Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Ben McKenzie

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Ben McKenzie not only survived the 00s but also the glare of the spotlight. The actor shot to fame as a troubled teenager in the mega-hit series The O.C., which debuted the same year as another teen drama, One Tree Hill. Ben and Sophia share stories about what it was like being young and dealing with fame on their respective hit shows. Ben also opens up about being terrified of being put in the 'teen actor' box, being confused with his character, and meeting his wife, Morena Baccarin, on The O.C. set but not remembering! Plus, Ben dishes about showing his 7-year-old daughter The O.C. and her reaction to the show, his childhood dream of being a football player and how he ended up acting instead, and what inspired him to write the book, "Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello, Lipsmarties. I am so excited about today's guest because we're really taking a stroll down memory lane together. And that memory lane first begins at our intersection of hot teen TV shows in the early aughts. Ben McKenzie is here today. I am absolutely going to pick his brain about the era that both the O.C. and One Tree Hill launched in. I have so many questions for him about how that

time period felt in his life. And I'm also really excited to talk to him about Southland and Gotham, two shows that I think were just so incredible. He also has had such a beautiful film career. Junebug was one of my favorite movies ever and happened to be his film debut. He has worked on Broadway. And he's also managed to become a New York Times best-selling author. And not for, you know, a novel or a narrative story about a character, but for a research project that he found himself in the midst of during the pandemic, he realized he was kind of the perfect Mark for cryptocurrency. A dad stuck at home with some cash in his pocket, worried about his family, and becoming aware of this vague notion that all these people were supposedly making heaps of

money on something that he, despite having an economics degree, didn't really understand. So realizing that these sort of grandiose promises of a crypto utopia sounded like the plot of a film rather than anything based in reality, Ben decided to dive in. And he had to ask, am I crazy or is this a total scam? This led to him writing the New York Times best-selling book, Easy Money, cryptocurrency, casino capitalism, and the golden age of fraud. It is honestly such a fascinating conversation, and his earned expertise in this realm not only fascinates me,

but led to him testifying in front of the Senate. So I can't wait to talk to him about his journey from shooting a hot TV show on the beach playing a teen to testifying in front of the Senate on the darker sides of the deep web and our economy. Ben McKenzie is genuinely someone who fascinates me, who I feel so lucky to call a friend. And I think you guys are going to love this interview. Enjoy. Oh my goodness, what an amazing trip it is in the very best way to have you on the show today.

We were giggling kind of before we started recording about the fact that, you know, we grew up essentially together on TV in a really wild time. And it's so fun to see you now in your role, you know, as this wonderful man and husband and father and author. And I'm just like, we made it out, didn't we? We made it out, man. We made it out. It was, man, the early odds were wild, weren't that? It was such a weird time.

Yeah. I forget, how old were you when you got started on one tree hill? I had been 21. for, I want to say, 10 days or something? Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, you were even younger than me. How old were you when the OC started?

20s, early to mid-20s, a teenager. Okay, yeah. Yeah, no, the way that you do on network TV or did back then. Totally. Yeah, I graduated from college, and I was like, oh, I'll all try acting. and ended up in L.A. And to be on, I mean, I'm sure you can relate. Like, One Tree Hill, it was One Tree Hill in the O.C.

And it was like being shot out of a cannon. It was really strange. Totally. And I remember thinking about you guys a lot. Because, you know, I grew up in L.A. And I went to college here. And then I had to leave to shoot the show. And you guys were here, like, in the thick of it.

And we had our own set of. mess from being so isolated in this tiny little bubble together but then you guys you know you sort of had the whole big city at your fingertips but i imagine that was also super weird yeah exactly it's like good and bad right yeah you're in the middle of it which is fun but also a little a little uh a little dangerous or a little um you know you're just you're on display right like you're you're doing this thing, that you're still learning how to do. I mean, we're always learning how to do stuff. I feel like you learn every day.

But particularly at that moment, I had no experience. I didn't really know what it was all about. And so doing that in a public way, you know, in Los Angeles, it's quite the trip. Yeah. Yeah, it must have been a while to be in North Carolina and be on TV and sort of, I'm sure, in that town, you were like, Yeah. Rock stars. Well, and the thing I think that was the weirdest about it, you know, Wilmington's really a college town. So everybody around was just a little younger than us. And then it's also a very popular place to retire because it's so beautiful. So it was sort of like, I remember this moment where the girls and I were like, are we supposed to date like a college kid or are we supposed to like actually not run away creeped out by like these retired golf dads that are like our grandfather's age that are looking for their round two or three trophy wives. Like, what are we going to do here, man? It was so,

everything was just a little bit weird. But I did really love it. And I, I have so much nostalgia for Wilmington ever since. Like, it's one of my favorite places to go back and visit. So I will say that was sort of a cool thing for us about a location. It does feel like this place that's very precious to us. Well, I love that we have that very weird era of teen television in common, but I actually, I really like to ask people questions that go like a little further back, not just necessarily beginning of career, but I think when you become a public figure, whether it's like we did in our 20s or you're doing the incredibly cool work you're doing now, people meet you as a public person, a successful adult. And I'm always really curious if,

because they say hindsight's 20-20, right? Like if you look back at your childhood, if you could rewind and see Ben as an eight-year-old kid or a nine-year-old kid, did you want to tell stories? Did you want to write books? Like, do you see the throughline of the person you are today in who you were as a child? or were you a completely different kid and everything sort of happened by accident? Right. Now I can see the through line from my family, but at the time, I wanted to play football. Really? I was like, yeah, I was Texas football fanatic.

