspect to it that makes it socially important, across the board, really, in the storytelling and the casting, in the diversity, and the amount of female directors you use, why you chose to tell that story representation. It's a big sort of all-round and it's about how successful the storytelling was, of course, but

it's a bit of a... This is important work. Success with intention. I guess it's not just about the entertainment. I love that it's just properly entertaining, but I like the fact that it's saying something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the twisted tale of Amanda Knox.

Uh-huh. We interviewed Amanda Knox. Did you? Yes. I found her to be so brilliant. I could barely stand up. Right. She's a great girl. When we were talking earlier about being a mother and like a father as well sometimes,

but for the most part, it's harder to be a mother and leave your kids behind. But K.J. Steinberg, who created the show, because we shot it in Rome, in Budapest, in Vancouver, all over Italy. And she had to leave her kids at home and do this. I'm so glad for her. It's taking quite a big swing, isn't it? Like, stylistically, it's a terrible, tragic story. but there's also a lot of absurdity in what happened in the situation and KJ was not scared to show that some of these things were so absurd they were funny.

Yeah. And the stylistic approach of this sort of Amelie-esque kind of filming style at the beginning and all those things are big swings. Yeah, it's very ambitious. Yeah, and the fact that she pulled it off, I'm just a light for her because it was really hard for her being that far away from her family. And dealing with something that wasn't easy, you know,

it's a difficult story to tell for loads of reasons, you know, legally. But Amanda was around a good bit. And you met her mom. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I met her mom. I met her kids. I met her husband.

I met her sister. Some of the days they were there for some lighter scenes, but some of the days they were there for some really heavy scenes that brought them right back to it. I remember her mom saying to me, it's really hard to watch for loads of reasons, but I wish I'd been that articulate when it was happening. I wish I'd known how to deal with my emotions and I wish I'd known how to operate within that situation. And it's like, how could you?

Well, I said to her towards the end, and now she has kids, so it's not hard to imagine. But I'm, of course, watching that thing and I'm no longer putting myself in the position of her. I'm putting myself in the position of, oh my God, if this happened to one of my daughters. Yes, completely. I would a million times would rather sit in prison

than have them sit in prison in a bizarre way. I do think it could be harder for the parent. And she agreed. I did the Zoom initially with the producers in KJ, but then I did the second Zoom with Amanda. And I don't know about you, but most of the times if I'm offered a job, I'm kind of like, why do you want me to do it?

I was a bit like, I don't know. You were those scared of this role, right? Oh, completely, yeah, yeah. But it was her talking about that. It was really emotional on the Zoom, you know, because when she was talking about her mother and what she went through, I sort of realized then that maybe I could play it because...

You had the emotion in you. Exactly. And I was more sort of nervous about it is a bit exhausting doing that. Coming in, frazzled, panics. Being frazzled all day long, it's hardcore and it takes it out of you. But yeah, she's a great girl. So you were scared, it's a big acting challenge. And also you didn't write it.

It's not going to be how you might like to land in that challenge. But I feel like in stuff like that, you have to just be on board for the ride. And for the most part, if you're working with normal people, they do want a bit of feedback or they do appreciate a suggestion or two. But really, at the end of the day, I like just to do it and not think about all the other stuff because my day job is so thinking about everything. Yeah, yeah. And in actual fact, it's kind of fun just to go there and be an actor and then at the end of the day, go to your trailer and look at your phone. Yeah. Yeah. And not just be like writing more scripts. So I was nervous about it for that reason, but also because it's divisive

subject area. People have opinions about her and you would have opinions about why the show's even being made. Strong as opinions, knowing the least amount, the actual story. That seems to be related. You just never know how something is going to be received. Yeah. How has it been? Have people reached out to you? It was a little bit of, like there would be because people are. There's no consensus. Yeah. Online was a little bit funny. Yeah, people like to be really very upset on Meredith's behalf, as if this person's not also allowed to tell their story. Because one scenario is worse, say, if we got in a car accident and you died and I got fucking paralyzed, I wouldn't be allowed to talk about being paralyzed because they would go, what about Sharon? Yeah, there was people

who were angry on her behalf. But for the most part, I would say the response has been really good. People thought they knew that story like you were saying. And then there was so much that you didn't know. And my hunches, anyone who's even complaining still hasn't seen this story. I would say not. There were people in our comments sounding off. And I literally wrote a few times, like, this couldn't be more obvious that you didn't listen to the episode. That's what I know from this comment is that you, when she was on this show.

Yeah, she did it. And what about her? Yes. And I'm like, what I know for sure is you did not listen this episode. Because there's no way you could write that comment and had you listened to me. But the show and the story, the thing that happened to her, is just a reflection of the world acting very sinister, and then there's a lot of defensiveness that comes out of it. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think a lot of people are like, no, because they are not okay feeling like they live in a world where we could do that to someone or that they themselves have done it, unfairly. Or enjoyed the opera of it while it was happening. Yeah. So to do something lighter, you've taken on Jeanette McCurdy's book. I'm glad my mom died. We interviewed her when she first was promoting that book and his first show.

Sure, one of our best episodes ever. She's amazing. She's incredible. She's, again, a giant-brained person, ridiculously talented. It's a really difficult story to tell. And somehow she's managing to do it. And it's funny and entertaining and traumatic. I think the defining attribute that allows you to enjoy it or not enjoy it,

be it Amanda Knox or Jeanette, is if they weren't destroyed by it, it's great. And that really is, Jeanette, it's like, oh, no, this bitch ain't destroyed by this. She's gotten stronger. It's so inspiring. She is. You play the mom? No, she's just producing the project. Yeah. Okay, got it. I'm just delighted to be involved in any way, just getting to see her work. And it was a book that I was obsessed with and talking to her about it before we had it picked up, before we went out and pitched it even, I knew I wanted to be involved.

really something. Now I'm scared for you. You're writing two different projects for yourself. One at Amazon, one at HBO? I wonder what the Amazon thing is. Because someone else has asked me that as well. We're developing something with Amazon. But not necessarily you starring.

Not for me. No, I'm writing an HBO show. For you? Yeah, for me. I always still get embarrassed by that. Really? I'm writing it for me. No one else will be in it. Yeah. I think it's braggy. Well, no, I felt it with pulling as well. Even though that was the first thing, I was like,

and I will cast me, you know, it just feels a bit indulgent me. Yes, but it's not. Just I know. But the workload, I'm a little worried about the workload. Are you? I am. You've now created more shows than almost anyone, really. You're just racking them up.

It's a lot, and you're fine. How many hours of day do you work? It depends. Well, at the moment, we are making a show for Netflix called Vladimir, and it's shooting in Toronto. and it's like mad hours because there's a different time zone. So at the moment, it's not great because I finished my work in the UK and then I go to eat dinner with my girls and then I go back to work.

But for the most part, when you're writing, I'll do a sort of 10 to 5 kind of thing. If my girl's at school and she's leaving at 8 in the morning, I start at 8 and then might end a little earlier. But I don't know. I mean, I'm just sitting at a desk. You don't feel like you're approaching burnout level or anything. Now you're worrying me.

You should be a little bit worried. No. Here's why I watched this incredible documentary. I did not know this DJ. I don't know. I just randomly watch it. Avici. Have you ever heard that?

No. He was this enormous global DJ, the kind that can make a million dollars a night. And now everyone wants to start working with him. So it's like this amazing artist, this amazing artist. And this documentary is heartbreaking because, and I can so relate to it, which is like, you want something so bad. It takes so long to get it.

And when it comes, it's nearly impossible to throttle it. And this took him down. I think he died of working. What the hell? Yeah, he killed himself. No. He killed himself. He killed himself slash maybe fell on a broken wine, but whatever.

He was not in a good spot. Very tragic story. And I was watching it just going like, I very much relate to this. These opportunities don't come around. He had to have felt that way. And it's really hard to govern yourself when it's all things you want. That's true. And there is definitely an element of that because I did start late.

And so I've always felt like I'm playing ketchup. But the other element of it is that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't. Yeah, you said, I'm not very good at twiddling my thumbs. I become a bit more hyperactive as I get older. I don't really know how to relax. Yeah, I don't really know how to relax. But here's the thing, why, I was writing this episode of something that was set in Germany. and then every day over the two weeks that I was writing out

I was just like going to Germany get out of my head and my house and just be in a different world and I find it very relaxing. Okay good. When I was doing divorce and catastrophe that was hard and I remember having, I guess they were sort of panic attacks

I didn't know what they were at the time I was like, oh my God you're drowning in the commitments yeah but it doesn't feel like that now I mean I've got a company of amazing people The new show, you're playing a divorcee moving through the world. Yeah. Is there more plot than that than I'm leaving out?

Well, I'm the mother of a son. It's kind of about the Salman's generation, really. It's about that point in your life where your children are adults, but they haven't left, and you're still looking after them, and your parents are getting older, and that becomes also a responsibility, but it's this time in your life when the stakes are so raised because you suddenly become incredibly aware of your mortality. And in this particular situation, she wants to meet someone. She wants to fall in love before she stops being a sexual person.

You know, so there's this clock, but the world isn't allowing her. Well, here's my pitch. You're going to have a lot of lovers in this show. You're going to have to go on a lot of dates, and there'll be good ones and bad ones. And I'm volunteering to be one of the lovers. Thank you so much. I can't commit to a lot of episodes, but it's just one. something within reason.

I'm letting you know, I will do that. Would you be a force for good or a force for bad? Whatever you choose that morning. You're like, I want to see him be naughty. No, I want to see the sweet side of him who has kids. Not like a builder. I don't want to play a parking meter made. But let's just say I was giving you a ticket.

But then somehow I charmed you. And you're like, I hate you. What does this guy? Can you imagine going out with a parking meter? It would be rough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're just people too. No, you're right.

You're right. I'm a dick. They deserve to be in love. No, it's okay. They're giving us tickets. It's like, you can only like them so much. They are in charge of giving us tickets. And it's not their fault.

It's not their fault. Once in a while, one will hang out in front of my kids' school at drop off. Really? Just waiting. I can't let it go. I can't let it go. Because, you know, everyone's so fucking hectic. Everyone's trying to get to work.

It's a mess. Yeah, they're like vultures. And I have on a couple of occasions said, you know, an even better spot is the emergency room. You should go hang out at the emergency room where people really don't. don't have time to park. Blank face or do they give it to you back? No. There's nothing.

Then I feel bad. Then I regret it. And then I've done it twice. No one wants that job. Well, listen, takes a unique person to post up in front of a elementary school to do your ticket. That person, I'm going to say it's a he. I don't know. You sex is.

Probably has to have so many tickets. Yeah. Exactly. Meeting their quota with parents that are struggling to get to work on time. I think we could pick on a better... Let's go in front of an agency. Is it a showbiz school? No, I mean, are there a lot of showbiz fans?

Because in a way, I'd sort of go like, it's a fair cop. No, and in fact, it has more kids on free lunch than probably any other school in the city. So, no, it's the opposite. Screw that. Let one of those people say it. Not you. I got to use my privilege for good.

I'm trying to protect these people, Monica. I can't believe you're not supporting this. You're not protecting them. You're protecting your... self. No, I don't care if I get a ticket. I literally... No, we fight all the time.

Yeah, it's part of the charm, I guess. I've got a very weird relationship with... Money. Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I think I just need a bit of therapy for it. So, yeah, so if you don't cast me on your show, I could also work you through financial insecurity.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. There's a few different services I provide. Do you know what's weird about writing a show that does have sex in it? Yeah. Is that then you just get embarrassed when you, send it out to people.

That they think you're a pervert or something? I can't lose that feeling. Is that the Irish Catholic? I don't know. I mean, Rob and I used to get it a bit when we would write these sex scenes like side by side and then all of a sudden we'd realize that we were writing for each other

and we'd get really embarrassed and awkward. It feels like that when you write something and then you send it to an actor because you're saying, we're going to do it. Yes, yes. We're going to be dead. We're going to do this. It could be even more.

Are you on board? Yeah. It's like asking someone out in real life. It's vulnerable. God. But I would think this is where the positive side of being a woman, that side of the coin you should embrace, which is if I write that scene and I send it to Sydney Sweeney, and I'm a 50-year-old dude and I send this scene. I got this great scene I wrote for us. You shouldn't do that there.

No, I shouldn't. Correct. I agree. That's a bit Woody. I agree. Yeah. I'm with you. That's a bit Robert DeVisel.

Well, Emma Watson. Yes. I'm in full agreement. That's why I'm using it to illustrate my point. But you can do that, and it's totally fine, and you should feel nothing about it. If you've earned anything, it should be that. We know you're not a predator. Generally, women are not predators, so you're free to do that.

There are some. There's a few. Thank God. I don't know any. If you're a predator and you're a female, please in the comments, signal yourself out. Are you vaping? It's a nicotine. spray. Oh, a spray. Yeah, so it's a very healthy delivery system. I was very addicted to vaping and

nicotine gum and occasional rollies. And so I did some hypnotherapy about four years ago. Well, that brings us to my very last question for you. We've arrived. Oh, wow. So you quit drinking for three years. Yeah. And you loved it, right? I did. Apparently I was annoying. You loved it so much you talked about it? I did a little bit. I wasn't like evangelical, but I was just just suddenly going on walks for no reason other than to enjoy the beauty of the walk. And prior to that, there had to have been a pub at the end of it. So what it did was sort of just give me a whole new perspective. And I kind of loved it.

And I figure my brain was like on fire at the time. When you go a couple years of that hangover, for me, I had hangovers every single morning for a decade to not have hangovers. It was almost unimaginable. Like so much of my life was dealing with a hangover and going to work and hoping it would break and oh, I'm sweating, okay, it's going to break. Just that whole madness. And then when we had kids,

and even we'd be on vacation with our pod, Monica's a member of, and they drink and we don't. And I'd wake up and I'm like, I can barely deal with the kids without a hangover. I can't imagine what it's like to deal with kids with a hangover. God, I remember. It's awful.

So my great curiosity is like, what brought you back? Oh, my dad died. Oh, you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good reason. But it wasn't like my dad died and I had to have a drink. I just wanted to, with my brothers and sisters, drink a Guinness.

We all needed it. But I didn't go back in like full bore. It was very, very occasional. And I was still on my sort of like smug thing because I was like, I just don't drink in the same way anymore. And then like suddenly it just sort of creeps in again. It's a habit. And then the next thing.