I played through high school. I think in sixth grade, I did a play. and I had a great time but then I went and I was at a private school and then I went to a public high school and you know

it felt at the time in the 1990s in Texas that I had to like pick you know it was and it was no competition for me at the time I really wanted to play football and I didn't have the bravery to like also try to act at the same time. It really wasn't on my radar so I only got back into it in college

But growing up, my mother is a former English teacher and now a poet, and my father's a lawyer, and I have an uncle who's a screenwriter. So I didn't have any direct connection to Hollywood, but I knew the value of words and of stories. And I saw my uncle wrote a play that was on Broadway when I was like 12. okay um and we made the big trek from from texas and i have two younger brothers my mother bought us matching sports jackets so we would like look all nice for the theatrical experience yeah um my uncle's play is a seven hour long play it's a notoriously yeah oh boy called the kentucky cycle you watch first chunk like three or four hours you have dinner and you come back um it's a whole experience and i was riveted i was

captivated. And so I think that was a clear, you know, signal. But really only looking back on it, really didn't really get, get into it until college, until I was about 18. But that was also kind of random, just like saw a play, was holding auditions, had an amazing time. A guy who had become a friend, had decided to do Romeo and Juliet with the capulets being played by black actors and the Montague's played by white actors. And first of Virginia, where I went to school, is a very racially self-segregated school. That's like a sort of a really awful racial past. And it's present. I mean, I guess I haven't been there a while, so I don't know what it is now, but even in the 90s or early 2000s, it was pretty self-segregated. And so we

did this production of Romeo and Juliet, I played the friar. It was not Romeo. Good clarification there. Yeah, it became a thing, though. It became, we got this huge hall, like it wasn't in the drama department, but we got this huge, I guess it was normally a lecture hall, and hundreds of people showed up every night, and we made like the CBS National News. And I was like, wow, this is really amazing. You can tell a story, and people will listen. I think that's, when I got hooked. Yeah. That's so cool.

And what an interesting thing, too, that a, you know, a classic she experienced story could be so relevant. And also shine a light on, you know, an issue in your community that everyone was aware of and perhaps didn't know how to talk about, but could talk about through art. Yeah. Yeah. And I met people doing the show that I,

during the play that I never would have met, which is strange, right? Because you're literally passing them every day. But because of the sort of the nature of the school, it just didn't happen. But then I was like, the guy that played to his father was the safety of the football team? This is like a D1 school. So he is like absolutely jacked, huge. And I remember doing a drinking contest with him at one point. which was a really bad idea.

Ill-fated choice, huh? Ill-fated choice, but lots of bonding going. Lots of bond. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, it was cool. And so then I just kept kind of doing it in college. And I still got my degrees and other things, but I was just in the drama department a lot,

doing plays and stuff. Yeah. Well, the economics degree will, you see the through line now with the book, which we'll get to. But from college and really leaning into theater, Is that what motivated you to move to L.A.? To really give it a try?

Kind of. Although I actually moved to New York first. I graduated in 01. I did Summerstock Theater at Williamstown Theater Festival, which is great. I've always wanted to do that. It's great. You've got to do it something. Like now you can, like, do it right.

They'll, like, give you a little house. And, I mean, they don't pay you, but, you know, it's a great experience. Yeah, Williamstown is this revered theater festival in Massachusetts, Western Mountain. It's absolutely beautiful. It's where, you know, Williams College is, this is a little college town. And I got the equivalent of an internship there. And, you know, so you're like sort of, you're building the sets, you're striking the sets. You're doing kind of all of the ground work and, like, you might get a couple lines or something.

All these amazing actors from New York theater were up there performing. I remember seeing Sam Rockwell and Jocco Ivonik. Joke, I forget how, what Jokko's last name was. Anyway, they did The Dumb Wader and Zoo Story as a duo where they would like flip parts every other night. Wow. Two-handed plays for those listening that are sort of iconic and looks like actors and people always do them in auditions and stuff. And they were performing them. And they were just, I mean, it's just phenomenal, just sort of off the.

off the charts um so i i started i started there um kind of just getting a sense lay of the land and then i moved to new york in august of 2001 um like two weeks later nine eleven happened um wow yeah it was weird and and i was waiting tables and i was trying to get work there wasn't a lot of work to be had obviously given the situation and particularly if you were starting out you know um and so early the next year I moved to L.A. on the advice of a friend, a friend of my uncle, who kind of let me crash on his floor and auditioned a lot, got nothing. And a year later, I got the Ossary. So, yeah, it was a circuitous journey to get in there. Sure. Well, you know, it's like they say, it takes 10 years to become

an overnight success. You know, people don't know how much of a grind it really is to become a working actor and then to remain one. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. Was it jarring for you? I mean, I know we touched on this a little bit earlier, sort of laughing about what a crazy time it was, but was it jarring to just be catapulted into that level of, you know, fame, attention. You were in L.A. So you guys were, you were getting tailed by paparazzi it was the some say the golden age I'd call it like the horror age of gossip

blogs like everything was just so ugly was it I know it was really hard for me as a woman because you know misogyny but I can't imagine it it was less hard for you even as a man it's got to be pretty shocking

to be you know shoved into the deep end like that you does it does I do remember a feeling like oh I'm like I'm a commodity like I'm a thing right like they've done that with us I think it's a far worse for women and still is but even then it was like put on the Ryan atwood clothes and do the hair and like you know then they're going to sell magazines or they're going to um you know you're just you're just out there in a way where before you were totally private um no one cared and now

it's hard to feel that they really care about you as a person because they don't know you as a person. They care about this thing that's been created, which, you know, you're proud of, but is, yeah, it was a very strange experience. And I was the oldest member of the cast and it was the one who'd gone through college. And I was like, this is very strange, you know, like, this is really fun. But I was terrified. I was like, it's going to end at some point. And then I've got to, like, get the next job. and like I've got to like sort of you know I was terrified of getting like sort of put in that teen idol actor box which a lot of people yeah right yeah did you have this utter feeling I mean I don't know what it was like oh my god yeah it was so it was very surreal and and honestly kind of scary for me and you forget that people don't know you know you