I remember saying to my daughters, do you remember when I used to drink a glass of wine every night with dinner? Then sometimes I would have two glasses of wine. And they couldn't remember it. And I was like, well, that's great. Yeah. Because I thought that would be something that they'd be really aware of. Yes.

So I started slightly getting back into that. Now I've stopped. It was like the excitement of suddenly drinking again. Yeah, yeah. I got a bit giddy. I was buying nice wines. It was like, I remember when I started eating meat for the first time after 16 years. I was so horny for meat.

I was just like, give me meat. So it was a bit like that. with the booze. And now the last few days have been nuts because of the parties. But it has adjusted things a bit. It's not like a habit. It was a habit before where you don't even notice that you're drinking wine because you're just always drinking wine. Yeah, I have that. Yeah. I 100% have that. But I don't know. I'm back and forth on whether I care. But you know what? What happened was, and you know the way your phone sort of really gets into your head and sends you loads of videos about whatever it is you're fretting about. So while I was not

drinking, it kept sending me all these videos about how terrible booze is for your brain. I know. So it fed into my smugness and I was like, this is brilliant. Everything is positive about this. And now they're continuing to come up and I'm like, no, no, no, no. No, don't look at me. I know. Yeah, the algorithm is really on one right now. It's really awful. No alcohol, but whatever. There's some really unfortunate studies, I think. Well, what about also all the 100-year-old people who drank every day. No one wants to talk about them anymore. They used to talk about them a lot.

And they used to tell you you have to drink a glass of wine day. You'll be good for your heart. They're all in the mat. Why? Well, I mean, I think red wine. It's fine. On the continent. It's tasty and it's fine.

Live long. Did you drink Beamish? I've never loved Beamish. It's too sweet. I love Beamish. But not Guinness. I love Guinness. I love Guinness.

You'll be happy to know I've literally forced Monica to have a Guinness. when we were in London. They're not really for me. Yeah, but come here, London, London Guinness. Okay, so that maybe that's the issue. Unless you're the Davencher. You've been to the Davencher? No.

Unless it was a cross street from our hotel. Unless that was the one. Where was your hotel? Claritius? No, we weren't at Claritius. Another one of those. It's not far from there. It wasn't that place.

It was kind of a shippole. There's no way it was this one you're thinking of. They do quite good Guinness. And then obviously if you go to Dublin or anywhere in Ireland, Oh, it's so good. It's just very thick. Yeah. It's a little thick.

Well, Sharon, you're as lovely in person as you are on screen. Thank you so much. Yeah, this has been so fun. Sorry, I was a bit hung. It was not even hungover because it was from two days ago. You're just exhausted. Yeah. I've needed to wait for about the last 40 minutes.

Oh, no, you could have told us. Oh, so you can go on the couch. Really? Yes. Yes. Thank you. We adore you. Thank you.

Everyone watch the 96 projects you're in. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. I sir hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. Okay. Well, the last time I saw you... Yes, ma'am. Or the last time the people saw you.

And me, I guess. You and the people. Yeah. I am one of the people. Yeah. You're going to go to the hospital. Which I did. Yeah.

So tell everyone what transpired. I went to the hospital. They hooked me up to. No, I peed first. You were able to? Yon sample. Remind everyone what happened. You couldn't pee.

I couldn't pee. It was painful. I got a crazy fever. I gave blood and yon at my GP. That stands for general practitioner. Yes, although he's not. He's an internist and he doesn't like it. But in any rate, and then my family was concerned I was sepsis.

Yeah. Again, I don't know if you say septic or he has sepsis. He's in sepsis. There's something weird about sepsis. Sure. I don't know. Do you? Yeah, I think it's like, and turns out I was in sepsis.

He went sepsis. He went sepsis. Or did he went sepsis? Septic. No, I think septic's only about the tank. Okay, the septic field and the septic tank. Anyways, get there, do some samples. They hook me up to a stronger antibiotic.

My vitals are good, though. Great. So I'm there for some hours. I get a bag of fluid. I, oh, yes. And then he takes an ultrasound of my bladder. And, and it's, It's full.

Yeah. But I just peed. Yeah, but you didn't get a lot of pee out. Yeah. So he's like, you know, we're going to have to do a catheter. And I was like, oh, no. Of all the things in life, I hope to avoid. Yeah.

It was putting two feet of cable up my pee hole. Yeah. God, I did not want to do that. So I think I've had one before, but I think I woke up post-surgery with it. I also have had one, but it was gone by the time I woke up. And then I think I was on a tremendous amount of over. It's in the hospital when they removed it or something. I don't know.

I just have no memory of this. So I guess I'm not saying where I went or anyone's name. So this is the first order of business was the nurse was going to. And she told me I got to put lytocaine in your urethra. Okay. So she has this syringe about this big, about six inches long. It's a fat boy, right? There's a ton of fluid in there.

And so she's holding my penis and she puts it right up to the urethra. And I'm laying on my back trying to just be in another zone, right? I'm just trying to... Are you worried? About getting erect? Yeah. No, no. Really?

No, no, no. I am so terrified about getting this procedure. Oh, wow. Okay, that's good, I guess, for... Yeah, yeah. Positive side. So she has this syringe. She has it up to the hole.

And I don't know if it was stuck or whatever happened, but there was an audible pop. And then the whole thing went in, like, boom, the whole, and I went, oh, my God. Like I yelled, which I, oh my God. And she goes, oh, oh, I'm so sorry. That's not supposed to happen. What? Oh, no. That's not what you want to hear.

Obviously slowly put all that fluid in. But again, I think it was stuck or something. Maybe she pushed you hard and then just made this loud pop and then it fucking just gushed six ounces of jam in my penis at once. Yeah. Wait a minute. And I was like, whoa, we're off to a rough start. Was this nurse in armcherry? No, but I loved her and I learned a ton about her. We had a very, very, like, connected, intimate conversation about, like, her,

someone in her life who passed. And, like, we had had a really great time. Okay. I feel like, I feel like this nurse is an armcherry and got, like, nervous. She was holding the armchair expert's penis. Yeah. And, like, having to. I don't think so.

Because we were just speaking so candidly, she would have said she liked the show. I think that's where we were out. Okay. No, I don't think she was an armchair. I still do. Okay. Okay. So anyways, you know what that happens?

And then they come back with the tube and then they put the tube in and I'm like, and it is, it's just horrendous. I can't believe you don't get anything for it other than the topical like the game. Yeah. I guess it's just where I'm such a baby. It's like zones where I'm a total baby, I guess. So it goes in, it's insane. It's insane and it takes so long because it's got to go through your whole penis and then up and then into your bladder, which is deep in there.

And it just feels like forever and it's the worst feeling. Then they blow up the balloon. Then they strap the bag to my flag and they stick the thing. Now, my one complaint was like big sticky pad to pin to secure the bag and everything. And you know, I have hairy thighs. Sure. She slapped her right on there. I was like, take a set.

Let's get a razor. I'm mad. I'm mad I didn't advocate for myself. Oh, okay. Because, as it turns out, when I got home, she had put it up too high. So my penis was hanging down much lower than where that thing was, which was making the tube go upward. Okay. And pull my penis up.

And I was a freaking pull the thing. So as soon as I got home, I had Kristen and Lincoln reattached it lower. And then we shaved my leg. But getting that thing off with all the hair. Okay, whatever. Okay. Here's, I'm, I'm, like, belted? No, no, it's just there's a hose, and then I took a photo and I sent it to Eric and Aaron, and they screamed out loud, both of them, they said, because you can tell it looks absolutely miserable.

But there's a strap that there's the sticky piece with clamps that hold the top of the hoses. And then they've got two elastic belts that go around two parts of your legs and then a big bag to fill with you on. Right, right. You immediately look 85 years old. Yeah. I mean, there's so many funny things that happened over the course of the three days I had it. One was we kept telling, you know, I kept complaining about the tube in my penis. And at one point, like day two or three, I was emptying the bag in the toilet and Delta came into the bathroom.

And she goes, oh my God, Daddy. I thought you were saying that metaphorically, tube in my penis. She didn't know I had a literal... What did she think? I don't know, but I love that she knew to say metaphorically. Yeah, yeah. I was like so distracted by how wonderfully she said. Her vocab.

Yeah, I thought you were saying that metaphorically. Oh, my God. And I go, I know. I thought you immediately look like you're in some serious medical. And I felt like it, you know. I felt like what's going on a week ago. Yeah, just a week ago, I felt indomitable. And now I have this bag.

And then the bag, and maybe other people have positive experiences with it. So I'm not bashing cathering. Sure. And again, a lot of these things I think were just chickens coming home to roost. Because you remember the cath or cowboy commercial. Yeah, he goes, I've been cath, I've been cowboying for 25 years. I don't like pain when a calf. Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that. And so, I mean, you know. And you've been making fun. of that for years. I have because the guy was like 75. I'm like, hold, let me get this straight. You started cowboying at 50? He might have. Look, you're 50. I'm not ready to start cowboy and I'm right to start riding a soft chair. The thing about it is, mid sneeze, I was like, oh my God, anything abdominal. Yeah. It sucks because you have that balloon in there. And also just the balloon at the end of your bladder. What it feels like is that painful moment you have to pee so bad,

you don't think you can hold it. It just felt like that for three days. And anytime I'm It was just like the sharp pain in there. I hated it. I really... It wasn't for you. I did not enjoy it. Saturday I woke up and I said to Chris and I'm like, I'm going in and get up, take it out today. I cannot wait till Sunday.

She's like, okay, but remember, they didn't say that arbitrary. So then she talked me off the ledge and I waited until Sunday. That's good. I'm so happy to get it out. Yeah. I don't ever want one of those again. I understand. No, silver linings.

Okay. Let's go through them. I slept in the guest house for three days. Uh-huh. And I really didn't do anything because I couldn't move or anytime I moved, it was just the worst grody feeling of like, I'm peeing my pants. Oh, well, I'm going to add.

Yeah. This is too much information. Um, what? Goading doodles was almost impossible because you're putting doodles. Going doodles. Oh, pooping. Because you're, you're really, I don't know about for a girl, but for a boy, you're using the same area to push the, the doodles and,

to push yawn out. Those two things are married for a boy when you sit down on the toilet. Right. You just push and everything comes out at once. But I have this tube and so there were times when I was trying to doodles. Yeah. And all of a sudden, he just started coming out of around the tube. Not in the tube.

No. So it's somehow it's pushing around the balloon inside the bladder. Okay. Also, you take these pills to make your yawn super dark orange. It looks like the McDonald's. Oh, really? You remember McDonald's orange drink? No.

Okay. They got to call orange drink. It wasn't orange or juice. Okay. I don't even know if it was orange soda, maybe orange soda. It was dark as hell orange. Okay. Okay.

And I'm just on the toilet and I'm like, oh, fuck. And my penis can't be in the toilet because it's got a tube coming out of it that's attached to my lower leg. Okay. So the bag's like at your ankle? Yes. Oh, it's that far down. Not at my ankle, but around my knee. Oh, wow.

I imagine it to post, I imagine it like high up. I'm going to, I'm going to post the picture. No, no, I'm going to, I'm going to crop the photo. Okay. So you can at least see the placement on the leg. Okay. All these pictures of Eric's dad as a wizard. Sure.

We touched on that book last week. Okay, so I've mocked out the offensive. Okay, hold on. Oh, boy. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh Yeah

Also, yeah Hold on The color, yeah, the color of the pee Is McDonald's orange Again, it's these specific pills they make you take Because they want to be able to see the line in the bag really clearly They don't want like see through yon They don't want, wow

Okay, because it's like, it's kind of brach Can I have it back? No, I'm still looking at it. Come on. I don't like this anymore. Can I have it back, man? Hi. Okay, the belt is made of like...

Rob, I'll send you the whole one with my penis so you can see the... Great. Two coming out. Great. Um, thought, so yeah. And then, so I got it out. And then I, I thought, oh, that's my only problem in life is this, this catheter. How did it smell?

There was any smells, but I didn't. Did I wrap up? Like, there's nothing more disconcerting than there's, like, yon. coming out around the tube. Yeah, that's uncommon. I'm like, what's happening? Why is there, shouldn't the urine be coming through this hose? What's wrong with the hose of the hose blocked?

Why am I able to push yarn? Were you worried you were going to get it in the tube? No, no. I've had some follow-up questions throughout this process, but these ones are definitely the best. What about, um, was it warm? The pee on your leg? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And that feel kind of good. I mean, it was really hard to enjoy anything. The other thing I was living in, like, abject fear of is like, fuck, I hope I don't get a boner. That's what, oh, you mean during it. Oh. With this holes in, like, sometimes you're sleeping and you just,

you have an erotic dream and you wake up. Morning wood. And I'm like, is it going to jerk? What part of the tubes is it going to do? Huh, interesting. I'm sure there's some slack so that it... Kristen did not think this was a thing, but Eric and I thought it was a thing. I was texting with him most.

He had to deal with most of my complaints. Sure. And I said, Eric, I'm not going to masturbate, but don't you think they should have told me I can't? Maybe you can. Oh, my God. I mean, seriously, some people have catheters in, like, for life. Like, I'm sure they have to masturbate. I don't think you can.

And then also, where is the semen coming from? It doesn't come from your bladder and you have a two, like, your vast deference. Your vast deference is the muscle that's like pumping and pushing. The semen out. Anyways. What I said to Eric is. The semen would go through the catheter. Well, the thing is I don't think it can because I don't think the semen goes into your bladder

and then out your earie for somehow. It would leak out the way the. Yeah, so man can ejaculate while using. Okay, Rob's pulled up. And indwelling urinary catheter. He Googled it. Though it requires specific consideration, depending on the type of catheter, the individual's comfort level, mine was low. And the desired sexual activity, mine was low.

While intermittent catheters used for self-catherization are removed before sex, indwelling folly catheters can be kept in place, a sub-repubic catheter, which enters the bladder through the abdomen. of preferred for sexual activity as it doesn't interfere with inner cords. Okay. So if you have one for a long time, they probably give you a specific kind so you can have sex and masturbate.