You know, they really project. And I realized how separate the projection was for me on our show versus my life. Actually, not that long ago, my girlfriends that I did the show with, during the pandemic, we started a rewatch podcast. A, because we were trapped in our homes and we wanted to be working. And B, because we all were like, we sort of have some trauma from this thing. Like, we have love and great memories, but there's also a lot of weird shit. Maybe we could work through it together. And I made this remark about how shocking it was to land in this world where I'd just turned 21. I was playing this, you know, archetype of the popular girl in high school. And like, I'd had three years of co-ed college, but I had come from a really small all-girl

school. There were 55 girls in my graduating class. And the 55 of us were together from 7th through 12th grade. And Hillary and Joy were like, oh my God. Oh, my God. Of course you were so uncomfortable. We didn't even put it together. Like, you never did high school with boys. You never had any of these experiences. And then, you know, I was the one who was playing this like very sexed up cheerleader. And I was just like, I'm really uncomfortable, you guys. But I had to learn to kind of navigate like oh because i play this girl on tv people think i am this girl in my life and it was really yeah it was just really uncomfortable i remember of having these feelings of like it's so hard to create your own identity when all anyone knows of you is of course the thing

that you've you know and you're very grateful that it's happened but like of course they don't know you for you what would they know about you other than this role you're playing on t-th it was so hard to separate your identity. Well, and when you're trying to figure out who you are. Right, right. And then everyone's telling you who you are. And what we found, I don't know if you guys experienced this as the men in that world, but particularly as the women, we were very much assigned an archetype.

And then that was how we were treated in public, how we were treated in the press. And so for me, as a, you know, I'm the first person who wants to organize the outing. I'm everyone jokes that I'm like a cruise director in my friend group I'm a really social person I love community but I'm also really nerdy and sometimes intellectual to a fault and it was very strange to be like oh I'm being put in the super sexual like hot dumb girl space and then that's how that's how like stories about my life are being told in these magazines and this doesn't actually have

anything to do with me. And it was really surreal. And, and, you know, Hillary got cast as the, like, angry, like, tough girl. And Joy really got put into the space of, like, being the girl next door who has the voice of an angel, which, by the way, she does. So it's like, that blurred the line, right? Like, her music in her real life actually added to this assignment of this character for her and it we all were sort of like wait where do i what's mine and what's not mine and how do i claim my own identity here but i would imagine in ways i feel like we're finally starting to talk about the pressure that was also put on the boys like you guys were all expected to look like superheroes and be like these suave dudes and i don't know i i would imagine it was weird for you

too yeah yeah i mean i think i think it was it was was worse for um for but as in for it is still a heart for women um yeah i was also older but but but yeah it was strange kind of um thought of as this it was not for me because i was i was the bad boy quote unquote um but like not really who i am uh right you know i'm more of a dork um um um so it was sort of fun I think I knew enough, like I'd watched enough James Dean to be like, okay, I can like do a do a take here. Right. You know, a version of this.

But the trick was not to, like, in a way, I felt like the trick was to not buy into your own hype and to kind of like be able to separate your own identity from his character. It's so tricky, so difficult. Years of therapy. Oh, absolutely. Because not only do you have to not buy into your hype. hype. You also can't take personally what isn't true about you that circulates like wildfire. And that's hard to thicken your skin in a way, especially when your job as an actor is to be completely emotionally open. You're just like, who designed this system? It feels wrong.

Yeah, it feels it's, I mean, I think there's a reason why sort of the younger you start, the more difficult can be attained. because it's so, careers are so volatile. And creating your own understanding of who you are as a person, the thing that no one can take away from you. Yeah. Right. You are the things that you are versus the things that people perceive you to be based on whatever work you've done.

It's just so difficult. I think when you start off really young, like as a child actor, and you're getting that gratification. right you're rewarded every time you you know you dance you're a good good little monkey and you dance correctly you know it's a really messed up system well i think it's probably gotten better hopefully since we were there but i don't know i hope so i don't want to be like a total downer about it either because you know i know i said this for for my experience certainly and i imagine you have this you probably also have amazing memories like and and i i don't know if you

have relationships with, you know, the folks you worked with. But what are the good memories? Like when I say that to you, what are the things that start popping in your head that were amazing about that first work experience? It was amazing. It was a blast. I mean, we were, we'd throw these big party scenes and there would be, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of people there. And Adam and I got along like, you know, like a house on fire, particularly in the early days. when it was just like, there was like this brief period when we'd shot the pilot, Fox saw it and was like, quick, get it on the air, build the sets, da-da-da-da-da.

But like at least we had a summer where we were able to kind of, you know, it was sort of like feeling like you're on the edge of a wave and it's going to like get to shore. But like for the moment, you can just kind of, you know, zen out. Yeah, I remember, I remember, I don't know, I had a really, really good time just kind of, Also figuring out how to act on camera. I had no experience, really, almost literally none.

So I remember going to the camera truck at lunch and the DP would let me watch takes so that I could just like see what it looked like. And that was really helpful. Like at a certain point, I needed to not do that because then it can become too sort of self-refer. referential or something you can like get in your head a little bit but like at the time i was like oh right if i it literally just like eyeline stuff like sort of like basic um acting on camera stuff that i just you know i didn't i didn't know there was no acting on camera class at the university of virginia at the time because why were there right um undergraduate you know so um but yeah no we had we had we had we had a blast we had a really really really good time and it

It was awesome to be in Southern California, you know, on the beach. Yeah. Oh, man, I know. There'd be times where I'd see like something from your show and we'd be in hurricane season. And I'd be like, those lucky fuckers, they don't even know. Yeah, the worst, the biggest complaint was driving to Manhattan Beach Studios. Yeah. From.

That is honestly quite far. It's long. It's a long time. So I read something recently. It made me laugh. You said that you let your seven-year-old see a couple of episodes of the show. And then she was super into it. And you were like, wait a minute.

I don't know if this is like appropriate for you. How do you navigate that as a dad? Well, clearly poorly. I shouldn't have let her watch it. I was just kind of feeling like I've made this turn in my career where, you know, I took a break from acting. for a bit. And so, you know, Gotham ended in 2019. I did a play and then the pandemic hit and I took this weird detour. And so I think I was feeling like I needed to show my kids like this is, you know, this is what I've done. And I couldn't show them Gotham was too violent. Definitely

couldn't show them Southland. That would not be appropriate at all. And so I was like, oh, the O.C. you know like it's you know family show yeah it was on now we're telling us sure it's fine and then it's like oh right in the pilot there's uh well there's obviously lots of sex uh there's cocaine uh oh boy you know deeply deeply uh inappropriate use of alcohol or unhealthy use of alcohol i mean it was a mass and so francis of course loved it she was like she's like this is awesome Yeah, like, whoa, dad, you were like a rock star. You're like, don't, no. No, I mean, she wouldn't even give me that credit.

But she was definitely interested in, you know, the whole scene. Yeah. She's seven going on, you know, 13. So she's like, teenagers are, well, now she's a, teenagers are, you know, the mystical beasts that she, like, sees. Right. Not actually experienced. Yeah, it was really fun.

But then I needed to turn it off and give it a few years. Totally. You're like, let's maybe go back to animated films for a while. Yeah. Yeah, I showed him. Yeah, I showed him that made animated film. Nice. So good.

Okay, that feels cool. What was that shift like for you, though? Because, you know, it's obviously hilarious to think about it through the eyes of your kids. But you did really turn in terms of the kind of subject matter. that your shows were about. Like, to your point, Southland and Gotham, you know, they were intense and violent and dark and so amazing. Was it like a choice for you to really want to go in the opposite direction of a dramatized

family story like the O.C? Or were they just scripts that you happen to read like and everything worked out? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you can relate to this, but I think there's this misperception that actors have controller for their careers. Oh, choice you mean? Yes. It's like, why'd you do it? Well, they offered it to me or like I...

Because it's the one I booked. Yeah, because they let me do it. And they also were willing to pay me for it. So I did it. Yeah, I mean, the O.C. I was like, you know, obviously thrilled beyond belief to get it. And that was just kind of luck. After that, I did.

I think the one job I really purposely set out to get was Southland. Like, that was like, I needed to... I read that script. from Anne Betterman, and I thought this is fantastic. She's such a great writer. She's an unbelievable writer. I also created a R. Bonavon. Yeah. Just

an extraordinary writer. Incredible eye for detail. John Wells was producing it. It was theoretically going to take over the, or it did actually, for a brief moment, take over the ER time slot on Thursday nights. And I told my manager at the time,

like, I really, this is the thing. So kind of knive. to like get the meeting and then quote unquote offered to read in the room even though I wasn't supposed to be auditioning you know the whole like kind of game of it um and and it worked I guess because they hired me um so that's the that's the probably the most purposeful I've ever been in my career was like I have to do something that's completely different both for like you know kind of more perception reasons, but also just because I needed to do it personally. Like, I needed to feel like I was growing and learning and be out on the edge.

And that's what soft it was. It was shot in the streets of L.A. It was highly improvised. It was, you could say whatever the hell you wanted. And then we would just sort of bleep it. Yeah. Training with the cops and being around real cops, real gang members and all that. It was like, it was, you know, that was, like, graduate school for acting, I guess, right?

If, like, EOC was undergrad, that was like, and it was scary because, like, you would realize when you showed up, oh, I haven't prepared enough. I'm not really quite very, you know what I mean? And you're just going to have to kind of roll with it because they're not going to stop for you. How does that present? What was the first time that you felt that? Well, thankfully, I was working with an actor named Michael Cudlitz, who was my training partner in the show. So basically, the pilot takes place in the very, what was good about it was the character was written as a naive young rookie cop. So my naivete as a, as a, as an actor, worked for me.

But Michael was really great, really tough, he's a big, tough, strong dude. And he was very, he was aware instantly that, like, the show was going to, at least our plot line on the show. There was obviously, they were amazing. Regina King was, you know, a lead actor, Sean Hadassie. We had amazing actors on it. But for our plot line, the training officer and the rookie cop, like, our relationship was going to, you know, determine whether that worked or not. And so we needed to become fast friends. And then as soon as the camera started rolling, he would just be an absolute.

dick to me because that was the character. He was like going to just, you know, tell me I'm an idiot. And there was a freedom in that. I think that really helped to know that I was actually supported as soon as the camera stopped rolling. But when we were rolling, I was free to be as uncomfortable and naive and clumsy in a way as I actually was. and then over time

the character evolved and that was really we did five seasons of that short seasons but five seasons and that was really probably the most change I've had in a character that I've done

which was really enjoyable that's so cool and now a word from our sponsors who make this show possible And then how did Gotham happen? Gotham happened because so both the O.C. and Southland were Warner Brothers shows. And when Southland was, Southland lived this really weird life where it was on NBC and then it was on T&T. That was actually in the middle of a strike.

I think that last big strike was in there somewhere. Anyway, it got sort of jumped to bat it around a little bit and so by the time I reached this fifth season it was kind of probably going to have to wrap up and Peter Roth who was the guy who ran Warner Brothers TV you know was

I guess I'd done right by him and so he wanted to get me on a deal and so I stayed with Warner Brothers and Bruno, and I did a pilot right as that show was ending, which never went to series, but Bruno Haller created that.

And so Bruno wrote the part of Jim Gordon with me in mind. So I got like the most amazing phone, a year later, you know, we did this pilot, didn't go anywhere, but we had a great time. And a year later,

I got the most amazing voicemail from Bruno, who's this, you know, charming British fella, you know, saying, I've written this part, you know, you in mind. You should take a read and, you know, no one's ever written anything for me yet.

And, you know, yeah, I'll take a look at playing the future commissioner Gordon in a Batman TV show. Sure. Yeah. Let me just count to three before I say yes. Right. But yeah, that's how that's how that went. It was just kind of like I was stayed in the fold and and then and then that brought me to New York. That was kind of like how I, because I've been in L.A. for over a decade at that point and that was actually one of the attractive things about the show as well. I was like it's kind of just ready to, I love L.A., but I was just ready to shake it up, you know, do something different. Ready to do something different. And then, you know, you got to go to New York. You're in the center of theater, which we know you love.

and then, you know, unexpected bonus of going to do this amazing show, which, by the way, having something written for you is like such a feather in your cap moment. And on top of it all, you met your wife. And it's like, what a cool, just like, what a cool thing happened to you. It was amazing. It was incredible. I mean, I was in New York, a city that I love dearly. And, you know, we had all of the toys, all of the, you know, it was really going to,

show off New York, right? So if you wanted a 200-foot crane and 50 extras and, you know, shut down Fifth Avenue or whatever you would do it, or at least for a few seasons, you would. And yeah, and then Marina came on the show pretty early on, like sort of midway through the first season.