But yours was only a couple days. And I was living in like absolute fear, fear of that happening. Sure. To the degree that I was like, oh, I might give myself one because I'm so afraid of. That's what I was about to say

when you were talking about getting it inserted. Like this is what happens during waxes. like it's so uncomfortable but they're like there's a little worry like what if you get visibly yeah and not because you're you're into it but just because like you're you're convinced you're worried you're so afraid of it you might manifest your self-sabotage yeah so anyways i got it out okay great oh more than that i was bold i went out to eat on saturday night i was like fuck this i'm going No, no. You did? Yes, and I had to walk, I had to walk like a grampi. I could only walk like a step, like eight inch steps at a time. Yeah. Did we, where it was going to fall out of your pants? Sure. But that I knew it wouldn't happen because the balloon would catch it and if you start pulling my bladder through my body. So I was more nervous about that. Like, am I going to feel, you know, we had an armchair anonymous nurse talking about a patient who ripped his catheter out with the balloon inflated. I kept thinking of that the whole weekend. Oh my God. Now, When I just saw that picture, it kind of reminded me of my water babies.

Oh, sure, sure, sure. And I grew up, you know, and I would make babies out of those grocery bags. And then I filled with water and cared around and it would be my water baby. That kind of looked like a water baby. Yeah. Oh, another interesting thing is I was, the one thing I was excited about, I was like, oh, cool. I kind of had my dream. I don't have to get up to go pee in the middle of night.

So I was looking forward to that. Yeah. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night, like 4 a.m. And I'm like, fuck, I have to pee so bad. What's going on? I have this bag on. Yeah. Lift up my pant leg.

It's 100% full. Oh. So it's 100% full. So I am trying to relieve it, but it's just backing up another bottle. So now I am feeling like I have to pee. So now I'm rushing to the bathroom, not to pee, but to fucking empty my bag. Monica, this is over. I might get fired from the acting job that I got once it's

sweet okay wait go ahead did it out but was it a relief as soon as they put it in at least like then like because you were all backed up with pee no and I you know my stubbornness I maintain I probably didn't need that I could have it's not like and then on my subsequent videos it to get it removed they were looking at the amount of urine that was in my bladder when I got it. She said, well, that's it. There wasn't a ton of urine. And I was like, yeah, I think

it would be. Anyways, who cares? Um, did they find out what happened? We'll get to that. Okay. I mean, they don't find out what happened, but all my blood stuff comes back and I have all kinds of different things going on. But I just wanted to finish by saying, I had in my mind, I was going to feel like a million dollars when I got this catheter out on Sunday. And then I got the catheter out and I got home and I was like, oh, I still feel like shit, you know, I still have a massive infection. I'm still on like, showing antibiotics. And I'm on really heavy ones now. Got it.

That make you not feel good. So some of the results, one is E. coli was in my UTI. I said that. You did not want to hear it, but I did say that. UTI. I think prostateus. Okay. Infection.

E. coli. Weird. in the mix. But you didn't have any tummy troubles. I never had honest, no, or throw up. But I had had a piece, did you ever tell you that part that right before I got the fever, I'd had a piece of bacon? Elk? Yeah, elk. That Kristen had cooked while I was away. And I was like, that was in the fridge too long. I took some, a bite and I was like, I think we should throw this way. I don't think this is good. So I had eaten. So you had one bite of it. Just one bite. Well, then maybe that was. And threw it away. So I don't fucking know, Monica.

Like what, I asked about my, they're not carbonegos. I call them carbongles, but I don't even think I actually have carbone. I asked about those. The doctor says it's completely unrelated. He looked. He's like, there's nothing happening. Did he say they're okay? Yeah, he looked and said there's nothing cooking here.

Because I was like, I saw, I diagnosed you with something. You know, what do you have me on? Mercer. Right. You have me on Mercer. And then he said, now that thing, Mercer is very common when you cite. and wear tight clothes. So he did recommend I use a surgical soap when I cycle.

I am disgusting. I sound like a complete petri dish. No, it's fine. You're just a person. You're just saying that to egg me on. It's like, say it more. Do they tell you that they found anal wards all over my face? They did?

No. Oh, wow. No. Okay, wait, but Mercer is scary. Like, remember when Mercer was this huge, there was a huge thing in the hospitals and they were quarantined and stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

I think there's degrees of it. But yes, all to say, I was a little sad that I didn't, like, spring back to full health. Sure. I think it's going to be a longer process than I normally like. I'm impatient. I want to feel good. I'm exhausted all day. Okay.

So you're on antibiotics. You're washing with Mercer soap. No, I haven't gotten that yet. Oh, okay. But I'll get that. Okay. And you miss your pee bag a little bit. No. No. No. But again, chickens coming home to Roost. The other thing I was thinking is I took a Uber home from the hospital on Thursday. And there's a line in chips where Steve Agee's a cab driver. And he goes to pick me up, my character. And it's in front of the emergency room at the hospital. Agee's character goes, hold on before you get in. You don't have any fucking leaky tubes or bags or anything. Do you?

And because I made fun of people That might have tubes and leaky bags I gave myself one And then the making front of the caffeine cowboy Yeah So man the chickens they're home They're rooose roosting Simmy sim sim

Wow Yeah what are your thoughts about all this Oh I mean I love it I mean I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry that it was painful and uncomfortable And did it So I had a catheter

put in when I got my eggs frozen. Oh, you did. Yeah, and I didn't know. They told me after they had to do that. Okay. And it hurt after to pee so bad for a while. So does it hurt still? Because it's like sore.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sucks. Yeah, it's the whole thing sucks. I am insistent. I am willing. Okay.

That I am going to wake up Thursday morning somehow. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to feel a million bucks, like a million bucks. I think you will. But I think you need to be smart about these next few days if you want that to be true. This isn't just going to happen like a miracle. Right. You need to be careful with how you're treating your body over the next few days.

I'm taking my medicine. Take it easy. Oh, I left out a silver lining. I was in the guest house for three days by myself and I got to watch a lot of TV. Oh, yeah. And guilt free. Yeah. So I can really only watch so much and I start getting mad at myself.

Sure. This was like, go for it. And I watched the entire house of Guinness. Oh, fun. Stephen Knight, Peaky Blinders. Yes, yeah. It's very peeky blinders. Oh, fun.

And it makes you want to drink Guinness so bad. So I ordered Guinness NAs. Oh, fun. And at night I get in my bed with my tube hanging out of my dick and I would have my little pint glass and I let it breathe the way they said in the show. And you watch your program. Yeah, and I'd sit my Guinness with my piss tube in. Wow. And I really liked it.

This is a ding, ding, ding. Why? Because this, we talk about Guinness on Sharon. Oh, yes, we do. We do. That's right. Yeah, that's exciting. Their N.A. is really good.

That's great. Not as good as Ted Seeger's. Well, that's as good as Ted Seeger. That's what they say. That's what they're saying. Everybody. Stay tuned for more. Or armchair expert, if you dare.

Wow. Well, that is harrowing. You went through a lot. How was your weekend? My weekend was good because while you were going through that at the same day, actually, Taylor Swift dropped her album. Oh, I know. I listened.

Okay, yes. Yes. Yes. So how does one eventize a whole day? Like, what was your whole, what was your day? Now, I'm, dedicated to that, right? Well, so it dropped Thursday at, I guess, midnight East Coast. So nine hour time, which, you know, there are, there are moments in life where I feel is just so, so, so grateful to be on the West Coast.