And I just remember connecting with her in a way that I'd really never connect to with anyone before. Yeah. generally didn't date actors that much and I don't think she did either and yeah it was it was definitely a kind of a process of like are we really going to do this because there's obviously as you know like you know actors get together all the time while working it can really well but it can also go really poorly but I think we were really at a place in our lives where we were ready

for the real thing. We were ready to kind of do it right. I actually met her on the OC probably 10 years prior. And she says I blew her off. She says that she like hit on me and I didn't pay her any mind. I don't think that's true. But it's the story she loves to tell. Like that she trolls you about it a little bit.

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, you should have bet the one. wedding. It was like all, the whole speech was about what an idiot I am. I'm like, I, yeah, I probably probably was like that. Definitely it was like that. Um, uh, I think we met when, like met for the second time, but met in, in, in a real way when it was right, you know, I'm not a believer in fate, but this felt, um, it felt, you know, it felt incredibly fortunate to meter and to sort of start a formula. Yeah. I think, though, that that's something that's so cool, you know, like what we were

talking about earlier, that through line to your artistry and what you were passionate about as a kid, I really think that, you know, sometimes clichés become cliches because they're just so true. And that idea of hindsight being 2020, of course you wouldn't have seen it the first time you met her. But in hindsight, you look back and you go, oh, maybe there was a reason that at certain points, me and this person kept being put in the same rooms. Like, I've had that in my life. And when it hits you, you just go, oh, my God, am I the recipient of magic? Or am I an absolute idiot that I didn't get it until I got it?

And maybe it's both. Yeah, yeah. I think it's both. Well, actually said at the wedding, like, you rarely do get a second chance to make a first impression. Oh, I love that. they'll mess it up. That's really cool. And I love that you talk about that. You know, you have to weigh when is it worth a risk and what do you do with the connection, you know, and you guys had to do that in the context of being on this job together. And the added layer on

top of that is, oh, if this is the real thing, we're both public people. How do you figure out how to navigate what you allow in because you want to be able to celebrate your life and then what you keep away from prying eyes so that you have some privacy in your relationship. How do the two of you navigate that? I think being in New York is very helpful. Just kind of away from there's a lot going on here. A lot of stuff shoots and there's always a great theater scene. We live in a neighborhood just shock full of actors. There's actors everywhere. But it's very low-key, you know, there's not, there's not paparazzi. There's not, you know, the place where the actors go for lunch.

There's, you know, it's a very, you know, there's just sort of a New York anonymity to it. And so I think in that way, it kind of works out great because we can go, we can dress up, doll up, and go to, you know, a function. But for the most part, we're just here with our kids, you know, taking them to school. and, you know, waiting for the phone to ring or you're trying to make it ring. And it's tricky. We now have three children and juggling the careers with, like, our kids are now getting to an age, at least the older one and maybe even the older two, too, like, we have to balance like, okay, if we're going to do a job somewhere, like, how is that going to work?

Because they need to be in school. We want to give them, we want them to have as normal. a child quote unquote normal a childhood or or have a schedule have a have a have a consistency yeah but at the same time be able to enjoy the perks of this which is to be able to travel and to be able to see so it's definitely a lot it's a lot of work i mean we were just talking about it right before i came on like there's always you know new challenges uh to uh and and And, you know, Marana's career is, like, on fire. So it's, like, kind of, you know, you want to go for it, right?

Like, how often do you have a moment? Like, she's in Deadpool 3. Like, how often it be in a movie that's, like, you know, going to make a bazillion dollars? You need to, you owe it to yourself. Like, you put in the work, like, go, go for it. You know, make something. But also, you know, you got three kids at home who, like, you know don't totally understand that right yeah they don't get um what's going on so um but i have to

say we're i feel like we're doing pretty good job it seems like it's so cool and then i think one of the things that geeked me the most again because we've known each other you know um both from like being literal neighbors for a time to you know from afar but being like i see you how you doing this is weird this industry is crazy um you know it's like two blocks away from each other i know it was so cool but i um i i love the paths of advocacy you know that you and i in particular have taken and i know what a trip it was when i got to testify in front of congress and i've seen you on the hill doing it and like i just was like yes i love this for for like my friend over there And to see that you dove into this world of research when the world shut down, because you could

kind of smell that something was fishy and you followed that instinct, I'm just like kind of obsessed with this. So can you walk us through how that happened? I mean, I know you got an economics degree, you know, in college in Virginia, but the world of cryptocurrency and the implications of it in society and policy and the economy. It's so mind-boggling and I think really hard for a lot of people to understand who didn't, you know, spend lockdown doing the deep dive that you did. So like, talk to me about how this began. Sure, sure. So I was already kind of, in retrospect, I was like searching for a new thing.

I had finished Gotham. I did a play. I'm kind of trying to shake it up and, like, get some of that old mojo back. Like, I think if you do a lot of TV, you can kind of get into this rhythm that's, like, a bit repetitive. So when that play ended the pandemic, actually, I was just about to do a pilot, and the pandemic hit, and, you know, it was, everything was over. We were all, you know, put on ice. And I remember kind of looking at the newspaper, or maybe, I guess it was my computer screen that had the news on it, and drifting over to like the markets, which I never really paid attention to, even though I had an economics degree, and kind of noticing that they had gone, you know, obviously crashed down when COVID hit, and then they were roaring back and trying to make sense of it and noticing this thing called crypto, which a friend of mine introduced me to. and he said, you know, you've got to invest in it.

He actually used to live with me at that house. I had a little guest house. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I love Dave, but he's given me terrible financial advice before. He had encouraged me about some penny stock when I was in my 20th and, you know, put a little money into it and lost it, as did he. And so I just became kind of curious about.

it from that angle like wait a minute this the words don't make sense here right like from a linguistic you know i'm a i'm a i'm a bit of an anti-retentive guy when it comes to the stuff my mother's an english teacher and the dad's a lawyer so like you know you use a word like currency and that means money but money in economics like it does things like i can't call this glass money because i can't use it to buy stuff, but that's one of the things that the money's supposed to do is supposed to be able to buy and sell stuff with it. But you couldn't really do that with crypto. I mean, people talk about how theoretically you could, but you really can't for a variety of reasons. And so it felt like an investment, but if it was an investment, it was unclear what

it was an investment in lines of computer code stored on these ledgers called blockchains. and it just had all the hallmarks of kind of well of fraud of and and even more serious crimes potentially like money laundering and financing of terrorists and all sorts of things and I just became obsessed like I was sort of fascinated from the intellectual level of what is this desire to have this money that isn't from the government like I can understand the libertarian aspirations there but historically speaking it doesn't work like if the money doesn't come to the government you know logical questions where it's going to come from it's going to come from corporations from private actors um private money which is a thing we tried in the 19th century and

it didn't work in part because of fraud because once you know we we all have a bone to pick with the government but if the if the government's not issuing the money and instead corporations are pressuring it. You can see where the, you know, where the pitfalls would be, right? Like, what's stopping from gaming the system and from sort of manipulating these quote-unquote currencies? Yeah. I mean, you even see it now with inflation. You know, you see, for example, like massive food corporations doing $250 million buybacks of stock and then raising their prices by 20% and saying, it's inflation. And it's like, it's not inflation. You're. You're doing it.

You made a decision to raise prices for customers while enriching yourselves and you're blaming the economy. But it's not the economy. You chose it. The corporation made the decision. Like, it's crazy. There's a lot of research out there that shows that the pricing power that these corporations have had is really, it might even be the majority of the reason for the inflation. It's certainly a large part of it. The supply chain is messed up because of COVID, but like, what's the difference between a legitimate supply chain issue and just being able to gouge people because you can say, oh, it's the supply chain, you know?

Right. And I find that really interesting because we're seeing the damage being done by that kind of corporate greed, and we're not even talking about the corporations being the ones deciding what is money. So what you're saying, it's like if you think it's bad now, imagine how much worse it could be with this, this, this. being assigned the value of currency. Like, what are we talking about? It's made up. Right, right, exactly. And exactly. And but of course, money's made up, right?

Like money we also created, but it comes, it's a social construct and it's only as strong as the social consensus that underlies it. And so, you know, these things, these currencies that we made up, they're, you know, in terms of in the world, the average currency is actually pretty volatile. It's just that we're in the United States and we're actually. actually blessed with a very stable currency. So we sort of don't understand that. Ironically enough, given like the critical kind of like took off here.

But it was this story of, of, well, on a simple level, it was like a get rich quick scheme, right? It was like, who doesn't want. Like a Ponzi scheme? Yeah, yeah. But it had all these trappings of like emancipation and, you know, independence, decentralization, that you would sort of be free with your money to do whatever you wanted with it. But all of the stories, as I looked into them,

none of them were really true. They were reactions to things that were real, right? They were reactions to, you know, corporatization or centralization of certain, you know, economic actors in the economy. they were also, I think, given a lot of power because the subprime crisis was such a disaster and so many people got screwed over there that, like, faith in our economic system really was undercut potentially, you know, forever, but certainly for a generation.

You know, crypto took off amongst these young men, sort of 18 to 29-ish. Those guys, like, they saw their parents lose their house. They saw the destabilizing nature of subprime. And so when you put those guys alone, you know, in the pandemic, isolated from each other online all the time, right? And they see this thing that their friends are supposedly making money on. Like, why wouldn't they go for it? And then it just, as a Ponzi, it just like took on a life of its own.

And so it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. and the celebrities got involved if you can talk about and, you know, the story just spread much like a virus, actually. The person whose work influenced me the most

is this Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Schiller, who is a behavioral economist. He's not so much looking at the sort of mathematical models, but more the human behavior behind economic activity. And he just points out

that these these narratives their reaction to something that's real in this case maybe like the distrust of government born from the subprime crisis but they just kind of take on a life of their own and they mutate and they change to fit

whatever whatever sort of story resonates with the public and it's actually the first time that I was able to articulate why I was so interested in it because it was like well I'm not really not an economist I have an economist. I have an economy economic degree, but I'm not like, I didn't go to graduate school. My math is actually pretty bad, obviously. It's always my weak point. And I'm not some, you know, cryptographer,

expert on the technology. So why am I here? Why am I so obsessed with it? And it's because I'm a storyteller. It's because I'll tell stories for a living. I like to say that I lie for living, too, as an actor. I mean, I know we're always talking about truth, but it's also about show and you can tell when people are lying. I think actors are pretty good bullshit detector because they've been bullshitted before. Anyone who's ever had an agent has been bullshitted at least once or twice ago.

And so you see people doing stuff and you're like, well, that's not true. Yeah. Like I didn't at the time know as much about the quote unquote technology as I do now, but I knew that the celebrities selling it didn't know any more than I did. Well, yeah, they've just been told a story.

Someone has sat them down and said, this is really cool, and you should get in on it because it's the future, and they go, wow, okay. Well, they pay them in real dollars. Sure, but it's like you believe... There's a lot of money to show us.

Yeah, you believe a story. A friend of mine explained it to me in a really interesting way. You know, we were talking about all of this because I understand that there is real value assigned to some of this, and I also understand that it's essentially completely made up, and how does it become real when it was just an idea? And a buddy of mine was saying that he had a friend very deep in the space

who was talking about all the meme coins. And I was like, just the idea that a meme coin has value, it's a meme. What are we talking about? you know, much like Dogecoin was a joke that then became a currency. And he explained to me that if you just were paying attention, like he tracked a $10,000 investment in a meme coin that over the span of two weeks became worth $140,000, but then one week later was worth nothing.

Right. And I was like, so if you were smart enough to get out and you could have made $130,000 on the made-up idea, but if you had waited seven more days, you would have lost 10 grand. Like, what is this? So I guess I'm curious, I ask questions and I hear examples, but I certainly don't feel like an expert. And I hear you saying that, you know, you may not be particularly great at math, but you do understand the language of economics, the language of money.