For the time. Yeah. Yeah. This is one. Super Bowl. Super Bowl is always one. I'm always very grateful. Now, so I.

was working editing. I must have been because I didn't have time to listen that night. And I'm on a group text, okay, with three other swifties. Two are, Molly, uh-huh, Molly, Jake, and Audra. Okay. Two, well, one is the biggest swiftly I have in the world. Okay. And people are going to be so mad at me for saying that because I'm like, no, I am. And then. That's Jake. Yeah, Jake. Molly is number two. She's very, she's very, she's very high, up on the Swifty scale. Yep. Audra and I are some deviations below that.

Uh-huh. But love her so much, obviously. Yeah. So anyway, I'm like trying to not really look at my phone because these texts are. They started at nine. They started listening. They're coming in. They're talking about each song.

Yeah. I was like, oh, fuck. Like, I don't know what anyone's talking about. Yeah. So I start listening Friday around to West Coast time. And, and it's fun. It's easy listening. Yeah, it comes out.

It's, it's very easy to consume. It's very, yeah, this is Taylor Swift. It's, it's breezy. It's, it's, it's poppy. Like, it's, it's fun. I enjoy it a lot. Yeah. I.

While we're inching closer to someone, we're like crawling, we're crawling. No, I love her so much. We're making our way to, like, the edge of the cliff where the back guys might be able to see us, We can take a piece. I know. I mean, yeah, this is one of those things. You can't say anything, but I'm gonna. Like, I thought it was great.

I've been listening to it a lot. It's, it's fun. And is it a show or a grower? Is it like the more you listen or the more you appreciate it? The more I listen, the more I like the sound. Uh-huh. But the lyrics for you are not hitting the way some of them have. Yeah.

So the reason she's so. special to me is because of her poetry, the way she writes. I do think this album isn't the best lyrically of hers. Okay. That's okay. Not everything has to be the best. Yeah, yeah. There's one song on their father figure that I think is Michael's. Is George Michaels. Yes, he's credited on it. I think that is quintessential Taylor lyrics. I think it's so smart and good. It has this great turn and I love it. Yeah.

I love it. But the rest are kind of like... They're fun. They're just fun. Yeah. And that's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a song.

I don't know if you've heard about already all the like drama. There's drama. Please tell me. Okay. There's a song that's about... So romantic? Actually romantic. Actually romantic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is it about? Is it about KZZ Swigs? Charlie X, X, X. Charlie X. Yeah, you're really dating. You in the bag. That's a lot.

That's a lot of. It pairs nicely with my piss bag. Charlie XX is seemingly about her. It's not a nice song. You know, it is not a nice song. Well, okay. Now, great. There's already I've heard that.

That's not how I've, heard the reaction. Really? What have you heard? Well, the reaction is like, what a cool way to turn this endless you're this I'm into like, I'm kind of flattered by your obsession. It's actually quite romantic that you're thinking about me that much. I know.

Which is a little catty. It's so catty. It's so catty. Look, by the way, it is a bop. Like I, and I'm kind of, I feel very personally conflicted about this because I really like the sound of this and I like find myself singing really grooving to it. Yeah. Moving your hips and your shoulders. And yet I am fundamentally kind of like, you're the most famous person.

You don't need to do it. You just don't need to do that. Really quick. Yeah. I think this is where you're seeing tension between the internal identity and the external. identity. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, she's the biggest pop star to ever be.

Yes. This is below her. Yeah. But to me, it's like she'll always be the mid-level kid in school. That's who she feels. Yeah, she will always be that in her heart, like a mid-level kid in school. And I don't know anything about Charlie X-E-X. But the name makes me think she feels like that she's owning her sexuality.

And is that I literally haven't seen a picture. She's just like cool, right? She's cool. Yes. She's cool. So when your internal identity is stuck in eighth grade and someone who's cool, then you don't, you lose sight of the fact that, no, actually I won the bigger war and this is kind of below me. This is my dissonance. When I am the boss of 100 people on a set of a movie, it is really hard for me to understand that. It shouldn't be, but it is. I know. I'm against the principal at high school and the, and the boss.

So the B1 is so confusing. Yes. I understand. And that's exactly. I think actually that is a through line through this whole album. I think there's a lot. There are parts of it that to me read like all these cool kids rejected me. And so I'm kind of swinging back into this other direction.

Or just this like Hollywood didn't like me. So I'm choosing a simple life. Uh-huh. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it that is funny because for me, I'm just like, oh, I know that's how you, that is how you perceive what's going on. And that's your, that's your internal stuff to work on because that is not true. You're a billionaire because the world showed up for you, the world, not just middle America, the coast. Everyone voted, you know, and everyone picked you. But I also, yes, it's endearing.

We all just have stuff that we have to work on. But I do think if you are at that level, you have a bigger responsibility than most to work on it or to have someone tell you like, hey, you're punching down. I know you don't, you can't see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you objectively are. But can I, can I devil's advocate that? Mm-hmm. And I don't, I don't really have an opinion on it.

I don't know enough about the players and I know. But my devil's advocate argument would be like, no, no, your obligation as an artist is actually right about whatever you're going through and not try to be, like, not try to be the person you're hoping to be in three years. And maybe in three years she'll be what you wanted this to be. But she's clearly annoyed and it's taking up space in her head that this girl wrote this song about her. And that's the reality of what she's processing.

Right. And in that way, I think that's the exact song she should write. And then maybe in a year, she'll be able to look back like I got that venom out of my system and that was below me. I should have been above that. And that'll be a part of the process. And then hopefully she'll put that experience on the next album. But my devil's advocate would simply be like, no, I don't think you should ever write for who you should be. I think you should write for exactly what you are right now and what you're going through.

And you've got to like live with the mistakes that are inherent. Yeah. I mean, I think you're right about. that I don't I think she should write to anything she wants to write yeah yeah what you choose to put out in the world when you are yeah you just that you're saying it's not the most attractive look whether it you support her right to do it yeah exactly of course it's her right she can do whatever she wants but it's to me it's like own that unfairly or fairly it's it's going to be a little hard for me to say unfairly when it comes with a lot of prizes is that when this has happened

these are girls she gave a shot to yeah she feels betrayed yeah so that's deep right it's very deep and i have people i want to i have plenty of things i want to say and i never will yeah yeah and i am not her that's the other it's like if i don't get to then you surely can't this is what's great too is obviously we see in each other what we see what we're struggling with ourselves And I would say, you are her, actually. And I don't know that you, I can, it's hard to update. Well, I'm not her. We have to be very, we just literally have to look at our Instagram following and be

realistic. I'm not trying to be her. Oh, I know. I'm just saying, I think you should identify with it because I think it's hard to onboard. But all to say, I feel a responsibility. Like, and there are things I would love to say to the world that, I'll never, ever, ever say to the world. Sure.

And it is, because it's, it's not the right thing to do. It's not going to make the world better. It's not. It's not going to make the world better. And it's causing pain for no reason. And that's for me to deal with in therapy. Not, you know, again, or write about it, do whatever. But to put it out is a real, real, real choice.