So how would you explain to our listeners like, What cryptocurrency really is, and you've talked about the red flags that you were seeing in terms of this story sounds made up, but are there actual identifiers you would tell someone who's trying to learn about this to look for, to understand it? Yeah, yeah, and I can make it simple, and this is what I told the Senate. It actually starts, it starts and ends with language. So they're not currencies. They're not, they're just, they aren't.

That's not what they do. There are things you put money into, hoping to make money off of them through that work of your friend who bought the meme coin. So what that is is a security. It's an investment contract. But they're unregulated, basically, right? Like there's very little laws. There are very few laws that really apply, or that, sorry, have been applied broadly speaking to

crypto, right? You see all of the cases now. Like everybody's in court. Everybody's getting sued. Jail, left and right, all over the world. And it's because I, in part, I think the powers that B didn't really take crypto that seriously. It's awfully stupid, sort of understandable. But the crime that can be facilitated by using it is significant.

I mean, it's kind of mind-blowing, actually. There was a hearing today in the Senate Banking Committee, which was the committee that I testified in front of a couple years ago. And the hearing was explicitly about cryptocurrency funding terrorism and sanctions evasion and, you know, the North Korean nuclear weapons program. I mean, literally like the worst people in the world can use it to send this thing that has value of some kind instantaneously all over the world and avoid the system and avoid the regulations. So what are cryptocurrencies? They're unregulated unlawed securities. And it's sort of interesting. Our securities laws come up by the 1930s because of the 1920s we have them.

And the roaring 20s, you know, this big bubble that built up crashed and ended up, you know, resulting in the Great Depression. And the powers that B said, oh, you should probably have some rules about this stuff. Yeah. And the main thing that the securities laws are predicated. primarily on disclosure, you need to say, if you're going to invest in something, you need to know who the hell you're giving your money to, what the hell they're doing with that money, right? And crypto has none of that, effectively design, right?

It's like, oh, I'm betting on a meme coin. Okay, what does it do? Well, not really anything, actually. It's a dog in a hat or whatever. But other people are like, the numbers going up. So, like, there must be value there. Well, in an unregulated market, you can manipulate. the prices of these things.

I mean, you saw Sam Bangitfried get convicted of, like, one of the worst financial frauds in American history. Yep. And what was going on inside of his empire was just, it was just straight up fraud. It was just taking people's money, filtering it through a bank and spending it. And in the meantime, you know, the numbers on the screen can kind of do whatever the numbers on the screen do. They're sort of, the exchange.

for the most part are kind of like bucket shops. A bucket shops were fake exchanges that up until the 1920s when they were outlawed would, you know, you'd call on the telephone or send a telegram or whatever it was and make, and you know, invest in something and they'd say, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

And then, you know, they wouldn't make the trade. Right. They'd just take your money. They just take the money. And then it really just becomes sort of a Ponzi scheme where you just, all you're really trying to do is slow the redemption process. down and control the redemption process. You're just trying to make sure that people can't get there. The thing that keeps a Ponzi going is not just the ability to get new money in,

but to manage how many people are able to get their money out. Right. You have to hold on to it. Yeah, because the money's not there, right? Like you're creating these returns on the screen and saying, oh, it's up this percent. None of that matters until you actually need to get the money back. And that's when, you know, shit gets real. And so these are sort of, you know, in many ways, just like sort of new iterations of the same old Ponzi stories.

They're just kind of updated for the digital age, right? They have all the birds and they have all the, you know, crypto is basically the opposite of what it says it is. It's not decentralized. It's highly centralized. It's not new. It's crypto's been around or blockchain's been around for over 30 years. Yeah. It's not a currency.

Stable coins aren't stable. Like it's really funny. that, like, you know, it's kind of exactly the opposite of whatever they say there. Right. Which is a grand tactic of, like, you know, telling you something that's just blatantly not true and daring you to disbelieve it. Right. And now a word from our sponsors.

I mean, it's really wild to think about. And it's so cool to talk to you about because this thing you were interested in, essentially led you down this rabbit hole that has resulted in the book being a New York Times bestseller. You testifying in front of the Senate, you know, what a wild pandemic project you had. What do you think is the biggest takeaway that you want folks to get from the book? What do you, like, why did you decide to aggregate all this information and publish something? I think I want people to understand what actual money is and why it's so important. the thing that is so important to understand about it is that it is a thing with share.

In many ways, I think our monetary system is what's called a public good. Maybe it's a thing that we all need to work for us all to do well. Like obviously, we have private ownership of particular things, but in order for our society to work, we need money to work for us. and share it, and that's a responsibility to make sure that it is working for all of us. And so I think, you know, the potency of the cryptocurrency stories really came from the failures of our regulated system to do all of the things that money should do, right? And I really, I think that's why I wrote the book, is to get to the bottom of the mystery of how it was all working. And I'm, I'm not, my journey isn't quite done.

I'm working on a documentary. I filmed all of these guys. So I have an interview with Sam Beck-M-Fried, which is quite a trip to look at. Oh, my goodness. So, so I think the doc will also kind of get into this territory. But I wrote it to actually talk about how important it is to, to be connected. sort of aspires to this like libertarian notion that like

your money is just yours and like nobody has any like you sort of live in a fantasy land where like you don't have to interact with anybody you're totally probably no one knows anything about you that can seem nice but in reality we need to share this thing called money to share the system and agree on its rules or it doesn't work for any of us

right devolves into this what crypto is which is this sort of zero-sum game where someone to win someone else has to lose the winners and losers aren't equally distributed there's like a couple of winners the scammers and the criminals and then a bunch of losers the um the average person and every once a while you know an average person wins a little bit but that's of course a good thing for the scammers and for the people running the casinos or the excuse me the exchanges is like you need enough people out there spreading the story, right, that like, hey, I got rich on it for people, other people to get drawn into it. So I think that's really what I'm kind of trying to talk about is how connected we all are and how important those connections are to

addressing the issues that crypto purports to address. I think that's really beautiful. It's such an interesting thing, you know, for me, connection, community. the last 20 years of political volunteering and activism have really shown me that in whatever way you might be dissatisfied, as you said earlier, with our government, we can forget in this country how lucky we are and how good we have it. And yes, there are all sorts of historic horrors and disparities we have to address. And the fact that we have a relatively stable currency, the fact that we are developing ever more access to things like healthcare, you know, I would love if we had a more Nordic system in that regard. But like we forget that community is really the only thing