Last counter. Just thought of it. There's nothing in the history of rap that's been better for the industry than the feuds. Dis tracks, yes. They fuel everything. Yep. This whole Drake and, I mean, I would not be surprised if we saw them having lunch in Italy

somewhere. Sure. I mean, really. Yeah. And you, now that a lot of these rappers are long past that phase, you'll hear ice. Like, Jay-Z's writing songs back in the day for, you know, East Coast, West Coast. Yeah. Jay-Z's writing a dray song, his most popular song.

Like, none of that, a lot of that was not real. And it was great for business. Is it possible that Taylor's like, yeah, this is below. below me, but like, this is part of the game. This is part of the product. And so now Charlie XEX gets to write a counter song to this one. And that thing will pop. And this thing popped.

And maybe it's just business. Look, she is a business genius. A true business genius. She's a mastermind. I would not be shocked if, yes. Also, look, this album is happy. She's happy right now. And that's amazing.

I want that for her. That's what I want to get to. She's happy. And that is clear, right? And there are songs that aren't happy, father figure and this, that I almost feel like she's so happy that she almost has to find, like she has to find the fuel again. Like maybe manufacture a little bit. Or yeah. mix with like, oh yeah, what is bothering me? Oh, yeah. Charlie X-CX did this. Like, I don't know that

that's really on her mind all the time and I hope it's not. Yeah, yeah. But... This is so fun because normally I'm a little critical. I know. I love her and I love the album. This has been a fun reversal. Yeah. And it's been a joy. Well, because I can't. I'm not ever going to just be like... Blindly. Blindly. So I was listening nonstop. So Eric and Molly came over on Sunday, and I wanted to hear her opinion again. As we know, she's the number one top tier, Swiftie. Yep. So I was asking what she thought of all the tracks.

And she was saying, you know, on this one. She loves the album. And I said, you know, there is a sad truth to art. And I experience it. And I'm aware of it, which is, I'm going to have even said this, you know, a few episodes. I'm watching it and run. And this is so cocky to say. but it's true.

I'm feeling so much pride over the script. Forget everything else. And I'm just like, God, that was, that's as good as I could have done. You're proud of it. I'm very proud of it. Yeah. And then immediate next thought is,

I don't think I could write that. I wrote that script in two weeks. Mm-hmm. And I thought I just stepped on a dog. It was my backpack. I just was like, man, I don't think I could fucking write this. And it was the scariest feeling. And what I ended up coming up with is,

the only way I could write the sequel would be like, we start them divorced. And then we're figuring out what happened. Right. Because the most recent thing I can even remember is that turmoil of having children and how you both get lost. So I got to go back a bunch of years. But in general, I'm so lucky my life's pretty fucking good.

I'm not like, I'm not wrestling. Yeah. Demons. Pain, right? Yeah. Which I do think is the fall. of art. And so when we were in the song, I was saying, like, I applaud her if she can figure out

how to be creative, happily married, happily financially secure, accomplished her goals. I think that's a hard place to create from. And I was saying, like, if you look at her early music, like, if between 17 years old and 30, 70% of that audience is either looking to go out tonight to find love. or they're dealing with having lost it. Right. It's like a breakup or pursuit. There's a lot of emotional turmoil with relationships, with work.

Establishing yourself and your identity is in a career. Like all the main topics that drive pop music, unfortunately, she's just not, she's no longer embroiled in. She's not dealing with a huge breakup. She's not dealing with getting love or falling love. She's like stable. And it's not, yeah. So, you know, it's a challenge. It's a challenge.

but I also think you, like even you, everyone is wrestling with stuff. And you do have to be introspective about that. Like your age or your relevance. I agree. I left that part out. So I'm definitely wrestling with stuff, but it's stuff that a very small percent of the potential audience is wrestling with. That's what happens is your potential audience narrows and narrow.

So like mine right now is like existential work identity loss. Yeah. But that's, but that is not narrow. I think a good artist makes something very specific, very universal. And I think that she is the capacity to do that and does that. Like, she's writing about John Mayer, one person. And yet that song resonates with so many people. And it's specific. It is talking about his chess game. And so many people are like, I have what. I know that person. I have this. I understand it.

And same with these things as we get older, too. But I think she'll write a motherhood album. I do too. Yes. And I think that'll appeal deeply to whatever percentage of young people are mothers. But again, it's not this like, 100% of people are looking for love in their 20s. Right. You know, that's just, I think the fact.

And like all the pop songs are about love. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And it's obviously the most common. So the next thing she'll be able to do that has the broadest appeal will be to write a like a really revealing and truthful album about motherhood. Mm-hmm. But again, it's just a much tiner when no one in their 20s is really. But again, I don't. You don't like that.

I don't think it's true. I think it's the most obvious. It's the most obvious thing going on. But there are deep things going on. with all of us all the time. And if you choose to deep dive into those things, like eldest, there's a song on there called eldest daughter. And like that is, well, I think some people think that's about him, but I don't think it is at all. About who?

About Travis. Like, or connecting it to Travis. But I don't. I think it's about the responsibility of being the eldest daughter. And it's like, there are things. Like, we're just so, we're multifaceted. We are. But you could look at our most prolific songwriters.

There's a bell curve. And then you've got to ask yourself, why is there a bell curve? Does is her brain deteriorate? Are they losing their creative? I don't think that's it. Yeah. And then there are some artists that stay, but also look at their lives. There are people that never leave the cycle of love addiction.

And they can be writing about heartbreak and obsession into their 60s. Right. And so, yeah, if you want to keep. your life a mess, which some people did. But I think in general, if you look at people that kind of like, they deal with all these big, mercurial events in life, I do think you just look at the output disappear. And also, that's, that's probably okay. That's, that's, that would be the hard part to get to. Like, that would be my song or my script today, which so few people would, they're not a place in their life they would understand. I was like, can I let all that go and still love myself

and think I have value and let go something I work so hard to get. Like, that's where I'm at in life. Right. Could I make that message broadly appealing? That's the challenge. Yeah. That would be the challenge. Anyway.

Any whom? Okay, let's do some facts. Okay, great. I want to say Hogan. I'm going to be honest with you. Interesting. I have these little hiccups with people's names sometimes, and this is one of them. In my mind, it's Sharon Hogan.

I know why. It's because there's two R's and that's, confusing. Sharon Hogan. And what's Hulk Hogan's wife's name? Or daughter? Rob? I have no idea. You don't know off the top of your head with the Hulkster's family?

Candice Hogan? Brooke Hogan, Sky, Linda, Jennifer. He's had a lot of wives. There's no reason then. Oh, also he's passed. I forgot. Yeah, yeah, we lost him.

Yeah. It's sad when people die. He entertained a generation, man. He really did. Oh, fuck. He really did. I love the Hulkster when I was a little boy. Yeah. I really did.

What a character. He body flammed Andre the Giant. It's a 500-pound man. I wonder if when he did that if Andre took a fart. When he landed, I'm almost certain he took a fart. Yeah, I think he took it. Do you ever see the memes about Andre the Giant, how many beers he drank? I know in the dock they talked about it.

I don't remember. But there's these claims that seem to be substantiated that he drank like 126 beers in one's a day. And I'm just like, I'm like, I understand. And then he's 500 pounds, but 126, that's, that's 10, 12 packs and a six pack. And it's, it's not like shots. It's like, that's liquid. Five cases of beer. No, I do not believe that.

I think of my farts he took. Ew. Oh, man. This is a ding, ding, ding. Uh-oh. Farts. Do turkeys poop more than other farm animals? Oh.

Turkeys do not necessarily poop more than other farm animals in terms of total volume, but they do poop very frequently. The larger and heavier an animal is, the more waste it generally produces. A turkey's waste output differs significantly from that of a cow or pig, both in volume and how it's concentrated. Like chickens, turkeys have a fast-working metabolism that causes them to excrete waste often as frequently as every 20 to 30 minutes. Okay. Wow, yeah, you were right. We're watching this nature show about dolphins, the girls and I. Uh-huh.

And this very, very assertive bird lands on the boat. And the guy's just staying there doing his two-camera thing. And also, this bird just lands. And it comes right up to his face. Like, I've never seen a more confident bird. It was not afraid of this human at all. That's nice. And then it's sitting there and they kind of are getting a bang out of it.

And then it just goes, like, it just sprays. It sprays bird poop on the front of the boat. And then it does, like, four more squirts throughout the thing. And I'm like, I fucking hate how they squirt their poop. And then it brought back PTSD of that woman in the grocery store that we saw. Oh, my God. We pulled her jersey. We didn't see.

We saw a video. We did not see him first. She pulled her jersey material shorts to the side and just squirted like a goose on the floor of a. In the middle of the grocery store. I mean, what? And like, we have a high tolerance for poop stories. And like, we understand that sometimes you have to Tonka. But this was so just like go outside.

Yeah. Grab. I mean, also, like, here's what I would have done. If it was like that and it was that desperate, she was in the vegetable section, grab one of the plastic bags that are everywhere around you and squirt into that. She didn't care about others. At all. Yeah. She had no regard for anyone. I feel like if you're going to do that, you liked it. Like, you enjoyed it. It's a kink. Although we have had some armchair anonymous stories where people do crazy stuff. when they have to poop.

And they're just like, my brain wasn't working. They're good people. And they're good people. They're really good people. So I don't know, but I, it is such a disturbing video. Yeah, the waste, this bird was just, it's squirting. It's so gross. And they're so smug about it.

Yeah. Okay. The waste called hot manure is very high in nitrogen and phosphorus compared to most other livestock manure. Cattle, the sheer size of cattle, means they produce a much greater volume of manure per day than turkeys. A large dairy cow can produce more than 100 pounds of manure daily. A hundred, you? Yeah.

A cow shits you out every day. Every day. Compared to a turkey's fraction of a pound. So they're doing a lot, but tini's. Yeah. Interesting. When I watch nature shows, I'm just so grateful that I'm an omnivore because if you're a, herbivore, you have to eat so much to get any calories out of it.

There's just no calories and hey, you have to eat a bale of hay and then dump a monica. Does hay have fiber in it? I seem to have, yeah, I think it has a lot of fiber. Oh my God, imagine the constipation. Yeah. Okay. And then it's got to go through their four chambered stomach because it's like impossible to break down.

Oh. Okay, I did a little more research on this. Yeah. While the largest individual poop comes from blue whales and elephants. Oh, yeah. Animals that poop the most frequently are small energy-intensive creatures, like some birds, ding, ding, ding, 40 times a day. Oh, my God.

Rabbits 200 to 300 times a day. No. And penguins six to eight times an hour. How are their butts not so raw? I hate rabbit poop. I don't hate it. I'm just so confused. Is that their food or the poop?

Because their food looks identical to their turtles. Yeah, how can they tell? They probably. They don't. They can't tell. Oh, they probably don't. Ew. Okay.

The last thing I'll say about doody. Okay. Because I just said it getting off the commode the other morning, Saturday morning. I said, I was about to, I was flushing and I was like, it is is funny how disgusting we think it is when it is food. That's all you're looking at. You're looking at food. Yeah. But mixed with.

It's not like you're looking at, you know, a carcass. Like, it's just, it's just. It's just the food that you thought looked so good when you were putting it in your mouth. And now it, you know, nothing, that's its food. No, but it's mixed with like bacteria and stinky bile and stuff. Yeah, I know. It's just, it is just food. It's good that we're not, that we don't think it's just food because it is bad for,

if we ate it, it would be very bad for us because of bacteria. So we don't need to get confused like the rabbits. I have a hunch. We have, once we started living in such compact society, that's when diseases started spreading a ton. When we started living with animals, these are when like all these really wild pathogens. So I wonder if when we were hunting and gathering,

if we had the same aversion to duty. Because again, no other animal does. They like go right up to each other while the other ones. They also, though, ate differently than we eat now. So the ways we're producing is so much more complicated than they were just eating like natural foods. I think I'm meaning kind of like they ate, which is just like a tremendous.

tremendous amount of meat. But you would put mustard on it. I do. But that's a seed. It's a seed. Yeah, but the kind of you eat isn't just mustard seed. It's made into a paste sauce. I have no idea what kind of mustard I mean.

Sugar. Actually, there's probably not added sugar. But whatever, it's not, it's not pure. Okay. I love mustard. Yeah, it's a great condiment. Great for salad dressings. Okay.

Oh, to the point that has she made the most shows. Aaron Spelling holds the Guinness World Records for Record for the most prolific TV producer Having created over 4,500 hours of television programming by 2003 Whoa I saw this funny thing of Howard Stern Talking about the summer I turned pretty He loves it

Yeah, he loves a lot of like teen shows and stuff He's team Conrad for people who are wondering Okay Okay, so you said that your kid's school I'm not going to say what it is has more free lunch than any other school in the city. I couldn't, there was no, it wouldn't let me find that. Yeah, yeah.

But that school, that school, 45% of families qualify for free or reduced lunch. So that's a lot. Yeah. I feel like when I was in elementary school, you know, you knew the kids that were on welfare because they didn't have to pay for lunch. Like they, I forget what they had, but you'd be in line and you'd see it. And I think, you know, and I didn't grow up in like the fancy part of Michigan. Yeah.

I still think it was like only one in 15 or 20 kids was on the free lunch. I wonder what quality, like is it just family income, right? Yeah, it's just income. Yeah. Oh, shit. I forgot to find an important fact, which is where we stayed in London. It started with the C, but it was not. It's not clarege.

Claridge. Clareges. Nope, that's the same one we've been saying. Connaught. Nope. I've stayed there. That's a great hotel. Easer hotel.

Maybe it doesn't start with a C. Maybe it starts with an M. An M? What's that little area we're in? It was by the theater district. West End? Corinthia. Oh, wow.

That one would have even rung a bell for me. It was the Corinthia Hotel in London. That's where we stayed. And I don't think we went to the pub that she wanted. There's no way that was the pub. The pub we went into is like something that would be on the Jersey boardwalk. Yeah. Yeah.

It wasn't really authentic or nice. No. But it. They did serve Guinness on tap. That's all you can say about it. Yes. Speaking of, you know, we talked about drinking. And, you know, of course, yes, there are all these studies.

There's lots of debate about. How bad is it? Now, that is it. Yeah. And this Harvard article says, because, yes, there are, of course, bad things, but it also says everything in moderation. So, anyhow, that is it for facts.

Okay. God bless Sharon Horgan. She is a gift to us. Yes. Consume all of herself. She's so consistently great. Agree. Yeah. Right.

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