that makes any of this work. And, you know, the roads we drive on, we can only drive on because we all agree to the rules of the road. We agree to stop at red lights and go at green lights. And it is a societal project to be able to exist in a work. and it's really interesting to hear you qualify money in that way. It only works if it's looked at as a shared system and the regulations on things like you're saying, securities and whatnot are the only way we avoid another Great Depression, a disaster. And I don't think it's accidental that we saw a pandemic cause, the disruption that we did and the supply chain issues that you're referring to. And now it's really interesting to see, you know, some of the folks

who know that it takes regulation to make any of this work trying to rein in these companies that are gouging and doing the things because it's like, no, no, you're saying that it's the system and it's actually just you. And in a way, it's another version of the crypto scam, right? It's like, oh, well, I'm going to get rich even if it hurts everybody else. And there has to be a moment where we decide to stabilize the community for the benefit of the community. So it's really, I've just never thought about crypto in that way, and I appreciate you illuminating it like that for me. No, that's exactly right.

And I think the notion that you're sort of just going to be able to go to your own little siloed area and exist free of others is not just a fantasy, it's a dangerous fantasy. The truth is we do live in a democratic society for all of its faults. And so our government does represent us for better or worse and imperfectly, of course. But like the solution is to strengthen that and to focus on that, work on that, is not to sort of imagine some system where it's every man or woman for himself. It's actually very dangerous because in that world, nobody trusts anybody. That's the weirdest thing to me about crypto is that.

that it says it's this trustless money that all you have to do is trust the code. But first of all, it's not true because the code doesn't fall from the sky. People write the code. So he's really doing these are trusting the people that write the code. And Sam Begman-Fried, he instructed one of his guys to change the code. That's how he actually stole the money is he literally just changed the code that was the exchange. But it's also to say you want trustless money is wrong. Because why should we aspire not to trust one another?

That's so dark. So, it feels apocalyptic or something that, like, we would, none of us would trust each other. Well, and in a trustless society, fascism blooms. Yes. And it is part of what we're seeing. And I think the importance of being able to identify the tools that tip the skills toward fascism rather than a representative democracy, it really does feel like one of the most important. acts of awareness of our time because there's a lot at play

that's trying to make the world more fascist and incredibly easy for a handful of people and incredibly dangerous for everyone else and I should hope that the more we can learn about all of these systems including the one you write about in the book the more we can go

no we don't want that we don't want nine billion people to suffer and six dudes to be rich Like, that seems probably not like the best outcome. Yeah, exactly. And we have agency, right? I mean, that's the thing that I want to really impress upon people is we have, we know it's hard, we know it's tough, we know it's imperfect, but we have agency, right?

And we don't have anything else. All we have is each other. Yes. That's all we have for better. And so we need to. So to strengthen the us. Yes. Feels like the goal.

Yeah. So the documentary is coming. When do we get to see it? It's hopefully relatively soon. I think it's going to be ready in a few months. And then I'm going to figure out how to get it out there. I'm going to go to festivals. Am I going to try to screen it for buyers?

I'm really excited about it because it's very unusual. If you go on Netflix and you see these cryptodocks, it's very much like it's about a con, you know, and it's these like really these blowhard guys who ripped off whoever. There can be kind of fun, but they're sort of true crimey. This is, which is a genre I love, but I feel like it can get repetitive over time. This is kind of a comedy, sort of. It's like, it's just ridiculous what happened with the whole bubble.

And unfortunately, I think there's, you know, still more to come. But it's a comedy with some heart and hopefully some brains as well, just kind of looking at like, how did we get? get here, right? I mean, too much. I don't think crypto would have taken off in the way that it did if it weren't for the pandemic for everyone being so isolated and feeling like in a way, I think it was almost like a way of connecting, you know, it's like you find these old groups and you you you promote this or that coin and you you get the false sense of community. To me, it's false. I mean, it's not really predicated on any real affection because it's solely for

profit. And if you know that you're being exploited, it may seem like you're in a part of a community, but you're probably just a sucker. Yeah, I imagine this is how the people who invested with Bernie Madoff felt like, oh, we found a new thing and it's going to be great. Absolutely. I mean, his genius was, because he ran his con for decades, his genius was, he was a respected person. He, you know, he was chairman of NASDAQ. He, like, created this thing called payment for order flow. which is an important thing inside the plumbing of our market. So he was like this revered figure, but his business investing wasn't going so well,

so he was just sort of lying about it. But he made it an exclusive club. You had to be invited to invest with Bernie. You were alongside all these big charities and all these wealthy people. And I think crypto was writing on that for a minute, this notion's a notion that it was like the future, you know? all you needed to invest in the future of the future of money was a willingness to part with the current version of it you know it's like you could you too can own the future of money just give me some of your real dollars now um i i think that uh it's really fun i love the true crime stuff but my favorites true crime is the dumb kind like the cohen brothers kind of crime we're like me too yeah yeah okay yeah i like that i think it's fun and so this this will

probably have elements of that. Oh, I can't wait to see it. That's going to be so great. Well, I see we've gone a little over, and I know you have three kiddos to attend to, and it might be like school pickup time in New York. Okay, so I will ask you my last question. I just, I love to ask everybody when you think about, you know,

where you sit, what you're working on and your life, what, as you look ahead, feels like your work in progress. My work in progress is the balance. between the work that I do outside of the home and my connection to my family and to my community, but particularly to my wife and my kids. You know, I think that's really the, the pandemic was a wonderful reset, you know, I'm privileged to say that, but it was like, oh, right, a lot of this stuff doesn't actually matter, right?

Yeah. Like, it's up, who's down. it can feel good, and it's not like you shouldn't go after these things if you really want them. But at least for me, it was a recognition that that wasn't what really drove me. There wasn't really something that gave me the deep satisfaction that I was seeking. So I think that's what I'm focused on, is that balance. I love that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, this was so great.

This is an I-heart podcast.